Murder is Murder, No Matter How Nice the Murderer Is

     Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser is a book about two boys who open fire at their school. The boy's names are Brendan and Gary. The initial reason why Brendan and Gary opened fire at their school is because they wanted revenge for the constant bullying that they experienced at their school.Both Brendan and Gary are very different as characters, but somehow they came together to shoot a whole bunch of people.

      I think that the killer that is the easiest to sympathize with is Gary. Throughout this book, you read all about Brendan and Gary's 9th and 10th grade experiences. You see how badly they are getting bullied. But you can't help but feel sorry for Gary (that is, until he starts shooting a bunch of people. ) The bullying that Gary has to go through is downright brutal. On top of that, he's pretty depressed, and he thinks a lot about committing suicide. But I don't think these are plausible reasons to commit a crime like murder. 
        But I don't think that the big question here is whether Gary had the right to murder these people or not. I wonder if Gary would have committed this crime if he didn't know Brendan at all. "Whatever that dark thing in Brendan was, it started to come out in Gary too...I don't know whether what Gary had came from Brendan or whether Brendan just brought it out in Gary" (pg. 54). I, myself, doubt that he would of murdered those people. He just doesn't have the anger inside of him. But Brendan certainly had enough anger for the both of them.
     In the end, I don't really know if  Gary would have done it without Brendan. But does that matter? It does not matter that he might not of killed a bunch of people if Brendan was not there, what matters was that he did kill a bunch of people. And no matter how many times he was bullied or tormented, it doesn't matter because he committed the crime. I do not believe that any reason would be a good reason to kill anybody. And just because Brendan may have influenced Gary to join him in the shooting doesn't mean that Gary is a good person. After all, it wasn't Brendan pulling the trigger in Gary's gun. It was Gary.