Not that parents have much say. It’s hard to pull aside a kid and get him to stop picking on another, because they won’t always see the problem. But if somebody had managed to sit the kid down or get people to stop talking about him and joking about it, well, we probably wouldn’t be reading this and Larry might not be dead.

I can’t answer for the Young Marines, but there’s plenty of girls and women in martial arts. Heck, one of the mothers in our Scout Troop is an instructor. She’s a foot shorter than me and doesn’t look in particularly imposing but I bet she could kick my ass.

You are also making a rather big assumption; that those activities were “hobbies” of his, and that this in turn gives insight to his self-image. They could be nothing of the sort. I know personally of a family who, having a bully for a son, put him into martial arts on the theory that it would teach him self-discipline. God knows I’ve seen people put their kids into Scouts because “It’ll make a man out of him” or because Mom decided her son needed a strong male role model that he wasn’t getting at home (the former usually ends up badly - we’re not the Junior Marine Corps - but the latter often does). I can easily see that someone might put their kid into the Young Marines for the same purposes. It’s very, very possible that this kid was put into these activities against his will and give no read at all into his own feelings about his masculinity.

As far as jail time goes, the owner of that gun who failed to secure it should be sitting in jail right next to this murderer. Someone with a gun who also has a child who does not ensure that said gun will not be misused by that child is guilty of at the very least gross negligence.