The soldiers getting 5 years is a side issue, regardless of the reason 5 years isn't justice, and two wrongs don't make it right. Arguing because they got off with a slap on the wrist for a horrible crime means someone else should is flawed, as I'll doubt you'll find anyone here arguing the 5 year sentence was just.
It sounds like life was not kind to him, but that in no way excuses what he did. I'm sorry he's not a modern day Jean Valjean who commits a crime out of survival necessity and is hounded by a legal system with a lopsided scale when it comes to justice and mercy.
"There is very little thought to anything he does," Ricciardi said.
Now this was said as an argument that it wasn't premeditated and while I might find that hard to believe, if we take those words as absolute truth, then we have someone who given the option to consider his actions in depth chose not to think about it much before he started trying to kill people. And we are some how supposed to believe he doesn't present a future danger to society? Sorry if you don't give much thought to anything you do, and as a result murder someone not because there is imminent threat to your life, but because you don't see any other way to solve your problems then I think you are a great candidate for long term detention.
That all being said, I would agree that a chance for parole is reasonable, but I don't have a problem with the mentioned 30 year mandatory. Perhaps in that time he'll learn to lend some thought to actions of this gravity prior to taking them. The only miscarriage of justice I see here is that at the time he moves to a full fledged adult prison, he's likely to encounter a similar situation of being bullied and having a hard life, and that is a tragedy.
Advocate stiffer sentences for people like the before mentioned soldiers, demand a more secure less barbaric prison environment where social aspects mirror what society expects on the outside instead of a barbaric world of mob rule, but don't let him off lightly without making sure he's really not likely to repeat his actions because you feel sorry for his hard life thus far.
Honestly I also feel that his parents should face some responsibility. While I owned and had access to firearms when I was 13, I didn't touch them without first getting permission from my father. Quite frankly if I'd ever given him any reason not to trust me with that responsibility, I likely wouldn't have had them any longer, or at least not had unrestricted access to them with the exception of an honor system where I needed to ask. Then again my father didn't abuse me, and had I incurred problems similar to this young man that I couldn't have reasonably handled on my own, my father would have stepped in and resolved the issue one way or another. This did in fact happen once while I was growing up, and while I would have been able to handle things on my own if it had been left between me and another student, a vice principal decided to intervene in such a way that tied my hands and made me an open target for him. To this day even as an adult I would not want to be on the receiving end of my parents anger as she was. That is the job of a parent, and the parents here failed their son, and society horribly. While they may not be legally accountable, morally it sounds like they are just as much if not more responsible. Failure to protect and nurture their child, and allowing him access to firearms when all evidence points to a complete lack of respect, responsibility, and understanding of them might not be lawful crimes, but they are crimes in my book none the less.
