As a junior high school student, I shorted my lunch daily to leave a dime that went into an aluminum cigar tube. I was saving for a fishing reel that would cost $6.90 including tax. When I reached my goal, I walked to the Sears store to buy it. It was 5 miles one way. I still have that fishing reel today.
Salvador Ramos (Uvalde) was staying with his grandparents, but he was only 18 and came from a very poor and broken home. How many 18-year-olds can go live on their own with no parental help? No car, no rental history or credit score, no furniture, no household goods, and whose only prospects are minimum wage jobs, if they can find a way to get transport to said jobs? A few manage it somehow, after working summers while in high school and saving up for a car, etc., and finding roommates, at least one of whom has a parent willing to co-sign an apartment lease. Most kids that age who appear to be living on their own have a car provided by parents, insured by parents, and many other things actually provided by parents.
Audrey Hale was reportedly was on the autism spectrum and was also “under a doctor’s care” for “an emotional disorder”. Many young adults with autism still live with their parents, as they can’t make it on their own out there in the adult world, or it takes them much longer to manage that.
The disposable income thing is for real. While the parents might think their child is saving up for a car, deposit for an apartment lease, etc., he or she might actually be saving up to buy guns.
Parents of troubled adult children might need to practice some “tough love” and insist the kid’s paychecks be deposited into a savings account in the parents’ names as the price of remaining in their home, one they have complete control over to make sure the money is used for approved purposes (car, apartment deposit, attend truck driving school, barber college, whatever). But how many parents believe their kid would buy a bunch of guns and go shoot school children?