Frosstbyte

I think Columbine should be the new Godwin Law whenever children are involved. Did you seriously compare a kid who may or may not have done anything seriously wrong to two kids who deliberately plotted to slaughter their classmates?

I don't want to go down the Columbine road here, but not watching your kid every second of every day does not make you a horrible parent who is unleashing a ravaging monster on the world. SOMETHING happened here which caused whatever this kid was doing to have consequences far beyond what anyone would usually expect to happen from setting a fire. If you teach a kid about fire safety, I think we can all agree that you would generally say, "You'll burn down the house and might hurt yourself." Reasonably you can extend that to the neighboring houses.

But again, can you really turn that into knowing that it would start a catastrophic wildfire that would rampage across thousands of acres because of horribly dry conditions and about the worst weather luck anyone could conceive of? Really, short of the kid having doused his backyard in gasoline (or someone's house or his own house, etc.) and running around cackling like mad as he threw firecrackers into the holocaust, I see no reason that a punishment exactly like the one Snowy laid out wouldn't be completely appropriate.