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A simple test of this is to ask a 10-12 year old, "What happens when someone dies?"
A lot of them just simply don't know. The development of complex abstract thought just isn't there at the age of 11 to understand that shooting someone results in a permanent death that can't be undone.
I had this discussion with the 6th graders I used to teach. More than half the students had the ability to put two and two together to a point. They see an actor on t.v. or in a movie die and then later see them in another movie. In their mind, the death wasn't permanent. While the students knew that the actors were just acting, their brain hasn't made the distinction that the death was faked, too. There seemed to be a belief that if someone was shot in a movie, they were actually shot.
Like the title says, though, there is so much wrong with this story that the child's inability to be aware of the ramifications of his actions is only part of the problem.
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"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses
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