Which, again, makes no sense. A twelve year old with a gun is more risky than a shower. And the idea that I should be takling a larger risk because something else is a smaller risk is illogical. That’s like arguing that I shouldn’t wear my seat belt while driving, because sometimes planes crash.
The risks of one have nothing to do with the other.
Regards,
Shodan
What should be the age restriction for toy guns that shoot rubber pellets?
Do you have a cite for that?
Because he was a moron. When the police yell “freeze!” you don’t try to draw an Airsoft gun. You freeze, because if you don’t, the police are likely to shoot you. As we have seen.
[list=A][li]No, only the ones who threaten police with them, and [*]Don’t manufacture quotes and attribute them to me.[/list][/li]Regards,
Shodan
Someone with a greater emotional age than you. So, six years old or so.
Regards,
Shodan
Trying to draw an airsoft gun? You honestly believe he was trying to draw a toy gun? No wonder you think he was a moron, because no one not completely insane would do that when police pull up yelling (and, by the way, this kid didn’t do that either.)
Sure, like juvenile delinquent.
But the cops never knew he may be a juvenile, rather it was relayed to the cops as a guy with a gun.
It’s rather telling that people are flip-flopping between saying “twelve year olds are too stupid to be expected to obey police instructions, but instead it’s reasonable to expect them to reach for their toy gun” and “no-one can expect anyone to be stupid enough to threaten the police with a toy gun”.
Make your damn minds up… If you have functioning minds, anyway.
It’s not “stupid” to have a reaction time of greater than 2 seconds in that situation, whether you’re 12, 22 or 42.
It would be stupid to “draw your (fake) weapon” in that situation, also regardless of age.
Cite. So yes, that appears to be what he did, and yes, moron.
Not that 12 year olds aren’t often moronic, or that I wasn’t when I was that age, but grabbing for an Airsoft pistol is an especially egregious form of the malady. In this case, a fatal malady.
It certainly was.
Regards,
Shodan
“reaching to his waistband” is a far cry from “trying to draw” the gun.
Hell, he might have just been clutching the area where the bullet entered.
“Reaching for his waistband”, if that is how you chose to interpret that very grainy bit of footage, does not automatically mean “grabbing for his Airsoft pistol”. He could have been:
Well, like “juvenile.” “Delinquent” means delinquent, which is different. However, it is interesting that you spotted the way the term is loaded.
Except that’s not what you said. You said the caller only described him as a “guy,” not a kid.
Granted, and technically I’m correct. The caller called him a guy and later, “probably a juvenile”, (read maybe not) but never a kid.
Has anyone here referred to a 12 year old boy as a “guy”? Maybe a little guy.
You can take any risk you want, or no risk whatsoever as long as you don’t harm someone else. When your “risk prevention” results in serious harm or in death to someone else, we have the right to question whether your response was proportional to the supposed risk.
The risk posed by 12 yo with a something that looks like a gun is almost nil. And I’m not a single guy saying so from the comfort of his armchair. On the video you can see clearly a guy hanging around the gun-wawing kid for several minutes. He doesn’t seem to fear for his life. Wawing around something that looks like a gun is a typical activity for a 12 yo. I wawed around things that looked like a gun when I was 12. You probably already had 12 yo wawing something that looked like a gun around you. People are typically not terrified by 12 yo wawing around something that looks like a gun.
And I further argue that the risk of confronting a 12 yo wawing around something that is a gun, is essentially limited to an accidental discharge. And this risk is the reason why you should confront a 12 yo wawing a gun if you’re a responsible adult. You keep citing extraordinary rare examples of 12 yo murderers as a valid reason to outright kill a gun wawing 12 yo. You don’t get to kill people because they pose an extremely remote risk. A coworker with scissors might go postal and kill you with the scissors. You don’t get to kill any coworker coming close to your desk with scissors and looking funny because he might potentially be a mass muderer.
And this is even truer for police officers who are supposed to be trained and paid to assess, face, and handle dangerous situations.
What the fuck is the difference between “juvenile” and “kid”?
If a person is referred to as both a guy and a juvenile, I am expecting to see someone in the 16-18 range.
And I picked completely at random the example of a coworker going postal and killing you with scissors, but after I posted, I actually googled it, and bingo :
Coworker going postal and killing two people with scissors
So, I assume that following your own logic, you will from now on consider legitimate to kill any coworker who seems to reach for something that looks like scissors. Because it happens!
This post was in response to Shodan.
First of all - it is “waving”. Sorry for the spell flame, but 8 times is a bit much.
Second - it takes just a few pounds of pressure on a trigger for a 12-year-old to fire that gun. A 3-year-old may have a problem. A 12-year-old definitely wouldn’t. And I would say a 12-year-old waving a gun around is more dangerous than an adult, not less - an adult is expected to be a bit more cautious, 12-year-olds may not weigh their actions as carefully.
Fucking hell. The kid didn’t draw an object from his waistband and point it at the cops. He “reached for his waistband”. The posters here who say that there’s no reasonable way for the cops to tell a realistic toy gun from a real gun are correct. But the cops never saw him draw a realistic toy gun, let alone point it at them.
Instead they drove the car within feet of him, jumped out, and shot him. He didn’t draw his toy gun. He “reached for his waistband”. Whether the gun was realistic or not is fucking irrelevant, because the cops didn’t see him draw it. He could have had a comb in his waistband, or his wallet, or his teddy bear, or his phone.
Yeah, it’s funny how unarmed people always seem to reach for their waistband just before the cops open fire.
He didn’t draw a realistic toy gun and point it at the cops. Yes, I can imagine someone drawing a gun and shooting at the cops 2 seconds after they arrive. That’s not what happened. He didn’t draw a gun, or any other object. He didn’t do anything except possibly, according to the cops, move his hand slightly, and so they felt justified in shooting him. Moving your hand around a cop is justification for them shooting you, apparently. He was reaching for his waistband, that’s what everyone does, because how can anyone contradict what the cop says? Even if the dead guy turned out to be unarmed, he was reaching for his waistband, and that’s enough threat that he brought his death upon himself.
Unfortunately for the cops, in this case we have video of the incident, and the claim that the kid was reaching for his waistband is contradicted by the video evidence. It’s amazing how seldom people reach for their waistbands on video, compared to how frequently they seem to do it when there is no video camera. Do video cameras put out some sort of anti-waistband repulsor field or something? Clearly more research is needed, but it seems like if every cop carried a video camera the threat posed by rogue waistbands could be greatly reduced.
Do you dispute that Rice reached for his waistband? The video shows he did.
The police saw him put the replica firearm in his waistband moments before they pulled up on him. That is their claim. Do you dispute it?