Okay, so I can’t import an airsoft unless it has the orange tip. Am I to assume I can manufacture an airsoft here without the orange tip? But then there is the bit about “transported within.” Transported by whom, the owner, seller, importer? Transported for what purpose? Personal use, resale?
Having nothing else to go on, from the link I will assume it is against federal law to be in possession of an airsoft anywhere other than private property if it is missing the required orange marking.
I gather it was also illegal for Rice to purchase the airsoft, so who gave it to him? That’s a huge part of the breakdown of responsibility. If the kid’s mother gave this to him, and turned him loose in the city to play, that is negligent.
Did he really have to start shooting two seconds in? He could not have given the subject (adult or kid, I don’t care) five seconds to drop the gun? Could they not have parked more than three feet away, gotten out, and called out a demand to drop the weapon?
Why did the police pull up right in front of him and jump out shooting? Do you think that’s absolutely the best approach for a cop to take? I’m sorry, but I don’t see two cops trying to defuse a situation; I see two cops who saw a black man with a gun and at least one of them had decided to shoot before they even stopped the car.
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How long would have been an appropriate time to wait before making the decision to shoot?
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Long enough for the subject to either surrender or try to shoot the cops. Two seconds or less is not good enough.
Good police work is not about coming up with a justification to shooting people, it’s about training cops to figure out ways to not have to shoot people (and that includes training dispatchers to pass along relevant information.) Better police work would have resulted in nobody being hurt here. The cops did a shitty job.
No, the average cop car isn’t reinforced to be bullet proof. But one would be safer inside than jumping out in the face of a gun if he was afraid that it was real.
Do you believe the police when they say they told the boy to put up his hands three times between the time the drove up to him and the time they shot him 1 1/2 to 2 seconds later? Why don’t you try to loudly say “Put up your hands!” 3 times as fast as you possibly can? How fast can you do it and be understood?
No. Tasers are a less lethal response to a non lethal threat among other things. If there is a lethal threat then force must be met with force. Just like you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight, you don’t use a taser in a gun fight either. That would be quite foolish.
Not sure exactly what the protocol for pulling up right next to the kid was, but just commenting on the 1.5 - 2 seconds vs. 5 seconds. 5 seconds is a long time. A person can cover a lot of ground in 5 seconds, and can do a lot in 5 seconds. It’s enough time to draw, aim, and fire. Try it yourself. If you are recommending that a police officer wait 5 seconds when the person in front of them appears to be drawing a gun on them, that would be very bad for officer safety.
How good for officer safety is it to get as close to the gun as possible as fast as possible without analyzing the situation? What is the use of (supposedly) telling someone to put their hands up if you are going to kill them before they have a chance to do so?
And you believe that it was said in such a way that someone who didn’t already know what you were going to say would clearly understand you, and have time to actually do so before being shot to death? You see, even if we are to believe that the cop that jumped out of that car said that phrase three times with auctioneer-like clarity before firing those shots, there is that small problem that has to be addressed: At what fraction-of-a-second point in time between the last “…hands!” and the emptying of the guns was this kid supposed to be putting up his fucking hands?
It appears he had time to reach for his waistband where the officers observed him put the replica firearm moments before. The video I saw showed the kid’s hands go to his sides. Hard to tell with the quality of the video. The officers say they were yelling to the kid to raise his hands before they stopped, implying they saw him and identified him as the person that prompted the 911 call before they stopped.