I recently watched a documentary called “Devil’s Playground” that was so weird. It’s about a rite of passage Amish teens go through when they’re 16.
Practically every kid in this documentary was smoking like a chimney, there were girls in bonnets and sack dresses swilling beer from big plastic cups! The non-Amish kids claim that the Amish kids have the wildest parties in town, so they always try to attend. One Amish kid hopes to return to the community to follow in his father’s footsteps as a minister, but first must clear up the nasty addiction to crystal meth he acquired during his time in the Devil’s Playground.
Before I saw this documentary, I had no idea, but it seems like there are lots of wild kids in the Amish community, some of them with paintball guns.
Weird.
That said, the guy who shot the tomatoers needs to be caught, that dude is a loose cannon!
Depends on which end of the gun you combine with the asshole. Guns make great asshole elimination devices.
Not sure a 23-year-old Amish guy whose sole crime was tossing tomatoes at a car qualifies, though.
And forget the paintball. What kind of 23-year-old thinks a wild time involves tossing tomatoes at cars? I mean, this is the kind of stunt most of us outgrew about the time we discovered girls, no?
my only other comment is a general ‘wtf’ to community for apparently tolerating this little ritual. It surely couldn’t be that difficult to figure out who, where etc. (johann and his friends are just stopping by to pick up some produce, 3 squash, 2 cucumbers, 5 green peppers, 4 bushels of rotten tomatoes…).
yes, it can indeed cause damage, startling the driver of a vehicle in motion is never a good plan, I’ve seen dents in cars from merely placing a laundry basket on top, so I don’t have any problem believing that any object, yes, even a squishy tomato, thrown at a moving vehicle could leave a dent, the acid in the tomato juice can damage paint, and hell, just the fact that you’ve caused work for some one else…
assholes.
(but, in case anyone doesn’t figure this out, shooting them was way way way over the line)
Ironically I just posted about road rage causing more problems than it’s worth and not provoking these drivers with guns.
But the paintball gun makes me undecided. If the guy got out and someone fired a paintball gun at him, it’s considered a firearm (in Canada) and it certainly can kill you (at least, mine could). If I was being shot at with a paintball gun outside of a proper game, I might consider than an attack with a deadly weapon. Without knowing how the paintball gun was used in the story, I hesitate to bash the shooter outright.
On the other hand driving through the same place 3 or 4 times means the guy was just looking to get provoked. The stupid kids should have realized that and stopped.
Sorry, just reread what I wrote, I in no way condone the shooter. Just pointing out that it was stupid on the kids part, but absolutely crazy on the driver’s part and should be punished to the full extent of the law.
Your paintball gun could kill? What is the velocity of the ball coming out of the muzzle? I would imagine that a person would have to be pretty close to the muzzle to sustain a serious injury, let alone death.
Meh, I’m with bandit. Thin the herd. Once they find the shooter, they oughta wax his ass too. Thinning the herd again. The fewer idiots there are in the world, the happier I am. Amish or not.
In this case someone was actively discouraged from doing so.
And I can imagine a scenario involving two 18 wheelers, one hauling gasoline, the other hauling a loaded car trailer on a busy highway and a nitwit with a tomato that would result in much more damage then a nitwit with a gun.
I blame Amishness for this. Seriously, do you have any idea how monumentally fucking bored you’d have to be to consider tossing tomatos at passing cars a rollicking good time? When you’re twenty-three years old? If this guy had had access to even basic cable, he’d be alive today.
The guy who was shot was actually Mennonite, not Amish. From the CNN link in the OP:
Which apparently include paintguns.
While 23 sounds a bit old to be engaging in such shenanigans, I must say that I’ve seen similar silly stuff from some fraternity brothers, who, like this kid, are old enough to know better.
What I don’t get is the driver going by five times (if I’m counting this correctly–the story says he got hit the first time, and drove back a second time; then 25 minutes later he drove past twice, and on a third pass got out of the car with his gun). He knew that they’d throw tomatoes at him each time. It’s as though he wanted them to wind him up enough so he could feel justified in shooting them.
It’s scary that people like him live in our society.
