Like being shot myself

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That's how I feel every time I hear on the news that a twelve year old was fatally shot for playing with a toy gun. In a society obsessed with guns. Why are Americans so brutal? And more importantly... POLICE ARE SUCH SCUM!! ! Oh, sure, children are the only ones they can kill... they'd piss themselves if they went up against the mafia, stupid f****...

[MOD. EDIT: filter your swear word, please. Thanks.]

Last edited by XFilesGeek on 24 Nov 2014, 10:24 am, edited 1 time in total.: Naughty language

No

Point a firearm or realistic looking firearm at someone armed, and you win the prize of getting shot at. This happens everywhere, not just the US.

You'd have to be mentally deficient to not know better (yes, even at 12). If he was mentally ret*d, his parents shouldn't have let him have a realistic looking pistol.

Is there an actual news story associated with this thread, or should it be moved to PPR?

Yeah, unfortunately: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-cana ... icRSS20-sa - not that it's the first time. Last time it was in CA.

Dillogic... you're seriously trying to justify the murder of people simply because they might not have heard others ask them to drop the gun? You seriously couldn't care less that a twelve year old who simply happened to grow up in a gun-obsessed society can not now live anymore, for what was probably a split-second mistake?

It's just ruthless and stupid above all. Because, if they love their guns so much they shouldn't be absolutely terrified when someone is actually holding one...

Well look at this way, a person has an object which looks like a gun. They are doing something to make someone else fear for their life. The second person then uses reasonable force to protect themselves, this use of force results in the death of the first person. Has a crime been commited by the second person ?

I would say as long as reasonable force was used and the person had a reasonable fear of mortal injury then no crime has occured.

As Mootoo has quoted a bbc news report I will use a UK example.

Imagine that you try to grab a random woman and drag her into the bushes to where you have a box of milk tray and £10000 to give her. I imagine that she will violently resist you. Now imagine you are now covered in dents and cuts plus have been kicked in the balls by this young lady, if you complained to a policeman consider what his reaction would be.

I can also give you plenty of excessive force cases where people have got into a world of trouble after using violence to protect themselves from a threat. But before you smear the policeman with the label of "murderer" consider the hypothetical example of the woman and the bushes plus the UK law on self defence.

This is a constant issue with the police, they've adopted a posture of "us vs them" rather than 'protect and serve', and they act more like an occupying army than a police force. Further, they've gotten so focused on "officer safety", despite the fact that the job is not particularly dangerous and that the vast majority of on the job fatalities are traffic accidents, that they shoot first far too often, and are not held accountable.

It's not murder if the child didn't follow commands and went for the pistol. There's only one way that can be interpreted from the side of a police officer, and that's, the suspect is going for the pistol after refusing commands. It might not always be the actual reason, but it's weighing up the lives of the officers, potential innocents and the potential bad guy/s.

It doesn't take a firearm obsessed person to know that it works this way.

Are you freaking kidding, Dillogic? Or, of course, is the law truly espousing such injustice? You mean, anyone who even dares to hold a *legal* firearm and happens to be deaf ABSOLUTELY must be shot dead?! What are you and others who think like you, a shell with no semblance of any rationality or feeling?!

At least shoot them in the leg! A thousand options there are!

But... I suppose you might have some shotguns in your closet yourself (just speculating, of course), so no hope in talking you out of a deep-seated opinion that apparently we should be merciless even with children...

What a f****d up world this is...

And Woodpecker... if a person actually grabs another person then by all means they should defend themselves, but it's not like they actually encountered someone actively shooting at people. If this isn't unreasonable force I don't know what is...

it was not a toy gun but an air gun that shoots bb pellets.bb guns and paintball guns are harmless on most body parts but if one is hit in the eye by either type of gun it could blind someone for life.
I knew a girl who played paintball without eye protection and really is blind in one eye for life.bb guns and painball guns are non lethal but are not toys to be used by unsupervised minors.plus some bb guns look just like say a glock 9mm

so either way how can you blame the cop

No.

If you read the story, the individual was pointing it at people. Pointing. Pointing a firearm at people is a crime (unless you're doing it for a legal reason, which is usually self-defense orientated), whether it's a legal one or not. Someone called the police. And you know the rest.

Shooting someone in the leg is possibly fatal, and it's not easy to do under stress. It's not the police's fault that they killed the kid. It was the kid's fault that he was so stupid, in addition to his parents for not teaching him better.

I fail to see why I'd be upset of a child I don't know dying -- thousands upon thousands die each day. What we can do is see why they died though, and learn from that if it could be prevented.

Yeah, I think they should have held off fire, but I don't know how long for -- as soon as it's pointed at you, you're under threat of death. I'm not going to backseat Rambo them though -- that's for the law to decide. As far as I can tell though, it was an unfortunate problem that could happen anywhere, and the police aren't guilty.

I have plenty of weapons, yes, but I fail to see how that has any bearing on anything, other than perhaps giving me more knowledge on how one must utilize them (say, I don't go around pointing them at people; which I knew when I was 12 too).

Perhaps, then, gun safety should be taught in schools. I can't really fault the cops in this case - if anyone is to blame, it's the people who should have taught the kid that you don't point guns at people, especially in a public place.

Maybe if kids were actually taught about guns properly, rather than having them hidden away and treated as Dangerous Forbidden Objects...?

That will be effective only if the deaf person is holding the gun with his feet.

Obviously, you have never been in a situation where you needed make a split-second, life-or-death decision based on the risk you perceive, rather on the actual risk involved. I was trained to shoot anyone who pointed a firearm at me as part of my military training, and I have been in combat situations.

And by "combat situation", I mean being in the presence of one or more hostile or violent persons who appear to be carrying firearms with intent to use them against me, the people in my unit, and the non-combatants around us.

It takes one-tenth of a second to pull a trigger, yet it takes quite a bit longer to say, "Sir, can you hear me?", "Sir, can you understand me?", "Sir, is that a real weapon?", "Sir, is the weapon loaded with real bullets?", and "Sir, do you really intend to shoot me?" before even drawing one's own weapon.

Would you spend your last breath asking stupid questions if an armed thug broke into your house and threatened to kill you, or would you shoot first and ask questions later?

I wonder if this is a case of suicide by cop.

Hey... just saying... HE WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD. If you feel threatened by some paint being held by someone who's clearly not a strong adult then you are the inadequate ones...

I can't believe this... every single person here supports the police killing children?

You do realise that a gun is not a club, right? That it's lethality is not strongly dependent upon the strength of the individual weilding it?

The youngest person to ever kill someone in a public shooting was only 6 years old, a kid named Dedric Owens. He shot a classmate at his school, fatally wounding her, with a gun he found at his uncle's.

Just because a kid is twelve does not mean he is incapable of murder, especially if he's using a firearm. Yes, it wasn't real, but there was NO way the police could have known that. What if it had turned out to be a real gun after all? It wasn't, I know. But seriously, how would you react if you saw a 12 year old kid walking around in public, holding what looked like a real gun? I don't think you would assume it's a toy, because that assumption could cost you your life if you're wrong.