Saturday, October 17, 2015

The Hard Truth From Orlando

I'm over this Tamir Rice silliness. Yes, he was 12 years old. Yes, it wasn't a "real" gun -- just a pellet gun or air gun or whatever. I don't know what the laws concerning supervision of children with pellet guns or BB guns or whatever "toy" guns are in Cleveland. Florida is pretty lenient, but you still have to be 16 years old or be supervised by a responsible adult when you're out with a pellet or BB gun. And the endless litany of any parent with a child, toy gun or not, should be, DON'T point it at anyone, DON'T point it at anyone. I guess Tamir Rice's parents were out on a smoke break when that part of their parenting class was going on.

And I'm pretty sure that at 12 years old, he should have known better than to have a realistic-looking usually nonlethal "toy" firearm in a public park, waving it around, pointing it at people and acting like a thug. Someone called him in. Someone who didn't know he was 12 years old and it wasn't a "real" gun called 911 about a guy in a public park pointing a gun at people. The police came, and because this unsupervised little dumb-butt came flailing toward them instead of dropping the gun and freezing in place, he got killed -- because the police are NOT omniscient. They are not bulletproof. And they can't tell how old someone is in a glance, nor can they tell from a distance if the firearm is a toy or not. And when someone comes towards you, waving what appears to be a firearm around, you don't wait to be shot to find out if it's a lethal weapon or not.

Tamir Rice's death is a tragedy. But if the parents want to know who to blame for their son's behavior that day when he was killed, they can just look in the mirror. But it isn't really about the loss of their unsupervised, untrained 12 year old son. It's about the payday the parents hope to glean from his death. Maybe if the police and city counter-sued these parents, and so many others just like them, for their failure to supervise when their kids get arrested or killed, we'd see a whole lot more parenting going on and a whole lot fewer irrational lawsuits and dead children.

     Florida Cracker

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