To me whether a 10 year old with a shotgun is capable of hurting people is beside the point. The only relevant question is how to minimize the chances of violence, and that (at least to me) unequivocably does not involve a swat team. Yes he could hurt someone. How on Earth does that lead to a standoff with heavily armed strangers being the path to a nonviolent outcome? Not a rhetorical question. I’m deeply troubled by the idea that if there is a concern, then a paramilitary unit making demands must be the way to asuage them. Especially since “perturbed children are not a hotbed of careful consideration of consequences”
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I don’t see any difference between kids and adult here, we all know that adults are capable of some mean shit. It’s also not a question of what you can rely on in a kid. In that situation, the adults are responsible for the outcome, and the only acceptable outcome is non-violent. If the boy shoots, the adults have failed.
You need people present who understand that, who approach the boy with respect, empathy and compassion. Armed cops are typically not in that group.
I don’t think “buckets” are the appropriate way to assess and respond to human behavior. The boy is an individual, and there’s no way to resolve the situation without engaging with what is alive in the boy at the moment, helping him find a way out of this situation without hurting someone, because that is not what makes things better for him, that is not fulfilling any of his actual needs. The boy needs to be sure that it can end well for him, too.
Another bucket, most people - including kids - are capable of considering consequences when you support them, so that’s what we must do here. It comes with a certain level of vulnerability, there’s no way around that.
I understand that all of us were afraid in such a situation, and rightly so. But as a society we have to understand that force and violence are not appropriate response to fear.
An armed standoff will increase the level of anyone’s fear, and thus increase the likelihood of a violent outcome.
I did. It didn’t help 
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I messed with sling as a kid, and never got quite good enough to be anywhere near as accurate as I am with a slingshot. Been an archer since I was a wee one, and the slingshot instinctive aiming seems almost identical.
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I’m curious as to how many people lock up their car keys and kitchen knives to prevent kids from misusing them? A 10-year old is perfectly capable of grabbing either of these and doing damage (perhaps more so with the car than the knives). All it takes is a meme of other kids doing it and it could become a thing. In England, where firearms have largely been removed from the public, there is now a demand that pointy knives be removed from the public https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/09/23/ban-sales-pointed-kitchen-knives-no-reason-modern-world-says/ and https://reason.com/2019/10/07/the-u-k-must-ban-pointy-knives-says-church-of-england/. What makes once-ordinary objects become a problem?
And everyone knows there is no purpose to cars or kitchen knives other than to kill./s
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Clearly - it’s not guns that are a problem. We just need to send all our 10 year olds to England.
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Guns don’t kill people - 10 year old American kids do. If they have guns.
If a 10 year old comes after me with a knife - I’ll swat him on the nose with a newspaper or hide behind a chair. If he points a shotgun at me and starts firing ?
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…pushing someone into a swimming pool and drowning them.
…wrapping someone in straw and setting them on fire.
Am I playing this game right?
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Wait, is there no problem, or is it the liberal media’s fault ?
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A steady stream of people using them to kill other people comes to mind. If a meme actually gets 10 year-olds to start mass murders using Rubik’s cubes, I imagine most decent aficionados would accept some limits on leaving the once-innocuous toys about. I mean, what sort of sociopath would prioritize a hobby over lives instead, right?
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Guns aren’t innocuous. They are machines designed specifically for killing people and animals.
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Googling minor, shotgun, police, and restricting the search to 1970, is not turning up any direct analogues to this particular news event—but the results we do get suggest “50 years ago” was not the idyllic utopia some of us might remember from sitting on the couch watching Sesame Street
AUGUSTA, Ga., May 13 — The six Negro men killed in rioting here Monday and yesterday were all shot in the back, a physician who examined their bodies said today.
Dr. Irvine Phinizy, chief medical examiner for Richmond County, said one of the men had been shot once, while the others had suffered two to nine wounds.
“In my judgment, none of the wounds was caused by shotgun pellets,” Dr. Phinizy said. A police spokesman said that the Augusta officers had carried 38‐caliber weapons on the evening that violence erupted in this city.
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Somebody will only call them evil if they solve the Rubik’s cubes first.
Otherwise it is just accidental and totally non-preventable…
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Right? I say we just take the easy way out and play lawn darts instead.
Oh shit, who darted Kenny?!
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I wonder if you have ever stopped to consider why armies don’t send soldiers into combat armed only with cars and kitchen knives.
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I watched Mad Max, and in the future, they do send them in with cars and kitchen knives. And flamethrowers, and crossbows, and…
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