Then again, Maggie Simpson did shoot Mr. Burns when he tried to steal her candy.
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So, I guess they’ve stopped believing that Blue Lives Matter afterall?
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That title is good enough on its own, without the story.
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“… the father had instructed the child to fire at police …”
No more nominations, folks. We’ve got our Father of the Year right here.
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Happiness is a warm bun. Simple things for simple minds.
Two all-beef patties, special sauce,
lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed
GUN!!
(look out, hit the dirt, duck, etc.)
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“Son, I’m getting that fish filet and if I don’t come back in 90 seconds I want you to open fire.”
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Me too. I had an order completely messed up, then forgotten about so I had to wait about 40 minutes in my car.
The poor guy who bough the food to me looked like he was about to cry. I’m fairly sure they were understaffed in there, so I just accepted his apology with a smile.
No point in me making his bad day worse.
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Yeah.
Is it only me fully expecting the follow-up to be along the lines of “The child was charged with aggravated attempted murder, tried as an adult, and sentenced to fourteen consecutive life sentences. The three year old was charged with being an accomplice, and thanks to minimum sentencing laws will be eligible for parole in 2064.”
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Ok, so plainly the father is a Bad Guy With A Gun ™ but would a Good Guy With A Gun have been able to fire back while retaining his GGWAG card?
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To be honest, for me and probably many other Europeans, it’s just “American” - no further distinctions needed.
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If the dad was angry due to being out of work due to a workplace injury caused by sub-par workplace safety that wasn’t covered by health insurance (that he lost anyway after losing the job due to being out sick due to the injury thanks to atrocious labor laws) and channeled his anger into right-wing conspiracy theories and paranoid anti-government militia culture, then you’ve got the American Bingo.
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But the distinction is still relevant to the couple billion people in Asia, everyone in Canada, Australia, etc?
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Or perhaps they were simply claiming to have some impression of broad/general European sentiments towards/impressions of what is considered “American”, while not claiming to have anything like that for the rest of the world?
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This.
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It’s completely legit to call into question police actions, but considering they could have shot the “father”, or the kid, his sibling in the car, or someone else, and no one died, they actually deserve some credit in this situation.
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No, they don’t. Unless, of course, I deserve credit for declining to run over the pedestrians crossing the street on my daily commute or for not yelling at patrons in my library. You don’t deserve credit for performing a function the way you’re supposed to do it.
I haven’t seen a photo of the suspect in this story, but I should not be able to guess the skin color of the father with a 99% accuracy based on the fact that the police didn’t shoot him (or the kids).
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This headline could easily have been “Police show incredible restraint in failing to murder 4-year-old” but the father’s actions and resultant gunshot by a child are even more out of the ordinary than cops doing their job right.
These officers did the job they were trained for well. Exercising restraint shouldn’t be remarkable.
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Having to react quickly when a four year old points and fires a gun at you is something you can train for, but, no matter how well trained, a lot could go wrong. That has a greater opportunity for catastrophe than most things I’ve done this week.
If you substituted “fast food worker” or “librarian” for the word “cop” in the above story, would you still think it was nbd?
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“MOM’s Organic Market” a chain with stores from NY to Virginia, has a sign up to the effect of “Be kind, or please shop elsewhere”, which I prefer to “the customer is always right”. No, they’re not always right, sometimes they’re just being a dick.
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