Thursday, January 5, 2012

Texas 8th Grader With Toy Gun Shot Dead by Police


Police shot and killed an eighth-grader in the hallway of his middle school Wednesday after the boy brandished what looked like a handgun and pointed it at officers. It turned out to be a pellet gun that closely resembled the real thing.

Fifteen-year-old Jaime Gonzalez "had plenty of opportunities to lower the gun and listen to the officers' orders, and he didn't want to," Interim Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez said.
Of course that's what the police say. That's what everybody says after they shoot someone in a supposedly defensive or justified situation.


What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

15 comments:

  1. Your link pointed to another idiot who brandished a toy gun. How does that comment on what the police had to do in this case?

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  2. How does this comment on the gun culture which encourages this kid to want to brandish any kind of gun, or to believe that bringing any kind of gun anywhere is an acceptable idea?

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  3. I don't count a pellet gun as a toy gun. Toy guns don't actually fire a projecile that can injure or kill.

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  4. Dog Gone,

    I don't know when you were last in a public school, but places like that are flooded with messages about how it's wrong to bring a gun onto campus and where students should go to report seeing one. The problem here is not a gun culture. We've had that for as long as we've been a country. The problem is a culture in which children don't do what adults tell them to do.

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  5. "I don't know when you were last in a public school, but places like that are flooded with messages about how it's wrong to bring a gun onto campus and where students should go to report seeing one."

    You're an idiot. School campuses, at all levels, last time I checked, have LOTS of PSA style posters advocating against using illegal or stolen prescription drugs, having unprotected sex and texting or using cellphones in class. NONE of those things have stopped happening or show any sign of doing so.

    The one HUGE difference between those behaviors and the idiocy of bringing a gun, illegally, onto a school campus is that if a kid wants to text, do drugs or have unprotected sex he/she is not likely to be able to kill someone in a moment of rage--or get themselves killed in a moment of confusion.

    For a "professional educator" you don't seem to know a fuckuvalot about kids.

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  6. Democommie,

    About high school students, I know more than I want to know. My comment was in reply to Dog Gone's assertion that there's a message that it's acceptable to bring a gun to school. Children may be getting that idea from music and movies, but they certainly don't hear it from school administrators or teachers.

    But once again, you're supporting my main point. The problem here is too many children who have no respect for adults. From my own experience and from listening to others in the field, I have seen a general attitude that anyone but the child's parents or, often, just Momma isn't worth hearing. I've had parents tell me that I was disrespecting their children because I asked them to do their work.

    This event is a symptom of a bigger cultural problem, and it has little to do with guns.

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  7. Greg Camp:

    You're so hung up on your gunzlust that you can't imagine normal, sane people might actually understand that paranoid dickheads like you are THE problem with gunz.

    You're a fucking piece of shit and a disgrace to your profession.

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  8. Democommie,

    I don't bring a gun into a school and wave it around, nor do I give guns to children. The problem lies elsewhere.

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  9. Greg writes:Greg Camp said...

    Democommie,

    I don't bring a gun into a school and wave it around, nor do I give guns to children. The problem lies elsewhere.


    The problem is more complex than you acknowledge.

    You are a big supporter of and glorifier of and fetish worshipper of the violent gun culture.

    You don't know who or where your guns go when you sell them, because you never check. In fact you seem to go out of your way NOT to check, and then come up with the flimsiest, most stupid, non-critical thinking mental pablum to support your laziness and aversion to responsibility.

    Someone made this gun available to this kid; we don't know who that was at this time.

    But you Greg? You were a big part of the culture that made it attractive to him to do this.

    People like someguy who think it makes any kind of sense to open a locked door and waive a gun around to show how tough and powerful he is? That is another example.

    The navy seal who accidentally blew his brains out? One more.

    The guy who started shooting at a mouse in his kitchen in Utah, and ended up gut shooting his roommate? There's another one.

    You are all part of a culture that likes to pat yourselves on the back for being responsible, when you are anything but that.

    You glorify the fiction, the myth, the delusion of guns, and then whine that it has nothing to do with you when the reality of guns bites someone in the ass,like this kid.

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  10. Dog Gone,

    And you disparage people who do nothing wrong. You draw conclusions that are not supported by anything other than your dislike of guns. You grab on to minor points and worry them endlessly, while ignoring the major ideas.

    You believe that people are evil deeds waiting to happen. I believe that most people are basically good. That's the difference here. From your perspective, denying guns to everyone makes sense, but you should, at least, be honest about what leads you to your conclusion.

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  11. Greg writes
    And you disparage people who do nothing wrong.


    No.

    I disparage people who do things which are stupid or dangerous. For example, your posing with a gun in your belt - there was no custom of belt carry in the old west but you should know that instead of promoting misinformation. That kind of carrying a gun is dangerous. Further, you have your finger on the trigger - also a violation of gun safety.

    And you claim to be in control of a firearm while you are not in fact conscious. that is NOT being in control
    and it is also unsafe. You and others are ONLY disparaged for your words and actions.

    You believe that people are evil deeds waiting to happen.No, that is also factually inaccurate.

    I address the reality of gun use. There are damned few and far between good uses of guns for self-defense. In contrast, there are thousands upon thousands of bad uses of guns.

    Further, other countries with far fewer guns in comparison to our numbers of guns don't have the same gun violence problems. You call that thinking ill of people. I call it an objective measurement of societies with and without guns. You're the one making good or evil judgments. I don't see anything in what you write that demonstrates you can do what no other human being can do - you cannot tell by looking at anyone whether or not they are criminals, whether or not they are mentally ill, or whether or not they are drug users. You can;t tell by looking at anyone either if they are responsible or dangerous for some other reason.

    > I believe that most people are basically good.

    Believe anything you like. Your general belief doesn't make it so on an individual basis. So long as we have the gun violence that we do, guns are a problem in the hands of many people. This is true either because of their aggressive actions, or just their poor decisions like the ones you demonstrate.

    That's the difference here. From your perspective, denying guns to everyone makes sense, but you should, at least, be honest about what leads you to your conclusion.

    No,I favor an objective means of keeping people that we already have determined are prohibited from firearm ownership or possession from having them. To do so effectively, I argue for simple, inexpensive and non-intrusive testing. That is no more onerous than requiring training prior to ownership, or carry. It is no more punitive than requiring passing training,and no more judgmental. it is a reasonable and sensible threshold people should be willing and able to meet.

    Or do you object to training as a requirement because it doesn't track with your assumption that people are just so darned good they don't need to prove competency or knowledge by taking training?

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  12. Dog Gone,

    You go on about thousands of misuses of guns and bleet that there are few if any appropriate uses, but there are hundreds of millions of guns in this country. The vast majority of those are not used inappropriately.

    In addition, you keep yammering about me having my finger on the trigger, but what are you talking about? The picture in question doesn't support your claim. Even if it did, you refuse to answer what I said about a single action revolver with the hammer down on an empty chamber. In that state, the trigger is a useless appendage. Until the hammer is cocked over a live chamber, nothing can happen.

    And further, you keep telling us about other countries, as if that mattered here. My only concern for foreign countries with regard to the present subject is whether I'll still have access to their good designs. So long as they're still willing to export to us, I don't care what they do internally. That's a matter for their own people to decide. But if they wish to criticize us for our practices, I'll be pleased to inform them that I don't care.

    But with regard to training, I'll go one better. How about we require gun handling and marksmanship classes in high school? That way, we'll teach everyone the correct usage of firearms.

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  13. This is simple and has nothing to do sift guns. I was taught as were my kids, when an officer or teacher says stop you stop, if he says drop the gun, you drop it. It is a matter of parents not teaching or demonstrating Respect.

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    Replies
    1. Don't be silly. Kids panic. You cannot always expect kids to do the right thing because they are kids. Kids, like animals, react sometimes on emotion, with a lack of thought that is appalling to an adult.

      Children's brains, teen brains, are different than the brains of adults. Teaching is very important - you're right - but not always sufficient.

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    2. Anonymous, there's a bit more to it than you say.

      "It is a matter of parents not teaching or demonstrating Respect."

      There's the society that encourages and glamorizes gun play. There are the cops who are too ready to shoot. And then there's you, always trying to downplay the roles of guns.

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