Years ago the Left was opening up another front on their war on normal. They wanted boys to stop playing with toy guns. Cap guns fell out of favor and mothers of young boys were told to keep their boys from “violent toys.” It went nowhere since boys like fighting. They will fashion anything handy into a gun, sword or club. Even lefty mothers had to concede it was a losing battle, but the Left never quits.
They will try to lever this tragedy into a campaign to ban toy guns.
A 12-year-old boy shot by police after grabbing what turned out to be a replica gun died from his wounds on Sunday, one day after officers responded to a 911 call about someone waving what the caller described as a “probably fake” gun at a playground.
Deputy Chief Ed Tomba said one officer fired twice after the boy pulled the fake weapon — which was lacking the orange safety indicator usually found on the muzzle — from his waistband but had not pointed it at police. The boy did not make any verbal threats, but grabbed the replica handgun after being told to raise his hands, Deputy Chief Tomba said.
“That’s when the officer fired,” he said.
The Cuyahoga County medical examiner identified the boy as Tamir Rice.
An attorney for his family, Timothy Kucharski, said the boy went to the park with friends Saturday afternoon, but he did not know the details of what led to the shooting.
The police department is investigating the shooting.
Both officers who responded, a first-year rookie and a 10-year department veteran, have been placed on administrative leave pending the results of the department’s investigation.
As is always the case with these things, the details will take a while to come out, but that won’t stop the trouble makers from jumping to wild conclusions. I will say that I have been around a lot of guns and I have never seen a kid’s toy that would fool me at shooting distance. Pellet guns are a different thing so maybe that’s the issue here. On the other hand, cops have killed innocent people because they mistakenly thought a wallet or cell phone was a weapon.
The county prosecutor’s office also is investigating.
Mr. Kucharski said he will conduct his own investigation into the shooting and review the police’s investigation to determine “how exactly an innocent young 12-year-old boy could be killed playing at the park.”
“His mother is devastated,” Mr. Kucharski said.
The shooting of the boy, who was African-American, occurred as a grand jury is expected to make a decision soon over whether to charge a white police officer who shot an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., setting off months of protests.
Mr. Kucharski said he did not know the race of the officer who shot the boy, and the shooting did not appear to have anything to do with race.
The important question, he said, was why the officers did not act with more caution because they were dealing with a child.
“The police have to address these things in the proper context,” he said.
“This is a 12-year-old boy. This is not a grown man.
“I’d think you would handle situations with children differently than you would with an adult. They don’t fully understand everything that is going on.”
Police said the weapon was an “airsoft” type replica that resembled a semi-automatic handgun.
The proper context is that in the ghetto, 12-year old boys are regularly toting around guns and shooting people. Bangers have long assumed that a child can get away with one murder before the law treats him as an adult. It’s also why you see boys running drug corners. Even if they get popped, they are facing a trip to juvenile detention and therefore have no reason to talk to the cops.
Normally I would assume this will be used by the gun grabbers, but the Ferguson fiasco may trump the gun grabbers. Ferguson is looking like Burning Man for the Anarchists so maybe that’s run out of steam. It’s tough to know, but my guess is the Cult is ready to throw in the towel on Ferguson so that leaves the gun angle as a useful way to push Ferguson off the radar.
That’s why I said pellet guns are a separate issue. They are, in fact, guns in the conventional sense of the word. They may fire a low velocity projectile of a small caliber, but they can still put an eye out, as they say. Some can kill a small animal.
Frankly, I’d never let my kid go to a public park with a pellet gun for exactly that reason. Most people would not know the difference. This appears to be an urban area so it makes even less sense.
Still, the cop has a responsibility to make damned sure it is a proper shoot. The fact that it is on video should establish it one way or the other.
It was obviously the ambition of this kid to be carrying the real thing sooner rather than later. And, the cops were too quick to shoot. One does not negate the other.
Every time I hear a cop say that he has a right to go home at the end of the day I think, no, no more than I do. Maybe less.
This Daily Mail article contains a slightly less cuddly picture of Tamir and a not cuddly at all picture of the Airsoft Colt 1911 – No way a cop, or an experienced shooter could easily know that that gun is not real in a high stress situation.
Here’s the Daily Mail’s story:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2846824/The-cops-know-doing-doesn-t-Father-s-grief-12-year-old-son-shot-dead-Cleveland-police-waving-BB-gun-playground.html
Here’s a link to the 911 call:
Not a confidence builder if you’re betting your life on a 911 operator.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/24/cleveland-shot-boy/19471925/
Airsoft gun. If you’re not familiar with airsofting, it’s a recreational activity for chubby Mall Ninja types, so the guns are made to look as close to the real thing as possible.
The fact that it was missing the orange muzzle that is usually customary is somewhat telling as well.