The kid was returning a BB gun to a mall, which is not something that carries the death penalty last I checked.
The man—who was a danger—decided the child—who was in danger—was a danger.
He was encouraged to do this by our dominant cultural narrative.
www.the-reframe.com/cruel-luxuri...
Afterward, the story reported that the child wasn't following the man's orders.
The man, who saw himself as the protector of his community, decided that the child was a danger because he had decided that it was his job to decide who was dangerous and who was not.
So the self-appointed community defender pulled out his people-killing tool—the ownership and use of which is seen as a fundamental right in this country—and issued some commands, and the child obeyed, because he was being accosted by an armed stranger.
However, the community protector was unsatisfied with the child's compliance, so he killed the child.
This is also seen as a fundamental right in this country, provided you're the kind of person who is allowed by our dominant cultural narrative to appoint yourself a protector.
In the name of community safety, the community protector shot the child six times in the back, according to the story, so this must have been an extremely dangerous-seeming child, especially the back part of him.
I know framing the story like this is likely to raise objections from the gun-defender crowd, including a knee-jerk reaction against my calling a 17-year old a "child." It's one way I know using killing tools to execute teens is something that's seen as a fundamental right.
But I have children around that age, and if some maniac who fashioned himself a community protector decided to murder them for some self-created reason, I would mourn a child, because of course I would, and so would you, I would presume, if you are still capable of empathy.
Certain types of people worry so much about how to explain the existence of LGBT people to kids. Mine didn’t find it confusing!
But we talked about this whole cop situation a few days ago and they couldn’t understand why it is allowed to happen and I WOULD like help explaining this one to my kids.
Why are police unaccountable? Why won’t politician’s confront them (ok I told them about DeBlasio and his daughter and NYPD for that one)? Why do we keep sending them more counterinsurgency weapons? And so on
Extremely well written, as always. Maybe we need to beat our swords into plowshares and rebrand our “people killing tools” as “community protector killing tools.” The existence of such tools is unfortunately a reality in this country. We may as well use them for good instead of evil.
Aside from the obvious tragedy, which I deeply regret, please let me draw attention to the absurd size of that police vehicle. Sometimes I think that a part of US society already lives in a dystopian world. The law of the strongest and the greatest.
I have honestly never seen a police vehicle like this in my portion of reality, but I have no doubt it exists somewhere out here. Have no idea what it would be used for other than an off-road money van. Its suspension is far too high for any kinda of protection in a hostile environment
It's an excellent piece and probably written so well that it will be too difficult for those who need to understand it most. The only thing I would pick on a bit I present as a question, if your peaceful nation was brutally attacked by your neighbor what would you do, should you prepare for that?
I’ll answer with a question:
How do you see the question as relevant to the themes of the essay and why do you see it as something that is a “pick” on it?
I sensed that one of the themes of the essay was that we should defund the Military Industrial complex. Granted it is out of control, but at the same time, for example, a country like Ukraine who did not have such a complex was at grave disadvantage. There are evil people out there.
I was writing about the way our supremacist dominant cultural narrative causes so many of us to instinctively view any suggestion that we stop orienting ourselves around violence as a danger, and to instinctively view our orientation around violence as creating safety.
It’s an interesting reflex, isn’t it? We look at something that causes global instability, and for many of us, all too often, the reaction at the first suggestion that we begin to reverse it is ask questions that presuppose that this same thing is what protects us from global instability.
the leaders of the israelis and germans got support and funding for their genocides by using the "self-defense against our evil neighbors" argument you just made. it's kind of a drawback of your argument!
The military restricts firearm access at levels that the average 2A fetishists would describe as nothing short of tyrannical
I've got friends who were dishonorably discharged for just carrying without permission
Local story here, and tragic. And it was the second student to be shot from the victim’s high school that week, along with another teenager shot from another Seattle area HS recently. This is unacceptable. We need to be outraged that our young people are being killed. Too many guns.
In truth, in America it seems that the problem is not so much the firearms themselves, as the pervasive narrative in which American firearm ownership and use has inextricably become embedded.
