Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Open carry for me, but not for thee

The decision not to indict the Officer who shot down a 12-year-old in Ohio is a horrible way to wrap up 2015. Charles Pierce (via Esquire)says what needs saying:
Is there any real point in being angry any more? Is thre any real point even to be surprised? There certainly is no point in emphasizing the damn irony that Ohio is an "open carry" state so, even if the cops assumed Rice was 18, and they also assumed his gun was real, they had no cause even to stop him, let alone open fire. Listen to the spiel that Wayne LaPierre unspools every time he's in a room with more than four people listening: arm yourselves, because the world is a hellscape of violent Others who are coming for you and your children. At its heart, open carry is about open season on the people who scare you. It's certainly not about an absolute Second Amendment right that applies to black people as well as white. Open carry is about You and the Others, and so is the training of our modern, militarized police forces. If only Tamir Rice had not been born with that congenital ability to become huge and threatening the way he did in the mind of Timothy Loehmann. If only…

These guys are okay to carry anything, but a child who is darker can't have a toy gun without being shot down like a dog.

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