I remember just a couple of years ago when a 6 year old Black kid was "acting up" in class and the Miami police were called to the school. They had difficulty calming him down and used a taser gun which caused him to go into spasms and vomit. In defense, the police said the the child seemed "agitated" and they needed to gain control of him. Must have been a real danger to the community - all 40 or 50 pounds of him. Maybe he was going to blow up the Federal Building with one of his Tonka Toys. Perhpas we should bring back the electric chair. Lethal injection isn't enough excitement for Law Enforcement so they're going around shooting 50,000 volts of electricity into 1st graders. (and we criticize Singapore for caning?)

Thanks for the comment justx. Your anecdote brings to mind an incident in Santa Fe a few years ago.

An Hispanic fellow with a lot of problems, including his woman, threatened himself with a butcher-knife to his throat. Left her and proceeded down Hancox Street, knife to his throat, screaming to the world. His lady called the law.

Six police officers, male and female responded and surrounded him. Guns drawn, they told him to drop the knife. When he didn't do it one feinted toward him as though to grab him, and he brought the knife from his throat in a defensive reaction sort of way. He (might have) made a swing with the knife at all the cops who were well out of reach.

Nothing for it but to empty half a dozen pistolies into him. Otherwise he might have harmed himself.

His relatives raised a lot of dickens about it, but his lady-friend opined it was just the right move on the part of the cops. Saved her having to do it and get prosecuted.

Ah well.

J

I believe in the right to bear arms, but unfortunately there is nothing in the Constitution that mentions IQ, Logic or Rational Thinking associated with this basic right to live in a free country.

I guess we could go on forever listing these stories. I only thought of the 6 year old because I was looking at my neighbor's little boy and wondering why 4 or 5 cops had to taser a child when a 55 yr old frail lady like yours truly wouldn't have too much trouble. What about the innocent man in New York that had was shot 41 times by police when he reached into his pocket. I guess because he was Black they mistook his ID card for a gun. After all, they both have numbers on them.

I should be careful what I type on this board. Someone might label me a "Liberal" for caring about equal justice and human rights. You've probably seen a woman wrap a towel around her hair after a shower? Well, the other day I needed to dash to my car in the driveway and I was wearing a towel wrapped like a turban - not sure if you could see the platinum blonde underneath. Made me think twice.

Justx:

Gracias. You'll want to be careful turban-wise until we decide who the next enemy is going to be, and until we get tired of killing this one. With any luck the next people who frighten us will be asiatic dwarfs who can be easily identified by sight.

As for the rest, it ain't the guns, either in the hands of the citizenry, or in the hands of the cops. I'd about as soon be shot to death as beaten to death with a billy-club. What's the problem is there are a lot of people running around with itchy trigger fingers who'd love to make the firearm do what it's designed to do. A lot of those people have gravitated to cophood because it's one of only a few places they stand a good chance of deliberately killing someone and getting by with it.

As it says in the Bible, or one of the Shakespeare plays, or somewhere else, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Jack