William Shatner Upset By Police Who Drew Guns Upon Stormtrooper On May 4th (cbr.com) 431
McGruber writes: On Twitter, William Shatner is sending his contempt to the Lethbridge Police department and three of its officers that celebrated May Fourth by drawing their rifles on and then taking down a woman dressed as Stormtrooper, who had been standing in the parking lot of a Star Wars-themed business. According to CTV News, the restaurant was promoting its special May the 4th drive-by and takeaway menus with a dancing stormtrooper.
"In the video, Ashley can be seen dropping the blaster and trying to get on the ground as the officers surround her but being unable to do so due to the rigidity of the costume," reports CBR. "The officers then push her down, remove the helmet, handcuff her and pat down the stormtrooper costume. At the same time as Ashley's boss Brad Whalen, the owner of the Cantina, screamed to the police that Ashley was holding a plastic gun, the author of the video approached the officers to tell them the same thing. The police, however, instructed him to stay back and not interfere."
An investigation has been opened to see if the officers' actions were appropriate.
"In the video, Ashley can be seen dropping the blaster and trying to get on the ground as the officers surround her but being unable to do so due to the rigidity of the costume," reports CBR. "The officers then push her down, remove the helmet, handcuff her and pat down the stormtrooper costume. At the same time as Ashley's boss Brad Whalen, the owner of the Cantina, screamed to the police that Ashley was holding a plastic gun, the author of the video approached the officers to tell them the same thing. The police, however, instructed him to stay back and not interfere."
An investigation has been opened to see if the officers' actions were appropriate.
lucky girl (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:lucky girl (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you don't know how this works.
It's very difficult to pin anything on cops. Hell, they can commit full-on murder in broad daylight in a crowded park and barely get a slap on the wrist (look up the Native American who was carving wood in a park in Seattle and got shot for holding a knife).
I was wrongfully arrested by some small-town asshole cops, had one of them standing on my face, another when I asked if they could loosen the cuffs a click came over and cinched them down another click or two just for spite. Got to spend a night in county jail, and when all was said and done I only had to pay $6000 in attorneys fees and $100 or so to the court to get a "stay of proceedings" where it mostly dropped off my record after a year of good behavior.
Justice isn't a thing in the system we have here in the USA, or apparently Canada. It's pay-to-play, pay-to-walk-away. If I had been poor, I would probably have a record for something I didn't do. Instead, I got to pay to have the threat of a record-without-a-trial-for-totally-bogus-charges hanging over me for a year, and then got to walk away.
Oh, and the personal property they took off me? Yeah, never got some of that back, because they conveniently neglected to catalogue it.
I know some good cops. I know some bad cops. Bad cops are the reason people hate cops, and the reason why, when a cop gets shot, the first question that comes to my mind is "I wonder what he did to deserve that." For every good and innocent cop who gets shot in the line of duty by some a-hole, there are probably two dirty cops who got shot because they were being a-holes and doing something actually deserving of it.
Re:lucky girl (Score:5, Interesting)
You fail to understand how the system works.
The cops already lost this one because of the optics; it's a woman, she was doing everything right AND it taps the culture button ( starwars ). It was guaranteed to get a celeb endorsement ( although I'll grant that Shatner is an ironic icon, but he seems a good guy overall ). They're already in a bad position and on the defensive. What're they going to do? Come out against public sentiment and say...what? Even if she was doing whatever they believed her to be doing, they've already lost, and if they don't know it they need to fire whoever is in charge of their PR.
She'll get a payout ( that the citizens have to pony up for ) and a public apology, the dept will make a lot of noise about retraining their officers ( which will be a powerpoint slide, maybe ), and it'll go away.
Re:lucky girl (Score:4, Insightful)
Presumably, two cops were following the lead of the first one on the scene. If he starts down the "let's cuff the potentially dangerous suspect" checklist, the others have their own checklists to follow in their supporting role. What they do not do is question each other about what are the correct protocols, unless the officer in the lead actually decides to pause the procedure and ask for an opinion.
Once they start down the "let's cuff the potentially dangerous suspect" path, the civilian in front of them is The Enemy, and the only question is whether to escalate quickly to violence. That's why they have guns out. They are following their checklists asking themselves if it is time to apply lethal force yet, again and again.
In a sane world, an LEO would tell someone to put the toy gun down, then ask them to please sit on this curb while we have a little chat and assess. But you don't sit down and chat with The Enemy.
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Public apologies are exceedingly rare.
From Canadians?
Re:lucky girl (Score:5, Informative)
She'll get a payout
For what? She was what was seen as a threat at the time, and everyone did everything right. She wasn't abused, and she was treated like anyone else carrying a gun down the street.
Were the police stupid? Yes. Was the situation misread? Definitely. But stupidity doesn't pay out.
Having a gun pointed at you is abuse. It immediately puts you in a precarious life-threatening situation where any engine backfiring or dog unexpectedly barking in a 2 block radius could immediately end your life as the jumpy copy empties his weapon into you from a few feet away.
Any private citizen would probably get written up for assault and brandishing, and probably lose their carry license. We shouldn't let stupid police continue to be police. It puts everyone around them in danger.
Re:lucky girl (Score:5, Informative)
Funny, the video was in Canada, not the States.
Re:lucky girl (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:lucky girl (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:lucky girl (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference is, an armed civilian is just one person. They are limited in how much damage they can cause before society can deal with the threat. Whereas tyrannical cops can oppress and entire community quite effectively.
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"It seems it doesn't take that much to get police officers to be a bit too full of themselves."
Speaking from the standpoint of an American here, you mean if you give someone a firearm (and training to use it to shoot people) and body armor and restraints and a Taser and a radio where he can call for immediate backup and make him nearly immune to the consequences of his actions from a legal standpoint, sometimes that can go to a person's head? Lol, that could never happen!
Re:lucky girl (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think so. The police in the UK don't even carry fire arms, the police in the Netherlands and tend to be more like social workers.
IMHO, aggression and violence generate more of the same.
The police should deescalate generally. If they become more harsh, crime will become more violent and dangerous too.
But North America seems to have a military mindset, and only believe that you can "control" the population with force.
It does not work very well, I read many reports about injustices and mistakes.
Re:lucky girl (Score:5, Insightful)
If they become more harsh, crime will become more violent and dangerous too.
That is exactly the reason that most police officers here in the UK don't carry -- and don't want to carry -- guns routinely. Tasers do seem to be attracting more widespread support now, but that's exactly because they are primarily a defensive weapon. Anything with bullets is normally reserved for specialist units that have additional training and qualifications, and usually they're either stationed at high value targets or deployed in response to specific situations. Obviously they're still police officers, so you might get them attending other types of incident if they are the officers who are available at the time, but that's relatively rare.
Re:lucky girl (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:lucky girl (Score:5, Informative)
Which proves the point perfectly. 1004 people killed by police in the USA just in 2019. The one example you hold up to show the UK having the same problem is ann isolated death from 15 years ago, very soon after a very large terrorist set of attacks, and the inquiry into it lasted three years.
The UK armed police have to account in huge detail every time they draw, point and use their weapons. In-depth analysis of every shot fired, and off duty until the inquiry is completed and they're cleared for armed duty again.
Re: lucky girl (Score:5, Informative)
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You might expect most of those shootings were justified.
Filter out the justified killings and your chances on any particular year of being shot by police in an unjustified instance are in the one in a million region.
Your chances drop dramatically if you're not into a particular lifestyle where that's likely to happen.
Police don't just pull their guns and shoot random people on the street.
Re: lucky girl (Score:4, Insightful)
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Tasers are far less likely to cause irreparable harm to anyone than a real-bullets gun. On average, one person per year in the UK dies after a police officer has discharged a Taser at them, and even that figure is a bit misleading because it includes people who actually died much later and where the coroner did not find any causal link between the Taser use and the subsequent death.
In the last year with figures available, police discharged Tasers around 2,500 times. Put another way, only about 1 in 6 office
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The cop mentality is more-or-less a constant everywhere in the world.
Really? Have you ever traveled to developed countries, like, say, Sweden or Germany? Or, hell, Iceland? [pri.org]
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Canada's Florida and Texas rolled into one.
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Our unofficial tagline is "At least we're not BC".
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It was in Alberta, which is only nominally in Canada. Culturally, Alberta is the 51st state.
Which in no way compensates for the stupidity of your original post. BTW, crime in Alberta is way up - people not apologizing when someone else bumps into them is up 36% since 2018.
Re:lucky girl (Score:4, Informative)
Which in no way compensates for the stupidity of your original post. BTW, crime in Alberta is way up - people not apologizing when someone else bumps into them is up 36% since 2018.
Shouldn't be a surprise. There's parts of the province with 85% unemployment. With a federal government(Trudeau's Liberals) that's going out of their way to directly impact all of the raw exports that Alberta produces. And the same feds doing everything they can to look like they're doing something, while doing the opposite. From forcing abnormally long delays on railway extensions to pipelines to expansion of profitable mining ventures, all tied up in environmental impact studies, court cases by environmental groups and so-on.
People who don't live in Canada like to think the whole "breakup of Canada" is just a joke/BS type of thing. They just don't realize that when Quebec was whining it was because they didn't "get a good enough of a deal." Whereas today, it's an entire provinces economic viability on the line.
Re:lucky girl (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is basically the core of the problem. Even if you're a thug, consequences would keep this under control. As it works with the population in general, where we do have a lot of assholes that are kept under control by not wanting to go to jail.
If you're basically above the law because you are the law, that limitation flies right out the window and we see what we see now.
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Out with the jackbooted thugs.
Re: lucky girl (Score:2)
Re: lucky girl (Score:4, Interesting)
You have to demonstrate that the decline in crime rate is not because more police have been added.
Crime rates declined everywhere.
The surge in police numbers did not.
Correlation does not imply causation, but a lack of correlation does imply a lack of causation.
List of police per capita by state [billmcgonigle.com]
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I thought a lot of these declines in crime rate have been attributed to the removal of lead in petrol.
The biggest cause of the sharp decline in crime in the 1990s was the emergence of crack cocaine. Crack addiction kills fairly quickly, and there was a large overlap between crack addiction and the urban underclass.
Does anyone have a citation for the lead thing? I've seen good evidence that average IQ went up as a result, but that doesn't mean crime goes down.
Not according to Mother Jones and other sources... (Score:5, Interesting)
Finding out the lead thing is as simple as googling it, but I'll give a couple links.
To summarize:
The link between leaded gasoline and increased crime is strong. The crime increase was a constant lag depending upon when different countries and areas started using leaded gas - they adopted it a year earlier, crime started going up a year earlier, they adopted it later, crime went up later. The same was seen for the cease of use of leaded gasoline - areas that stopped using it earlier saw crime drop earlier, and vice versa.
You note that average IQ went up. Well, that's true, but if you dig deeper, you'll find that lead doesn't damage the brain evenly - it does particular damage to sections of the brain that control aggression.
https://www.motherjones.com/en... [motherjones.com]
-High childhood exposure damages a part of the brain linked to aggression control. The impact is greater among boys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The decline in the crime rate is due to legalization of the best pre-crime prevention strategy every invented: abortion.
Police do deter crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed.
The USA actually has fewer officers than many other countries, per capita. [wikipedia.org]
I believe that more officers allows for more professionalism - more ability to properly train, for example. They can afford to assign more officers to various duties, not have to ignore sections of crime.
USA: 298 per 100k
France: 340
Germany: 381
Italy: 456
Singapore: 713
Of course, there are counter-examples like Mexico(464), but that would only point out that there are lots of factors to control for besides just the amount of police. Economics and culture play big roles as well.
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Or are you upset because they're mostly black, and police are killed by violent black criminals at roughly 10 times the rates that black men are killed by police?
If that is some kind of defense for police officers that abuse their power, two wrongs do not make a right. Racism is racism, regardless of the reason for it. To be clear, I'm not arguing that police as a whole are racists. I'm just saying your argument supporting racism by police isn't morally defensible.
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The vast majority of police are not racist, they are simply doing their jobs. When the crime rate among a particular ethnic group is higher, then the police will be interacting with them more frequently.
If anything, many of the police are afraid of being accused of racism and will try to treat blacks more leniently.
There are stats that show whites are less likely to be involved in a violent confrontation with police, but when they do get involved in such a confrontation they are more likely to be injured or
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Crime rates are down [Re:lucky girl] (Score:2)
Since the 1990s, America's crime rate has dramatically declined...
crime rates really haven't really declined much at all, ...
Looks down to me: graph [pewresearch.org]
source [pewresearch.org]
No it's not, and it's not thing. She'd sue the cit (Score:3)
> America, dude. Qualified immunity is a thing.
Actually this was in Canada.
But let's pretend it was the US and find out what this qualified immunity thing is. Qualified immunity is a rule about when a government official makes decisions on behalf of rhe government, as part of their job. If the decision is *arguably* legal you have to sue the city or state, on whose behalf the person was working. You can only sue them *personally*, sue an individual cop, if their actions were clearly unlawful.
The idea he
You know what else is made of plastic? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: You know what else is made of plastic? (Score:2, Insightful)
Saw the video... (Score:5, Insightful)
These cops were disgraceful, what a bunch of inept fucking morons and before someone says "they may not have known" about the 4th and Star Wars then there is a problem with a Police force that does not keep track of the social atmosphere of the people they "claim" to be serving and protecting.
Police should most definitely have a finger on the pulse of these kinds of things. Need to keep these ass-clowns AWAY from any conventions or multiple SWAT teams will be called in.
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These cops were disgraceful, what a bunch of inept fucking morons and before someone says "they may not have known" about the 4th and Star Wars then there is a problem with a Police force that does not keep track of the social atmosphere of the people they "claim" to be serving and protecting.
To be fair, assuming that someone dressed as a Stormtrooper isn't carrying a real gun is probably a bad idea. So even if they do know about the 4th and Star Wars, a certain amount of caution is in order.
But the moment they got a good look at the "gun" in the hand of the teenage Stormtrooper named Ashley, that should have been the end of the matter. There's a photo of her blaster, and it's blatantly obviously a hand made toy, even at a distance. Police training in weapon recognition has been abysmal for 4
Re: Saw the video... (Score:3, Insightful)
"assuming that someone dressed as a Stormtrooper isn't carrying a real gun is probably a bad idea"
WTF? Do a lot of actual violent criminals in your town dress up in elaborate costumes from children's movies and dance around in parking lots? For realz?
Re:Saw the video... (Score:4, Funny)
These cops were disgraceful, what a bunch of inept fucking morons and before someone says "they may not have known" about the 4th and Star Wars then there is a problem with a Police force that does not keep track of the social atmosphere of the people they "claim" to be serving and protecting.
To be fair, assuming that someone dressed as a Stormtrooper isn't carrying a real gun is probably a bad idea.
It's a stormtrooper, what are they going to do, shoot you with it?
Re:Saw the video... (Score:5, Funny)
These cops were disgraceful, what a bunch of inept fucking morons and before someone says "they may not have known" about the 4th and Star Wars then there is a problem with a Police force that does not keep track of the social atmosphere of the people they "claim" to be serving and protecting.
To be fair, assuming that someone dressed as a Stormtrooper isn't carrying a real gun is probably a bad idea.
It's a stormtrooper, what are they going to do, shoot you with it?
Judging by the historical documentaries I've seen, they're going to miss you with it, making black marks on the walls around you.
Re: Saw the video... (Score:4, Funny)
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I could forgive someone for not knowing about the 4th, but regardless, what person in this day and age doesn't instantly recognize a Star Wars stormtrooper outfit, and could therefore should be able to instantly surmise that there's about a 99.999% chance that the "weapon" is also a Star Wars themed toy, and not a threat to anyone.
Now, we can admit it was probably not great judgment to be swinging around a pretend gun, even in a stormtrooper costume, given the recent incidents in Canada. But once the offic
Re:Saw the video... (Score:5, Insightful)
The cops could then ask her to leave the weapon inside next time,
What weapon? There was no weapon involved.
Open Carry? (Score:2)
I didn't think you could be challenged by police for openly carrying a weapon? Even if it is fake.
Perhaps because it wasn't holstered and she was holding it?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Lots of states are not open carry.
California used to be open carry. But when Ronald Reagan found out that black people were also allowed to own guns, he put a stop to open carry for everyone.
Re:Open Carry? (Score:4, Informative)
In fairness, this was after the Black Panthers were involved in many deadly firefights with police and were chanting things like "The Revolution has come, it's time to pick up the gun. Off the pigs!" while following cops around:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Black_Panther_Party&oldid=955179294 [wikipedia.org]
Psst, your bigotry is showing (Score:2)
> Think about it. Carefully.
You'll have to ask someone else that one. I don't own a gun and I have been self-quarantining. I'm also fully vaccinated.
How many other groups do you stereotype like that, I wonder?
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Dude, nobody said that those protesters were you. Drop the projection and narcissism.
If you can't see how wildly differently the Black Panthers and the Three Percenters are being treated, then feel free to confirm it so that I can judge you while knowing.
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Re:Open Carry? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps because it wasn't holstered and she was holding it?
She wasn't holding it.
She had placed the toy on the ground and stepped away from it.
The cops should be fired. No one this stupid should have a gun and a badge.
Re:Open Carry? (Score:4, Informative)
She had placed the toy on the ground and stepped away from it.
The cops should be fired. No one this stupid should have a gun and a badge.
Actually it seems like they did exactly what their training manual said. She was holding it at one point. That she put it down does not mean that the threat is completely over.
So they should tell her to turn around and walk away from it. At that point, barring some evidence of another weapon, there is no threat and they could just ask her to remove her helmet and talk to them.
And please don't tell me I don't know anything about policing. I was a cop, and spend a bit of my spare time now teaching armed people how to interact with cops, using curriculum that I developed and which was reviewed and approved by the state police.
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It wasn't a weapon, unless you used it to smack someone on the head. And what's next, getting shot by the cops for having a Super Soaker?
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There was no weapon.
It's not illegal to cosplay. And if a cop is too dumb to recognize a stormtrooper on May the 4th outside a business decked out for the occasion, they should not be a cop.
Re: Open Carry? (Score:2)
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There are no Canadian Provinces which are "open carry" for handguns, including Alberta where Lethbridge is.>
Thanks, I wasn't quite clear on how that worked in Canada.
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That will only work until the first mass shooting where the shooter thought to paint the tip of his real weapon orange.
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If the police can't tell the difference between a prop Star Wars blaster carried by someone in a Storm Trooper costume in front of a Star Wars themed restaurant and a real firearm, they're:
A) Hopelessly incompetent
B) Unable to make reasonable decisions on the spot.
"They were just following procedure" is never a valid excuse. It means the procedure is wrong and/or the officers lack the mental facilities needed to understand when they should be put into action / followed.
No investigation needed (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFS "An investigation has been opened to see if the officers' actions were appropriate."
You don't need an investigation for that. The answer is "no, the actions were not appropriate."
Re:No investigation needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Lethbridge's chief of police is calling for an investigation into the actions of responding officers after video of an arrest outside a Star Wars-themed restaurant on May 4 surfaced online.
... and ...
LPS Chief Scott Woods initiated an investigation under the Alberta Police Act to determine whether the responding officers "acted appropriated within the scope of their training and LPS policies and procedures." The investigation was spurred by video of the arrest circulating on social media.
My cynical self says the only reason there's an investigation is because of the video. And it will probably focus more on how there came to be video rather than the totally inappropriate actions of the police officers.
We have investigated (Score:3)
A 911 call triggered it (Score:5, Insightful)
FTA: "Apparently a couple of people had called 911 and said that there was somebody with a gun on 13 Street N.," said Brad Whalen, the restaurant's owner.
Who were the stupefyingly ignorant two people (or cruel pranksters) that called 911? They just caused a lot of people a lot of trouble while putting a 19 year old's life at risk. And if it was a prank, it won't be hard to figure out what two assclowns made those calls.
Prank or not, the next time Canadians want to make fun of Americans, all we have to do is retort with this story. Both the callers and the cops were... just... ignorant.
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"Who were the stupefyingly ignorant two people (or cruel pranksters) that called 911?"
The same thing happens when people see somebody on the sidewalk with a _camera_!
Then they are immediately _concerned_.
You know, in the current climate, in this day and age, terrorists!
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"Especially if it's a camera with a big lens. People never stop to think that if a person with a camera was up to something they wouldn't be so obvious about it. They would use a cell phone cam, just like everyone else. But people, in general are stupid and too afraid to simply ask questions."
Check on Youtube, they are not afraid to ask questions, they just don't like nor understand the answers.
Why are you filming me/my car/our building?
For my use.
I'm working on a story.
I need B-roll footage of this street.
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Whether her life was at risk depends on whether that police department has been trained in de-escalation. Could someone who has had that training (or given it) tell us whether their actions were appropriate?
Re:A 911 call triggered it (Score:5, Insightful)
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It looked more like police screwing with someone under the new zero tolerance for guns policy in Canada.
Using the Wrong Force (Score:3)
Only In America (Score:2, Troll)
So...
You can dress in tactical gear with real assault weapons and storm your state capital, and the police just give you a knowing nod:
But you can't can't stand outside a Star Wars themed store in storm trooper costume with a plastic storm trooper rifle without being taken down by the police.
Right.. no wonder autistic people don't understand our world and our strange social rules because it hardly even makes sense to me.
Re:Only In America .. oopsie (Score:3)
Ooopsie... this was Canada... egg on my face. Seriously Canada?
Re:Only In America (Score:5, Insightful)
You can dress in tactical gear with real assault weapons and storm your state capital, and the police just give you a knowing nod
...in the US.
But you can't can't stand outside a Star Wars themed store in storm trooper costume with a plastic storm trooper rifle without being taken down by the police.
...in Canada.
Both of these scenarios are different flavors of batshit crazy, but they at least didn't happen in the same country, or under even remotely similar gun laws.
Re:Only In America (Score:4, Insightful)
Our countries do have one thing in common.
A low bar to entering a career in law enforcement.
Re: Only In America (Score:2, Informative)
...with real assault weapons
For the umpteenth time, there's no such thing: there are semi-automatic rifles - some with dangerous-looking bits of plastic, some without - and there are mil-spec assault rifles... and under Federal law, those are entirely ineligible for private ownership if they've been manufactured after 1985.
The average [self-identified] liberal's perspective on firearms seems to be comprised of equal parts A-Team and CNN...
Technically, the term is now defined, as scary-loo (Score:2)
No such thing, until the ban.
Technically, the 1994 ban did define the term "assault weapon". Per the law, an assault weapon is defined as a firearm with any combination of certain cosmetic appearance features that look scary to certain people who don't know anything about guns.
I don't recall if "black" is on the list of scary looking, and therefore an assault weapon.
The term appears to have been coined by gun control advocate Josh Sugarmann, who wrote:
--
Assault weaponsâ"just like armor-piercing bullets
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Storm Trooper Violence (Score:2)
Obviously there has been a vast number of Storm Trooper violent crimes. You know, attacking Rebels, manning the Death Star and so on.
The police are such asshats in situations like this. Every one of them involved needs to be demoted to Mall Cop. No, wait. That's an insult to Mall Cops everywhere.
They should be assigned to the TSA. Nothing insults those people.
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Obviously there has been a vast number of Storm Trooper violent crimes.
You know, attacking Rebels, manning the Death Star and so on.
Don't forget World War I [wikipedia.org] -- wait, what are we talking about?
Re:Storm Trooper Violence (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously there has been a vast number of Storm Trooper violent crimes.
But they never hit anyone.
Nice (Score:2)
He's upset about that, but no comment on the unprovoked killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia? Heh. At least she wasn't murdered.
Thin ice (Score:2)
But that was a long time ago... (Score:2)
...and far far away. What's ancient history to Kirk?
Anyway, it's not a helmet, it's a mask; we're all supposed to wear such things, no?
That fucking title (Score:2)
The fucking news needs to stop reporting what people are feeling and report on what's fucking happening.
Enforcing new restrictions (Score:2)
Canada just banned "assault-type weapons". The definition of such is based on appearance. Other than "colour", a stormtrooper weapon certainly looks like an EvilBlackGun.
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Re: Enforcing new restrictions (Score:2)
Well a stormtrooper blaster is essentially nothing more than a Sterling SMG which would likely fall under the newest ban.
Thanks Trudeau! (Score:2)
Take away law abiding citizens rights to own ACTUAL guns.
So now police can arrest you for holding a plastic TOY gun!
WAKE UP CANADA!
The police were never in danger (Score:4, Funny)
Even if the weapon was real, it's a known fact that stormtroopers can't hit anything.
I'm skeptical (Score:3)
And yet.... (Score:3)
And yet people wonder why so many view cops with distrust and contempt....
Some days the world is just to odd to comprehend (Score:3)
As a Brit waching from across "the pond" I find it so funny ( read: in a pathetic way ) that an actor in a costume with a plastic gun gets manhandled by law enforcement for being a threat, meanwhile a bunch of backwoods yahoos crying about Covid-19 lockdown infringing their rights, drapped in the confederate flag ( considered contraversial, read: rascist to many ) and carry automatic weapons, are allowed to gather outside government buildings and chant about their rights in full view of the Police!