When the police arrive, the figure is unmasked and it turns out to be the man's 15-year-old adopted son, adopted four years ago when the boy's biological father went to prison.
If you live in Great Britain or Australia, this vignette of violence from gun-besotted America is reported to you as:
Father who mistakenly shot son 'devastated'Listen, you poncey limey git, he didn't shoot him 'mistakenly' or 'accidentally'; he shot him deliberately, thoroughly, and quite well, thank you very much. I am sure he is devastated that he was forced into such a necessity, but a knife doesn't stab any less because it's your adopted child holding it.
Had this happened on your home turf, the papers would be wondering why an innocent and apparently much-loved elementary school teacher was carved up by his own son. Do you have a preference as to which of those stories you'd rather read? I know I do.
47 comments:
And if you want to gain "Most Hated Person in the WORLD!" status, respond to the idiotic tweets of "mistaken" shooting with something that indicates your happiness that a criminal is dead and a father is alive.
You'd think I'd claimed that raping babies was fun.
Sometimes the mask slips. Sometimes you really see how deeply they are committed to being on the other side.
Forgive us Tam. We are not all of this mindset. Some of us are even a tad pissed off that the group sizing is not mentioned.
Cheers- Rusty Ray
I'd choose to live...
I guess blood will tell, after all.
Still a hood is a hood is a punk even if it is related. Self defense quite often is against those related.
Too be fair, the local, state, and national papers also reported it that way, right from when it first happened. They just followed our lead.
That's 'to' not 'too'
I guess it's true that you're 49 bazillion times more likely to kill a family member than a criminal. Err, emmm,
But wait, you're BOTH right! He's a family member AND a criminal!
Sean
I think that stat comes from misunderstanding that "you are more likely to shoot someone you are aquainted with", with the unfortunate side information of: "if you you are acquainted with drug addicts, burglars, members of the mob, dealers, pimps and other low-life"
If you aren't acquainted with that sort of person two things happen, your chances of shooting or getting shot drop dramatically, but the odds that you will shoot a stranger go up.
I guess I should know better than to try to be snarky on the Queen of Snark's own blog. I assumed everybody would know that I was making fun of that idiotic study, but apparently not.
I remember when I first found out about the 'crimes between acquaintances' category of the UCR, and how it was twisted to "You'll just shoot your kid/parent/cousin!"
Always gets an interesting reaction when you point out that that category includes, say, one gang-banger shooting another, or a cab driver being murdered by a passenger and so forth, and a very small percentage of family members
Anonymous 9:58 : Tam once said (paraphrasing) that it must be painful going through life with an inability to detect sarcasm ...
I was discussing this with a work friend. We are of the mind that the child was set in his ways before this family addopted him. Was not caught by police/the law etc and had no record or records were sealed. Either way one BG down. As for the addopted father it sucks but sometimes when you buy a carton of eggs some are cracked.
I do hope that his sister turns out much better and understands that her addopted father loves her and loved her brother too. I'm not holding my breath for this and wouldn't be supprised or offended if she became a rabid anti gun advocate without realising that without that gun she would be related to a violent fellon and no longer have a loving father. Not to mention depriving 3 other kids of their father.
Scott
"Do you have a preference as to which of those stories you'd rather read? I know I do."
Sadly, they do.
More sadly, it's not the same preference as yours.
As I know from sad personal experience, when a kid who's well set on the path of violence and harm is choosing their first targets to try out the whole "take what you want" thing, family and friends are nice, easy, safe-feeling targets. They know the house and know the target's habits.
If you presuppose a lack of empathy and morality, family and friends are actually much easier to victimize than strangers.
"He was a good boy, he just was in the wrong place at the wrong time."
And... "He was just turning his life around when this tragedy struck."
Steve- plus I'm sure his church is going to miss his singing talent.
Tam, you are absolutely correct with regard to the Australian press and population!
mike in oz
Non-kin adoptions can be kinda risky. I tried to point this out to Shithat, or Popehead, or whatever he calls himself, with examples on both sides of the question, but he changed all of my thoughtful helpful innocuous comments to "I eat paste."
He made a mortal enemy of me by doing that.
However, what can one expect of a guy who's a lawyer, which means he's an asshole, and who is also a californian, which means his brain doesn't work right?
Justthisguy ... You're *THAT* guy?
GahDamn ...
@Justthisguy You never answered about what the paste tasted like.
@ justthisguy;
Dude, you must not have had any raisin'. Didn't your Momma teach you not to go into someone else s house and shit on the carpet?
thatmrgguy, that is not what I did.
The perfectly reasonable sympathetic comments I left there are no longer visible, of course. I thought we were just having a conversation, and spoke about generalities, and gave a couple of anecdotes of cases known to me.
One case (my landlord as it happens) got excellent results with his non-kin adoptions. Another (a former member of my congregation) got horrible results.
One of the kids of the latter was rather cool; he gave me some excellent tips on how to get along in prison.
I think Shithat was just being womanish there; I spoke a generality, and he took it personally. As I wrote above, if you are from california I think your brain just doesn't work right.
P.s. I wonder if what set Shithat off at me was my disclaimer at the end of my warning against non-kin adoptions, to wit:
Unless You Are A Christian.
Both of the anecdotal cases I mentioned above are Christian couples, infertile, who considered it their duty to foster, and look out for, and raise, kids abandoned by others.
"I think Shithat was just being womanish..."
...and which horrible quality does he share with an inferior being like me?
Think really carefully before you answer that.
The perfectly reasonable sympathetic comments
You mean stuff like engineering a virus to kill people without blue eyes?
Heil yeah, perfectly reasonable.
Oh wait. You don't do subtle for Reasons. Let me explain, and not even sum up for it is simple: the only common thread in all the places that think you're a paste eating shitheel is you.
I see that Stingray is still channelling Zydeco. He really needs to see an exorcist and get that evil kitty out of his head. He also can't tell the difference between a late-night Internet Gedankenexperiment and an actual evil intention. Perhaps he has brown eyes, and is taking it personally?
As I wrote in a comment on another post, I am a professing Christian, and am thus forbidden from acting on any nasty homicidal thoughts I might have about people, or groups of them.
Stingray's intemperate language bothers me. He being a professed atheist, I worry that there is nothing holding him back from acting on his anger, except maybe prudence and practicality; certainly not Principle.
To Tam: Yes, women do tend to take general statements personally, as you just did. I had thought better of you.
Atheism does not imply a lack of principles, just a belief that there is no god.
Also: you have nasty homicidal thoughts? Do these occur before, after, or during the eating of paste?
Ah, I see that a troll, possibly a california lawyer, has shown up.
P.s. On the eating of paste:
Why, yes, when I was about six years old, I did sample the paste, as did we all. I didn't care for it, preferring the nutritious food my Mom packed for me in that proverbial Brown Bag.
I will admit to licking the canopy of that sadly neglected B-57 they have at the Warner Robins Airplane Museum, just to show some autistic smartassedness. Hey, you have to show your favorite old bomber some love!
Looks like I killed this thread; let's put it to bed.
I think Shithat was just being womanish there; I spoke a generality, and he took it personally. As I wrote above, if you are from california I think your brain just doesn't work right.
I'm originally from California Dude. You sure do make a lot of generalizations about people you have no idea about. Lets see if we can make a generalization about you...you're from an eastern liberal state like 'Taxachusetts'and you love the fact that government will take care of your every need.
You claim to be a Christian, but don't show by your interactions with others that you even believe in what the Bible teaches us about how we should treat other people.
So, not "womanish", but noble and Christian: stewing in a grudge about having been asked to leave by someone who subsequently mocked you, calling them childish names, and returning time and time to do it on others' bandwidth and others' living rooms. Repeatedly insulting your hosts wherever you may be, and insisiting that whatever speculation, now matter how dismissive or outright vile, is "thought experiment" and therefore the user is in no way accountable for any of it.
Dude, you've hit so many misogynist tropes about how women can't take responsibility or behave honorably and are catty about people they dislike I could fill out an entire bingo card.
I'd say not to feed the trolls, but apparently someone left out a pail of paste.
I have been taught my misogyny (as you call it, LabRat) by the wimmin I have met. I don't call it misogyny, I call it a realistic outlook. Misandry is the problem, not misogyny.
Oh, LabRat? You lie.
OH! Labrat got TOLD son! Holy shit in the corn flakes, you talk about your rock solid defense! THE WIMMIN I MET WUT! UH-HUH UH-HUH. Look at that proof! Holy shit, I don't even know where to start on "you lie," I mean you SOLD that!
Oh, go on, do some more. It's like an ethnographical study on the tribe of milder paste-eaters as they explain to the bus driver how physics works. :D
I think Stingray needs to be restrained, judging by the language he uses. WTF is wrong with that boy, anyway? I will pray for him.
Justhisguy,
People say mean things about me on the internet all the time, but you'll never hear about it here because:
1)Haters Gonna Hate, and
2)Don't Care
Now, somebody was mean to you on a third party's blog and you come here and whine in my comments section about it, ask me to take a side in your problems, and make up obscene little nicknames for them.
Now, in the light of your own weltanschauung, who's being "womanish" and who's being "manly", ma'am?
WTF is wrong with that boy, anyway? I will pray for him.
It's a genetic condition caused by my wanderlust-filled genealogy, influenced by the company of such bastions of womanly weakness as LabRat and Tam. It's called "the ability to spot a paste eating boil on the ass of society, and laugh at the monkey that keeps grabbing the electric wire."
Sting, I would describe Tam as being full of womanly strongness, and Labrat as being full of knowledge and wit.
I would describe you as being an annoying insulting asshole, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I recommend that LabRat forbid you from writing on her very erudite and informative blog.
She writes about serious things in biology, which inspire thought in all of us who read what she writes.
What you write seems to be mainly bitching and complaining. Hey, that's cool, I do that too,mostly!
However, that ain't as erudite and thought-provoking as what LabRat writes!
Yes, I do believe that your wife exists on a higher intellectual level than you do. You should be afraid of this, living in Los Alamos as you do. There are plenty of guys who live there who are smarter than you and who may well make more money than you.
Female hypergamy is what you need to worry about, guy. You have been running Asshole Game on me lately, which is silly, I being a male, who would thwack you if you tried to get sexually nekkid with me.
You need to worry about even-more-obnoxious assholes than you, who can steal your wife.
Oh, Chevy Corvettes really are Plastic Pigs.
P.s. Not to disparage Our Tam, I forgot to say that she is full of wit like a sackful of loose razor blades.
Be careful sticking a finger in there.
Oh, Stingray?
Goertz von Berlichingen!
JTG,
"Female hypergamy is what you need to worry about, guy."
Made-up bullshit you read on the internet is what you need to worry about.
That, and insulting my friends anywhere within pistol shot of me.
Fuck right off. I'm just not in the mood for games this morning.
No problem, Tam. It is very unlikely that I will ever be within SRBM shot of you. I have not the slightest desire to set foot anywhere in Indiana.
I do say that that Sting must be a better person IRL than he appears to be on the Net, or you would not hang out with him.
It's not bullshit on the internet, it is actual Capital S Science. M'self, I don't care; I have aged out of the boy-and-girl game, and just read about it for amusement.
P.s. Tam, you have declared enmity to me, so I hope you realize that I am now obligated to pray for you. I have just done so. I am serious.
Hey, that gives me an idea!
A prayer takes a finite amount of time, t. If he's going to pray for everybody who dislikes him, then, he's need to say n prayers, taking n * t time. If we can get n large enough, we can consume so much of his time that he won't have anything left to be a douchenozzle.
The internet's first DDoShitbaggery attack!
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