Today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that a 13 year old boy was shot and killed by sheriff’s deputies while carrying a plastic toy replica of an AK-47. When spotted with the ‘weapon’ by two deputies, the youth was ordered to drop the weapon. When he refused to follow their orders he was shot and killed.
In the print edition of the paper the boy’s mother questioned:
Why did they kill him? Why?
I can’t imagine the horror his family and friends and fellow students are going through. But here are two reasons why police feared for their lives and why they opened fire on a thirteen year old with a particularly realistic toy gun:
A well-liked teacher was found slain in woods behind this quiet Massachusetts town’s high school, and a 14-year-old boy who was found walking along a state highway overnight was charged with killing her.
And from JSOnline from October 22, 2013:
Students cowered in fear and pleaded for their lives as a 12-year-old Nevada boy went on a schoolyard rampage with a handgun he brought from home, waving the weapon at frightened classmates and shooting a math teacher in the chest on a basketball court.
How much more collateral damage do we have to have before we get serious about gun control?