A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆
The kid was returning a BB gun to a mall, which is not something that carries the death penalty last I checked.
The man—who was a danger—decided the child—who was in danger—was a danger.
He was encouraged to do this by our dominant cultural narrative.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆
The story reported that the murderer was an off-duty security guard, a job which bestows the same authority to issue orders to citizens or kill them for noncompliance as does that of an off-duty pizza delivery guy.
The story also reports that it is unclear where he is employed as a guard. That's fair enough, since whether he is a guard or not doesn't matter. It does put him in a uniform, which I suppose means something to people who believe uniforms automatically grant killing authority.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆
Whatever the case, it was deemed important enough to hit the headline, the "security guard" of it all conveying something or other to someone or other about something or other that I've been pondering ever since.
To me, it conveys two disturbing truths.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆
First, every bad guy with a gun thinks they are a good guy with a gun.
Second, our dominant cultural narrative will often keep the "good guy with a gun" story going for you even after you've proved yourself to be the exact sort of menace to society you presumed you were protecting everyone from.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆
But I have children around that age, and if some maniac who fashioned himself a community protector decided to murder them for some self-created reason, I would mourn a child, because of course I would, and so would you, I would presume, if you are still capable of empathy.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆
Empathy is a challenge in a culture that scorns empathy, in a culture that so often looks at killing and explains to you why your distress is dangerously wrong-minded, and why you ought to take the more realistic view, which is to numb yourself to increasingly murderous cruelty.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆
What was he doing? I will be asked. Why was he there? I will be asked. What did that BB gun look like, though? I will be asked. How was he holding it? You're making my point, I will answer, feeling far more tired than I did before.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆
However, the community protector was unsatisfied with the child's compliance, so he killed the child.
This is also seen as a fundamental right in this country, provided you're the kind of person who is allowed by our dominant cultural narrative to appoint yourself a protector.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆
In the name of community safety, the community protector shot the child six times in the back, according to the story, so this must have been an extremely dangerous-seeming child, especially the back part of him.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆
I know framing the story like this is likely to raise objections from the gun-defender crowd, including a knee-jerk reaction against my calling a 17-year old a "child." It's one way I know using killing tools to execute teens is something that's seen as a fundamental right.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆
Afterward, the story reported that the child wasn't following the man's orders.
The man, who saw himself as the protector of his community, decided that the child was a danger because he had decided that it was his job to decide who was dangerous and who was not.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆
So the self-appointed community defender pulled out his people-killing tool—the ownership and use of which is seen as a fundamental right in this country—and issued some commands, and the child obeyed, because he was being accosted by an armed stranger.
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