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Stormtrooper Arrested
Kexel writes: Nope, not an April Fools joke. A forty-year-old man in Massachusetts bought a Stormtrooper outfit, and then walked through a neighborhood near a school to show his friends. The principal saw his fake blaster and called 911. The man was then arrested and charged with disturbing a school and loitering. A police spokesman said the man "used bad judgment." I guess this shows you what not to do when geeking out on Star Wars.
The funny thing about this is that if the guy had been carrying a real gun he probably would have fallen within the ambit of the second amendment. The NRA would have been outside the school picketing; Fox News would have done a feature and the Republican 2016 candidates would have been falling over themselves to defend this guy's 'rights'. Instead, because he was carrying a toy gun, he comes across as a geeky moron.
Those charges make no sense. Perhaps there is missing information here, but how exactly is walking by a school loitering, and it sounds like the principle did more to disturb the school than the storm trooper. After all, we all know that walking by a school with a plastic laser rifle is totally equivalent to shooting up a school.
I guess this is what we get in a society where everything must be punished.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
There is ZERO difference between the actions of this 'principal', and ISIS enforcers operating in lands targeted by Saudi Arabia, the USA and Israel. It is always about sheeple COMPLIANCE, and making it clear to the sheeple that reasonable and harmless 'deviation' from expected 'norms' will NOT be tolerated.
That gay kid denied the right to give his speech at his graduation- same thing. And before the usually neo-liberal trolls on this site suggest this is a 'right-wing' phenomenon, such suppression is actually far better organised by the neo-liberals/SJWs.
A a kid, I once saw a older man curiously dressed in Victorian formal garb. My fellow schoolmates fell over themselves to express OUTRAGE at his appearance. These young sheeple had been successfully conditioned to look out for 'black' sheep, and demand they be 'torn to pieces'. You may see mob outrages on video from Africa or South America and think "that could never happen here"- but it does, all the time. Maybe the level of overt violence is 'less', but that really isn't the point.
He can sue the police, which is the recourse available everyone should exploit for being wrongfully arrested.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
I saw an interesting commentary on that--there was supposition that the storm troopers actually let them get away on purpose in hopes that they would lead them to the Rebel base, which they did. Normally Storm Troopers are deadly accurate, as seen when they shot up the sand cruiser.
But of course, that is too intelligent an idea to credit George Lucas with, so it was probably just a coincidence.
The 501st should hold a damn parade past that school.
It's NOT okay that they ran him in. Wearing a Stormtrooper costume, including a prop blaster is NOT a source of probable cause. It's called False Imprisonment if they did it. False Imprisonment's a fancy name for kidnapping by an LEO. 18 USC 242's interesting reading on this subject.
<blockquote>"Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death." -- 18 USC 242, Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law</blockquote>
Heh...does an act that, if it were properly enforced against, would result in the possible execution of the LEOs involved or a life sentence sound like it's "okay" to you?
If the blaster was black plastic, would you be able to distinguish it from a real gun from 100 feet away?
I was raised around guns, and also enjoyed the original Star Wars movies when they were popular. So I'm going to say, I could distinguish between a toy and a real gun from farther away than that, even with failing eyesight. Here's a stormtrooper gun vs. a 9 mm. Which is probably going to be fairly common. How blind would you have to be to not be able to see the difference? Even if you are not very familiar with guns, you'd have to be pretty obtuse to mistake these two. If you can't tell the difference between them, then you probably wouldn't be able to distinguish a gun from a stick.
Probably the most similar weapon you'd see in the US would be a TEC-9 But even that would be pretty hard to confuse with a toy blaster. Quite honestly, someone would probably have a better chance of hitting you by throwing the toy at you than hitting you with a TEC-9, unless you are less then a few inches from the barrel, and it doesn't jam.
Apparently the Stormtrooper blaster is based off of the Sterling L2A3 But the toy has a lot of extra crap attached to it, so you'd have to be pretty far to mistake the two. Plus, I can't say I've ever seen a Sterling L2A3 in the US. I doubt many people in the US, other than serious gun collectors, have ever seen one.