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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.
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?
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.
I'm pro gun. I'm anti idiocy.
I'd just wish everyone who wants one has to spend a week with my old drill sergeant. He had some rather ... graphic ways of showing you just WHY guns are no toys and why these things deserve your respect. He taught us certain rules and procedures that, if used properly, make sure you CANNOT harm anyone you do not want to harm. And I think he's got to do something right, in his whole career not a single soldier he trained got wounded by a bullet while under his command.
He retired last Fall with 70.
I think fewer people would get hurt by guns if they had to go through such a training. And FAR fewer idiots like that principal would litter the streets and our courts with idiotic panic reactions like that.
Panic reactions is one of the things that kill people, btw. With or without guns.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.