Thursday, March 12, 2015

Two Police Officers Shot In Ferguson

The New York Times reports 2 Officers Are Shot Outside Ferguson Police Station. This is a horrible event and I hope they catch the perpetrators quickly and officers heal quickly and fully.

As an exercise in absurdity, I wonder if this event will generate similar questions to recent violent events involving guns and the police. Let me try to think of some:

  • Did the shooters fear for their lives?
  • Were the officers from the area, had people seen them around before?
  • Did they rob a store earlier in the day?
  • Were the officers on the sidewalk or in the street?
  • Were they overweight so that they would have a better chance to survive this event if they hadn't been?
  • Have they every smoked pot?
  • How were their grades in school?
  • Were their parents on welfare?
  • What were they wearing?
  • What kind of music did they listen to?
  • How did they speak? Did they swear?
  • How long were their bodies in the street before ambulances came?
  • Were they Muslim?

Just to be clear, the answer to all these questions is "it doesn't matter".

And yet again I'll wait for the standard NRA solution to be proposed: if only these officers were armed with guns this wouldn't have happened. Oh, right.

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