Her 17 year old son was brandishing in their car on their way to Park City last weekend.

Hitch? It *looked* real enough to passersby as he waved it in and outside their moving vehicle.

They were detained and what they described as traumatized, and otherwise delayed on their way to a soccer game.

You be the judge!

Real or not, police say it is illegal to use it in the manner son was while they were riding in the automobile.

https://youtu.be/Y-0RVUI8wxE

Considering how many kids have been killed over such things, I think she might re-evaluate her use of the word "traumatic."

I fail to see what benefit our Gun Culture is here in the U.S. outside of hunting & target practice, both limited to sporting people who've undergone rigorous background & psych testing.


Look at Canada which has a far greater land to people ratio, and other developed countries as well.

the idea that 'free people' can overturn a tyrannical gov't by force of arms (which has tanks, rockets, planes) is Far Oversold.

Tanks, rockets, and planes can annihilate people. There's not much regular people can do to stop that. But tanks, rockets, and planes can't control people. For that it takes boots on the ground and people with small arms can make an impact.

Read up about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Jews that resisted were ultimately overwhelmed by the Nazis, but imagine how different WWII would have been if all of the Nazis' victims put up that kind of resistance. I think it would have been a shorter war with far less loss of life on all sides.

A government is far less likely to became tyrannical when its citizens are armed than when its subjects are defenseless.

My comments above in no way are meant to justify the lady and the kids in the news story. Waving the gun around was stupid and I'm glad the police stopped them.

Don't worry, they didn't justify anything, let alone typicalbadutah parent.

how about using their head for something besides a hat-rack and the gun never makes it into the car. It's called PREVENTION then the police don't have to stop them, they don't have to be late for the soccer game.

This has nothing to do with gun control. It has to do with a family where the inmates are running the asylum.

A five year old even could be in danger. A 17 year old should know better.

+1

A friend of a friend in Provo was shot and killed for brandishing an air soft gun in the last year.

Here in WA state, there was a grouping of 3 fatal shots to infants a few months ago, also a gun that a youngster brought to elementary school in a back-pack went off & injured another student, it was still in the back-pack, not fired intentionally by Anyone.

I agree.
If I percieved someone aiming a gun at me and I had a weapon, I would protect myself.
In times past, nobody would have thought anything about it. In the world we live in now, anyone should know better.

I teach in a middle school, and we have had students bring loaded guns. Last year a gun was found in a trash can in the bathroom. Year before last, we had 2 students arrested for selling weed in the breezeway. To think that children and adolecents are incapable of hurting someone is naive. The outraged mother needs to get out more.

Weed!


OMG, do you realize how many middle school students die each year overdosing on weed!!!!!!!!!!


Zero, is the correct answer, it is also the correct answer to how many humans in the past ten thousand years have died of an overdose of weed.

Zero.


But go ahead and keep conflating weed and violence though, because everyone knows how weed makes you beat people up, except it has the opposite effect.

I think that they should start a "Pot for Pistols" or "Reefer for Rifles" program...


Turn in a gun and get a pound of confiscated marijuana...

To be honest, I think the mother can share responsibility for what happened. In view of the human carnage that takes place in this country from guns, one would think that by 17 a boy would have the sense not to do something as childish and irresponsible as brandishing a toy gun out the window of a moving car. Obviously he didn't but his mother was equally responsible and should have stepped in before the police had to

My opinion is mom needs to not play the innocent victim here and teach her children that they have a responsibility to society.
A 17 year old, if I saw them waving what looked like a real gun around, I would assume it was a real gun.
Even in Utah there have been drive by shootings plus accidental shootings because of kids getting their hands on a loaded gun.

The police were called and they did their job.
Of course they would take precautions because of the chance there was a loaded weapon. No one was injured, tased, put in a choke hold, beaten or locked up.
A 17 year old should no better, and also mom should have known better.

If I got a toy gun that looks real enough from a distance, and choose to go for a walk in my neighborhood while showing it off, twirling it, pointing it at things, should I then b surprised there would be consequences?

Whether the kid was a real threat is important!
Detained for an hour over a toy gun? That's descrepable!
Once police found out it was a toy, a very stern lecture to the 17 yr old kid should suffice.
I have found that UT local police and state troopers really, really enjoy pulling people over...
Anyone heard of Jade Helm 15?

All the mother had to say was "I can't leave until the toy gun is in the house. I don't think you want to be late to your soccer game"

"Detained for an hour over a toy gun? That's descrepable!"

Did you just invent a new word there?

Randy, I'm glad it's not just me that gets flusterated by people inventing new words!

Dumb kid. Dumb mom. Detained for an hour. Oh, dear, I must clutch my pearls at the inhumanity!

I know right, he committed an obvious assault, just arrest him, book him, and release him to his mom. That should take less than an hour!

It is a good thing this didn't happen in rural central Florida and a lot of other places. The police are not reluctant to shoot here!

Doesn't anybody remember the young black child at the playground who was shot by the police officer responding to the "there's a kid with a gun" just recently? I think that mom should thank her lucky rocks that her son was not shot!

Why anyone would let their child have a toy that could be mistaken for a real gun is beyond me. Really, what did she think would happen? She's lucky her 17 year old didn't get killed by someone who thought he was a threat.

In my town, a cop shot a 13 year old boy who was carrying a toy gun.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Andy_Lopez

She's lucky her son wasn't shot and killed because that's happened, and can happen even to Mormon teenagers. It's perfectly natural for a police officer to regard a gun that looks real to be a threat and use self-defense since it's a dangerous job, and in many cases, that gun is real.

The mom was very defensive being interviewed. Twirling the toy gun around, saying it was bought at the dollar store. Yet it sure does LOOK REAL ENOUGH from a DISTANCE.

How she could just excuse it like that says volumes about her parenting skills.

My children grew up in New York City. I knew not to buy toy guns that looked like real ones from reading our Daily News and the New York Post.

NYC outlawed them sometime in the 1990's because of kids getting shot by cops, because they looked that real. Most parents don't need a law on the books though to just use plain common sense.

Even the water guns have gotten bad raps by cops and gangsters as "menacing." Some were made to look like machine guns. Why chance it with the kids safety?

Amy Jo, I truly love your posts. They make people think. Don't stop.

. . . to involve a person on a roof with a rifle.

This was soon after the Colombine school massacre, so tensions were understandbly high.

Several of us arrived on scene as back-up, parked our squad cars down the street and cautiously approached the house on foot.

An officer in the lead confronted a young man over a side fence next to the house holding what looked to the officer like a semi-automatic handgun. In a loud voice, he commanded the teenager to drop it. The young man hesitated, so the officer pulled his duty pistol, pointed it down and over the fence that separated him from the young man and again repeated the command, this time much louder and more emphatically.

Myself and other officers ran up to the fence and pulled open the side gate, where we saw the young man on his knees, looking confused and asking what was wrong. At this point, we all had our weapons drawn and were shouting commands to get down on the ground. The teenage boy's black and brown-colored "weapon" was on the ground, near his feet and looked to me like a real gun, given that it was missing the telltale orange barrel plug that would have indicated it to be a toy. I kicked the young man's gun away with my boot. It was plastic and rattled as it bounced along the ground.

If that young man had not dropped his "weapon" but, instead, had continued to hold it and had, say, swung it around in the direction of the contact police officer, a very unfortunate--as in tragic and fatal--shooting might have taken place, with the officer having been forced to make a split-second decision regarding what could have well been seen by him as a lethal threat aimed in his direction.

During this event, from around the back corner of the house, came running some more young men who were carrying plywood cut-outs of assault rifles, and who had no idea what was currently taking place in terms of our interaction with their friend.

We were in "draw down" mode, issuing commands, with our fingers along the slides of our Glock pistols (you never, ever go to the trigger unless you are ready to, and are intent on, in police parlance, "destroying the target").

In terms of situational awareness, we at this point realized that these teenagers were "playing war," so we holstered our sidearms. We took the boys aside into the backyard, sat them down and gave them a stern lecture about how dangerous it can be--especially in a post-Colombine environment--to be seen brandishing what citizens observe, at least in their view, to be real guns. (In this case, the "gunman" who had been reported to police dispatch as lurking on a rooftop with a rifle was carrying a wooden rifle replica, wrapped in tape, that was used in high school ROTC drill practice).

After talking to the boys, one of them took a bat, bashed the plastic gun into pieces and said he was sorry.

Such situations can be deadly serious--and are treated as such by police officers who are highly and regularly trained in how, when and under what circumstances to use--and not use--lethal force. (In this particular case, all of the officers involved wrote individual departmental reports, explaining in detail what happened, including why we decided to draw our weapons).

Thankfully, everyone came out alive, but things could have turned out much worse--horribly so.



Edited 14 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/2015 05:13PM by steve benson.

I have guns, and I like my guns, but this woman has no defense to offer. If police have articulable cause -- like "Young man in the most-likely-to-be-criminal age demographic is waving a gun around" -- they're going to react seriously.

The mom needs to be a better parent. I got the police called on me once (transporting an uncased shotgun into my apartment), and Provo PD resolved it simply by knocking on my door. They indicated the caller told them I wasn't threatening anybody, just walking from my car to my door with the barrel pointed in the air).

Two pepole got shot a couple weeks ago with pellet guns in South Jordan. Even 'toy' guns can be lethal or crippling.

I'd just state that the cops do know how to be reasonable, and under the circumstances, how they acted was appropriate.

My son's friend thought it would be funny to sneak into the house, last year, with an airsoft shotgun. He was14 at the time, and it was after midnight. I have years of military, and intelligence experience, and know appropriate procedures. I detained him quickly, and unmasked him. I quickly realized who he was, and what was going on. I took him home, and had a conversation with his parents. The loaded .45 that I had in my hands, could have told a different story in the hands of an inexperienced citizen. I believe in our second amendment rights. But these rights need to have certain caveats attached to them. Mandatory training being paramount. I also believe people need to know what kind of damage these weapons will do. Criminal records check isn't enough. If you've ever been treated for a psychiatric issue, or have ever been charged with stalking, or domestic assault....you should be barred for life from ever owning a firearm.

Errr... I didn'nt weed would kill you-at all. I was just pointing out that minors are capable of committing crimes. Chill out.

I mean I didn't say, not "I didnnt" lol