What is the ethically and morally correct nonviolent response to a mentally ill attacker?, Ilkka asks:
Occasionally you see in Toronto Star these news articles about a cop gunning down a mentally ill person who was brandishing a gun or a knife and obviously ready to use it on others, and the article then chastises the police for not recognizing that the criminal was mentally ill, as if a police officer could somehow be expected to instantly peer into somebody’s brain, or as if bullets merely tickled when fired by a mentally ill person.
Logically, the mentally ill person being innately incapable or unwilling to respond to reason and orders and respect the lives of other people should be more justification for the use of force, not less.
Using a taser sure would have saved the day… but hey, wait a minute, weren’t tasers also evil and therefore most definitely should never be used by the police?
This is so confusing that I almost wish that some psychotic hulk attacked a Toronto Star reporter some day, so that instead of playing Captain Hindsight, he or she could just show us the ethically and morally correct nonviolent response.
Ilkka was surprised by the same bit of trivia that surprised me a few years ago: Taser is an acronym for the Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle.