A tragedy worthy of Shakespeare

SayUncle links to a news story about a fifteen year old boy beingshot to death by police in a school in Brownsville Texas.  The boy brought a very realistic looking pellet gun to school and created a situation where the school was locked down and a full police response was called in.  Here is what I commented over at Uncles:

I’ve been thinking about this story since I first read about it in the news late last night.

It seems to my reading that the situation was orchestrated by the kid from the start.  He created a ‘situation’ at the school that guaranteed an armed police response.  He was ordered to drop his very realistic gun.  He instead aimed it at the police.  I have not heard that he fired on the police.  I suspect not.  If my suspicion is true, actually harming anyone else was not his real intent.  He escalated the situation to the point where the police had no other alternative but to shoot him.  As much as I hate to suggest it, this has all the signs I would expect to see in a deliberate attempt to achieve what did in the end happen.  I believe this was in reality a case of Suicide by COP.

I feel for the kid’s parents.  And especially for the officer(s) that pulled the trigger.  They had no way of knowing that it was only a pellet gun and the situation was created to prevent their finding out until after the fact.

But I also have to feel bad for the kid.  Whatever his situation may have been, and I’ve seen no hint as to what that might have been in the media, he chose a permanent solution to what was almost certainly a temporary problem. 

And everyone looses in the end.

I trust Uncle’s title about ‘banning pellet guns’ is just Unc looking for some dark humor in an otherwise totally unhumorous event.  And you know some dumbass Joyce Foundation shill will suggest exactly that.  Only they’ll be serious.