Upstate New York Teen Facing Weapons Charge Over Airsoft Gun
One more for a trend?


Another teenager with an airsoft gun treated like a teenager with a weapon after someone calls the police.
A Rome mother feels the pain of the Virginia mom whose son was suspended from school for a year for firing an airsoft gun on their own property. In the case of the Rome mother, though, the teenage son is facing criminal charges.
Naomi Oshel says her then 15-year-old son, Austin Perks, was playing with an airsoft gun in the courtyard of his friend's Rome apartment complex June 1st when police responded after someone reported possible guns in the area. She thought the entire incident ended that night, after she says officers examined the gun and handed the toy back to her son.
Three weeks later, a Rome Police Officer showed up at her door.
The mother says the officer who returned told her he wasn't sure why he was there but that there was pressure to charge the teen. She says he was charged with unlawful possession of a weapon and that they had an appearance scheduled in family court today.
More on the Virginia case WKTV referred to here and here.
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Why family court?
They haven't had enough practie with drumhead courts-martial yet.
For the sake of The Children, the common law protections regarding such trivia as making sure the charge has some passing relationship to what actually happened do not exist in "Family Court". Like a lot of attempts to make the Common Law tradition warmer and fuzzier, this matt have started out as genuine good intentions, but it has become a way for The System to railroad families it finds annoying.
You know who else bowed to pressure?
The Green Archer?
Giles Corey?
Exactly the opposite. He died exclaiming, "More weight!"
+1 fart on Thomas Putnam
Yo-Yo Ma?
*** bites lip ***
How long have you been saving that one?
Penn State BoTs?
Every employee ever at least once?
Though I'm pretty sure if my boss told me to do something this stupid I would either get fired for refusing - or be allowed to refuse (at which point I'd start seeking other employment opportunities).
I mean I don't want to Goodwin the thread or anything, but didn't the Nuremberg trials theoretically get rid of the defense "I was just following orders"?
This is what mass hysteria looks like. This country has lost its fucking mind.
There was pressure to arrest him because the jackasses we let run this country are getting called out on their jackassery and their looking for some kind of official cover so they don't come out of this looking unqualified to operate a shovel.
How can the kid be charged with unlawful possession of a weapon? You can buy a fucking Airsoft gun at Wal-Mart. I had several when I lived in New York state. "Pressure to charge the teen"? From who?
Look Epi, the cop is just trying to do his job, okay? He'll arrest and book the kid and put him into solitary for a few months while they decide what laws he broke. Isn't that good enough for you?
I'm not voting for Epi because he is soft on crime!
You know who else was soft on crime?
The Democrats?
Bob Dole?
*slow clap*
Well done sir.
Hedley Lamarr?
I guess it's going to have to be. Maybe JJ Abrams can explain it to me by writing a Star Trek movie as a metaphor; he's used to twisted pretzel logic.
These pretzels are making me thirsty.
And now I'm hungry! Thanks a lot, Hugh. And Abrams.
These pretzels are making me thirsty.
the officer who returned told her he wasn't sure why he was there
Because he didn't do well in high school?
Seriously, Mom should have just closed the door on him at that point.
she was told to bring her son into court to face an unlawful possession of a weapon charge.
"No, thank you. Unless, of course, you'd like to be on the losing side of a really big lawsuit!"
the juvenile and public information officers who have the specifics of the case were in training and unreachable.
Have they no shame?
"...the losing side of a really big lawsuit!"
You know, I'd really like to think that was true, but I really don't think the courts can be counted on to stop this kind of insanity.
The mother says the officer who returned told her he wasn't sure why he was there but that there was pressure to charge the teen
Just following orders, ma'am.
*blam*
Sorry about your dog.
Oh right, that's what rule of law means. "Well, there's pressure to punish your kid, so he's charged with a crime we know he didn't commit."
New York cops try to upstage Virginia school administrators.
I was part of an incident like this in college. A few friends and I had just purchased some airsoft guns, and popped off a few pellets in the park across the street when we saw a cop pulling around the corner.
We started walking back to the apartment, and the young (couldn't have been older than 22) cop screeched to a hault and came out of his car gun drawn and pointed at us. Two of us sat down immediately, the other tried to show the cop we weren't doing anything wrong (by showing him his red toy). The cop flipped the fuck out, I was sure he was going to get shot.
told her he wasn't sure why he was there but that there was pressure to charge the teen.
Oh, boo hoo hoo. Man up and tell whoever is pressuring you to fuck right off. Sounds like the department is full of 16 year olds being told to smoke a cigarette just because it's cool. Grow up.
Air soft guns always struck me as really dumb toys. You won't catch me carrying something that looks that much like a real weapon that isn't capable of throwing real lead. That said the level of stupid involved in these recent cases involving them is staggering...
They are only dumb because the public has been so heavily propagandized about firearms
It is fucking idiotic to bring weapons charges against someone who didn't even have a weapon. Who's the incompetent larval politician in the prosecutors' office who signed off on this bullshit?
-jcr
Not only that - but I bet if they were say, throwing Shuriken around at some plywood sitting in their yard, they'd never be charged.
IE - real weapons, no charges. Fake weapons...
Land of the free
But it's NOT a weapon. How can you charge a person with possession of a weapon if it's not one. It's not difficult. You look at it and it is a toy, it looks like a weapon but isn't one.
If one holds someone up with a fake gun, it's still assault (and robbery). I remember going through this in a criminal justice class.
Now, none of the above is to suggest charges are justified-- they're not. But the fakeness of a gun doesn't exempt you from potential charges if you were to use it in a holdup or generally threatening manner creating the impression it were real.
Sure - because you're pretending it's real and if people are not aware that it isn't, their fear is the same as if the gun were real.
However, this isn't about anyone using the fake gun as if it were real - they purchased it legally and used it for its intended purpose - play.
But of course this isn't really about gun so much as it is about trying to demonize anyone who may have a gun and may think about telling others that they believe in the 2nd Amendment.
As their belief is gun owners (and smokers and republicans and libertarians) are by definition evil - so their existence must not be tolerated.
Especially among the most tolerant of citizens.
Sorry to Goodwin - but does any of what's going on right now help anyone else understand that perplexing question of "sure Hitler was evil, but how did they get the common person on the street to agree?"
Re: Paul,
Airsoft guns are not "fake" guns, they're toy guns. A "fake" gun is like the one Dillinger used to escape out of jail.
A) Fuck that person who called the cops in the first place. I hope he or she gets a contaminated cucumber creamed up their ass.
B) Fuck who ever pressured for charges. I hope he or she gets a scary squash shoved up their ass.
C) Fuck all you liberal/progressive pieces of shits who created this big state mentality. Yeah, I'm stretching pinning it on you but I'm not feeling well.
As for the mother, I'm no lawyer but she could just show up with the Wal-Mart bill where she bought it. And show the judge. How is buying something illegal?
We're talking Rome, NEW YORK. No mystery where the "pressure" to charge came from .... Cuomo?.... or Bloomberg with his hand (and money) up Cuomo's arse.
Welcome to the new "gun control". Scare the shit out of kids so they will believe they are evil and you can continue with your rise of fascism.
Tar and feathers for everyone involved in this from the busy-body fuckstick who called 911 to the prosecutor and cops.
Speaking of upstate New York juvenile crime news:
Six arrested in Brian Holloway's trashed house case
Sorry if this was posted in the PM links after I left.
No one important reads the pm links anyway.
I've had the opposite happen: When I was in high school, some friends and I would airsoft in a local neighborhood park. We had the cops called on us by grouchy resident. They sent one lady cop. We dropped all our stuff so we wouldn't look threatening. She talked to us, checked out one of the guns, and said we could could keep on playing as long as the guns didn't shoot paint. It was probably my best cop experience ever, she was so chill and calm.
Also, the grouchy resident complained at the HOA meeting about our little games. Everyone told her to shove it.