I said this when Tamir Rice was killed. I said it in the 90s when the California kid was killed. And I'll say it here too.
There's no one single person at fault, but the person at fault the most is the parents for not teaching their kid how not to be a dumbass.
"Hey, what'cha doin' Jimmy?"
"Just taking my toy gun out to play"
"Whoa there! That's a bad idea. If this gets mistaken for a real gun, somebody will call the cops on you, and they'll KILL you for real! Nope! You're not going out with this gun. Even if it is plastic, a bb gun, a pellet gun, or anything else that could easily be mistaken as the real thing."
And I've heard it before: "But cops are the ones KILLING the kid!"
Yes, and I do agree that a LOT of what the cops do is corrupt, this is the ONE CASE where you expect them to shoot to kill. When they are under the impression that you have an active shooter, you WANT them to shoot to kill.
"But it's NOT an active shooter! It's a toy gun!"
And how do the cops know that? They get a call that theres a kid with a gun. Have you SEEN how many kids get real guns and shoot up schools the last 20 years??? They have to treat these situations as real.
"But he's just a kid!"
And a kid with a gun is just as deadly as an adult with a gun.
The way to not have cops shoot you on the spot is to not appear like a deadly threat to society. Now we can sit around all day debating on how we got to this point, but the reality is we live in a world where kids shoot people with guns. If you have what looks to be a gun, you're gonna get shot. And the kid may not even know what he did wrong.....and thats the parents fault.
Because if cops wait around, and figure things out first, you have Uvalde all over again. People were pissed, as they should be, that police showed up, and DIDN'T shoot a kid.
I have no love for police in their current state. I'm even subscribed to a community on Lemmy called "the police problem".
However, this is like the ONE THING they're good for, is stopping active shooters. Don't want to get shot by police? Don't make yourself appear as an active shooter.