Gun nuts at "bearingarms.com" faults Tamir Rice for his own death.

[haele]

34. That was a friend's bb-gun that had been lent to him that day.

No one ever has told me if the friend had picked at the orange tip to remove it or if Tamir had. Kids - and a 12 year old is still a kid! - modify their toys like that all the time, especially if they think a part that otherwise does nothing looks lame on their toy.
You're still blaming the kid for 1) being 12 years old and black, 2) with a toy gun, 3) out in public on a playground by himself, where he's easy prey.

Because sure as hell, if he had not been by himself, the police would have been a lot more cautious approaching him, and he probably would have been given a warning for playing with a bb-gun, instead of being rolled up on and shot before he had a chance to react to anything.

It's rather like the "situational liability/contributing factor" insurance assessment of injured parties after the fact.
While it's both a moral and criminal wrong to assault or rob someone, and the criminal is 100% at fault, when it comes to insurance companies, not being aware of your situation or failure to take reasonable protective is a contributing factor when looking at the liability and determining "fault" for restitution determination in an insurance settlement. If your home gets robbed and a house-guest gets injured in the process, they will look at what you did to "burglar proof" your home and everything that could have been done to avoid the injury as part of their assessment on how much they are going to pay you and cover the medical bills of person being injured.
In other words, the victim's situational liability becomes a contributing factor in the pay-out for the situation.

Unfortunately, situational liability been used in courts to mitigate the "fault" of the person doing the crime, especially when the criminal comes from a class of defendants that have the resources to pay for protection from liability - like corporations, wealth, or public service.

Finding anything to blame Tamir Rice, who had not done anything that carried penalty under the law, for his own death is attempting to create a contributing factor for his murder to be his "responsibility", a tactic to lessen the accountability on the police - y'know, the cowards who drove up at high speed and fatally shot him within two seconds of swinging open a patrol car door because they saw a black youth sitting alone in a park, and "knew" he had to be a criminal thug that was a drag on society.

Might as well say that because he was playing with a bb-gun missing it's orange tip now, that is a sure indicator that in just two years, he'd have been a gun-toting gang-banger shooting up a neighborhood in a turf war, randomly killing toddlers and school kids - so it's just better to shoot him now, while he's just a lil'shorty, before he turns into a crack-smoking, heroin-dealing cold blooded thug.


If this sounds a bit hyperbolic, it's because that stereotype ends up being the underlying reasoning for most people I've discussed this with who try to say "why didn't his parents teach him how to act in public", or "he shouldn't have been on the playground with a toy gun that looked real" or "the police had a right to be in fear of their lives, how did they know he wasn't in a gang and going to shoot them..."

I have found that behind the argument that Tamir Rice bears any responsibility for the police shooting him always goes back to a race-based assumption. It's always been the "feeling" that young black men are at heart gang-bangers, no matter if they stay in the 'hood, or if they go to Harvard. And there's a certain type of law-and-order personality (not just white) that believes that young black men (and women) need to be neutered; if they aren't under strict social control, the color of their skin indicates that their true nature , which is to run wild and rampant, and they will infect good, hardworking (white) kids with their drugs and parties and casual, lazy "other-ness".
And it's very difficult to convince these people that they're fearful, ridiculously judgmental reactionaries.

Haele