Eric Cordian <emc@chao.insync.net> writes:

http://www.modbee.com/metro/story/0,1113,194747,00.html

An 11-year-old Modesto boy was fatally shot early Wednesday morning when police SWAT team officers on a federal narcotics sweep raided his parents' home. Police said the shooting was an accident.

Alberto Sepulveda, a seventh-grader at Prescott Senior Elementary School, was pronounced dead in his home at 2524 McAdoo Ave., just east of Highway 99 in the north Modesto neighborhood commonly known as Highway Village. He died from one shotgun round to the back, Police Chief Roy Wasden said.

How very odd. If I stop a psychopath from gunning down an entire mall full of people by shooting him a few times in the back, the government would most likely have me arrested, hauled downtown for questioning, and I would be demonized by the media. I might even be charged for some bullshit "weapons violation." And HEAVEN FORBID that in the process of stopping dozens of people from being killed one of my bullets go through the gunman and hit a bystander, or that I simply miss and hit a bystander. In that case, the USG and courts wouldn't care how many lives I saved. They wouldn't say "shit happens" and let me off the hook. There would be national outrage probably. Yet the government can execute a predawn raid in a residential area and shoot an 11-year-old (doubtless wielding an "assault pencil") with a shotgun in the back? No questions asked, no national media coverage, no national outrage? Disgusting. Oh, I forgot. It was a drug raid, and it was executed by the USG. That makes it all okay. Particularly that last part.