August 17, 2004
Living in peace
A baseball bat? All this violence is evidently coming from America...
A 15 year-old teenager died on Tuesday morning at the Nanterre hospital Max Forestier after he was beaten with a baseball bat by a 49 year-old man on Monday evening in a dangerous district of Nanterre. . .Posted by Carine at August 17, 2004 12:57 PMThe attacker was put under close watch by the police. . .
"After an argument in the cité Pablo Picasso in Nanterre, a 49 year-old man, a Yugoslav living in Nanterre, beat a 15 year-old teenager from North Africa at his temple and throat with a baseball bat," explained the police.
The two protagonists had no legal record and were not known by the police.
I can sympathize. It isn't hard to want to beat a 15 year-old with a bat sometimes. A measure of civilization is how seldom you actually do it.
Posted by: Doug at August 17, 2004 04:47 PMThis problem could really be easily solved.
First, submit folks who wish to buy a bat to a background check.
Second, implement a 24 hour waiting period for buying a bat.
Oh, but there's so much more we can do! We can implement safety locks on bats, and devices that do not let the bat operate when it's not in the authorized owner's hands. We can have lockable storage containers for the bats, and bat education classes. We can prohibit transport of bats in any ready-to-use state, require special licensing to carry a bat, and even require that bats not be removed from authorized batting ranges. There's really no end to what we can do. And next, we can start with machetes.
Posted by: Doug at August 18, 2004 05:13 PM
