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“Don’t Bring a Gun to a Snow-Ball Fight”

The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) of Washington, DC, doesn’t have the best reputation as a law enforcement agency to begin with, but an incident during this last weekend’s blizzard really takes the cake. A ‘veteran’ detective with over 25 years of experience, when faced with a crowd of people wielding snow-balls, pulled out his handgun in an apparent effort to deter this wild crowd of . . . snow-ball throwers.

Look, the snow-ball throwers were in the wrong—some of their snow-balls were hitting passing cars, which is potentially dangerous, and they didn’t exactly behave in a respectful way toward the detective. I don’t fault the detective at all for stopping his car, confronting them, or calling for backup. Fine. An overreaction, but an understandable one. But pulling your gun? In what universe do hand-lobbed balls of snow (and this wasn’t even wet, packable snow) constitute a threat worthy of brandishing a firearm?

As you might expect, the detective has been placed on desk duty pending an investigation. Check out the video below, including the enjoyable chant that I stole as this entry’s title.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.