Teen Faces Eight Years in Prison for Making Joke

By Selwyn Duke

We’ve all heard the stories about little boys punished for shaping their fingers like or drawing a gun, or even just uttering the word “gun.” But out of Austin, Texas, comes a story that makes those incidents look like case studies in common sense. The Daily Caller reports:

In February, Justin Carter was playing “League of Legends” — an online, multiplayer fantasy game — when another player wrote a comment calling him insane. Carter’s response, which he now deeply regrets, was intended as joke.

“He replied ‘Oh yeah, I’m real messed up in the head, I’m going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts,’ and the next two lines were lol and jk,” said Jack Carter, Justin’s father, in a statement to a local news channel.

What happened next was that a Canadian woman saw the quip and called the police, after she found Carter’s address and determined it was near an elementary school. (It’s real unusual for people in urban areas to live near schools, and men bent on committing violent massacres will never drive to their target. You know, the carbon footprint deterrent and all.) What then transpired? Did the police actually go and question Carter? They sure did.

Read the rest here.

Comments

[Statusmonkey]

It's understandable that the police would pay this dingleberry a little visit. But if nobody who heard the remark actually felt threatened by it - and if there's no evidence that he actually intended to do what he said - it should end with the visit.

I've seen the authorities sweep all sorts of maladjusted teenaget behavior under the rug. And for the most part, I approve of that.

[Cristina]

The Joke, Milan Kundera