Mystic. Just to clear one thing up, the taser is not a "lethal" weapon. It hurts like a bitch, yes, but (though things have gone wrong in a handlful of situations) it is not a lethal weapon. A lethal weapon is something that is used to cause fatal harm. A gun is a lethal weapon. A knife is a lethal weapon. A taser is not.
And I have no qualms about this guy standing up and asking his questions to Kerry. Whatever he wanted to ask, if you ask me, is fair game. I don't know how many of you have actually been to functions like this one, but I know that there is absolutely nothing more annoying than a guy that thinks he has all the right in the world to take all the time in the world to hog the mic. (There were people actually getting up and leaving because of this guy hogging the mic. I doubt that was because of the questions he was asking.) These things are scheduled events that operate on a time-table. This is something that everybody knows, before coming to said function. I don't care who you are, or how many good questions you have, in a democractic society (since the concept is being thrown around so much), if rules are set so that everyone should get an allotted time at a mic to ask their questions it is not in your authority to say "fuck you, I'll be here until I get done." Sorry, it doesn't work that way.
Now, again, I think the cops could have handled it a little differently. I don't think these clips show it, but the reason he was tasered (or, the final reason as it was admittedly escalated) was that the lady cop was asking him to put his arm down. After everything that had happened, they had him on the ground and were, yes, arresting him (whether or not that was right is not what I'm touching on), but the lady cop made a clear order for him to put his arm down, and he had one hand still in the air, refusing to put it behind his back. (I'll watch these clips again to see if they show that, but I saw that on FOX, from another angle.)
He refused to put his arm down, obviously defiant. Even when he was screaming "don't tase me bro, don't tase me" he still had his arm in the air and refused to put it down. So..they tased him.
In the beginning, had he told them, politely "Ok, give me 15 more seconds, and let me ask these final questions and I'll be done" things might not have escalated. But he gave the cops, even when being asked quietly to leave the mic, a "step the fuck back, I can ask my questions" attitude, and things got out of hand from there. I don't think the questions that he was asking had much to do with it, it was his hostility and the subsequent reactions to it, that caused the whole thing.
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