Wait, What? | Is This a Great Country or What?

• An unarmed man, suspected of no crime, who three years ago was shot 16 times by police while lying in his bed, told a Seattle Times reporter in March that he bears no ill will for the cops who shot him.

Said Dustin Theoharis, now 32, "Sometimes (police) make mistakes."

Theoharis was napping in a friend's house in Puyallup, Washington, when police arrived to arrest the friend's son, and when Theoharis reached for his ID, one officer imagined a gun, and the two officers opened fire, hitting Theoharis in the jaw, both upper arms, both lower arms, wrist, hand, shoulder, abdomen and both legs. He spent months in a hospital and skilled nursing facility and today is largely immobile and unable to work.

(He "won" legal settlements totaling $5.5 million, but one-third went to lawyers, and much of the rest has paid medical bills.) [Seattle Times, 3-21-2015]

• Ion Productions of Cincinnati is eager to sell "the world's first commercially available hand-held flamethrower" -- the XM42, which could shoot 25-foot flames and costs between $700 and $800. Ion announced in March that it was seeking additional funding, touting the device's uses ("killing insects," "eliminating weeds between pavement cracks," "melting snow," "entertaining friends") and assuring potential buyers that portable flamethrowers are less regulated than handguns.

(Only California and Maryland legislators, and a few city or county officials, appear to be on top of the issue of amateur flame-throwing.) [Washington Post, 3-22-2015]

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