How a ‘Knockout Game’ Player Took a Broken Taser to a Gun Fight

COMMENTARY | Sometimes a story comes along that warms the heart in the midst of news of scandal and disaster. A local TV station in Lansing, Michigan relates the story of how a thug brought a broken taser to a gun fight while playing “the knock out game.”

The “knockout game” is something that is apparently being played by mainly young, African American males. The idea is to select a passerby and random and knock him or her out with one blow. The game has been spread by social media and has become a nationwide problem, aggravated by the reluctance of the mainstream media to focus on it due to the race of the attackers.

However in February, 2013 a man in Lansing was dropping his six year old daughter at school when 17-year-old Marvell Weaver tried to play the knockout game with a taser. The taser did not work. However the conceal carry handgun the victim had did work. Weaver was wounded and later sent to jail. Remarkably, noting the precedence of the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case, the unknown would be victim was not charged with a hate crime for defending himself.

Noting what happened in Lansing, it would be interesting to note the numbers of incidents of thugs playing the knockout game in cities that have strict gun control laws vs. those where conceal carry is the prevailing law. There may not be much difference up until now, but more incidents such as happened in Lansing where bored teenagers wind up eating a bullet or two for assaulting random people on the street might make them think twice.

In the meantime, those thugs who have been identified on videos as participants in the knockout game need to be apprehended, charged, tried and, if convicted, made to contemplate the folly of their actions in a nice, secure prison. If anything calls for a police crackdown, it is the idea of young men hitting people at random just for the fun of it.