The Effectiveness of Skateboards as a Decapitation Tool According to a Skateboard Proprietor
You do not need to pass a background check, sit through a three-day waiting period, a permit or ammo to use a skateboard. But maybe, just maybe, if circumstances were just right, you could use a board, trucks and four wheels to decapitate someone. Maybe?
I should have known better than to log in to Twitter dot com — we all should know better than to log into Twitter dot com — but this week brought me more than my average (excessive) intake of hot takes, dank memes and reply guys trying to sell their e-book in famous peoples’ mentions.
This week I logged in and learned that skateboards are deadly weapons! You may have heard about the kid from Illinois who drove across state lines with guns to “counter-protest” in Wisconsin and shot a bunch of people? His lawyers are saying he was justified in firing at Anthony Huber, a skateboarder who was killed trying to stop the shooting, because a skateboard can be used to decapitate people.
I’m going to gloss over some the most obvious takes, but some facts need to be established. The shooter had already shot someone and was fleeing the scene and an AR-15 is inarguably a deadly weapon (even more-so than a skateboard, the data back this up). So the defense’s logic appears to be that the kid was justified in killing Huber (in self-defense) because Huber was wielding a potentially deadly weapon (a skateboard) also in self-defense, since the kid had just shot someone.
Here’s another relevant fact: skateboards are TERRIBLE for decapitation. And as a former sponsored skateboarder and purveyor of skateboard hardgoods, I am incensed to have this silly little children’s toy I’m obsessed with be equated to tools created specifically for killing people.
Don’t get me wrong, an errant board can cause levels of pain I guarantee you’ve never felt otherwise. And anything swung hard enough can kill you. A strategically placed pencil or callously dropped coin can kill, ask any tour guide at the Sears Tower or Empire State Building. But the difference — and this is important, dear reader — pencils, pennies and skateboards aren’t designed for killing. I keep my skateboard in my car because sometimes you find a skate spot while you’re running errands, not because I might need to defend myself.
In fact, as a skate brand owner, I can think of a few things I’d rather have on me if my plan was murder (the real kind not the “bro you’re killing it!” kind). Top of the list? Probably an AR-15. It’s light, easy to use, easy to get, and, again, it’s designed specifically for killing people.
But this isn’t just about a lawyer calling my favorite toy a weapon to justify murder. My skateboard is fine and not offended in the least. But what’s worrying is the precedents, both legal and cultural, this could set.
The facts in the case are pretty clear: a kid raised on right-wing bullshit and good ol’ post-9/11 American gun culture saw that Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 were coming to a town near-ish to where he lived, so he packed up the car, drove to Kenosha, and shot three protesters (who it’s now argued were actually attacking the peaceful kid with the peaceful semiautomatic rifle). That is to say, the “threat” of non-white, anti-racist, politically opposed protest was enough that this kid decided he needed to play Judge Dredd and make sure none of “them” were acting out of line.
The judge in the case decided that the people who were shot by the kid can’t be called “victims,” but can be referred to as “looters” or “rioters.” While conservatives cheer the kid on as a hero, the judge in the kid’s murder trial may be drawing lines for which people deserve justice. And in this case, it’s definitely not the victims, because as the attorneys for the defense said, one of them was carrying a skateboard, which maybe, possibly, with a little elbow grease, a good backswing, if you attached a sword to it, could potentially decapitate somebody.
If the defense’s argument is successful, there could be massive legal repercussions. If someone breaks into my house, am I allowed to defend myself if the intruder is sufficiently threatened by my presence? Could a school shooter argue that bullying or abuse by a teacher is sufficient grounds to claim self-defense? Any possible “good guy with a gun” scenario immediately becomes a self-defense case for the bad guy (“Yeah, I was mugging some lady, but this guy tried to grab me, so I had to kill them both to defend myself!”).
I realize the arguments get more and more absurd, but that’s the point. Entertaining the idea that someone who names themselves vigilante, takes a weapon across state lines, and uses it to shoot people because he got scared once he got there, somehow deserves to be treated as a victim himself, rather than a murderer, is absurd.
Almost as absurd as saying it’s because one of the guys he killed, Anthony Huber, was justifiably shot because he was carrying a skateboard and tried to disarm the kid who just shot a protester.
Look, it’s trite to say in 2021, a year in which even the tiniest rural villages have a ten-thousand-square-foot public skatepark, but skateboarding is not a crime. But according to the defense in this case, carrying one is punishable by death.
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