About Pepper Spray

nostrich:

One hundred years ago, an American pharmacist named Wilbur Scoville developed a scale to measure the intensity of a pepper’s burn. The scale – as you can see on the widely used chart to the left – puts sweet bell peppers at the zero mark and the blistering habenero at up to 350,000 Scoville Units.

I checked the Scoville Scale for something else yesterday. I was looking for a way to measure the intensity of pepper spray, the kind that police have been using on Occupy protestors including this week’s shocking incident involving peacefully protesting students at the University of California-Davis.

Deborah Blum wrote a great thing about pepper spray.

Honestly. WHO FUCKING CARES. Guess what, police can be assholes. They use pepper spray. Is this somehow new all of the sudden? If you protest ANYTHING, there is a very high possibility you MIGHT get pepper sprayed, regardless of how peaceful you are. For all I care let these assholes keep getting pepper sprayed, there are MEN who got far worse then pepper sprayed who fought over something more than what these hippies call “greed.” They got sprayed all right; by German MG42 machine GUNS, and Japanese Type 96 machine GUNS. Think about that. You know what, you wanna prove something to me, get pepper spayed and not complain about it. Yea, I know it hurts, but if it’s something you believe in than isin’t it worth it? I’m sick of it all.

First off, to compare a peaceful protest on a university campus to the heat of war is just stupid. These were students who were simply expressing their right to free speech PEACEFULLY.

You may not believe that this protest is valid (as you express often in your blogs), but calling people “assholes” for fighting for what they believe in makes you the worst asshole of all. You don’t give a crap about your fellow human being.

And all of you who are basically saying that “consequences are consequences”… These are not simply “consequences”. And to quote you, “Police can be assholes”. This goes way beyond that, it’s a clear abuse of power. To use such a form of “control” on an non-violent group like this was completely unnecessary.

Stop being a dick and think of something you’d fight for. Now, think of being unjustifiably punished for peacefully protesting whatever it is that you fight for. You’d be pissed too.