“Felonious Assault” with a Pizza Slice

One of the dubious “advantages” provided by the government school system to its inmates is the knowledge that they can enlist the State as an ally in petty disputes within the home.

This is the likely reason why a 38-year-old Gainesville, Florida man is behind bars tonight for the grave alleged offense of hitting his daughter with a pizza slice. The daughter promptly called 911 and within minutes the father was in handcuffs and facing felony charges.

According to the Orlando Sentinel: “Deputy Nick Vickers says the man used racist and sexist terms when he asked his daughter to turn off her computer, and she fired back with some crude language of her own. Vickers says the father `intentionally threw a slice of pizza at the victim'” — note the use of the term “victim,” not alleged victim, thereby planting the assumption of guilt — “`striking her at the back ot the neck, against her will.'”

Presumably, if the daughter had explicitly consented to being hit in the neck with a slice of pizza, everything would have been copasetic. As it happens, the father was charged with “child abuse without great harm,” which is a third-degree felony.

Rational people would recognize that the father’s act involved no measurable “harm” whatsoever, and thus no crime over which the State could claim jurisdiction. But we should not forget that the State claims all children as its property — whether for purpose of criminalizing parental discipline (or, in this case, trivial fits of pique) or — when permitted to —  for the purpose of conscripting them into the military for use as trigger-pullers and coffin-stuffers.

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5:24 pm on August 15, 2009