Being arrested for assault with a weird weapon is, statistically speaking, more of an American pastime than baseball. Forget your knives, your firearms, your conventional instruments of menace — over there, a significant portion of the population apparently prefers to reach for whatever happens to be nearest. A waffle iron. A decorative gourd. Last Tuesday’s leftover lasagne. The Smoking Gun, that magnificent repository of mugshots and municipal madness, has once again reminded us that the United States is a land of extraordinary ingenuity when it comes to interpersonal conflict.
The Great American Tradition of Improvised Violence
The website’s latest “Friday Photo Fun” challenge invites readers to match five gloriously deadpan mugshots to the weapons their subjects allegedly deployed during assaults or batteries. It sounds simple. It is not simple. The sheer variety of alleged implements involved makes this less of a quiz and more of an existential journey through the human condition. Furthermore, it raises a question that philosophers have long neglected: at what point does a frozen item cease to be food and become a felony?
According to the legal definition of battery, the offence involves intentional and unwanted physical contact with another person. Nowhere in that definition does it specify the contact must be made with something sensible. Consequently, a bag of frozen peas is, technically, just as valid as a fist. The American justice system, to its eternal credit, has never let practicality get in the way of a thorough arrest record.
Mugshots: A Portrait of the Alleged Weapon-Wielding Soul
There is something uniquely poignant about a mugshot. The flat lighting, the slight bewilderment, the thousand-yard stare of someone who is absolutely regretting whatever sequence of events led to this particular Thursday evening. The Smoking Gun has built an entire empire on this specific aesthetic, and good for them. However, what elevates this particular quiz above your average internet time-waster is the weapons themselves.
We won’t spoil the answers — partly out of journalistic integrity, and partly because the site’s images weren’t fully loaded when we wrote this, which felt thematically appropriate. What we can tell you is that the alleged weapons reportedly include frozen items, which places these defendants in a long and noble tradition. In 2009, a BBC News search would reveal no shortage of British incidents involving baked goods deployed as projectiles. The frozen weapon, meanwhile, has its own peculiar logic: it’s heavy, it’s to hand, and it will have thawed to innocent-looking evidence by morning.
Why Frozen Food Makes a Surprisingly Compelling Alleged Weapon
Food-based assaults occupy a fascinating niche in the annals of criminal history. Assault laws across America vary wildly by state, but most agree that hurling a frozen chicken at someone’s head constitutes, at minimum, a conversation worth having with law enforcement. From a purely practical standpoint, your freezer is essentially an armoury of varying densities. A fish finger offers minimal threat. A leg of lamb, however, is practically medieval.
The Pew Research Center has published extensive data on crime trends in America, though none of it, disappointingly, breaks down assault statistics by food group. That is a gap in the literature that someone really ought to address. Furthermore, the Guardian’s US news desk has covered stranger stories than a frozen-food lineup, which is saying something given the current geopolitical climate.
Have a Go, If You Think You’re Hard Enough
The quiz itself is surprisingly difficult. You will look at the faces. You will consider the weapons. You will feel confident. You will be wrong. There is something almost philosophical about the gap between the face we present to the world and the alleged implement we reach for in a moment of passion. Are any of us truly so different from the person who, in a moment of crisis, grabbed whatever was nearest and made a decision they would later explain to a duty solicitor?
Ultimately, being arrested for assault with a weird weapon is less a criminal matter and more a mirror held up to modern life. We are all, at our core, just one bad day and one suspiciously solid piece of frozen food away from featuring in a Friday photo quiz. Tread carefully. And perhaps move the oven chips to a higher shelf, just in case.
Read the original story at The Smoking Gun.
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