Perhaps the silliest response to the Ferguson incident is one I’ve heard at least a dozen times, both publicly and privately: “Why didn’t the officer just wound him?” The speaker is invariably an Eloi hoplophobe who wouldn’t know a Ruger from arugula. It’s fatiguing.
With a hat tip to the indefatigable JK, here’s Michael Yon answering the question at his online magazine.
The linked item is good, but what you really must read is the story Mr. Yon links to at the bottom of the page.
6 Comments
I actually tried explaining this to one of them a couple of years ago with regards to a different situation. I said, “it’s from the movies.” They said, “yeah, that’s where I learned about it.” I said, /facepalm.
Eloi hoplophobe.
Brilliant.
“Eloi hoplophobe”, what’s one of those? Look it up, and you land back on your blog, none the wiser. I do own my ignorance with some pride, also having to admit to not knowing a Ruger from arugula. Now, I know that the first is a gun and the second is rocket, (as it is known in the UK and Aus) a bit of gourmet lettuce.
Well, Musey, ‘Eloi’ was coined by H.G. Wells, for his book The Time Machine. As for its current usage, you might poke around in here. (In fact, you could do worse than to spend several weeks poking around in that website. I miss its author very much.)
‘Hoplophobe’ is taken from the Greek hopla (ὅπλα), which refers to a soldier’s weapons (you may recall that the infantrymen of ancient Athens were called ‘hoplites’). As a modern coinage, it may be attributable to the great firearms master Jeff Cooper. I’ve just discovered that Wikipedia has an item on this increasingly (and depressingly) common affliction here.
Hi Malcolm, I did separate out the word search and hence discovered that a hoplophobe was a person with an irrational fear of weapons. Nothing irrational in that. Eloi, seems to be some biblical reference about being forsaken. Christ on the cross, maybe?
What I can’t believe is that I am the only reader who didn’t instantly recognize your references. But hey, you’re a clever lot.
“Why didn’t the officer just wound him?”
I seem to have read somewhere that the officer wounded him several times in the head.
Jeffery Hodges
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