“I’ve been hearing that the law suits are about to fly. I say, where in the hell was this child’s parents?”
I’m wondering about this too. I’ve been at that zoo and exhibit, and no reasonably person would consider that exhibit dangerous. However, I suppose, if a determined person worked at it they could find a way into the exhibit. You might say, “well, what about small children”. I was not aware that they would be going to the zoo all by themselves at such a young age. Seems irresponsible.
I’m sorry, but society has NO responsibility to completely childproof the world for harried parents. Keep your eyes on them. If there are “too many to watch all the time”, get help or don’t go and next life, have fewer.
Now there is one less gorilla - but the number of idiots keeps going up. And there are lots of “armchair quarterbacks” who are second-guessing the shooting. What were they supposed to do. Tranks take time to work. If that gorilla would have even fallen on that kid that would have been it. And I’m sure the poor bastard who shot it will be second-guessing the whole thing themselves the rest of their lives.
1. I was checking into a motel and my son ended up inside of a claw machine. Took him less than 30 seconds to crawl inside. Once he realized we were upset, he showed us how easy it was to get out. The staff let him keep the teddy bear. (TL:DR - kids are slippery)
I can promise you one thing. If you ever want to test your security system, recruit a classroom of 5 year olds. They’ll find every flaw in your system in less than 10 minutes. Plug every hole then invite in the 7 year olds. They’re very inventive. Once all that is done, pull in a dozen 3 year olds and watch the whole damn thing fall apart.
2. The gorilla was doing what gorillas do and shouldn’t have been killed for it. Save the kid, tighten security on the enclosure, everybody count your blessings, and move on.
3. I’ve heard people compare this to a dog biting a child. The dog is put down. This is not a fair comparison. The dog is expected to be socialized to interact with people. The gorilla is a wild animal that will always be wild. Nobody expected this animal to be safe around children.
There’s NO common sense in this situation. From anybody.
That leads me to #4...
Sometimes there is no ‘blame’. Stuff happens and sometimes it’s terribly unpredictable. The people who blame the parents are wrong. The people who killed the animal are wrong. The people who blame the zoo are wrong. Nobody can accept the simple fact that bad things somethings happen. There’s always ‘liability’ in somebody’s eyes and that’s why there are so many warning labels. ;-)