Mommy England Is Threatening To Take Away Our Tear Gas
Parenting is as much of a gamble as anything that happens in Las Vegas, involving just as much screaming and bodily fluids. Sometimes, it turns out your pride and joy just wasn't ready for the responsibility of their new toy, whether that be a car or a can of slime that is now inextricably stuck to the carpet, and you have to take it away from them. That's kind of the situation Britain is in with the U.S., except instead of a toy, it's tear gas. They've concluded, based on recent incidents of police brutality, that we're simply not mature enough to use it. You know, incidents like this ...
... and this ...
... and this.
Specifically, 166 members of Parliament signed a petition asking their trade secretary to stop selling tear gas, rubber bullets, and other extremely impolite equipment to the States, which they were apparently doing? It's not clear how much of its tear gas the U.S. was getting from Britain, but we've bought almost 6 billion pounds worth of weapons from them since 2010. No one knows how much that is in real money, but it seems like a lot of tear gas. Who knew those kindly accented folks were a major supplier of chemical weapons? They don't even use it themselves. It's like finding out that your coke dealer is straight edge. What's even going on there?
In fact, turning this war crime around and going home is kind of a thing for them. They stopped sending the stuff to Egypt in 2013 and Hong Kong in 2019, both as a result of misuse against protestors. It's almost like it's a bad idea to hand out chemical weapons that have been banned from use in war for almost a full century to deal with shouty people. The Scottish Parliament already voted to cut us off, because bless their souls, they're more of an "act now, ask questions never" sort of people. Of course, they could just stop exporting it altogether if they have such a problem with people using it, but they do have an entire healthcare system to fund. Nobody ever said free colonoscopies would be pretty.
Top image: The White House, U.S. Navy
