Land of the Free, Home of the Tased

Van Meter, Iowa (population 1,104) is my hometown and is the greatest goddamm small town in history. July 18 is the Van Meter Fire Association's street dance. Not only can you get buck-wild, you can also pay $5 for a chance to use a Taser on City Administrator Jake Anderson or City Councilman Bob Lacy. 

"I volunteered to be tased," Anderson told the Des Moines Register, but he was glad when Lacy volunteered as well since, "I didn't want there to a 100% chance I'd be tased." 

I can think of 1 guy in America recently who wouldn't have minded his odds of being tased increasing to 100%. 

But we can't buy raffle tickets to shoot city officials with real guns (yet).

Though if you did want to shoot something with a real gun, good news: Van Meter's got $15 raffle tickets for a chance at a Sportman's Warehouse "gift card valued at the price plus tax for a Ruger AR556 patrol rifle" another for "a Remington 870 shotgun" and finally "ten cards valued at the price plus tax of a grab bag containing 300 + RDS .22." 

Fuck yeah! Price plus tax! 

Though it does look like I left the CAPS LOCK on when I headed out of town. 

Most of the time, a tasing is as harmless as a good tickle. Waukee's Police Chief Bill Daggart told the Register that, "Most officers will tell you they'd much rather be tased than pepper sprayed. The effects are so short, and it doesn't burn." 

So it'll be kind of like a modern-day dunk tank. A dunk tank for real America! 

Maybe I'll give my kids Tasers to play with this summer instead of squirt guns. That way they don't have to keep running in and out of the house to fill up at the sink, and apparently they'll go over better than the pepper spray I gave them last year. 

The raffle ticket sales will go to help expand Van Meter's police force. Because of crime? Too much loitering at Casey's? Drunk and disorderly calls from Fat Randi's? Too many citizens armed with Ruger AR556 patrol rifles purchased from Sportman's Warehouse?

Nope. The Register writes that, "Daggart said the desire to expand the force isn't the result of any crime increase in the town of roughly 1,100 residents. Van Meter is hoping to attract a data storage industry from companies such as Microsoft and Facebook." Those companies require bigger police forces than are currently available in safe, wholesome places to grow up.

And if local officials gotta be tased to give corporations what they want, so be it! The coasts could learn a lot from small town America. Just simple people with simple values. 

Van Meter is also the home of Bob Feller.