What constitutes a weapon when you decide to hit a baby in the face BTW?
Once again:
Weapon:
"An instrument of offensive of defensive combat; something to fight with; anything used, or designed to be used, in destroying, defeating, or injuring an enemy, as a gun, a sword, etc."
Do you seriously think the drunk guy intended the rubber nipple to be used in destroying the infant?
How about defeating the infant? In what manner of defeat would be brought by this action with the nipple?
Do you think the man planned to cause injury to the infant with a rubber nipple?
Therefore, since we could easily determine the chances of the man causing any form of harm or injury to the infant as none, one would have to then focus on the intent the man may have had in these actions. The only logical (including drunken reasoning) explaination I can think of in this case for the man to do what he did was with the intent to play around with the kid. I imagine he played around with the kid the wrong way and against the mother's wishes, but none of this comes close to assault with a weapon.
Also I'd challenge people to reread the article and consider how much force one might be able to muster when they decide to drive a bottle nipple into a child's face. Someone's been commenting about 'bopping' or 'flicking' the child with a nipple, but the article states merely that the child was 'hit' with the nipple, and later flicked with a finger. Consider the many ways you could strike with such a thing.
If the man actually struck the child with a forceful blow, I don't think people would be focusing on the rubble nipple, but rather the bottle attached to it, as the rubber nipple isn't going to absorb any of the impact from the bottle behind it, and therefore the object causing any damage or injury would have been the bottle.... something even I could relate to being used as a weapon.
But the bottle isn't in question, the rubble nipple is.... so then what is the process of hitting someone with a rubber nipple without making contact with the bottle?
Flicking/Bopping
Now unless you wish to take a full swing at the kid with the bottle to make an impressive Bop on the nose, or a quick flick along the tip of the nose, one has to pull their arms back pretty good and exert a lot of thrust.... when you do this, you then lose your accuracy..... and when drunk, it's even worse. Therefore if the guy took a full swing to make any impact worth injury, I would have to say he would have a greater chance crushing the entire bottle into the baby's face if he did that.
That would also be enough for assault with a weapon.... but this didn't happen.
Now when it comes to flicking the kid in the nose with his finger?
Irrelevent, since he's not being charged with it. If he's not being charged with it, then it must not have been hard or important enough to lay charges against.
All in all the whole situation still reeks of over reaction.