Why Didn’t the US Shoot Down That North Korean Missile?

>It's like a car full of young punks stopped at a red light beside a police cruiser and when the light goes green they burn rubber and peel away from the intersection first, but never exceed the speed limit. Very provocative, but the police have real crime to deal with, so they ignore it.

The punks can be charged with dangerous driving or reckless endangerment.

Testing your ballistic missiles over populated areas is not just "provocative", it's reckless. One mistake and people die. It's not so much that it's not a "real crime", it's that [shooting the missile down / accelerating in front of the car and doing a handbrake turn into its path] doesn't make anyone safer. You deal with it afterwards.

One of the problems with the Patriot missiles used in Iraq was that they often followed the target scud missile all the way down to the ground before making contact, thereby causing more civilian destruction than the scud alone, especially when the scud was also a dud.

Damaging residential communities in the japanese countryside in order to intercept unarmed missiles from NK would not be smart politics.