P-Necromancer
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User ID: 3278
P-Necromancer
10d ago
... So about 1 in 2 million American citizens? Are you genuinely concerned you'll be one of them? You weren't in the past year. I'll hazard a guess you also weren't struck by lightning in the past year and that is the more surprising fact (about 1/1,222,000 per year).
I'm actually shocked the number is so low; this isn't deportations, just detainment. I'm pretty sure the normal police have a much worse record of detaining innocents (though my attempts to look it up only give results about ICE, perhaps predictably).
If this number is accurate, it's just not a real problem: it's not going to happen to you and it's not going to happen to anyone you personally know. In fact, it happens just enough the media can make it seem like a common occurrence. The fact you're aware of it at all is the Chinese Robber Fallacy in action.
P-Necromancer
16d ago
If you're arguing that lethal force is necessary in cases of unarmed attacks (and with no special circumstances) where the victim is not injured on the theory that you don't know what is going to happen and the attack could result in serious injury or death, you're saying that the amount of apprehension the victim of such an attack suffers is comparable to that of someone who was shot at but not hit.
Obviously the apprehension is greater in the latter case. It's also greater if one is shot at with an anti-materiel rifle than with a pistol. My argument is that all three cases clearly exceed the threshold that (morally) justifies lethal self defense: that it is plausible that your (criminal) assailant will kill or seriously injure you, given your (lack of) knowledge of the situation and their intentions. Allowing yourself to be tackled to the concrete is very likely also allowing your head to be repeatedly slammed into the concrete, if that's your attacker's intentions, and you ought to have the right to assume that is your attacker's intentions, given their demonstrated criminal disregard for your wellbeing.
As for where the line actually is? I agree with u/self_made_human that a slap does not meet this threshold. A light shove or shoulder check doesn't. Any attack that neither carries any meaningful risk of serious injury or death nor puts your attacker in a substantially better position to seriously injure or kill you if they wanted doesn't meet the standard. If the attack has ended (and it's reasonable for you to realize that it has), there also ends your right to self defense. If the assailant is defending themself from your criminal violence, you have no right to self defense.
It's reasonable for the court to distinguish between these levels of apprehension of injury, provided the assailant is alive to be judged, just as it is reasonable for them to distinguish between premeditated and unpremeditated murder: that does not imply that unpremeditated (attempted) murder doesn't justify lethal self defense, nor does it imply that simple assault can't meet that standard either.
P-Necromancer
17d ago
“Very few other reasons” is also not a good standard for regular use of deadly force.
This is the evidence by which we, as individuals without any privileged information, must judge the situation. It's not (I very much hope) the sum-total of the evidence by which the administration is making these determinations. They haven't presented that evidence to the public... but they obviously wouldn't if its means of acquisition was at all circumspect. This administration has proven... erratic on certain matters, but they presumably would at least consult military intelligence regarding their targets, and I have pretty high hopes the NSA is capable of identifying genuine cartel vessels; is their security better than Iran's nuclear program?
None of which is to say we should just trust the process -- they've certainly made mistakes before -- and that's not to say the strikes are justified conditional on the targets being as described. Just that, pending evidence to the contrary, I think these likely are cartel vessels.
P-Necromancer
17d ago
I think you're missing the critical element here: the court's judgements are made after the fact, when the incident is resolved and all the consequences are clear. And in particular, the relevant point is not the distinction between simple and aggravated assault, but whether the attack resulted in injury or death. In that context it makes perfect sense to only charge the attacker for what actually occurred. If there's no injury, then that'll be assault (of one flavor or the other), but if precisely the same actions resulted in death, as you acknowledge is possible, then much more serious murder/manslaughter charges come into play.
But the victim of an attack doesn't have the benefit of hindsight. The probability of those outcomes depends on the nature of the assault, but it's certainly nonzero for punching or tackling. And past that, how could the victim possibly know their attacker means to leave things there and not cave their skull in once they're beaten? I mean, probably not, but what faith should the victim of a violent assault have in the good intentions of their attacker?
So it's wrong to say that Hayes was merely assaulted and it was thus inappropriate for him to respond with deadly force: it was impossible for him to know whether he was being merely assaulted or if the attack would result in his injury or death, whether by accident or intention.
But that is what the self defense rules try to adjudicate, and I still feel the outcome here is wildly unfair. I suppose the sticking point for me is that I think that by virtue of choosing to engage in criminal violence, the attacker has (morally) forfeited their right to have their intentions judged charitably by their victim. That is: once it's established that the attacker was in fact unjustified in their attack, self defense should be judged with the presumption that the attacker was trying to kill their victim.
I'm struggling to see the downside to this rule: if you don't want to get shot for assaulting someone, you can just not assault them. If you choose to anyway, why should society value your wellbeing over your victim's, however disproportionate the ratio? If you think it's unfair to get shot over a simple punch, you can, again, just not punch anyone, and thereby avoid the unfairness. I wouldn't support the death penalty for such violence after the fact, but self defense is different in that it can prevent the criminal harm from occurring at all, which has a much stronger moral case than the normal deterrence/retribution/incapacitation justifications for punishment.
(Well, I suppose I could see an exception for minors and perhaps the impaired, provided the victim is aware of that state.)
I'm not sure I'd say 'similar;' 5700 over 4 years (1425 a year) out of not all American citizens but only the 73 million American children is nearly 40 times more common!
But sure, I at least am willing to bite the bullet and say that neither of these are real problems. Could they become problems if they become vastly more common? Sure. ... But realistically, is that going to happen? Given, as you implicitly agree, these events are so rare an order of magnitude isn't nearly enough to elevate them to a substantial risk, ICE is going to have to massively accelerate operations before this becomes something genuinely worth worrying about. I'd personally put the floor for even considering a given risk at around 1/50,000 per year -- your odds of dying in a car crash in a given year are about ten times that, all-cause mortality for a 30-year-old 100 times that -- and it's got a long way to go to get there.
Actually, given the current ratio of detained citizens to deported non-citizens (about 170/500,000), they're going to run out of people to deport well before crossing that threshold; well before even breaking 5700. Their error rate could get much worse, I suppose? Well, again, I'm surprised it's as low as it is now, so that definitely seems plausible. Still, it's an enormous gap.
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