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I'm pretty late to the party on discussing the Ashli Babbitt shooting, but I now get my chance, because the Trump administration is going to pay $5 million to her family. (Archived link.)
I once discussed January 6th with a conservative in real life, and his stance was that the Ashli Babbitt shooting was an example of police brutality. He said that she was issued no warnings at all before being shot, and she wasn't directly threatening anyone's life. Taking a look at the footage, I don't know how she would have been warned at a volume that she could hear, and any of the police with rifles would have been jeopardizing their own safety and the safety of the other officers to lower their rifles and physically restrain her. I think the barricaded door and the cops with guns trained on the entrance should have been enough to signal that breaking through would be a bad idea. Given all these circumstances, I think that awarding $5 million to her family is
a stupid thing to do. Add it to the pile of other conflict-theory-esque actions that make this presidency a seriously mixed bag for me.regrettable. Sometimes settlements are the cheapest thing for suits.How many barricaded doors must the police retreat behind before they are justified in opening fire? I think pretty much every armed conservative would have lit up a left-wing Ashli Babbitt if they found themselves in an analogous situation.
Ashli Babbitt did not deserve to die, in the sense that the punishment did not fit the crime. But that is true of most people killed in police / self defense shootings.
I think that this is an important point. Ashli Babbitt's death was the result of both her own criminal stupidity and culpably poor policing. Both were necessary, neither sufficient. "Police are not required to take risks to protect criminals from their own stupidity" is part of conservatism 101, and in the case of criminals threatening physical violence is also the law. "Police should be sufficiently competent that situations where the police need to shoot at idiots are minimised" is non-partisan good government 101, but is not a legal requirement for good reasons.
Ashli Babbit FAFO, but it was also a bad shoot. This is kind of like sure the guy was doing 30 mph over the speed limit, but the person he hit shouldn't have been dancing in the middle of a busy highway.
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