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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   18681 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 27, 2025

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Turning to some good news:

It’s easier than ever to kill someone in America and get away with it.

Article link

This is a WSJ article about the rise in justified homicides in the US in recent years. Much of it is about "Stand Your Ground Laws." I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of the more lawyer-brained Mottizens on those kind of laws and their proliferation over the past decade or so.

On the culture war angle, this article is maybe the starkest example of "erosion of trust in society" that I've come across. A few of the anecdotes are pretty hair raising. They're cherry picked, I know, but the idea that a kid loses his father over an argument about a a fence and a property line made me sad. The "road range" incident they cover in detail seems like it was unfortunate but when one guy levels a gun at another, there's only one reasonable reaction.

Violence must be tightly controlled for a society to function. This is something that's bone deep in humans. We've developed methods of conflict resolution that fall short of violence for our entire existence as a species. Even within the context of violence, there are various ways of controlling it. Duels and so forth. Even informal ones; basic Bro code dictates that when one guy falls down in a fight, the other one backs off.

But this article hints at the idea that people are zooming past any of that to full lethality. It's impossible to compile the stats to determine if that's actually the case or not, but the larger point remains; in a society with plunging basic trust, you're going to see levels of interpersonal violence spike. How should state laws governing violence respond to this? Stand Your Ground is something I generally still support, but my mind could be changed if simple Bad Neigbor fights end up with more orphans.

I'm pro second amendment and pro self defense, but the one thing that makes me pause is the attitude evinced by a lot of pro-SYG arguments that any physical attack justifies lethal retaliation. I strongly believe that we, the men of today's America, don't do enough mutual combat, and that mutual combat exceptions to law should be expanded rather than retracted.

The historical norm was that boys and men got into fights. No normal male got to adulthood without getting into a scrap, and this might be punished lightly by parents or other authority figures, but the law ignored it unless it reached an extreme. It was understood as a normative value that there was a difference between punching and deadly force or the use of a firearm, and that boys should get into a few scraps in their lives. Instead today we have an attitude that ever getting into a physical fight is rare, and where it does happen it is acceptable to persecute any party to the fight.

In old cowboy movies, which set the moral tone for America from the 20s to the 70s, it was standard that two cowboys would get into a fistfight while wearing guns on their hips, and the one that went for his gun first was the bad guy, who would be prosecuted for murder if he killed the guy punching him. This is corroborated in well researched books and first hand historical accounts as the standard in the old west. A SYG standard that allows you to kill someone for punching is antithetical to the cowboy code.

Instead we've replaced traditional ethics with a feminized world where all physical contact is treated as a deadly threat, where boundaries are set such that all fighting is illegal and both morally and physically dangerous because of that boundary. We're raising our boys to act like scared old women.

Boys getting into fights in school has seen an unprecedented decline in the past thirty years

Trend analyses indicated that during 1991–2017, a significant linear decrease (42.5%–23.6%) occurred in the overall prevalence of having been in a physical fight. A significant quadratic trend was identified. The prevalence of having been in a physical fight decreased during 1991–2011 (42.5%–32.8%) and then decreased more rapidly during 2011–2017 (32.8%–23.6%). The prevalence of having been in a physical fight did not change significantly from 2015 (22.6%) to 2017 (23.6%).

This is an entire human experience, universal to males in the past, now rare. Symptom or cause of the feminization of society, you decide, I lean towards both. Zero tolerance policies towards violence have been a disaster.

There's always somebody in these conversations who talks about weird edge cases. You could get pushed and fall over and crack your skull open, you could get killed by one punch because there was some blood clot in your brain waiting to burst onto the scene. I ask these people: how did our ancestors ever manage to live? They must have been dying left and right from unlucky punches. That doesn't seem to be the case, it's an almost unattested to phenomenon before modernity.

The rare possibility of physical violence is a good thing for social regulation. So much of obnoxious behavior we see today is the result of its lack. Over expansive definitions of self defense that effectively make any form of physical violence a justification for homicide will make this worse, not better.

A SYG standard that allows you to kill someone for punching is antithetical to the cowboy code.

"So get back in there and keep boxing with that mugger, and don't worry, I'll make sure your health insurance provider knows you were just upholding the cowboy code."

Its important to note that there is a very real difference between mutual combat and sucker punching or mugging. The former is a thing almost solely practiced by co-ethnics of equal class. The latter is typically engaged in by the underclass, and is often cross-racial and cross-class.

It demonstrates the issue with an over-formalized legal system where common sense is basically banned. Imagine the following argument at an appellate court:

"So on July 9, 2025 two white boys started brawling in Jim's pub and Johnny was winning, then Tommy pulled a gun and shot him. You charged Tommy with Murder. But then outside Jim's Tommy's brother Timmy got punched in the face by Jaron and he shot Jaron right in the heart killing him. And you didn't charge Timmy with nothing?"

"Yes. Those are totally different"

"How."

"Common sense."

You see how this isn't going to fly when like 8/10 law grads are progressives and have been for decades.

Who mugs somebody by punching them? I guess it's not impossible, and maybe if by mugging we mean something more like purse snatching, but every mugger I've ever heard of had a knife at least. At which point we're out of the universe of stuff I was even remotely talking about, if someone pulls a knife on you that's an obvious deadly threat.

Who mugs somebody by punching them?

Literally everyone if you had your way.

Strong-arm robbery is the most common sort according to the FBI.

Any real fight, even with no weapons, is a fight for your life. That doesn't mean that all physical violence is a fight like that though, but the attacker needs to signal somehow that real bodily harm is not the intention. For example a catfight with slapping, nail scratching, and biting is unlikely to be truly dangerous, but getting ganged up on or attacked out of the blue is extremely dangerous.

it was standard that two cowboys would get into a fistfight while wearing guns on their hips

Showing you have a weapon conspicuously and not using it is a good signal of your intentions.

Instead we've replaced traditional ethics with a feminized world where all physical contact is treated as a deadly threat

This definitely isn't true. Under the law physical contact doesn't automatically justify self defense, and there are many cases where a physical attack was made and the retaliation was not found to be self defense in court.

No normal male got to adulthood without getting into a scrap

I'm smashing the doubt button extremely hard.

Boys getting into fights in school has seen an unprecedented decline in the past thirty years

I don't believe there is actual evidence that getting into fights leads to better outcomes for the kids in any measurable way, while there is strong evidence it leads to troublesome discussions, accidental injuries, and scrutiny. So there's all the incentive to push people not to cause problems.

I don't believe there is actual evidence that getting into fights leads to better outcomes for the kids in any measurable way,

gestures broadly The proof of the pudding is in the eating. We're in the middle of a society wide experiment in kids not getting into fights, and we sit on the internet and bemoan the effeminacy of our world.

while there is strong evidence it leads to troublesome discussions, accidental injuries, and scrutiny. So there's all the incentive to push people not to cause problems.

What discussions, what scrutiny? As for accidental injuries, you can't live your life never taking a risk of anything.

I ask these people: how did our ancestors ever manage to live? They must have been dying left and right from unlucky punches. That doesn't seem to be the case, it's an almost unattested to phenomenon before modernity.

As @FtttG said, those deaths are mostly from people falling and hitting their head on concrete after getting punched, so it makes sense it was more uncommon in pre-modern, more rural times.

But regardless, I think you're romanticising the past. Even if they couldn't easily slip and die from slipping on asphalt, our ancestors absolutely died left and right from stupid, violent deaths. Just look at the homicide rate over the last 750 years. Or further back, how 21% of men in Amazon hunter-gathered tribes died violent deaths.

Getting in a fight (outside of the well-regulated environment of combat sports, although even then some like boxing are needlessly dangerous), has absolutely no benefit and is associated with impulsive, low-IQ criminals, drug addicts and drunks for a reason. What do you get from escalating it to a violent fight that words couldn't express? And you have no guarantee, especially if it's a stranger, that your opponent won't suddenly pull a knife (or a gun) and kill you.

The rare possibility of physical violence is a good thing for social regulation. So much of obnoxious behavior we see today is the result of its lack. Over expansive definitions of self defense that effectively make any form of physical violence a justification for homicide will make this worse, not better.

What obnoxious behavior do we see today that would be fixable by violence from random citizens? If you're talking about say, mental ill or drugged addicted homeless people roaming many western urban centers, if the government's solution is to let anybody punch them as opposed to putting them in mental hospitals or homeless shelters, that would be to me an abject failure of government and I would not feel the least bit safer. Vigilantism is never a good thing and is a sign the police and authorities are a failure.

Is declining rates of violent death adjusted for 1) rising average ages and 2) improved medical care?

Is declining rates of violent death adjusted for 1) rising average ages

I don't think that adjustion should be done. 1. Rising average ages means people live longer, and that longer life means more opportunities to encounter violence. An old man might be less likely do get into violence, but before he was old, he was a young man for as long as his ancestors were, so all else being equal, he should get into more violence over his longer lifespan.

If there's a positive effect, it's probably from the effects on society from having more older people around too cool down and dilute young hotheads - but why would you control away social structure?

Also, people who didn't die violently live longer, so there's causality in the other direction (declining rates of violence cause rising average ages) and you're controlling away what you're testing for.

What obnoxious behavior do we see today that would be fixable by violence from random citizens?

Street harassment generally, but all forms of obnoxious public behavior which are performed with the full knowledge that if a citizen hits you, it's a huge headache even if everyone ultimately agrees you were at fault.

It used to be well understood that a bum or a vagrant or a drunk catcalling your wife or girlfriend or daughter or sister was ample justification for you, as a man of honor, to smack him good and hard. Bums and vagrants and drunks learned to keep their mouths shut. Now they feel no need to restrain themselves, no citizen is going to risk a felony arrest, becoming a felon over it. Or a civil lawsuit that will drain their bank account.

The problem with this being that if one is already a felon, or broke, the threat is much less, so you are free to act. We live in a society where a huge number of punishments used to keep people in line, things like credit scores and bankruptcy and even felony convictions, matter far more to one tier of citizens than they do to another. The result is to enable the worst parts of society while restraining the best parts.

This goes back to so many things that we talk about on themotte. Why do women feel no need of a man for protection? Because it's not like the average PMC male offers much protection anyway. Why do men feel so helpless? Because they are forced to endure obnoxious behavior without helping themselves.

How can we bemoan the loss of honor, while this thread is full of criticism of honor cultures and the violence they lead to?

How can we bemoan the loss of honor, while this thread is full of criticism of honor cultures and the violence they lead to?

Because honor cultures are objectively awful. The states where honor culture dominates, like the Middle East, tend to be poor, violent and oppressive places to live. I personally have no desire to live in a society where men are quick to resort to physical violence when their feel their honor threatened, and I'm happy blood feuds, honor killings, and even schoolyard fights are no longer accepted or commonplace.

The reason why "respectable" men don't beat up street harassers isn't just because of the legal risk, but because you might very well end up losing. Even if you're in peak physical condition and a trained martial artist, what if the vagrant pulls a knife? What if you win this time, but he comes back with 5 of his buddies? What's the point of risking potentially a life-changing, even fatal injury, because of what, a comment? The risk of escalation is too great compared to just walking on, ignoring the catcall, or just sticking to more middle-class areas.

It used to be well understood that a bum or a vagrant or a drunk catcalling your wife or girlfriend or daughter or sister was ample justification for you, as a man of honor, to smack him good and hard. Bums and vagrants and drunks learned to keep their mouths shut. Now they feel no need to restrain themselves, no citizen is going to risk a felony arrest, becoming a felon over it. Or a civil lawsuit that will drain their bank account.

And what if a woman is walking alone? Needing a male chaperone seems like social regression, it's a good thing that women don't need to rely on an individual man for protection. I'd much rather have a well-trained police force and justice/health system that is allowed to do its job.

The reason why "respectable" men don't beat up street harassers isn't just because of the legal risk, but because you might very well end up losing. Even if you're in peak physical condition and a trained martial artist, what if the vagrant pulls a knife? What if you win this time, but he comes back with 5 of his buddies? What's the point of risking potentially a life-changing, even fatal injury, because of what, a comment? The risk of escalation is too great compared to just walking on, ignoring the catcall, or just sticking to more middle-class areas.

I mean, I don't engage with street harassers for many reasons, but the chance that I would lose is very low on that totem pole. In a fair fight, I have approximately 0.1% chance of losing a fight to the average street harasser in an objective way. However, even if I win, in modern America, I lose. I am banned from using the proper tools to take care of this fellow, a billy club or a gun, so I would have to fight him hand to hand. That means I am going to, at the very least, get very stinky fighting him. I might also be out some expensive clothing. I mostly am wearing suits when I see street harassers, after all. The legal risk, is of course very high. George Floyd and Ahmad Arbery are good examples of this.

I am a bit confused by your mental model here where you think normal men confronting homeless creepers is not a thing because they fear to lose the fight. Its not a thing for me. Its not a thing for my brother or anyone else who was on the wrestling team at our high school. The fear is the legal shit, and the fact that its not worth it because they smell so bad. And also they prolly give you AIDS or some shit if they successfully bite you.

Thus, the gentleman's billy club is the solution.

In a fair fight, I have approximately 0.1% chance of losing a fight to the average street harasser in an objective way.

What’s the likelihood that it will be a fair fight though?

I am a bit confused by your mental model here where you think normal men confronting homeless creepers is not a thing because they fear to lose the fight.

I’ll admit I’ve never lived in a city where I’ve encountered the kind of aggressive, mental ill homeless mentioned here. Maybe that population is sufficiently malnourished that you can easily beat them with little effort, but the street harassment I’ve seen has mostly been from young men who looked in normal physical shape, often in groups.

Its not a thing for me. Its not a thing for my brother or anyone else who was on the wrestling team at our high school.

Well we come from different backgrounds I suppose, my high school did not have a wrestling team and the men I know are middle class guys working office jobs who have never been in a real physical fight.

The reason why "respectable" men don't beat up street harassers isn't just because of the legal risk, but because you might very well end up losing.

This is true, but have you ever seen a small bird chasing a red tailed hawk out in the woods? It happens all the time. Why? Surely, in a Pokemon style fight to the death, the hawk would win nine times out of ten, right? But, the hawk has to do this every day, probably a couple times a day, the smaller bird only once. If the hawk gets into fights every time it wants to eat, he will eventually lose. The same with the street harasser. If he wants to spend all day harassing, if there's no risk of violence he's fine. If there is any risk of violence against him, it becomes untenable, because he will get unlucky eventually.

And what if a woman is walking alone?

How is it any different than if she walks alone now?

Say, if you were a single white woman riding alone at the back of the bus, and it happened

A) in the 1930s, she'd get some looks: the bus driver would pull her to the front, and if a psychotic vagrant drew a knife on her every man aboard would jump him

B) in the 2020s, she'd be left alone, and die alone as everyone else walked away

Which society feels healthier?

Is that actually true? There's a reason that statistics are better than anecdotes. And if you were, say, 10 years old in 1939 you'd be 96 years old today. It's unlikely you've experienced this yourself even as a statistical anomaly.

I'm pretty sure that for survival of the community reasons the african american community did not like their fellows harassing white women.

The reason why "respectable" men don't beat up street harassers isn't just because of the legal risk, but because you might very well end up losing.

That's only a part of it. The problem is if you lose you go to the hospital, but if you win you go to jail. Lots of respectable men have a breaking point at which they'll suffer the risk of losing.... but a much higher breaking point if they lose either way.

We're talking about interactions that take half a minute at most. What good is a police force supposed to do? Are you gonna assign a cop to every unchaperoned woman? Flood police departments with complaints about "that man on the street who catcalled me"? How do you actually visualize effective deterrence of lowlifes from harassing people?

Honor culture has its flaws, but its benefits are that low-inhibition lowlifes are going to have their own "what-ifs" to consider when they think of marring someone's day with comments or worse. In my opinion, it's not the respectable men who must stick to middle-class areas. It's the disrespectable men who must stick to low-class areas, and if they do wander outside, they should behave properly.

Yeah the current Western system has very little ability to corral somebody who's already committed to pressing the defect button.

Most deterrents require some level of capitulation and the worst case is generally prison which in an absolute historical human welfare standard isn't really that bad.

And yet fewer people with IQs above room temperature press the defect button than "ever" before. (Crime has fallen a lot from the Days of Lead but isn't quite back down to the 1950's low)

In the current year, crime isn't a problem of insufficient deterrence. It is a problem of people so stupid and impulsive that they require a different kind of deterrence - like immediate corrective violence by the nearest available Good Ol'Boy or a Iain M Banks style slap drone.

Phase 1 of modern crime control is to minimise the number of such people:

  • Don't import them
  • Don't homegrow them by blowing lead dust at kids
  • If you do homegrow them, lock them up until they are too old to crime any more.

Phase 2 is to make co-operate the socially normal default (this is the "broken windows" concept) Phase 3 is to make the deterrents we do have sufficiently swift and certain enough that at the margin the IQ needed for them to work on you is lower.

The honorable fistfight is best suited for an environment like school. It includes a level of trust and familiarity. There is some authority figure nearby who can keep things from getting out of hand. Most of this is not replicated in the real world. Most physical altercations occur between strangers in a bar, a traffic dispute, or a misunderstanding in the street. Sometimes in those places, like a bar, there's a mutual understanding, but more often there is not.

Over expansive definitions of self defense that effectively make any form of physical violence a justification for homicide will make this worse, not better.

What part of it do you consider expansive now?

The rare possibility of physical violence is a good thing for social regulation.

Exactly. Like, if you try to kick my ass because you missed a turn, you might wind up dead. When I don't know anything about you except you are incapable of regulating yourself after you've fucked up a traffic signal, there's not even a partial desire to test my strength or your honor. I don't trust you. The people committing 4 million simple batteries a year don't deserve the benefit of the doubt from me.

Let me kick your ass a little, it'll be good for ya might be convincing from a Certified Mottezan. I suspect you're not going to break my ribs if you've managed to knock me out. The real world is not made up of Mottezans. In my experience, people that escalate petty disputes to physical confrontation are exactly the kind of people you cannot trust to regulate themselves or use appropriate judgment.

Instead we've replaced traditional ethics with a feminized world where all physical contact is treated as a deadly threat, where boundaries are set such that all fighting is illegal and both morally and physically dangerous because of that boundary. We're raising our boys to act like scared old women.

We're long past the point where you can or should trust a stranger to know when you're beat-- if such a world ever did really exist. The situations where a fistfight is good for you are rather limited. The situations where encouraging fistfights ends up as a good thing for society even more limited. Are fistfights more justifiable in some cases of lethal self-defense? Sure, you shouldn't whip out a pistol when Jack, your roommate in college, finds out you've been sleeping with his girlfriend. How many of those circumstances actually occur in one's life? What kind of demographics most frequently escalate fistfights to homicide?

I don't think boys should be expelled from school for getting into a fistfight. Zero tolerance policies are dumb. Encouraging physical violence is not going to improve our society, at least not in any way that a well-armed society can't.

I ask these people: how did our ancestors ever manage to live?

To quote myself:

In that period, about 56% of the US lived in urban areas. Now, the equivalent figure is about 81%. If two guys working on a farm get into a fistfight, it's unlikely to result in anything worse than a black eye. If two guys get into a fistfight outside a bar, a single punch can easily result in one of them falling over, hitting his head on the concrete and being killed instantly. This is such a big problem in Australia that various states passed so-called "one punch" laws.

Punching someone when they're standing on a concrete footpath presents a vastly higher risk of death than punching someone when they're standing in a field or on a dirt track.

...You're basing your entire argument on surface hardness? The fields in our area are full of rocks, if you hit your head on one of those it's much worse (sharper) than concrete.

You're basing your entire argument on surface hardness?

I think the fact that more people live in built-up environments now than they used to has a major impact on how they behave, yes.

The fields in our area are full of rocks, if you hit your head on one of those it's much worse (sharper) than concrete.

Okay, but if you fall over in one of those fields, what is the likelihood of you hitting your head on a rock vs. if you fall over on a footpath?

What's the likelihood of serious injury if you fall on concrete?

This doesn't pass the smell test. Fistfights declined in barrooms, and in cities as well as in the newly urbanized areas.

I'm not saying it's the only contributing factor: all kinds of violence have declined over time. But I think it's one of many, and it's an important consideration to bear in mind before touting the virtues of "renormalising" (for want of a better word) casual fistfights, which is the context in which I was originally discussing this. Fistfights on concrete are more likely to be lethal than fistfights on grass or dirt tracks; a higher proportion of people live in built-up areas now than in the past; ergo, all things being equal, an unarmed fistfight in 2025 is more likely to end with one participant dead than an unarmed fistfight in 1925.

Fistfights on concrete are more likely to be lethal than fistfights on grass or dirt tracks

Does anyone have even a bad study or effort showing this to be true, or are we just operating off intuition? People fall on concrete all the time, it is very rarely fatal. At what level of fatal risk are we comfortable considering a shove or a haymaker a deadly attack?

Punching someone when they're standing on a concrete footpath presents a vastly higher risk of death than punching someone when they're standing in a field or on a dirt track.

Only mostly in jest: "The ADA and its consequences..." (the ADA has driven a lot of paving of previously-dirt walking paths).

In old cowboy movies, which set the moral tone for America from the 20s to the 70s, it was standard that two cowboys would get into a fistfight while wearing guns on their hips, and the one that went for his gun first was the bad guy, who would be prosecuted for murder if he killed the guy punching him.

This was a very ritualized combat. It was between peers. The greatest age/strength difference was between a young braggart/fool and a tough grizzled man -- anyone throwing a punch at e.g. an elderly gimpy bartender was a bad guy, unless it was an accident for comic relief. It was obvious a fistfight was going to start, and very often the men would remove their gunbelts first. I seriously doubt it was that formal in the real Old West, but the movie version doesn't resemble what gun rights advocates call something worthy of lethal self defense today. None of the stories in the article resemble that; they all involved the offender having a lethal weapon, and in the only case it wasn't a gun, the defender was elderly. The protest guy also doesn't resemble that.

I think few gun rights advocates think you should be able to engage in mutual unarmed combat and then lawfully pull a gun and shoot the other guy because you're losing. But while self-defense opponents like to bring up that scenario, first of all they don't want the mutual unarmed combat to be lawful at all. And second, I think it's pretty rare. Less rare with a knife (because as @BreakerofHorsesandMen noted, a lot of people aren't very honorable), but it's the gun cases which tend to make the news. The cases brought up here are all easily distinguishable from that.

I'm not discussing any particular case here, I'm not interested in playing games with fact patterns. What concerns me is the cultural message sent. I think we need to enable and encourage more physical confrontation with less fear of legal consequences as a result. We need to encourage more scenarios where punching someone is legally justified. We can't do that if we also say, any punch is a deadly assault proportional to a gunshot. Those two theories are incompatible.

What I'm pointing to is a general attitude we're inculcating in our society, in our young men, that physical violence is completely outlawed and impossible. Quotes from throughout this thread, posters untagged I'm (ironically) not trying to start something with anyone:

[S]omething like a serious punch to the face from an adult male or tackle and an attempt to batter me into submission is something I would excuse, even if I prefer less lethal options. Those who don't want to be shot in such a scenario should ideally not be committing such acts.

In my opinion, when an adult makes the decision to assault another person, they are taking their life into their own hands. If it ends with the aggressor bleeding to death on the sidewalk, that is sad, but not upsetting.

Big dude comes over and the first thing he does is hard two hand shove. That's straight up an initiation of a fight with no pretense. If I'm on my ass after that and I have a pistol on me, I'm reaching, pulling, and firing.

[I]f I'm standing over a hard surface like a sidewalk or even asphalt, I would consider an unprompted shove as escalation to deadly force. A simple fall that results in your head smacking the ground can be fatal and often are, and someone shoving you with intent to disturb you is someone who is clearly fine with a very high probability of you falling over, with high likelihood of you lacking enough control to protect your head during the fall.

And the problem with inculcating this kind of "punching someone is a deadly assault, is never the answer, it is totally verboten on pain of being shot legally" is that it enables all manner of obnoxious behavior that can't be solved otherwise.

There's a lot of talk throughout this thread by pro-gun folks that it's important for citizens to be able to defend themselves from deadly assaults. I agree. I also think that citizens need to be able to defend themselves from obnoxious behavior, not with a gun, but with a fist. A world in which I can slug someone for harassing me in the street is a world with less harassment in the streets, a world in which I can't slug someone for any reason unless they punch me first is one with more harassment in the streets.

This seems like it should be totally justified to me. If we say that a punch is a deadly assault, and that if the punched fall down they're justified in opening fire, is one where running up to someone and being obnoxious is legalized.

What concerns me is the cultural message sent.

And you're ignoring shared social norms.

I'll be the first person to admit I think people need to get punched in the face more, or atleast know what physical combat, be it fisticuffs or whatnot, actually feels like and be capable of such.

That said, one of the first things my dojo drilled in my head, with the potential for sparring against people that might not even be able to speak the same language I have, is, when disengaging from sparring, always step back. The answer should be pretty obvious - you're keyed up, blood pumping, riding an adrenaline high, and stepping into someone's space is basically an aggressive maneuver that could result in a broken nose without them even intending to do so.

Reflexes are a hell of a drug.

So. Mutual combat? Fine. But it has to be ritualized, it needs to be strict, and it needs to be understood, by both parties, there are lines you do not cross.

And we definitely don't have that, and likely will never have that, given the current social situation in America as a whole.

I'm not discussing any particular case here, I'm not interested in playing games with fact patterns.

Then you're basically just blowing smoke.

What concerns me is the cultural message sent. I think we need to enable and encourage more physical confrontation with less fear of legal consequences as a result. We need to encourage more scenarios where punching someone is legally justified. We can't do that if we also say, any punch is a deadly assault proportional to a gunshot. Those two theories are incompatible.

Discouraging self-defense by gun does not get you to "more scenarios where punching someone is legally justified". You can tell because those who discourage self-defense don't want punching anyone to be legally justified; instead, what they want is for people to submit to being attacked and then call the police (who will typically do little to nothing). This does not get you nearer to your desired state.

Encouraging self-defense by gun doesn't interfere with getting to "more scenarios where punching someone is legally justified" either. Unless the law can't be made to support the complexities I referred to in my previous post. Which is quite possible -- but in that case, we're forced to choose between "law-abiding people must accept victimization by physically-tougher criminals" and "one can defend oneself with lethal force against criminals".

we're forced to choose between "law-abiding people must accept victimization by physically-tougher criminals" and "one can defend oneself with lethal force against criminals".

I'm not sure we are. Currently, I'm already victimized by both the physically tougher and the physically weaker miscreants, until they cross the line where I can shoot them I don't really have any right to defend myself from obnoxious behavior.

I should be clear: I'm all for self defense, I have a permit to carry (though I rarely carry), and I strongly believe in SYG against deadly threats. The only argument I'm having here is whether a punch or other light physical assault is automatically a deadly threat which justifies deadly self defense. The answer is no, and it's not just no, it's no and saying yes deeply undermines the fundamental basis of human civilization.

From a continental perspective, the fact that you even need stand your ground laws is basically a bug in the common law system, which often imposed a duty to retreat. For example, German law started from the opposite direction, where using violence to stop unlawful attacks was generally considered okay, then carved out exceptions that no, you can not shoot kids stealing apples from your tree, you have to pick the less deadly option if both are equally likely to stop the attack, and if the aggressor is obviously not of sound mind you do have a duty to retreat.

The furor over "stand your ground" remains silly, as it's not really implicated in most of these situations. Bashing SYG is a way of introducing a presumption of flight to every civilian interaction, which is ludicrous.

The fundamental question being asked seems to be if self defense is worth some single-digit number of edge cases per year in a country with more guns than people.

The answer is yes.

The better question is how much better or worse off the country would be with several thousand more "justified homicides" per year. Is not having to uselessly prosecute a lifetime felon for the umpteenth time worth some fractional enabling of a more tragic scenario? What's the optimal ratio?

The better question is how much better or worse off the country would be with several thousand more "justified homicides" per year.

We need something different and more proactive. When a guy has been picked up by the cops for random violence and felonies and given the catch and release run-around for the umpteenth time, maybe the state should give him a shit test. Ask him point blank if he's released if he will punch/stab/shoot some one for dissing him or stepping on his new sneakers. If he answers yes throw him in the slammer for a minimum of 2 years and then ask him again before he gets out.

Same for racialized(I hate that word) violence. Is whitey the devil who should be killed, quick and easy yes/no question. Is the solution to not getting your EBT on time a justified looting? Congrats, you just bought yourself a trip to prison.

Two years divided by democratic prosecutors and judges is immediate release. There's no point in multiplying laws that won't be enforced and sentences that won't be carried out. We cannot change the laws nor the enforcement, but we can carry a gun.

We cannot change the laws nor the enforcement, but we can carry a gun.

Not in blue states we can't. (Though technically NJ has Castle Doctrine, I wouldn't bet on it in court. And the word it uses is "premises", which practically speaking isn't going to include curtilage even though it normally does)

Do not quote laws to those with Glocks.

The cops have Glocks too. And once you've been shipped to state prison for violating firearms laws (or homicide laws), you won't have a Glock and you'll be wishing you took your chances with the criminals on the outside. Sometimes your choice is taking a beating (or stabbing or shooting) from a single criminal on the outside, or being sent inside and taking beating after beating (and worse) from as many criminals as care to. Even if you're dead, you're better off than that.

We all have choices to make in life. One can, with a bit of effort, be either above or below the law. The law is for those who cannot make their own.

One can be below the law with not too much effort, on the anarcho- side of anarcho-tyranny. It's a mean, impoverished, but quite possibly freer existence, at least if you have no internal moral constraints on theft and violence. If you do have such constraints you're stuck following the rules but not benefiting from them, which just leads to an unlamented death in short order.

To be above the law requires considerably more. Great work if you can get it, though.

In between, you're on the tyranny side of anarcho-tyranny. Step out of line even once on one of the things those with power care about, and you're headed for the unlamented death. This is enforced in all sorts of ways -- New Jersey's draconian penalties for a law-abiding citizen carrying a gun is only one of them. Drunk driving law is another -- doing that gets a lot of people into a cycle where they drive illegally (because they live and work somewhere you have to drive), get busted, go to jail, lose their job, have their license revocation extended, get out, get another job, repeat, for a very long time.

Others are less obvious; over on another board someone said they once managed to find an employee by sifting through the recruiter's discards, and found one where the employee had been rejected because he'd been previously fired. That employee didn't realize what everyone knows but most will deny: in most of the white collar world, below executive level, to be fired is to be unhireable, so you'd better learn to conceal it.

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If you only break one law at a time, carrying a gun everywhere is unlikely to result in legal trouble, because cops are sympathetic and don't want to do paperwork. Obviously won't work if you insist on driving with no license plates while high.

I believe you underestimate the anti-gun fervor of the state of NJ. They'd rather imprison 100 otherwise-law-abiding gun carriers than put one murderer in jail.

You could be right. It's possible. But what are the odds that the cops admit to noticing an otherwise-law-abiding concealed carrier?

I have been told that the trad caths of LA and Baltimore made local anarcho-tyranny work in their favor, and this was an open secret among the nearby ghetto dwellers- related to me by members of these churches. NJ might be worse than those places. It's certainly a theoretical possibility. But 'don't break the law when you're breaking the law' is generally a good enough kludge for avoiding legal trouble.

When a guy has been picked up by the cops for random violence and felonies and given the catch and release run-around for the umpteenth time,

An idea I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is offering elective euthanasia to these people. On a certain level -a level removed enough that I don’t feel morally reasonable to empathize with- I do think high-impulsive, highly reactive, highly violent people are “suffering”, and if faced with a a short prison stint you should “put both silver and lead on the table” and give them an easy way out of their existence. I think a good fraction will take it.

They don't need to be suffering for the rest of society to suffer from them. If we want them gone, we should be upfront about it, formulate clearly what our problem is, why ending a life resolves it, take the responsibility and pull the trigger. Not wink and nudge and see what kind of perverse psychological manipulation schemes spring up while we pat ourselves on the back for how we've helped the poor wretch reduce his own suffering.

That said, sure, make the offer. It probably won't make the world worse. Fewer of them should usually be good, unless you make the next Baron von Ungern-Sternberg kill himself and rob the future world of some amazing history.

I am upfront about wanting them gone: the argument that convinces me is that the state shouldn’t have the power to choose if a person dies. If it’s going to imprison someone for their entire life, let them decide if they want to die it easily. This gets around the capital punishment counter argument very effectively for me

The state also shouldn't have the power to decide that someone will spend the rest of his possibly quite long life as a drain on peaceful, productive taxpayers, and yet here we are.

I appreciate the sentiment behind the idea, but this sounds about as brilliant as the American embassy asking "are you a terrorist" on a visa application.

Asking "are you a terrorist" is there so that if you say no and turn out to be a terrorist, they can deport you for lying on your application.

Back when I was young and innocent I'd ask "...w ...why can't you deport them for being terrorists?", but after the seven zillionth undeported child rapist in Europe, I might need to sit this one out.

Here's the neat part. Some of them are stupid enough/unable to plan for the future and have a sort of honor culture where they will rather claim to be tough/hood/gangster/not gay or whatever than suffer the 'social' consequences of coming out week.

"Honor culture" doesn't mean you can't lie to the authorities to get a shorter sentence, what are you talking about?

Honor culture means you are obligated to lie to the authorities to get your buddy a shorter sentence.

Stupid enough honor culture does mean that.

Honor culture means that when someone insults your honor, for example by calling you a "retarded faggot", you are compelled to retaliate in order to restore your honor. If you're quick on your feet and have sharp wits, insulting the other party even more might suffice, if not your fists may need to get involved. This is contrasted with "dignity culture" where you would show yourself to be the bigger man by letting the insults slide off you.

Even if members of honor culture did find it insulting for you to point out their statement to the cops (and honestly I think most of them would just YesChad it), all that means is that they'd kick the shit out of you for pointing it out, not that they wouldn't do it.

Is not having to uselessly prosecute a lifetime felon for the umpteenth time worth some fractional enabling of a more tragic scenario? What's the optimal ratio?

Forgetting the optimal ratio, what is the actual ratio? Like what fraction of individuals killed in what was ultimately judged to be self defense fall into the bucket of "basically OK guy, got in a fight with his neighbor over a dumb thing" vs "hot-headed asshole who nevertheless mostly had his shit together and contributed somewhat to society" vs "degenerate/parasite/criminal that never held down a decent job or did anything for anyone else"?

I'm not sure whether if these three categories are really the right dividing point, but they seem like at least a good start at "lifetime felon" vs "bad neighbor".

My assumption is that most of them were lifelong lowlives and petty criminals who never committed a particularly serious crime(statistically the vast majority of lowlives). You can be a bad person and not deserve to die; we don't have the death penalty for shoplifting.

Serious criminals mostly don't get particularly close to normie gun owners. They kill each other at high rates, sure, but that's not generally counted as self defense.

Yeah. I do wonder how many were productive auto mechanics or bartender or whatnot vs being non-productive.

We used to have jobs for those people that didn’t require reforming them wholesale to let them contribute to society.

Crappy jobs still exist. You can go work in a warehouse or a commercial kitchen or changing oil or doing construction(and approximately 100% of white roofers, concrete guys, drywallers, etc have been to jail more than once). These are productive employments. Society is a lot more expensive than it used to be, but an underdiscussed story of the 2020s is how crappy jobs can never get enough people now.

Obviously no data that nuanced to look at, and it would be a dog's breakfast of definitions if there were.

My guess is roughly 90% degens, 9% assholes, 1% "basically ok guy", but obviously I have a side here.

As a counterpoint to this, there's the case of Scott Hayes and Caleb Gannon in Newton, Massachusetts, which was discussed here when it happened I believe. Hayes had his legal weapon on him, openly carried in a holster, while at a pro-Israel protest. Gannon took offense to this, ran across the street, and tackled Hayes. Hayes shot Gannon during the struggle. No nasty SYG in Massachusetts; Hayes was prosecuted and strong-armed into accepting pre-trial probation: he loses his license to carry, he has to take a course on "civil discourse" and he's banished from the city of Newton.

Gannon also got pre-trial probation.

So in Massachusetts, you can physically attack a man without lawful provocation and if he shoots you for doing so, the state basically says you're both equally at fault.

The issue in that case wasn't that he had an opportunity to retreat but didn't, but that the force used was disproportionate to the threat. Gannon committed a pretty clear case of misdemeanor assault and battery, but that's it. There was no gun involved, no other dangerous weapon, no immediately obvious risk of suffering severe bodily injury. There was certainly the possibility of sever injury or death, to be sure, but that's the slippery slope that people warn about and which point you're proving; to pro-gun people, any physical contact is a potential justification for use of deadly force in response. You can brush off the grocery store sample above as hyperbole, but it's not too far off from what happened here.

Hayes was prosecuted and strong-armed into accepting pre-trial probation: he loses his license to carry, he has to take a course on "civil discourse" and he's banished from the city of Newton.

Hayes was charged with a felony and he got off with a slap on the risk. You omitted the fact that pre-trial probation means that the above conditions only applied for 90 days following the agreement, at which point the case was dismissed. Prosecutors had a pretty clear-cut case of assault with a deadly weapon and they bent over backwards to ensure that they wouldn't have to try it and that the guy wouldn't even have a record. I'm not necessarily arguing that they should have nailed his ass to the wall, but this is about as light a sentence as you can expect. As for Gannon, if he hadn't gotten shot he'd probably be facing a similar sentence anyway, so I'm not sure what you think they were supposed to do to him. You can argue that he won't have a record, but he did get shot and will likely have some sort of permanent impairment because of it, so it's not like he got off too easy.

There was certainly the possibility of sever injury or death, to be sure, but that's the slippery slope that people warn about and which point you're proving; to pro-gun people, any physical contact is a potential justification for use of deadly force in response.

I think a lot depends on the context here. If you get attacked in empty alley at night by two unarmed guys, then it seems entirely plausible that they will kick you until you stop moving once you go down. If there are plenty of co-demonstrators around, it seems very likely that they would save you from being kicked to death.

Of course, attacking someone who is openly carrying is also a Darwin awards move, even more if you go to clinch fighting which could be seen as a precursor move for grabbing the gun yourself.

Of course, attacking someone who is openly carrying is also a Darwin Awards move

Not if you believe that the armed party was at high risk of killing an innocent person in the near future unless you intervened, and are choosing to risk your own life on a heroic attempt to stop them before they get that far. I would guess that this is what was going in in Gannon's head: he assumed that the only reason someone would bring a gun to such a situation would be that they planned to kill someone, and he fancied himself a hero. This is dumb, bordering on genuine paranoia, but if you take the assumption for granted then tackling the gunman is no "dumber" than any other desperate heroic act by an ordinary man.

to pro-gun people, any physical contact is a potential justification for use of deadly force in response

As is reasonable. When someone waves around a weapon, or has announced or otherwise demonstrated an intention to harm you, or is clearly too aggressive to de-escalate, and is physically capable of crippling or killing you, and leaving is not an option because he's already bearing down on you...then yes, of course you have to escalate as far as you have to in order to save yourself. Aside any legal or "moral" concerns, what else are you supposed to do? Gamble on your ability to BJJ your way out? Hope the other guy quits short of bashing your brains out? Bet on the police and paramedics to arrive in time to sew up all the holes the other guy cut into you?

All the Germans getting stabbed, pushed in front of trains or axed in the head by hobby terrorists sure are glad they didn't accidentally kill their assailants. Thank God we're not armed. We sure are morally superior to those savage Americans who just kill people for credibly trying to kill them!

to pro-gun people, any physical contact is a potential justification for use of deadly force in response.

Other people are pointing out tackling, heads, etc. which I also agree with.

But when open carrying someone beginning to wrestle you or incapacitate you generally ends in them taking your gun and killing you with it. It's why cops always have to kill the guy committing "misdemeanor assault" because it's just the assailant's first step before murdering them.

annon committed a pretty clear case of misdemeanor assault and battery, but that's it. There was no gun involved,

Am I alone in seeing this as so egregious to want this guy to go to jail for life or be given the death sentence? Oh you don't like that guy "having" a weapon so you're going to go there and punch him in the face? Well fuck you. I don't want to share a country with this kind of people and I'd be perfectly fine with the state becoming exactly the wet night-mare dream they have in their heads, but for real.

Am I alone in seeing this as so egregious to want this guy to go to jail for life or be given the death sentence?

No. I remember this quote all the time lately. Arguing with leftist is impossible because they pretend not to know things. This guy is just pretending that getting tackled to the pavement, and then ground and pounded is just no big deal. He knows. There is no way he doesn't know. This is all performative.

I've opined on this repeatedly. I'm still seeking the right terminology, the right descriptors for the phenomena. I like "Unidirectional Knowledge", but there are aspects of demoralization to it as well, when Yuri Bezmenov is saying you can shower the demoralized individual in limitless true facts, and they will still not be able to perceive the truth. Maybe an element of demoralization is a fear of thinking any unapproved thoughts, a terror of noticing something you aren't supposed to notice, and then being exiled from the tribe. But the bottom line is, they stick to pre-approved talking points they picked up from others, and they never have their own thought about it. That the talking point conflicts with other talking points is a thought they are no longer capable of having. That the talking point might actually justify the other sides actions if applied universally is also not a thought they are capable of having. You don't think about the talking point, you repeat it to ward off the thoughts people are trying to make you have. Thoughts are evil. Famous leftist of yore described this as "mind killing" themselves, and they were very adamant about it.

Regardless of the topography of the phenomena, that's what you are arguing against.

That or a troll.

Arguing with leftist is impossible because they pretend not to know things.

I suspect that a lot of what you interpret as "pretending not to know things" is "not knowing things" - and that latter in the profound sense, the sense of not really grokking that a physical reality exists independent of the narrative and social games. Living on simulacrum level 3 or even 4. Some of it is also "not knowing things" in the less-profound sense of "not knowing these specific things due to insufficient brainpower/attention to derive them from first principles (NB: Zoomer attention is scarce due to smartphones/social media) and due to a total lack of paths for others to feed the person the correct answers due to censorship".

And, of course, some of it's just a mistake on your part, as you admitted to here (good job there), and some of it (though relatively-little) hits the mark.

I'm going to respond here, but I'm going to tag @FistfulOfCrows, @Southkraut, @JeSuisCharlie, @self_made_human, @zeke5123a, @ulyssesword, and @The_Nybbler because all of these comments are in the same vein and merit similar responses. I understand the concern that things like punching, tackling, etc. can result in serious injury or even death. My issue is that, regardless of the true degree of risk, it is built into the criminal law that some kinds of attacks are inherently more dangerous than others, regardless of the actual injury inflicted, and penalties for those acts that we view as especially dangerous are increased accordingly. I'm going to use Pennsylvania as an example but it's similar everywhere; suppose you have the same Hayes attack except instead of it ending with Gannon being shot, they roll around for a while and Gannon is either stopped or withdraws, and Hayes doesn't suffer any injuries. Gannon would be charged with simple assault and, assuming no prior record, sentenced from anywhere between 30 days of Restorative Sanctions (fines, community service, restitution, etc.) and 1 year of probation. By the same token, if instead of tackling Hayes Gannon shoved a gun in his face, he'd be charged with aggravated assault causing fear of serious bodily injury, with a dangerous weapon enhancement, and, again assuming no prior record, sentenced to 9–18 months of jail time.

I used examples that didn't involve any injury because the law recognizes that apprehension of injury is sufficient to invoke criminal liability. In turn, the differing severity of penalties reflects a presumed greater level of apprehension that arises from attacks involving dangerous weapons compared with attacks that involving strong arming. The law entitles one to defend oneself using force proportional to the threat. If we say that punching and tackling are threats that warrant the use of lethal force, we are saying that they cause the same kind of apprehension that being shot at or threatened with a knife does. The logical conclusion, then, is that the criminal penalties for punching or tackling someone without causing injury should be similar to those that involve shooting at someone or threatening someone with a knife or gun without injury. Additionally, the idea of sentencing enhancements for using a "deadly weapon" or firearm doesn't make sense, insofar as these enhancements do not also apply to someone who punches or tackles someone. The upshot is that all assaults would now be aggravated assaults, excepting those where the level of contact is so minimal that in most cases they are rarely prosecuted anyway, such as the aforementioned shoving in a grocery store line.

If you think this should be the case, then you're entitled to your opinion, and I'm not here to argue the appropriate grading of crimes. What I would point out is that, if this is indeed your opinion, then the problem stretches far beyond one case in Massachusetts to thousands of cases annually in all 50 states and Federal jurisdiction. Simple assaults are among the most common cases prosecuted in the US, and if every case of punching or tackling, or whatever else you can say Mr. Hayes suffered placed the victim in apprehension of imminent death or serious bodily injury then the common practice of sentencing perpetrators to probation and community service is one of the grossest injustices imaginable.

On the other hand, if you do wish to preserve the practical distinction between aggravated assault and simple assault, then you have to recognize that there are few bright-line rules that govern when a victim is licensed to use deadly force. The privilege to use lethal force against an intruder in one's home without an independent showing of necessity is one, but even it is a creature of statute that only dates to the 1980s. While not a strict rule, an armed assailant is usually presumed to be sufficient grounds to use deadly force. But beyond that, it's hard, and I'm not going to fault a prosecutor for deciding to charge a shooting when there is no applicable bright line standard that says he shouldn't. It ultimately comes down to a question of reasonableness, and I can't think of a better way to determine that question than to present the evidence to a cross-section of the community and ask them. If you can't convince a single member of a 12-member panel that you're actions were reasonable given the circumstances, then it's a good indication that they weren't.

I think you are making a bad distinction. What someone would be charged with is somewhat orthogonal to whether a person has reasonable fear of material harm to limb or life.

And honestly crim law is a mess in that the same action can result in wildly different outcomes (eg Persons A and B can shoot C and D respectively. C could live but D dies. It isn’t obvious that A deserves a lesser sentence compared to B). Why demand consistency between self defense claims and how someone would be charged?

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.)

What you're missing here, and the reason I limited my examples to cases where there is no injury, is that the actual injury is only one component of the crime. A strong arm attack can be aggarvated assault in the right circumstances, including if the injuries are severe enough. But the other component is apprehension of imminent harm, and we grade simple assault lower in this respect because of a recognition the the amount of harm anticipated by the intended target of a missed punch is lower than that of the intended target of a missed shot. 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.

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.

then the common practice of sentencing perpetrators to probation and community service is one of the grossest injustices imaginable.

I would agree. It is grossly unjust.

When Decarlos Brown was released for the 14th time I actually think that somebody thought they were making the world a kinder, more empathetic, and higher trust place. However what they were actually doing was rolling the dice with someone's life for a 14th time. Sooner or later the dice were going to come up either "Daniel Penny" or "Iryna Zarutska".

I actually think that somebody thought they were making the world a kinder, more empathetic, and higher trust place.

Don't all racists?

What are you trying to say?

(FYI, it's spelled ulyssessword, with the second double-s)

suppose you have the same Hayes attack except instead of it ending with Gannon being shot, they roll around for a while and Gannon is either stopped or withdraws, and Hayes doesn't suffer any injuries.

That's an unreasonable level of foresight to base your actions on. Suppose that Gannon grabbed his skull and smashed it into the curb. Could Hayes have legally stopped it beforehand?

I'm actually okay with a light sentence if Gannon withdraws early. The court can know (with the benefit of hindsight) that it wasn't a serious attack, and treat it accordingly.

Hayes didn't have that hindsight. How is he supposed to tell the difference between your scenario and mine? I asked downthread if Hayes should have waited until he was dead or unconscious before defending himself, and I'll ask again here.

As another scenario, imagine that this shooting went the same until 4:27, but the officer fumbled his draw and the axe-wielder calmly stopped and explained that he had recovered a murder weapon (right here in his hand!) and urgently wanted help at the nearby crime scene.

There wouldn't have been a crime at all, and yet it was still a good shoot. Since I have no problem with (extremely stupid) non-crime justifying lethal force, you can guess what my stance on minor crime justifying it is.

If we say that punching and tackling are threats that warrant the use of lethal force, we are saying that they cause the same kind of apprehension that being shot at or threatened with a knife does.

Yes, depending a bit on the specifics. Gannon meets the threshold.

The logical conclusion, then, is that the criminal penalties for punching or tackling someone without causing injury should be similar to those that involve shooting at someone or threatening someone with a knife or gun without injury.

As I said above, the court has hindsight. It can know the attacker's state of mind based on the actions they took afterwards. If they took a couple swings then left, they weren't serious about the attack and can justly receive a minor punishment.

Simple assaults are among the most common cases prosecuted in the US, and if every case...

Aggravated assault make up about 25% of all assaults. The victim has access to some evidence that can distinguish between a ending-at-purely-simple assault and a soon-to-be-aggravated assault, but that baseline 25% makes me awfully apprehensive. Getting tackled and beaten on would very easily be enough evidence to tip me over to the "aggravated" side.

My apologies for the misspelling but I'm glad you found the post! I get what you're saying with the first argument, but the same could be said about someone who shoots and misses. Suppose the perpetrator only intended to scare the victim and used a gun he loaded with blanks, and an inspection of the gun proves it was loaded with blanks and the perpetrator told several people beforehand that he was going to scare the victim. The victim was not, at any point, in danger of being injured. We can prove this with hindsight. I think we both agree that the victim would have been privileged to use lethal force, but assuming he did not, do we only charge the perpetrator with simple assault since we know, with hindsight, that the victim wasn't in any danger?

I think we both agree that the victim would have been privileged to use lethal force, but assuming he did not, do we only charge the perpetrator with simple assault since we know, with hindsight, that the victim wasn't in any danger?

There's a specific carveout for guns, but otherwise yes. If it had been a prop knife, an inflatable sledgehammer, or other imitation non-gun weapon, then it would be a simple assault and nothing more.

It ultimately comes down to a question of reasonableness, and I can't think of a better way to determine that question than to present the evidence to a cross-section of the community and ask them. If you can't convince a single member of a 12-member panel that you're actions were reasonable given the circumstances, then it's a good indication that they weren't.

I think you're well aware that you could be on video being punched several times in the face by a guy who looks like Nikolai Valuev, and taking a lethal self-defense claim to a jury in Massachusetts would STILL be a crapshoot. Anyway, the prosecutor isn't presenting the evidence to a cross-section of the community and asking them. The prosecutor is bringing the evidence to a cross section of the community and telling them. That is, the prosecutor who has brought this case has already decided that it was not self defense and is arguing before the jury that it was not. The jury is not advising the prosecutor on a point he is not sure about.

Simple assaults are among the most common cases prosecuted in the US, and if every case of punching or tackling, or whatever else you can say Mr. Hayes suffered placed the victim in apprehension of imminent death or serious bodily injury then the common practice of sentencing perpetrators to probation and community service is one of the grossest injustices imaginable.

My god, you do have theory of mind! I apologize. Yes. Yes. Yes.

I could go on.

Yes, the entire reason most people think more aggressors need to be shot (preferably dead) is because the Justice System keeps just dumping them back on our streets to terrorize and eventually murder us.

Of course I agree with you, but then again I suppose we're on the same side of the Culture War.

And then I imagine that on the other side, they say much the same about us. How we all just imagine ourselves as Clint Eastwood. How we valorize and glorify unnecessary violence. How our policies promote and provoke suffering. How we all just parrot the same lines to signal our tribal allegiance. How we're not thinking for ourselves, how we cannot conceive of the better world that's possible if and when people just look past their indoctrination and seriously devote themselves to being better. How we just refuse to see evidence that contradicts our entrenched beliefs.

They could say that. But that would all be orthogonal to what I'm pointing out.

Look, any world view with enough sophistication will detach from reality. There will probably be contradictions on the margins. Weird word games you can play as gotcha's. One I heard lately was "If God is everywhere, is God also in hell?" Sometimes it cracks me up that the universal escape for any contradiction is "It's a mystery of faith."

But all that is a separate issue from a world view that nakedly contradicts itself from moment to moment. Police are moving back a BLM protest, and knock down a frail old man fracturing his skull? The left shouts about how that was an illegal use of lethal force! BLM protestor charges across the street and ground and pounds a counter protestor? Come on, what's the big deal? Sometimes you just have to take a beating. There is no ideology or world view tying this together except, "Fuck you, that's why". But they can't admit to that, so instead the news programs people with arguments as soldiers, and then they go out and do it for free.

I can think of a number of cases where "both sides sound similar, so both sides don't care about the truth" is just blatantly false. Go find one of our local Holocaust deniers who are capable of speaking with a completely straight face, for instance. Or a creationist.

"The other side thinks the same thing about us!" is just a case of typical-minding and being a quokka. Because you are sincere doesn't mean that the other side is, and there's no shortcut that lets you make generalizations about all the cases where two sides sound the same. Sometimes the other guy really is out to get you.

Or a creationist.

Creationism has too many epicycles where a low-IQ conspiracy theory would suffice to just write off as 'doesn't care about truth'.

Given how easy it is for a bad fall to cripple or end someone, and how unless you actively practice a relevant martial art you are now effectively at the mercy of your attacker, I would argue that once someone has been knocked to the ground they are squarely inside the "in reasonable fear for your life" box.

any physical contact is a potential justification for use of deadly force in response

I've seen too many head injuries from physical trauma to think that a tackle followed by someone mounting me isn't an unacceptable risk of serious injury. One bad fall, you can strike your noggin and just die, and even a concussion is not pleasant nor harmless.

It's not like even doing it recreationally/professionally in full-contact sports doesn't cause serious harm, and that's with trained athletes in great physical condition.

Something like getting slapped in the face? I won't condone lethal force. But something like a serious punch to the face from an adult male or tackle and an attempt to batter me into submission is something I would excuse, even if I prefer less lethal options. Those who don't want to be shot in such a scenario should ideally not be committing such acts.

I can appreciate that the risk of being tackled, or punched, or kicked, or whatever is greater than the general public appreciates. But can you tell me with a straight face that it's comparable to being shot or stabbed? Because that's the current standard. You can argue that the standard should be changed, and that's fine, but by that same token the penalties for punching someone without killing them should be comparable to those for shooting at someone without killing them.

  • -11

But can you tell me with a straight face that it's comparable to being shot or stabbed?

Yes. Having some familiarity with the common outcomes of all three; If you give me the choice between getting my skull cracked open, getting shot or stabbed, or getting set on fire. I am going to choose the option of getting shot or stabbed every single time, it's not even up for debate.

That was not the question which @Rov_Scam asked, which was if you would rather be tackled or shot.

One outcome of tackling is a fractured skull, but it is not particularly likely. One outcome of getting shot is to get a bullet through a vital organ or major artery. My gut feeling would place p(fractured skull|tackled)=0.1, and p(life threatening gunshot wound|shot)>0.1.

Depends on what you're getting shot with. A non-trivial percentage of the decline in homicides over time in America has been street-level criminals switching over to weapons shooting smaller bullets from .45's, magnum revolvers, and sawn-off shotguns.

No, the question for self defense is not whether you are perfectly proportional with your defense but whether you have a reasonable belief your attacker may seriously harm or potentially kill you. Once you do that, you ca. use lethal force while the threat remains.

I can appreciate that the risk of being tackled, or punched, or kicked, or whatever is greater than the general public appreciates. But can you tell me with a straight face that it's comparable to being shot or stabbed?

The mere threat of being shot or stabbed is enough to permit self defense, you don't have to wait until you're bleeding out to fight back. He actually was tackled, not just threatened with bodily contact.

Actually tackling someone is at least as threatening as aggressively brandishing a knife or gun, and both might justify lethal self defense. If Gannon had been shot as he was approaching, then I'd be a lot more sympathetic to your argument.

If you are carrying a handgun or a knife openly and someone tackles you, you are at risk of being shot or stabbed.

But can you tell me with a straight face that it's comparable to being shot or stabbed? Because that's the current standard.

Can't find that in Massachusetts law anywhere. I did find a case where throwing a radio at a cop is considered deadly force.

Comparable? Everything is comparable, even apples and oranges (they're both fruit). I don't claim that being punched is as risky as being shot or stabbed. But being punched can, depending on a variety of factors, cause permanent injury or death.

Since I think being slapped is so low risk it doesn't count for me (for almost every reasonable scenario), I'm clearly considering thresholds. Sneezing can kill you, and sneezing on someone can kill them too. I would rather that we didn't go around shooting people on the bus for not having a hanky at hand.

Note that I specifically suggested that actuarial evidence or a proper risk analysis be used to set the standards. In this particular instance, the facts (as presented here) would make me imagine that I would be in sufficient fear of permanent injury or death to not worry very hard about how I get out of it. I extend the same courtesy here, to people getting jumped by someone with clearly belligerent intent. Being tackled or shoved to the ground is rather different to being yelled at or having the finger flipped at you.

I also expect that the establishment of a norm that starting physical violence without cause might end in being shot would have a chilling effect. I can't recall the last time I attacked anyone in the past few decades, so I can live with the risk.

The issue in that case wasn't that he had an opportunity to retreat but didn't, but that the force used was disproportionate to the threat.

Gannon ran across the street and literally tackled Hayes to the ground. And was still on top of him when Hayes shot him. That's not a "grocery store sample" or anything like it.

And it's still not to the level where one can take claims that an objective person would have been in reasonable apprehension of death or serious bodily harm at face value.Why not let a jury decide?

  • -27

And it's still not to the level where one can take claims that an objective person would have been in reasonable apprehension of death or serious bodily harm at face value.Why not let a jury decide?

Pardon my French, but this is stupid as shit. Like do I have to actually wait for the fractures to open up in my skull before it becomes self-defense? Have you ever been in a fight outside of a video game? You know it's not like fists deal stun damage and guns deal health damage, right?

Like do I have to actually wait for the fractures to open up in my skull before it becomes self-defense?

As Rittenhouse prosecutor Thomas Binger said, "sometimes you have to take a beating". If this absolutely enrages you, you know what side of the culture you're on.

And it's still not to the level where one can take claims that an objective person would have been in reasonable apprehension of death or serious bodily harm at face value.

Well then, call me unreasonable.

What is that level? Would Hayes have to be dead before he had a "reasonable apprehension of death or serious bodily harm", or merely unconscious? I don't see much room for escalation after rushing across the street, tackling someone to the ground, and continuing to fight with them.

Why not let a jury decide?

because it's bare-faced lawfare to charge people with a crime despite them acting good. Also, because there shouldn't be a reasonable chance of conviction.

Locally, there's a (possibly apocryphal) story of a man charged with unsafe storage of a firearm. Thieves broke into his house when he was away on vacation, stole his guns, and proceeded to commit crimes with them. The police thought that he did not secure the guns well enough to prevent access (obviously, since they weren't secure enough to prevent the criminals from accessing them), and charged him with unsafe storage.

He had to go to court to argue that a locked, properly installed safe is appropriate for storage, and jackhammering it out of the basement before bringing it to a welding shop to open could defeat reasonable precautions.

Do you support the (possibly hypothetical) police that saw a hole in the concrete slab, but decided to charge him anyways? Why not let a jury decide?

Yes it obviously is. Now what?

Maybe your argument would hold water if we still lived in the society of the 1940s, where men at least appeared to be under the impression that they could engage in sporting fisticuffs without having their head purposely smashed into the concrete.

We don’t live in that world anymore.

I was taught by my elders in the way they believed a man should fight. Sportingly, punches and wrestling, knees and elbows frowned upon, let the opponent back up to his feet as many times as necessary until he accepts defeat. No lawyers after the fact, no thoughts of revenge for the loser, move on with your lives.

That was laughably bad advice once I hit the real world.

Roundabout way of saying that I am an objective person and I take Mr. Hayes’ claims of reasonable apprehension of death or serious bodily harm at face value.

I'm fairly sure in both the 1940s and now, if men wish to engage in sporting fisticuffs, there's a protocol for doing it. You might walk up to them and insult them, and when the verbal argument gets heated you suggest taking it outside. Or the bartender or the bouncer makes the suggestion. Maybe there's some pushing and shoving first. You don't run across the street and clobber them.

Bar fights as described by people who like to get in them are not protocol heavy interactions.

I'm fairly sure in both the 1940s and now, if men wish to engage in sporting fisticuffs, there's a protocol for doing it. You might walk up to them and insult them, and when the verbal argument gets heated you suggest taking it outside.

Anecdotally, I don’t think this actually stands anymore. I’ve seen a number of situations where people have been ungracious losers (pulling knives), or ungracious winners (kicking on the ground). I used to enjoy getting into fights outside bars when I was younger, but the vibe changed somewhere down the line.

In fairness, I wasn’t a young man in the 40s, although I was in the 20th century, marking me as an old. But I also grew up in a backwards place that was tight-knit and unblessed by diversity at the time.

You can brush off the grocery store sample above as hyperbole, but it's not too far off from what happened here.

Not even close..

[previous discussion]

Let me ask you a question. Consider the following scenario: The facts in the Hayes case are the same, except instead of crossing the street, Gannon stays on his side of the street and brandishes a gun in a manner obviously intended to intimidate. Is Hayes privileged to shoot Gannon? If Hayes doesn't shoot Gannon, what crimes, if any, should Gannon be charged with?

If Hayes doesn't shoot Gannon, what crimes, if any, should Gannon be charged with?

Massachusetts doesn't have a specific brandishing statute (to my surprise!), but mostly wraps it up in the assault-with-weapon-without-battery statute. That, too, needs more than the mere presence and visibility of a firearm, and I'd argue too much more. But there's still a lot short of actually pulling the trigger that can trigger the law.

Is Hayes privileged to shoot Gannon?

Depends. Do you mean "brandishing" in the colloquial sense of showing a firearm, or in strict legal sense of having seriously threatened the victim? In addition to the CorneredCat essay I've linked before and I'll link again, as a matter of law, in Massachusetts:

Here, there was evidence that the victim had a revolver in his possession. The defendant also had told Donna Pierni that the reason the victim was dead was because he was going to kill Marion Scolles and himself. There was, however, no evidence to show when the victim had made these alleged threats to the defendant. See Commonwealth v. Amaral, 389 Mass. 184, 189 (1983)(threat must be of an "immediate and intense offense"). There was also no evidence that the victim had threatened the defendant with a revolver or committed any overt act against Marion Scolles or the defendant constituting an assault or threat sufficient to place the defendant or Scolles in actual and reasonable apprehension of grievous bodily harm or death.

There may be cases where the colloquial brandishing is sufficient to count; I'd certainly argue the moral case where someone points a gun directly at someone, and the law might agree with me (and would in most states; in Mass it's kinda a clusterfuck). But the mere presence and visibility of the firearm is not on its own sufficient. Meanwhile, there is a narrow band where an aggressor can have "engaged in 'objectively menacing' conduct with the intent to put the victim in fear of immediate bodily harm" without a reasonable person seeing that as fear of imminent grievous bodily harm as required for self-defense law to apply... but it'd be really hard to do with a gun.

Either:

  • The police are able to dispense low level summary justice, as they were for hundreds of years. They can smash up stores of counterfeit products, they can beat the shit out of petty criminals, they can punish groups of disaffected or antisocial youths at risk of turning to more serious crime, they can clear up homeless encampments and disperse loiterers, and they can adjudicate local neighborhood disputes based on their obvious local knowledge of who the party most likely to have the litigious or ridiculous grievance is.

or

  • The public will eventually start taking the law into their own hands, with endless he said she said disputes, instances of clearly immoral but legal killing, and ultimately this a peculiar but hardly previously unheard of form of anarchy.

Personally, I would prefer (1), but the neutered police forces of the modern west, constantly monitored, unable to dispense even basic local low-level enforcement (which for reasons of criminal high time preference and the time the evidence gathering, prosecution and court process usually takes can never be replaced by another aspect of the justice system), also known as “police brutality”, are for now incapable of it.

They can smash up stores of counterfeit products, they can beat the shit out of petty criminals,

It's more like you go to jail and then the beatings happen there. the police don't need to do it and have it go viral online

There is violence in prisons, but almost none of it is at the hands of the guards.

And there's a pretty strong difference between jail(which most petty criminals have some stints in) and prison(which petty criminals generally don't go to and are as scared of as a regular person would be).

I wonder whether jails in densely-populated places like Chicago (total inmates 5900, largest single facility designed to hold 1500) are worse than prisons in sparsely-populated places like Wyoming (total inmates 2500, largest single facility holding 700).

As I noted below, it varies wildly by jurisdiction. 100% of clients I've dealt with have found state prison far easier to handle than local jails. One reason is that the inmate population of the local jail changes more frequently, so the rules for behavior (think Eternal September, but with high-impulse, violent, low-IQ, and/or very mentally unstable people) are harder for inmates to enforce among themselves.

Today I learned: prison and jail are not the same thing. Neat.

Prison houses serious criminals serving long term sentences(in theory). Jail houses everyone else- in a typical American city, this is mostly going to be people who violated the terms of their probation or who will be released on bail shortly, maybe with a small number of people serving month long sentences.

Prisons are generally state or federal institutions. Jails are usually run at the county or city level. ‘Federal prison’ sounds scarier, but state prisons are the really bad ones, because federal prison has a lot of segregation by criminal history that state systems often don’t bother with. Other than Supermax and Alcatraz(both of which were notorious mostly for high security rather than inmate on inmate violence), all the jails or prisons you’re likely to have heard of are non-federal facilities- san Quentin, riker’s Island, Angola, Huntsville detention unit, Folsom prison, etc.

‘Federal prison’ sounds scarier, but state prisons are the really bad ones, because federal prison has a lot of segregation by criminal history that state systems often don’t bother with.

Varies wildly by jurisdiction. I've heard more federal prison horror stories from my clients than state prison ones. Also, 100% of clients I've dealt with have found state prison far easier to handle than local jails.

Well yeah, there's blue collar and white collar federal prisons, and blue collar minimum security in the federal system is still probably really bad. The ones notorious for inmate on inmate violence and harsh conditions are mostly state, though- Angola, San Quentin, etc. Part of this is probably that the federal blue collar population is a pretty selected subset of mostly serious gang members while state houses most of the random ODC's.

Prison is probably handleable for people who belong there. It's just still really terrifying to petty criminals who expect to spend some time in jail.

You know who really can't handle jails and prisons? People who aren't habitual criminals or low-lifes. Which is much of the point -- you keep a population of discount Torquemadas around to keep the gentry in line. If I hadn't believed that before, being threatened with a stint at Riker's for a bicycling traffic violation would have convinced me.

But this article hints at the idea that people are zooming past any of that to full lethality. It's impossible to compile the stats to determine if that's actually the case or not, but the larger point remains; in a society with plunging basic trust, you're going to see levels of interpersonal violence spike. How should state laws governing violence respond to this? Stand Your Ground is something I generally still support, but my mind could be changed if simple Bad Neigbor fights end up with more orphans.

Although I don't predict widespread unrest or civil war, there will be more incidents of random violence and lowered social trust. There is the rise of 'Joey Swoll' phenomenon . Some say he's does good, but he has set a precedent or symptomatic of a much more confrontational culture, where people take matters in their own hands to rectify some perceived problem, which can sometimes end poorly when you're talking people hot in emotion . This why I have a protocol when encountering an 'IRL' problem: de-escalate and remove-oneself from the situation. This will usually keep you safe.

This why I have a protocol when encountering an 'IRL' problem: de-escalate and remove-oneself from the situation. This will usually keep you safe.

I think this is true at the individual scale, but, for various reasons, in aggregate results in substantive loss of territory that seems worth noting. This can take the form of "When we had a kid, we moved out of San Francisco because the streets didn't feel safe for a toddler" to "Nobody goes to the park anymore because gangs aggressively harass anyone else trying to use it". Sure, de-escalation is a good idea, but rolling over at every perceived threat cedes the commons to wannabe tyrants: people should be able to go to the park, or walk down the street with their kids.

That said, it'd be better if that level of enforcement of the social contract weren't left to the whims of private parties. That is notionally part of why we employ police.

There is probably an interesting observation here somewhere on the difference in social contracts between Tokyo (or Paris, Berlin, or London circa 2005, maybe?) and San Francisco or Portland.

enforcement of the social contract

You misunderstand.

The difference in "social contracts" between Tokyo and all those other places you mentioned is that, in those other places, the social contract is "you don't get to have safe streets or go to the park and not get harassed by gangs because that's what we believe to be social justice".

The question would not fall to the whim of private parties (as in, the other party in the social contract) in the first place if society at large bothered to uphold a productive social contract, as it does in Tokyo. The entire problem is that society has intentionally broken what the social contract used to be, and would now rather form one with the gangs allied against you than the reverse because #BLM was more fun.

The police enforce this version of the contract; that's why barely anyone got arrested for rioting in 2020. A member of the public stood up and put them down, though; the biggest impact was not "3 BLM protestors died", but because it sent a message to the now-aggrieved by the changed social contract that they could fight back too.

yeah it's true for the individual scale because that is where is is applicable. Taking more confrontational approach may work 9/10 times and the 10th time it goes badly because the other person was having a bad day. This is assuming the police are not present. it's not like you always have the luxury of time to wait for the cops to come.

This topic is near to my heart for a few reasons, also I'm a lawyer-brained Mottizen who has some criminal defense background so I've got EXTENSIVE working knowledge of this topic. Also:

  1. I was in high school in Florida when it passed the First modern "Stand Your Ground" Law in the country. Right around that time my class was doing a visit of the County Courthouse and we got to watch some court hearings and talk to the judge. The topic was broached and the Judge said, "Some people say it will turn Florida into the Wild West. I don't think that's going to happen. There will be some tough cases that will make a lot of people unhappy as we figure out the full implications of the law, but we'll get through it." Here's a great summary of how this law works in Florida if you're interested.

  2. The Gun Control debate led to a real political 'awakening' to for me when I actually dug into the stats and data and realized the entirety of the gun control narrative is mostly fabricated, with misleading definitions, cherrypicked examples, and reliance on emotional rhetoric over reliable data. Once that realization hit home, I suddenly saw that EVERYWHERE. People in this very thread are digging in and pointing out how that article twists the truth and obsfuscates reality.

Since that day back in High School I've seen Florida become a gun rights haven, with constitutional carry being implemented, and, most recently fully legal open carry. (I have yet to see anyone actually open carrying, I suppose at some point I might avail myself of the right).

Oh, and that infamous Anti-Riot law that offers legal protection if you intentionally run someone over during a riot. (emphasis on during a riot). Ever notice how you almost never see protestors pulling the 'road blocking' stunt in Florida? Hell, Florida barely got any rioting at all over the entirety of the George Floyd era.

I fully attribute that to "deterrence works" and "most protestors/rioters are rather cowardly." They won't try those tactics in a state where they are more likely to be prosecuted and/or shot for getting too uppity when there are ample states or cities with friendly laws and friendlier judicial systems to do them in.

Safe to say that whatever the stats are, politically the self-defense/gun rights trajectory in Florida has been starkly in favor of more protections in general. I don't think we're going back anytime soon.

However its not without its costs. "The Optimal Number of Wrongful Self-Defense Shootings is not zero." Florida also has its share of school shootings and such. I'm not particularly happy that David Hogg is now inflicted on the world.

I think that Judge nailed it back in 2005. Edge Cases keep popping up. Florida had the law in place for a while when the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin incident happened.

THAT was also a political awakening for me, seeing how much truth got twisted to make Zimmerman out to be an evilish white supremacist. You wanna know why I deeply mistrust mainstream media sources? This is why.

Interestingly, SYG laws didn't save him, he just got a straight up not-guilty verdict.

This does illuminate the difficulty that having a defense that, if proven, completely immunizes the Defendant from prosecution (that's how it works in Florida, anyway), when the actual facts on the ground can be messy.

THIS was one of the most hard-to-call cases that happened here. If you get shoved to the ground by an unarmed man... who then steps towards you with some unknown intent, are you justified in shooting him? Complicated here by the fact that the guy immediately started backing off once the gun came out. And that the guy on the ground was outnumbered. But he also technically initiated the conflict.

We discussed this one on the old Subreddit. (He was found guilty and went to prison). Also the victim had the last name McGlockton... and he was in fact shot with one. Truly tragic case of nominative determinism.

Then, however, there are some pretty freakin' clear situations where the law protects a legitimate 'Good Samaritan:'

Cop is literally getting beaten down in the middle of a highway, bystander approaches with a gun, issues a verbal warning, and then ends the threat efficiently. Look at how calmly that guy walks up to the scene. Just textbook.

This is also why the previous example isn't 'clear cut.' If someone knocks you to the ground then climbs on top to start beating you further, that IS a deadly threat. So once you've been knocked down, you better make the decision on whether to shoot or not before they get to you.

Allow me to point out some of the racial dynamics in the three above examples.

White/Hispanic Guy shoots Black Teen: Acquitted.

White Guy shoots Black adult (in front of his kid): Convicted, 20 years in prison.

Aaaand Black Guy Shoots Black guy (in defense of a cop, no less): not even charged, gets a free gun.

Yeah welcome to Florida its an interesting state.

I think the one thing that people probably do get wrong about the law here is that it DOES NOT let you draw your weapon as a deterrent alone (that's "Brandishing"), or fire a 'warning shot.' So on the margins people are probably a little too quick to deploy the weapon before its legally justifiable.

But the stats in Florida still tend to come down in favor of the law:

Concealed Carry permit holders (the ones who are most likely to carry a weapon) tend to commit very few crimes overall (some contest John Lott's data on this, but I've seen NO data rebut this). Florida has a LOT of those, somewhere around 15% of the adult population.

Violent Crime has been on a decline, starting right around 2007... after the law was implemented. We can get all tangled up on whether SYG is causing certain crimes to not get charged, but its still an absolute decline in your individual odds of being victimized.

Property crime has also been on the decline. Even in absolute numbers, as the population grows. Like I said, "deterrence works."

Do I attribute all these declines to SYG? NO. The decline also happened on a national level. However I just find that as good evidence that no, the liberalization of gun laws and extension of self defense laws isn't a driver of violence... SO WHY NOT LIBERALIZE AND EXTEND?

The reason I will defend "Stand Your Ground" laws even without considering firearm presence is that the alternative is batshit insane in my opinion. "Duty to Retreat" means if someone comes at you swinging (or shooting) your legal obligation is to flee as far as you're able to and if and only if fleeing is impossible may you respond with proportionate force.

I despise any law that places the 'benefit of the doubt' on the alleged attacker. Note, fleeing is usually your best option in the vast majority of cases. But a legal obligation to flee removes even the option to attempt to defend your community or family if you feel that is the best, most sensible option. Or most pro-social option overall. Remember my dawg up there who went out of his way to defend a cop.

Yes, its burdensome to have to actually dig into the facts and make a determination rather than just charging and punishing everyone involved. But I strongly, STRONGLY believe that if your government doesn't not trust its Law-Abiding, otherwise peaceable citizens to keep weapons on their person and deploy force on certain occasions, you don't really get to call yourself a 'free' state.

And on the flip side, I believe that any law-abiding citizen should be legally protected if they choose to step up in good-faith defense of their community. I think the equilibrium that you arrive at when any given citizen can and might deploy deadly force against any threats is inherently superior to the one arrived at when attackers can generally expect potential victims are unarmed and legally obligated to escape rather than fight back.

Philosophically, it is utter incoherent to me that the law would put the onus on the 'victim' to escape lest they be punished. This is such an asymmetry where, if someone acts to attack you and you have to actually have a mental process that goes "Oh gosh, I wonder if I have sufficient grounds to fight back" you're that much more likely to lose the fight.

Once again, if running is your first instinct, GREAT. But why should the victim be the one who has to consider all their options before they can respond with violence of their own? This inherently advantages the side that has already shown that they don't care about either the law or the wellbeing of others.

Its to the point where I'm reluctant to visit any places that don't have such protections enshrined in law because if I do get attacked, I'm going to defend myself if appropriate and I really don't want to get embroiled in a legal battle just because some other asshole took a swing or shot at me. If the KNOWN rule is "if you attack someone, they are legally entitled to fight back" then just assume that the attacker, if they're not completely incompetent, is accepting and consenting to the consequences of their actions.

Anyhow:

It's impossible to compile the stats to determine if that's actually the case or not, but the larger point remains; in a society with plunging basic trust, you're going to see levels of interpersonal violence spike.

You don't fix this by forcibly disarming everyone. Britain seemingly proving that, you fix it by helping move the equilibrium back towards high trust. Lowering the temperature. Trying to avoid divisive rhetoric and stoking paranoia, and for the love of God, reward and protect prosocial behavior!

I would argue that having robust weapons ownership protections and self-defense laws is a better foundation to build more trust on because its a selective pressure against those who would attack others and in favor of those who would defend their communities.

If every person who tries to fight back gets tried and some subset of them gets jailed, don't be surprised if on a genetic and cultural level, fewer and fewer people are willing to do that. Shoutout to Daniel Penny. And I don't think a population that is so helpless will survive any real crisis.

Dredged up one of my old Reddit comments where I say pretty much the same thing. I've held these positions for a while at this point.

Thanks for the effortful reply.

Look at how calmly that guy walks up to the scene. Just textbook.

Not only the walking up, but he also has a Hollywood level of "badass walking away badass-edly" after the shooting.

THIS was one of the most hard-to-call cases that happened here.

Disagree, but in the direction, I think, you would agree with. Big dude comes over and the first thing he does is hard two hand shove. That's straight up an initiation of a fight with no pretense. If I'm on my ass after that and I have a pistol on me, I'm reaching, pulling, and firing.

If the big guy comes over, starts talking shit, and there's a kind of mutual combat tussle that ends up with the shooter on the ground then, I would agree, it's more of a grey area.

You don't fix this by forcibly disarming everyone. Britain seemingly proving that, you fix it by helping move the equilibrium back towards high trust.

Completely agree. I'm as pro-gun as they come and believe in the adage of an armed populace is a polite populace.

Its to the point where I'm reluctant to visit any places that don't have such protections enshrined in law.

Thank you for validating my travel paranoia. I had to visit San Francisco, of all places, for work earlier in the year. I spent the entire plane ride obsessing over this idea that I was going to have to punch out a fentanyl zombie trying to rob me, only to have a blue hair they-them'er sentence me to thirty years of critical re-education for not displaying enough learned-experience-empathy.

If the big guy comes over, starts talking shit, and there's a kind of mutual combat tussle that ends up with the shooter on the ground then, I would agree, it's more of a grey area.

On the other hand, we want to discourage 6'6" MMA fighters from talking shit because everyone is afraid to talk back to them or from insisting it was a "mutual combat tussle" and "they only defended themselves".

"The jury might find the other party guilty of murder, but will not un-shoot you" is a deterrent that promotes gentlemanly behavior.

Disagree, but in the direction, I think, you would agree with. Big dude comes over and the first thing he does is hard two hand shove. That's straight up an initiation of a fight with no pretense. If I'm on my ass after that and I have a pistol on me, I'm reaching, pulling, and firing.

Its an edge case. If the guy shoving was armed, I would probably be all-in on 'good shoot.'

I know from lots and lots of training that the person on the ground is at a massive disadvantage.

Problem is that a shove isn't really an escalation to deadly force. Just because you end up on the ground you're not really able to say "oh I thought he was going to kill me."

Else there'd be a "loophole" where one person could just lay down on the ground and shoot the other person b/c "what if he jumped on me."

Likewise, the guy who did the shove was seemingly coming to support his GF, where the shooter had actually started the conflict.

I do think that if I were in the shooter's shoes, I probably would not have drawn the gun on the spot, but I also could probably have gotten to my feet faster than that dude. I would not have instigated a conflict like that in the first place.

Problem is that a shove isn't really an escalation to deadly force. Just because you end up on the ground you're not really able to say "oh I thought he was going to kill me."

I don't know how the law sees it, but if I'm standing over a hard surface like a sidewalk or even asphalt, I would consider an unprompted shove as escalation to deadly force. A simple fall that results in your head smacking the ground can be fatal and often are, and someone shoving you with intent to disturb you is someone who is clearly fine with a very high probability of you falling over, with high likelihood of you lacking enough control to protect your head during the fall.

Not many people who shove someone to have them hit their head and die on a hard surface actually intend to kill the person, though; it's a result of a combination of ignorance and bad judgment, as opposed to trying to stab you or drawing a gun on you. The threat profile is different, a kind of action that we're adapted to think of as a low escalation part of conflict but in our modern built environments is often deadly. And by the time you're thinking of drawing your own deadly weapon, the threat is past if it was this kind of bad judgment (though, if you're about to be curb stomped...)

Right, but if you ask the law to treat any intentional shove on concrete as possibly 'deadly force,' there's a can of worms to open right there.

Especially since its pretty unlikely that the dead guy intended to use deadly force when he shoved him. Yes, falling to the ground is a predictable outcome, but unless he was verbally shouting "I'm gonna kill you" or similar, its a bit harder to gauge whether he would have continued the attack after that point.

And more directly, if the guy shoved, then immediately turned and started walking away, surely you'd say its not justifiable to shoot him in the back, on the premise of "well, he could have turned around and came back!"

These are the things that make these fact situations messy.

Guy was pretty clearly starting to retreat once the gun was pulled IMO. I think it's fair to pull the gun but firing on an unarmed individual who's retreating is outside the bounds of self defense.

It's clear to the camera. It's not clear that the shooter, having just been blindsided, knocked flat, and then advanced on, had time and cognition to process the half-step back.

I opined at the time that I was willing to accept convictions like that one in an edge case for pragmatic reasons of keeping the peace. That willingness has pretty much gone away given subsequent events.

wasn't it an important point that the shooter had been yelling at the pushers GF over something minor? If you are going to shoot someone it better not be because of an escalated situation that you started.

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Welcome to the Grey Area.

that a kid loses his father over an argument about a a fence and a property line made me sad.

That is most charitable of you! The dad had a chainsaw, was on meth, and had entered the fenced in yard of his neighbor who told him to leave. Regardless of property lines - claiming a de facto easement through your neighbors fenced in yard while high with a chainsaw in Florida is asking for trouble.

Yeah, pursuant to my comment below: I think confrontations at your home have a different practical calculus than ones 'out in the world'. This strikes me as the kind of case you'd wheel out to argue for more permissive self-defense laws. The fact that the guy's son was there was unfortunate, but not a whole lot you can do about that.

The fact that a methhead had a son is unfortunate.

A retired Las Vegas police officer walked free after fatally shooting a retired computer network engineer during a dispute over who had the right of way in a Walmart parking lot. Both men got out of their vehicles. Both were armed. The ex-officer said the retired engineer pointed a gun at him first.

This is a helpful demonstration of why I've pretty much completely soured on the idea of people carrying weapons for self-defense. Adding weapons to the mix is almost inherently escalatory, and the cases of genuine self-defense seem to be massively outnumbered by instances of simian chest-beating that got out of hand or someone pulling a gun to win an argument. I'm not sure I believe the survivor's claim, but who acted first in this instance is almost irrelevant. Both of these people decided they needed to bring lethal force as backup to the world's stupidest argument.

edit: I don't really care if you own an M1 Abrams for home defense or an M61 for plinking, but actively carrying seems to be overwhelmingly downside for just about everyone.

the cases of genuine self-defense seem to be massively outnumbered by instances of simian chest-beating that got out of hand or someone pulling a gun to win an argument.

You're ignoring the cases where pulling the gun does win an argument. The argument being something classic like "I think you should give me your wallet" "Well, I disagree."

In 90+% of Defensive Gun Uses, in every survey I've ever seen, the gun isn't fired. Presenting the gun defuses the situation. In many home invader incidents, the criminals flee when they hear the distinctive sound of a firearm. Private legal guns save more lives than they take.

In 90+% of Defensive Gun Uses, in every survey I've ever seen, the gun isn't fired.

I'm aware. The problem is that these surveys overwhelmingly rely on self-reports, which are notoriously dodgy, and the fact that some guy thinks he justly defended himself by brandishing a firearm doesn't mean that he did. In many cases it 'defuses the situation' in the sense that when somebody pulls a gun you decide that the disagreement you were having with your loud neighbor isn't worth continuing. In other cases, it's just some fearful individual jumping (or shooting) at shadows.

Private legal guns save more lives than they take

That seems... incredibly unlikely. Per the CDC, in 2019 there were: approx. 14k firearm homicides, approx. 24k suicides, and 486 accidental deaths, and approx. 20k non-fatal injuries (not counting people shot by LE, which is outside the scope of this argument; also not considering assaults or other gun crime that doesn't result in injury).

In 2019, the FBI reports 386 justifiable homicides by civilians. Now, that doesn't include people acquitted on self-defense grounds, but acquittal rates aren't that high and acquittals are dominated by people who got off because their lawyer successfully argued they didn't do it rather than a successful self-defense claim. It's not a great start, with accidental deaths outnumbering verified self-defense homicides. But as you note, most claimed DGUs don't involve anyone getting shot.

The problem is that this still entails the claim that brandishing a firearm or similar DGU averted almost 40k murders in 2019 (or merely ~14k if you completely discount suicides). That's an extraordinary claim. Even taking the homicides-only number, it suggests that the US homicide rate would be almost 75% higher but for defensive civilian firearms usage (34k vs 20k in 2019). It's also impossible to substantiate, since the only evidence we have are self-reported survey responses and no real counterfactual. If there are supposed to be thousands of attempted murders being averted, you'd think they'd leave more of a footprint.

He's already taken those 90% into account, calling them "unreported assaults" committed by the defensive gun user.

Oh well in that case...

This is a very hostile paraphrase. @Skibboleth suggested that people who report defensive gun use on a survey are going to believe that they had a good reason to do so. That doesn't necessarily mean that this belief is correct in all cases.

This is what he said:

I formed this opinion when looking into DGU statistics* and concluded that many (if not most) self-reported DGUs were really unreported assaults (the wielder having essentially threatened somebody by pulling a gun).

Right. @Skibboleth says that he concluded that "many (if not most) reports" look to him like cases of

In most cases these people are reporting their own actions positively. Likewise, if you get two twitchy, dominance oriented idiots, it's very easy to get a feedback loop where they push each other towards a violent outcome.

"Many if not most" of 90% is not 90%, and he didn't just call them "unreported assaults" and drop the mike, he backed up that belief.

Personally, I think he has a reasonable point: I doubt that every one of those non-lethal interactions was actually a case of successfully defusing a mugging / home robbery / etc. and I suspect that quite a considerable fraction of them was two people in an argument, one guy escalates by pulling a gun, and then he justifies it to himself later because 'who knows what that guy would have done to me if I hadn't frightened him off'.

cases of genuine self-defense seem to be massively outnumbered by instances of simian chest-beating that got out of hand or someone pulling a gun to win an argument

Every time I've looked into this, the most noteworthy thing has been the vast variance in definitions used by the entities who are doing the counting. It's usually blatantly biased, to the point where I can probably tell you roughly what the definitions are going to be just by looking at the funding sources of the group in question.

The numbers that best correspond to my intuitive understanding of "self defense" come from Lott, and they suggest that the exact opposite of what you propose is true.

Out of curiosity, what numbers are you using as a basis for your statement, and what definitions are being used to calculate those numbers?

Are you sure this isn't just toxoplasma, where johnny the cop stabber being shot during an attempted armed robbery arouses no controversy, and only borderline cases become noted?

Am I sure? No. But I didn't start thinking this because of news reporting on individual homicides. I formed this opinion when looking into DGU statistics* and concluded that many (if not most) self-reported DGUs were really unreported assaults (the wielder having essentially threatened somebody by pulling a gun). And further observing that a large proportion of homicides were the result of arguments between two men who were either armed or had guns near to hand.

And the thing is that I don't think the problem is necessarily a matter of bad faith/lying. In most cases these people are reporting their own actions positively. Likewise, if you get two twitchy, dominance oriented idiots, it's very easy to get a feedback loop where they push each other towards a violent outcome. Whether or not this gets classified as murder or self-defense can come down to nuances of the situation and the caprices of the local justice system.

To be clear, my position is not that most self-defense homicides are actually murder (though I would posit that many are). It is that

a) many self-defense homicides would be easily avoided if neither party were armed (and would not result in a regular homicide instead)

b) the act of carrying a weapon publicly in the name of self-defense is usually a net negative for public order/safety. The genuine self-defense case is outweighed by the 'guys carrying guns for self-defense instead commit crimes or have accidents' problem.

To the second point in particular, the presence of weapons (especially firearms, although it applies to any weapon to some degree) changes the dynamic of any adversarial interaction. Weapons don't cause violence, per se, but they are lubricants to violence (and also make violence deadlier). If some guy is being loud and pushy, that's annoying. If some guy is being loud and pushy and he has a gun, that's scary. And if I have a gun in either of these situations, things can get even messier.

Tangentially, I think it also complicates the task of law enforcement, since LE has to square the circle of high potential of encountering someone armed with the fact that carrying a weapon is not illegal.

*Specifically, John Lott's numbers, which are commonly cited in defense of carrying weapons. The problem is that they rely on self-report and are literally unbelievable.

@birdcromble

Usually the mechanism behind toxoplasma is that only borderline cases go viral. This isn't a tweet, though, it's a news article in one of the world's top newspapers, whose quoted thesis is that literal first sentence, "It’s easier than ever to kill someone in America and get away with it."

Even given the collapse in journalism, wouldn't you expect someone pushing that thesis to collect the most persuasive cases, not the most ambiguous? If Florida Methed-Up Chainsaw Man was something like the Rittenhouse shootings that had already gone viral nationally, that might make it an unavoidable choice of example to discuss, but right now the top Google hits for "Druzolowski" "de leon springs" are two Orlando TV stations, then after the WSJ article and a Daytona Beach TV station we get down to the dregs of a "Florida Man Friday" podcast episode.

I think the balance of the evidence is that genuine cases of murder or mutual combat being written off as self defense basically don't happen. Journalists trying to pick examples of self defense that should be illegal and picking floridamen shouting threats while trespassing is an indicator that claimed self defense killings are mostly good shoots.

There's probably some mutual combat that gets written off, but "two low-lifes get into a fight with blunt weapons only and one of them dies and the charges get dropped" probably barely even makes the paper. With a firearm, probably essentially never.

Doesn't this describe a fair amount of "gang violence"? We generally (for worse, IMO) look the other way about that, through some combination of what you described and ignoring it for political reasons, be it "we don't care about [redacted]" or "it'd have a disparate impact to prosecute those crimes".

I think most non-lethal gang violence just doesn't come to the attention of the police at all, or if it does, not with any useful information. And even the lethal stuff the killing most often goes unsolved.

That's exactly why homicides are used as a metric and proxy. They get reported via some route in almost every case.

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Even given the collapse in journalism, wouldn't you expect someone pushing that thesis to collect the most persuasive cases, not the most ambiguous?

I guess that speaks to either the weakness of the case or the incompetence of the journalist that these are the best cases he could come up with.

Even given the collapse in journalism, wouldn't you expect someone pushing that thesis to collect the most persuasive cases, not the most ambiguous?

No. I would expect someone pushing the thesis to collect the most lurid and sensational cases whose details can be plausibly characterized or molded to support their view. There's no screen for ambiguity when the writer is strategically minimizing or ignoring countervailing details.

Concealed carry comes with the burden to lose every argument and to walk away.

That's Fudd lore. Perhaps it's generally a wise sentiment to hold but it's in the same vein as Dave Ramsey: "never use credit cards" of trying to keep low impulse control people from doing low impulse control things.

The problem is that low impulse control people say "Ha, I'm not like those other idiots" and then mag dump at IHOP.

The truth is, you don't know who you are, deep down inside, until your life is on the line. A rational well meaning person that operates 99.9% of the time in a rational and logical manner can turn into a bloodthirsty animal in the outlier. Most Americans do not find themselves in such a situation in a daily basis.

And not only that, but high impulse control people hear the meme and repeat it uncritically; this then harms other high impulse control people.

High impulse control people don't need to be told "they have the burden to lose every stupid argument", and continuing to tell them that will over-calibrate them into losing fights they really shouldn't be walking away from.

You don't need to tell me not to shoot people with machine guns because their dog pissed on my lawn, and someone treating me as if they did need to tell me that "because Some People would" is best seen as projection (as in, the speaker is low-impulse and has to tell himself not to do that, so he assumes he has to treat me as if I would).

Non-gun-owners have a higher rate of violence than gun owners do for this reason, or at least they do in at least one country that has a licensing scheme and keeps stats in English. The effect is not just limited to guns but looking at them is revealing.

When I'm training people on the legalities of self defense, I still remind them that THEY have to determine where their personal 'line in the sand' is to determine when it is go time.

You draw it further from you, you'll probably respond more quickly and are more likely to survive, but risk legal consequences.

You draw it closer, you'll probably be legally safe but not before the attacker gets a couple blows in and thus you might end up dead if your reactions aren't quick.

No 'right' answer, but make sure you decide where your line is well in advance so you aren't thinking that over when the attack is already coming.

De-escalation IS a skill that carriers should try to develop... and of course noticing when someone you're talking to might be willing to throw hands over a 'friendly' argument.

Not when Stand Your Ground applies.

Of course not in the legal sense. In terms of moral culpability, it’s better to plan to lose every argument than to plan to enter gunfights.

I decline to subscribe to your morality.

As somebody from a country where civilian firearm ownership is barely a thing I broadly agree. The vanishingly small likelihood I or somebody I know having a firearm available for self defense in a time of need seems to not outweigh the additional risk that comes with firearms being way more likely to be present in random aggressive interactions.

You can keep your beliefs about the relative prevalence of these things, and I have no interest in challenging your perspective there. But there's something interesting to notice, which I hope you'll take an interest in exploring.

Obviously one could say the opposite of your statement, with "The vanishingly small likelihood that I or somebody I know gets themselves justifiably shot seems to not outweigh the additional risk that comes with not having a firearm available for self defense in time of need."

The interesting part is about what this choice of what to minimize and what to focus on says about our implicit worldviews.

What experiences have you had, or not had, which leads you to the opposite? Is it easy to imagine losing your cool "randomly", and ending up shot? Easy to imagine people you care about doing the same? Hard to imagine anyone being genuinely above that? Have you had any experiences where you or someone you care about were threatened by a predator of either the two or four legged variety? If so, is it hard to imagine the situation being safe if the "good guys" were armed?

In spirit of going first, I have a hard time imagining myself or anyone I care about getting shot by someone who can then pull off a self defense claim. I have had experiences, and known people to have experiences, where there's serious threat of harm in the ways that firearms can stop. Given how these events played out it's easy to imagine having firearms making things worse too, but there's still a clear possibility that not having that option could prove disastrous. Naturally, this leads to me being sympathetic to the idea that we should allow firearms for self defense, and if someone gets themselves shot by being "randomly aggressive" in ways that puts an innocent person in reasonable fear of serious injury or death... so be it?

What about you?

and the cases of genuine self-defense seem to be massively outnumbered by instances of simian chest-beating that got out of hand or someone pulling a gun to win an argument.

Every stat I've read on the matter says the opposite, is the thing.

I can't read the article at the moment, as my work doesn't allow for archive links.

But going by forum commentary, this article is about what I expected.

The bitterly ironic thing is, I, as someone who's rather vociferous about 'stand your ground' and 'A man's home is his castle' and the use of firearms for defensive shooting - even then, I can think of atleast one instance that could be argued as a valid, bad shot that was ruled as 'legal'. And, I'm sure, if one did actual research, could come up with far more applicable instances than this circus cavalcade of examples.

(For illustration purposes, the case in particular I'm thinking of was the situation in Texas where the Mother and Step-dad refused to hand over a shared child to the Father(the father in question did have shared rights), and the Step-father shot him as a result. The step-father was ruled not guilty. While I'm sure the plethora of lawyers on the Motte could 'Um, ACTUALLY' the case in question, from a contextual, moral, and ethical standpoint, I have no problem pointing at that situation and noting 'Nope, that shit is fucked up.')

So self defense claims are based on five pillars:

  1. Innocence - you can't have started the fight
  2. Proportion - deadly force can only be initiated based on the threat of deadly force, not non-deadly force fights
  3. Imminence - the threat has to be occurring right now, not in the unspecified future
  4. Reasonable - a reasonable person would have considered the encounter a deadly force threat, even if it ended up being wrong after the fact (example: the gun someone pulled was actually a replica and not a working firearm).
  5. Avoidance - If possible, you must try and flee the deadly force threat before defending yourself.

All the state/prosecution needs to do is show the person is guilty of breaking ONE of those pillars to knock out a self defense claim - even if the other four are met.

Did the jury think you started the deadly force fight? Guilty.
Did the jury think you escalated the fight into deadly force? Guilty.
Did the jury think there no imminent threat? Guilty.
Did the jury think you were not being reasonable with your evaluation of a deadly force threat? Guilty.
Did the jury think you could have run away in the heat of the encounter? Guilty.

News and politicians frequently don't understand (or actively lie) about how self defense is determined in the law - not understanding that Stand Your Ground only removes the requirement of avoidance, but not the other four pillars. It isn't a pass for you to not be innocent, respond to non-deadly force with deadly force, react before the threat is imminent, or have your decisions not be reasonable.

If the news or politicians blame people saying "they feared for their life" on Stand Your Ground, that is arguing reasonableness, not avoidance - Stand Your Ground only deals with avoidance. This is an example of either not understanding self defense law or lying. If the jury felt the fearing for their life wasn't reasonable (or the person is lying about fearing for their life), Stand Your Ground wouldn't matter, as they'd fail the reasonableness pillar and be guilty.

Zimmerman was a classic example of Stand Your Ground being blamed - but the defense never argued it and didn't need to. When Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, he was pinned to the ground and being pummeled - there was nowhere to run to - so there was no need to argue he didn't need to run away (pillar five, avoidance), he physically couldn't.

What people are upset about is they feel stand your ground lets people go "looking for trouble" - Zimmerman should have minded his own business and not go looking for Martin - but that is just something that would be impossible to regulate in the real world. It also puts the cart before the horse: the attacker shouldn't have started a deadly force fight.

Are there situations where things are "awful but lawful"? Of course! If someone who couldn't walk without crutches attacks someone with a knife in a stand your ground state, instead of running to safety it allows you to stab them / shoot them legally, even if you could have easily escaped.

There are also the reverse cases wherein what should be an innocent person who used self-defense correctly only to be convicted because a good prosecutor can have the jury "Monday Morning Quarterbacking" the decision the person who used self defense made in the split second they had in a life or death fight that maybe they could have gotten away (even if the person being attacked didn't actually see a valid avenue of escape, so long as the jury felt they had one)

I'd suggest the vast majority of self defense cases never actually invoke stand your ground in a trial and it is just a boogeyman being used by people to explain increasing violence, but can't regulate a "mind your own business" ethic when something bad happens to a person who is a part of a class that gets special considerations from certain ideologies.

I'd suggest the vast majority of self defense cases never actually invoke stand your ground in a trial and it is just a boogeyman being used by people to explain increasing violence

The primary publicly visible impact of SYG in many cases is that the perp isn't immediately arrested after the shooting, and is instead allowed to live their lives during the investigation. People get up in arms about this in the meantime, because they are under the impression from watching TV that the process of a crime goes on a two week timeline of Crime>>Arrested immediately>>On Trial within a week>>Goes right to prison. Where in reality, if someone isn't a flight risk, it's very common for the police to make an arrest much later. The public sees an accused murderer walking free and assumes that means nothing is being done or going to be done, they're just free to go, when that isn't the case.

I think that the proportion requirement is also disputable.

Basically, I think that an innocent should not be expected to offer a fair fight to an aggressor. If there is an advantage to be gained by moving a step up on the escalation ladder, then stepping up on the escalation ladder should be fine. Probably not that many steps, though.

Here in Germany, there is no balancing of the legal interests of the attacker and the attacked, with only an exemption for a massive disproportion of the act of self defense. If you need to kill a criminal to stop the theft of valuable property (like a car), German law is generally a-ok with it. Of course, you are still taking your chances with DAs and judges which generally do not like that.

Personally, I have an intense dislike for non-consensual violence. In my opinion, when an adult makes the decision to assault another person, they are taking their life into their own hands. If it ends with the aggressor bleeding to death on the sidewalk, that is sad, but not upsetting. It is not that the attacker deserved to die, but we do live in a world where people can make bad decisions which will cost them their lives. If someone drives 300km/h on the highway while drunk and ends their life in a crash, that is similar -- sad, but not upsetting. Upsetting would be if they killed someone else with their stunt.

Personally, I have an intense dislike for non-consensual violence. In my opinion, when an adult makes the decision to assault another person, they are taking their life into their own hands.

But how violent is violent? If (as I once saw) a man refuses to get off a bus because he can't pay for the ticket, and makes it clear that he's willing to stay there for hours if need be, is it violent to physically remove him so the bus can leave? If yes, is it okay for him to resist this violence with lethal force?

"Yes" and "no" respectively. These are not hard questions, and the fact that we agonize over them is how we end up in a world where a prosecutor -- a representative of the state -- is arguing that a law-abiding citizen sometimes just has to take a beating (or the state will ensure he takes many beatings in the future)

Do you have any insight on the case of the german girl who was charged for self defense in the course of getting raped?

"Deadly force" is such a badly defined concept, especially in the gray area between slapping someone and shooting them with a gun. And there are all kinds of unacceptable injuries that don't have a >10% risk of causing death.

It's a shame the law never does something as sensible as refer to actuarial tables, I suppose it's all up to the juries.

IMO it'd be nicer to just agree not to hit each other at all rather than arguing over how much is too much.

That "agreement" has already been made on our behalf by the sovereign. The argument here is what to do when someone breaks the agreement. The "pro-civilization" side says you take your beating and then let the sovereign deal with it. The "barbarians" think you ought to be able to engage in self-help.

I see two main issues. One, is that actually a fair characterization of all SYG laws, that they only narrowly remove avoidance? I remember seeing it strongly argued that #1 was often directly undermined or made irrelevant by such laws, though I’m not sure about the truth of that. Related, and you see this a bit in the thread, is that SYG sort of “begs the question” in a sense where the very presence of a gun re-interprets a fight as lethal disfavorably to a would be assailant quite often. I realize sympathy for assailants is low around here, but common law does usually support the idea that e.g. a fistfight or an unarmed mugging is usually not a fight to the death (of course intentionality matters). The presence of a gun obviously changes the calculus. But who assumes this extra risk, is the operative question? I appreciate what SYG laws are trying to do but I do wonder if the matter is quite as clear cut as you say. As an example, should a conscious decision to bring a gun to an otherwise nonlethal dispute have any bearing on the legal responsibility, and do SYG laws impact that kind of finding?

One, is that actually a fair characterization of all SYG laws, that they only narrowly remove avoidance

I try to avoid absolutes, but I haven't seen any SYG law that did anything except remove avoidance - which isn't to say a judge or jury somewhere misunderstood it in a case - so if I could be pointed to a bad SYG law that removes more than avoidance, I'd love to see it.

I realize sympathy for assailants is low around here, but common law does usually support the idea that e.g. a fistfight or an unarmed mugging is usually not a fight to the death (of course intentionality matters). The presence of a gun obviously changes the calculus. But who assumes this extra risk, is the operative question?

In this case, the defender with the gun isn't legally allowed to use it in a non-lethal confrontation - it would break the proportion pillar, just having the gun doesn't permit one to use it. SYG also doesn't do anything here as if the "defender" goes for the gun, they are not acting in legal self defense with or without SYG.

As an example, should a conscious decision to bring a gun to an otherwise nonlethal dispute have any bearing on the legal responsibility, and do SYG laws impact that kind of finding?

Theoretically, and I am confident this has happens fairly often, two people who are both armed (guns holstered) and get into a shoving match without anything else happening. In this example, if one of them reaches for their gun, they have elevated a non-lethal confrontation into a lethal one, and the other person is now legally allowed to go for their gun. If no one reaches for their gun, it is a non-lethal confrontation regardless of guns being present - same as if they each had a sheathed knife or sword.

To give you your due, however, the presence of guns (or any other lethal weapon) does heighten tensions as actions in the heat of a confrontation can be misinterpreted and someone quickly lowering their hand to their side can look just like reaching for the gun. That is an incredibly unfortunate example, though, again, this isn't an issue caused by SYG or remedied by removing SYG - with or without SYG a confrontation where lethal weapons are around (even when holstered) is much more likely to escalate to legal self defense due to misinterpretation of actions.

In a weird way, guns essentially remove the avoidance pillar in most self defense cases to begin with (making SYG redundant), as as Nybbler put it: you can't outrun a bullet. It would be a very unusual self defense case where the prosecution could reasonably suggest a person can safely run from a lethal confrontation with an attacker with a gun.

Where SYG would most likely apply is when the "attacker" has a melee weapon of some sort and the "defender" has a gun - but is also confident they could safely remove themselves from the situation yet still decide to use the gun instead. I would be surprised if the number of cases which fit this fact pattern or similar to this is incredibly small - making SYG a boogeyman. I'm not even really defending SYG laws as much as I am pointing out it is probably used effectively in a handful of cases annually and is being smeared by people who either have no idea how self defense law works or are lying for political/legislative ends.

I remember seeing it strongly argued that #1 was often directly undermined or made irrelevant by such laws, though I’m not sure about the truth of that.

If you don't have an example you're just spreading FUD.

You don't need SYG to not flee from a drawn firearm (you can't outrun a bullet), nor from a man with a chainsaw who is much larger and faster than you (the shooter was elderly and had osteoporosis), nor to defend a person who cannot flee (the woman who had been shot). SYG made things easier, but they likely could have won the cases without it.

Anti-self-defense advocates often rely on a rather twisted version of the "innocence" pillar. Zimmerman "shouldn't have been there". The elderly man shouldn't have confronted his known-violent neighbor cutting branches with a chainsaw on the wrong side of the fence. The woman shouldn't have confronted the man who was arguing with the other woman. And I could agree with this, except the meaning of "shouldn't" is subtly different. All those things are imprudent, but they are not immoral and they certainly shouldn't be considered somehow "provocation" for legal purposes.

And I could agree with this, except the meaning of "shouldn't" is subtly different. All those things are imprudent, but they are not immoral and they certainly shouldn't be considered somehow "provocation" for legal purposes.

My favorite variation on the meaning of shouldn't, that I haven't been able to use for a while since the trial ended and it has fallen out of popular consciousness somewhat, relates to the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting. Leftists say he shouldn't have been there (implying the immoral sense) and I would respond with "Yes, he shouldn't have been there because the adults (and police etc.) in that community should have been there taking out the trash instead of letting the responsibility fall on the shoulders of a kid."

Failure of the adults to step up didn’t give him a responsibility. Not any more than a police shooting creates a responsibility for BLM to come to town, or seeing a homeless man gives you a responsibility to go volunteer at a shelter.

I say this despite thinking Rittenhouse was justified. He had a right to be there, not a responsibility.

I believe that men have a moral responsibility to protect their homes and communities, and they also have a moral responsibility to step in when the state is unable (or unwilling) to do so. The police (and politicians in charge of them) abdicated their responsibility to protect their community (moral responsibility, I know they are not actually legally required to serve and protect anyone) when they refused to stop the riots, so it fell upon the men of the community to step in.

There is no similar moral responsibility for BLM to protest police shootings or for people to volunteer at a shelter if they see a hobo.

Their homes and communities

That’s the sticking point; it’s the crux of the “shouldn’t have been there” argument. His home would be one thing, his neighborhood, his town, and so on…but he was out guarding a random car dealership in the next town over. Zero personal connection.

Which is why I brought up the BLM comparison. When people show up to the next town over because they heard its police were crooked, can they use their “community” as an excuse?

Again, I think Rittenhouse had a right to be there. But a right is not a responsibility.

Zero personal connection.

His father lives there, and he works there, IIRC.

Half credit, then.

I don’t believe it becomes a responsibility until he’s actually defending his family or friends.

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Rittenhouse worked in Kenosha, and his father and several extended family members lived there. He lived 30 minutes away from there (which is actually closer than any of the three assholes he shot lived from Kenosha). It absolutely was his community and fell under the same umbrella of responsibility to be protected by its members.

My previous job (before I started telecommuting full time) was a 30 minute commute for me, and my wife's family lived (and still lives) there, and I would absolutely consider it my moral responsibility to drive down with a rifle and patrol with my father-in-law and brothers-in-law if rioters were burning down their neighborhood. And to blast any and all fuckers that threatened death or serious bodily harm against me or my family.

And I’m telling you that the same reasoning is going to apply to half the protestors at Kenosha. They’re going to say they had a responsibility to protect their not-quite-neighbors from those nasty racist cops. Peacefully, natch, but if someone just so happens to threaten death or serious bodily harm…

If you don’t buy it from them, you shouldn’t buy it from Rittenhouse. He was justified in self-defense, not because he had some responsibility to stand guard.

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However, the modern world has too many men.

This is why, when one actually does exercise the male role, we make sure to treat it as a crime.

Men (as in, people specialized in dealing with this responsibility- they're usually male, but not always) are in significant oversupply in Western society, and as such instinct dictates that it is a moral imperative that they human-wave attack into the "enemy" and get killed until there are no longer too many men.

If they're not willing to do that for whatever reason, we'll just marginalize them more and more- make them pay for the worst men there are- until they snap and a group of them stand up to fight; at that point our forces can conduct the purge (or we lose and our enemy, more worthy than us, takes us over).

This is good for me if I'm Blue and my outgroup is domestic; waging a civil war on Red, if I win, will destroy my enemy and solve my excess-men-in-society problem in one fell swoop, much like it solved it for my ancestors in 2000 BC when they had this problem, which is after all why my instincts point me in this direction.

[This doesn't necessarily need to be military; it can be done through politics if the problem isn't bad enough, as that's just war by other means.]

the adults (and police etc.) in that community should have been there taking out the trash

What do you mean? They were there taking out the trash (the police were there supervising)- they were incinerating it, salvaging useful materials, and forcefully removing those who would prefer the trash.

A child, Rittenhouse, proceeded to shoot three garbage men in the course of their lawful adult duties. He should have stayed home, out of their affairs, but instead he was tried in the state he crossed into when he pulled that trigger (i.e. as an adult).

Reading the article implied the fence issue may have been more complicated. Essentially the article claimed that the property had been miss surveyed when the fence was built, so I think the fence issue might have been a part of another longstanding argument which resulted in some stupid and unnecessary violence.

It does not appear either party knew about the fence being mis-surveyed at the time. If indeed it was; the only claims I can find are this article citing "county records" and the decedent's mother. There was a longstanding argument, but the people who cared about the tree issue were the shooter's wife and the decedents mother.

Good contribution to the discussion, but the neighbor with a chainsaw story from the article is difficult.

1. He wasn't just wandering around with a chainsaw. The intent to cut branches was clear based on the shooter's wife's own testimony. 2. He had his eight year old son with him. 3. There seems to have been some level of pre-existing dispute over the property line.

The death is avoided easily by telling the guy "get off my lawn or I'm calling the cops." The article states that chainsaw man then walked toward the elderly shooter (who, by the way, retrieved his firearm before going outside to confront chainsaw man).

I don't know, we can quibble over facts and I'm not even saying that the elderly shooter should have lost his self-defense case. This just seems like an infinitely avoidable lethal interaction.

Edit: comment down thread did some digging. I now find this case to be cut and dry.

Exactly.

SYG is being completely mischaracterized or misunderstood to be allowing things it just flat out doesn't cover. It only removes the requirement of fleeing from a deadly encounter if it is possible (and you listed several examples of it not being possible).

Prime example of the worst argument in the world (non-central fallacy).

When someone says:

It’s easier than ever to kill someone in America and get away with it.

They imply murder, not very justified self-defence.

The article is absolutely rife with that kind of manipulative but technically accurate language. Just under the title

legally sanctioned homicides

Technically true, but has the connotation that it's some "The Purge" shit that's going on.

so-called stand-your-ground laws

They are indeed so called, but the phrasing implies that it's pretense.

The laws are written to protect those who tell authorities they feared for their life.

This one is not even technically accurate: the laws are written to protect innocents who defend themselves. That they incentivize less than innocent people to claim they feared for their life is not the reason they were written. Unless the writer can prove otherwise.

They imply murder, not very justified self-defence.

What I expected from the title was actually vehicular manslaughter.

They imply murder, not very justified self-defence.

They're the same picture. (Related: ever wonder why Demolition Man used the phrase 'murderdeathkill?')

There are some reasons you might see it that way, including but not limited to:

  • You think self-defense shouldn't be allowed against [insert your favorite identity] for Historical Injustice(tm) reasons
  • You're a bully, afraid someone's going to have had enough and shoot you some day over some stupid argument [either directly or by proxy], and you want to make sure it's harder for them to do that (also, see
  • You're a strict Social Contract theorist who is incapable of thinking outside your authority's exclusive right to decide who deserves what or think their decisions and conflict-resolution power are strictly superior to its subjects (the "people can't handle the right to self-defense" one falls into this bucket)
  • Axiomatically never believing a claim of legitimate victimhood (this is the "school zero-tolerance, suspend the victim" mentality, which is the distaff counterpart to the "maybe she should have dressed more modestly" line for rape)

Axiomatically never believing a claim of legitimate victimhood (this is the "school zero-tolerance, suspend the victim" mentality, which is the distaff counterpart to the "maybe she should have dressed more modestly" line for rape)

School zero tolerance policies are about lawsuit avoidance, not never believing the victim

Sure it is- if they believed the victim, and were correct in that assessment, then they need not fear a lawsuit.

Clearly, they do not want to do that. And if they aren't empowered to do so by broader society, well, that's already been covered by the preceding points (i.e. "they suspend a certain minority more, they suspend students of parents [who are also bullies] more, they don't want to do the work").

Also, the voting record of their personnel reveals they prefer candidates who don't see their inability/unwillingness to do their jobs as a problem.

Even before zero tolerance, "it takes two to fight" was (and presumably is) the attitude of school principals and such. As a kid I tested that once, and found (to my lack of surprise) that not only does it take actually only take one willing person to fight, but that not fighting back won't prevent you from being suspended.

The first one to begin distrusting is the Perfidious Journalist.

Justifiable homicides by civilians increased 59% from 2019 through 2024 in a large sample of cities and counties in those states, the Journal found, compared with a 16% rise in total homicides for the same locales.

Potentially-justifiable homicides in 2019 were adjudicated in the mass hysteria of 2020-21 BLM courts. 2021-22 courts were more likely to be biased against justifiable homicide claims when the assailant is Black, ie a large portion of the total homicides where justification claims are likely to be made. Even 2019 courts had social justice sympathies. As such, a higher rate of justifiable homicides when compared to 2019 tells us nothing on its face. The Journalist needs to take this into consideration or else clarify if they are talking about cases adjudicated in 2019 or cases occurring in 2019. They would also need to look at the number of gang-related shootings. According to Grok, there were 20% fewer gang-related homicides in 2024 than 2019. Given that almost no gang-related homicide is justifiable (and the clearance rate is hilariously low, and the perpetrators can’t mount a good legal defense), this fact on its own would make the increased rate of justifiable homicides seem larger even in the absence of an increase in justifiable homicides. As, if the total number of unjustified homicides have decreased, but justified homicides stay the same, then justified homicides will make up a higher percentage of total homicides — telling us nothing except that we got better at combatting gangs. Maybe due to deportations?

”Only two people know what happened,” said Kathleen Hoy, the dead man’s widow. “Unfortunately, my husband is dead.” In many stand-your-ground cases, authorities are left to rely on the word of survivors. The laws are written to protect those who tell authorities they feared for their life.

Yes, the laws are written this way because justice is written this way. Take it up with God. It’s unjust to jail people without evidence. This is a settled matter of justice. For most of civilizational history we didn’t even have DNA or recording devices, and no one freaked out about this. Perhaps the Journalist inhabits a social world filled with other journalists where everyone is constantly lying for gain and no one has honor. In such a world, it is assumed a priori that someone is lying, as a kind of default way of life; they are actually more likely to lie than otherwise. Or maybe this Journalist constantly wants to kill us but lacks the courage to do so, and consequently they imbue this urge on the common flock. But normal people aren’t like this. And even if they were, this assumption defeats the journalist’s own logic. If there are evil people constantly looking to kill others and get away with it with legal standing, then we would want to make it easier to make a justifiable homicide claim, because there’s a bunch of people constantly trying to kill us. Remember the fact of justice that it is better to let nine killers go than jail one innocent person as a murderer. This was Blackstone’s Ratio, Blackstone being the most important legal writer at the time of America’s founding.

I hate the Antichrist Journalist.

... this article is written with similar quality and accuracy as a South Park joke. Compare:

A retired Las Vegas police officer walked free after fatally shooting a retired computer network engineer during a dispute over who had the right of way in a Walmart parking lot. Both men got out of their vehicles. Both were armed. The ex-officer said the retired engineer pointed a gun at him first.

[several paragraphs later...]

Witnesses told police Hoy appeared enraged at a parking lot intersection, yelling at the driver of a Chevrolet Equinox. The Chevy driver, 67-year-old retired Las Vegas police officer Kerry Ruesch, kept driving. Then Ruesch backed up his car and stopped about 10 feet away from Hoy’s Toyota Camry. Both men got out. Ruesch told police that Hoy first held his gun pointed down and then aimed it at Ruesch. The ex-cop said he “reactively pulled out” his holstered .45 caliber handgun and fired several shots. Hoy crumpled to the ground.

Contrast:

During the course of the investigation, detectives say they learned that 69-year-old Robert Hoy parked behind the retired LVMPD officer Kerry M. Ruesch, got out and approached him while wielding a gun... Ruesch then got out of his car with his own weapon and shot Hoy, who died at the scene.

Well, that's just a one-off, and it's not technically a lie (and they could argue that this 'must' have been sourced from Ruesch's testimony... if they actually reported it, and found more than a couple pieces of profanity from the nurse they quote).

Compare:

In De Leon Springs, Fla., Edward Druzolowski, 78 years old, was watching a football game on TV when his wife said their neighbor’s 42-year-old son was cutting branches and had come into their yard. Brian Ford, accompanied by his 8-year-old son, had entered through a gate in the fence and carried a chain saw. Druzolowski went out to see for himself. He brought his .357 Magnum handgun, later telling police that he knew Ford had a criminal record and a reputation for violence. He repeatedly told Ford to get off his property. Instead, Ford cursed and walked toward Druzolowski.

Contrast:

Ford, who was with his 8-year-old son, reacted aggressively when confronted, court documents revealed. The two men exchanged words, and Ford reportedly threatened the defendant with a chainsaw, prompting Druzolowski to draw the firearm. Ford allegedly continued to advance toward Druzolowski despite being warned to stop, and the defendant fired his weapon, fatally wounding Ford. In his defense, Druzolowski cited his age, physical frailty due to osteoporosis and the size difference between him and Ford. The court found Druzolowski’s use of force was reasonable given Ford’s aggressive behavior and violent reputation. Additionally, the victim’s own young son reportedly told police his father had threatened the defendant during the confrontation. [ed: emphasis added]

And, for the money shot:

One Democratic legislator raised a hypothetical dispute at a supermarket checkout line. “I’m in the 10-items-or-less line, and I’ve got 15. The shopper behind me is understandably irate and proceeds to push me out of line,” Rep. Ari Abraham Porth said. “Can I then pop a cap on him, proceed to check out my 15 items, and ask for a cleanup in line 3?”

“You’re authorized to meet force with force,” said Baxley, who has since left office. “If you’re pushed, you can push back.”

I will bet cash money that this is not the full and honest conversation, or even a remotely accurate summary. Forget the question of whether Baxley was asked Porth's hypothetical and responded like that -- you shouldn't take advice from politicians or funeral home owners, but you don't need to be a lawyer to know Porth's hypothetical is wildly illegal in Florida -- does anyone believe that it's anything other than clipping unrelated conversations, and not even presenting the full argument from the side it doesn't like?

Because if they do, I've got a bridge to sell them.

The only one that I can't find on-the-ground details that they're clearly eliding or outright misleading on is the Mathew Dugger shooting. Maybe because there's almost no coverage of the case on the open internet, maybe because their editors decided one out of three wasn't half bad. Except then it ends in:

Prosecutors in September concluded Wilson’s killing was justified under Montana’s stand-your-ground law.

But in addition to the actual criminal being a literal coke fiend (still illegal to carry while drugged up!) and thus unlikely to have only carried a firearm or tried to shoot someone in an argument because of the state SYG law, it's absolutely not an SYG case -- you are not required to flee before trying to prevent someone from murdering a downed innocent woman.

There's some interesting deeper things that could be said about the wider state of self-defense law (although the FBI numbers are kinda sus if you look at them too hard) and the WSJ analysis is less actual analysis and more looking at a CSV and hitting the filter until you get a chart you like. There's some fun questions about the general state of courts and prosecutions where despite an increasingly-online constant-surveillance panopticon world, we somehow manage to know less and less about these Big Things.

But this news story isn't it, and that people from WSJ to Giffords to Bloomberg can't actually make that story about self-defense shootings... well, it's not strong evidence, because these people are also incompetent liars anyway, but evidence nonetheless.

Oh, this story is horseshit.

A retired Las Vegas police officer walked free after fatally shooting a retired computer network engineer during a dispute over who had the right of way in a Walmart parking lot. Both men got out of their vehicles. Both were armed. The ex-officer said the retired engineer pointed a gun at him first.

“Only two people know what happened,” said Kathleen Hoy, the dead man’s widow. “Unfortunately, my husband is dead.”

  1. Cops, even retired cops, always get the benefit of the doubt and then some in court. In all states. I don't like it but it's not going to change.

  2. Self defense, once raised by presenting a fairly minimal amount of evidence, has to be disproven beyond a reasonable doubt (again, in all states). If only one person alive knows what happened (i.e. there's no evidence otherwise), the defense should succeed. What the widow, and the Journal, are implicitly demanding is that if one guy pulls a gun on another and the second guy then fatally shoots him, the killer should go to jail if there's no physical or other testimonial evidence.

The next example is even "better" -- a methed-up guy carrying a chainsaw and approaching an armed neighbor who is ordering him to leave. Uh, yeah, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. This has the extra twist that due to a surveying error the neighbor was on his own property, but neither man knew that at the time, so it's not really relevant. Other sources also add the detail that the dead man's son (who was with him) testified that the dead man said "I’ll cut your head off with this chainsaw." Uh, yeah.

Then we get to the Reno shootout. Woman decides to intervene in some quarrel between a man and a woman. Man starts yelling at woman. Husband of woman intervenes. Man goes back to truck, gets gun, shoots husband. No, this wasn't what was deemed justified -- things continue. Woman pulls out her gun, shoots man. Man shoots woman (and some bystander) too. Then another bystander fatally shoots the man, thinking he's going to kill the woman. The dead man turned out to boozed up, coked up, and high on pot too. If the WSJ writer had his way, presumably the bystander who killed him would be imprisoned for it. Or not shot him and maybe the woman dies instead. How would that improve things?

If you claim there are too many "justified" shootings, there's two things you might mean. One, that too many people are doing things that justify them being shot. Two, that too many people are being shot and having it deemed "justified" when it isn't. The article is saying that it's the second, but the examples say it's the first.

Then we get to the Reno shootout. Woman decides to intervene in some quarrel between a man and a woman. Man starts yelling at woman. Husband of woman intervenes. Man goes back to truck, gets gun, shoots husband. No, this wasn't what was deemed justified -- things continue. Woman pulls out her gun, shoots man. Man shoots woman (and some bystander) too. Then another bystander fatally shoots the man, thinking he's going to kill the woman. The dead man turned out to boozed up, coked up, and high on pot too. If the WSJ writer had his way, presumably the bystander who killed him would be imprisoned for it. Or not shot him and maybe the woman dies instead. How would that improve things?

I assume that if the WSJ writer had his way, nobody here, including the first guy, would have had a gun. Unfortunately, there is no policy that would have realistically disarmed the first shooter without people screeching that it aims to disarm the second one. Any efforts towards a general crackdown on lethal self-defence should also be understood through the lens of this environment - encumbering any reasonable use of guns is just a means to the end that only unreasonable uses remain, which would make a total ban politically more attainable.

Then we get to the Reno shootout. Woman decides to intervene in some quarrel between a man and a woman. Man starts yelling at woman. Husband of woman intervenes. Man goes back to truck, gets gun, shoots husband. No, this wasn't what was deemed justified -- things continue. Woman pulls out her gun, shoots man. Man shoots woman (and some bystander) too. Then another bystander fatally shoots the man, thinking he's going to kill the woman. The dead man turned out to boozed up, coked up, and high on pot too. If the WSJ writer had his way, presumably the bystander who killed him would be imprisoned for it. Or not shot him and maybe the woman dies instead. How would that improve things?

Its presence in the article is clearly because the journalists needed more meat to try and push his point that stand-your-ground laws are bad, but he knows the facts aren't aligning with that so he just says it's an example of how guns and alcool don't mix.

But then, the story has this important tidbit:

Instead, Wilson retrieved a handgun from his truck

So it's not like the guy who turned this incident deadly had a snap lapse in judgement and the presence of the gun is what turned a likely fistfight into a shootout. The gun was not present, he had to go get it, which means we're dealing with an asshole whose brain was so fried he had murderous intent for several seconds to minutes.

Also

Instead, Wilson retrieved a handgun from his truck and shot Reichert’s husband at arm’s-length.

So why are we focusing on the gun here? He could have just as well stabbed him with a knife, with a broken bottle, concussed him with a baseball bat or tire iron, etc... Would it have been less deadly then? I'm not sure at all; what if the fact he wasn't using a gun made Reichert and the bystander less willing to pull out a gun in self-defense out of fear they'll be convicted of homicide? Would they have been able to stop Wilson before he murdered Reichert and her husband? We don't know and can't know.

It’s easier than ever to kill someone in America and get away with it.

I don't think a justified homicide is a central example of "kill someone in America and get away with it".

Also, if I take that very literally (see: the media never lies, although even then it wasn't probably meant to be that literal), killing someone in self-defense prevents an unjustified homicide with a justified one. You can get away with a justified homicide, so the statement can be true without increasing the number of homicides at all.

They're cherry picked, I know, but the idea that a kid loses his father over an argument about a a fence and a property line made me sad.

What's the alternative, self-defense is not allowed against people who are parents?

American self defense law usually allows lethal force when murder isn't the single most likely outcome. You are allowed to shoot your mugger or carjacker in a lot of states, even if in practice they just want your wallet/keys. Texas allows lethal force against a retreating burglar in some circumstances.

One of the pet theories without any serious digging I have, is that these things may come in waves. From my observation some societies that were considered as most polite societies like Japan or Scandinavia or England were incredibly violent in the past, they were places where you could get your head chopped off for looking at somebody the wrong way. So people created social technology of politeness and elaborate social rituals in order to prevent such a situation from happening - getting challenged to duel or having your balls blown off are some serious incentives for good behavior. Until some new people come around who think that all this politeness and social norms are gay, weak and lame and that they should be able to do what they want. And the cycle repeats itself.

There's a moderately interesting documentary now on Netflix called 'The Perfect Neighbor', which uses police footage to tell the story of one case of Stand your Ground (SyG) killing. The way the piece is framed attempts to demonstrate that the killing was racially motivated. The mixed-race community is shown in a positive light, and includes plenty of footage of the kids in the community reporting that the eventual killer used racial epithets towards them, although there's no hard evidence of this. They also put up some statistics at the end that indicate that killings have increased in SyG states, and that SyG killings target blacks at a higher rate. In the end, the Stand your Ground defense doesn't hold up and the killer is convicted of manslaughter.

The publication and pushing of this documentary, to me, shows that SyG is on the rise culturally - otherwise why would Hollywood feel the need to push back against it? What's striking to me is that this was the case they chose to highlight, given the fact that the SyG defense failed. I won't go too into the details of the case, but the main weakness was that the killer reported a longer timeline from when she called the police to come help here to when she shot and killed the woman on her doorstep, which they argued indicated she didn't really fear for her life but instead set the whole thing up to get away with killing her neighbor. Franky, if I were on the jury I would probably have acquitted, just on the basis of how SyG works. As far as I understand (IANAL), the only requirement for self-defense under SyG laws is reasonable fear of death/harm. In this case, it really seems like the jury concluded there wasn't a reasonable fear because the killer was racist.

My takeaway from the whole thing is that it seems the makers of the documentary are implicitly arguing that juries should nullify the SyG defense. The documentary was not directed towards the voting populations of states likely to adopt SyG laws, but rather towards blue tribe types who sympathize with minority communities. I don't think it's a mistake that this outcome was publicized on Netflix, I think it's meant to be an example. (Edit: I'll add that I initially thought the takeaway would be the opposite - that the woman would be acquitted and this would be an example of why these laws shouldn't exist. I was quite surprised when they convicted her.)

I'm curious if anyone else watched this documentary and had a different take.

to tell the story of one case of Stand your Ground (SyG) killing.

There was no SYG element to that story. It was a red herring introduced by uneducated subjects of the documentary. What she did was wildly illegal regardless of SYG.

Shooting through a locked door at a woman is not reasonable.

The publication and pushing of this documentary, to me, shows that SyG is on the rise culturally - otherwise why would Hollywood feel the need to push back against it?

Oooooor it’s on the outs and thus an easy target. Or it was a prominent tribal signifier. Or the studio wanted to bait controversy. Or the writer had a personal stake in a similar case. Or the random number generator demanded it. There are plenty of other explanations.

Applying your reasoning to other cases: Friday Night Lights meant racism was really on the rise. Apocalypse Now was trying to stamp down on anti-war sentiment. The eternal popularity of Nazis as villains, from Inglorious Basterds to Star Wars to *Casablanca, is proof that they hold too much sway over society.

Sorry, is your objection that I didn't specify this was a hypothesis?

The impression that I got from watching the documentary is the hypothesis that they are trying to raise awareness of SyG laws, and in particular couching it as a racial justice issue. My hypothetical conclusion is that they may be supportive of juries ruling against SyG defendants. Do you have anything interesting to say about this, or are you just being reflexively combative?

Uh, no. I assumed you were correct about the makers’ preference. I was arguing about the bit I quoted: the publication and pushing of this documentary does not imply that SyG is on the rise culturally.

that SyG killings target blacks at a higher rate

Well yeah, because they have higher rates of crime, self defense claims are more likely to be against blacks. This doesn't in itself mean anything.

You'll notice that I didn't make any claims about the basis or the consequence of this statistic, or about the fairness of SyG laws in general. My comment is about what the creators of the documentary were intending by including these statistics.

If SyG laws become framed as a racial justice issue, this will tend to polarize the debate on partisan lines, which I think is unfortunate. And if some juries rule against SyG defendants on the basis of racial justice, which I think is possible, that could damage the integrity of the courts and create more animosity.

Franky, if I were on the jury I would probably have acquitted, just on the basis of how SyG works. As far as I understand (IANAL), the only requirement for self-defense under SyG laws is reasonable fear of death/harm. In this case, it really seems like the jury concluded there wasn't a reasonable fear because the killer was racist.

So SYG only removes the requirement that someone flee from a deadly force encounter, if possible - it still requires the person to have not of started the deadly force fight, be reasonable in the fear for their life, be in imminent danger of gross bodily injury or death, AND only matching deadly force with deadly force.

Thanks for the clarification. Does reasonable doubt standards apply to all those provisions? In this case, the killer reported that the woman she shot said "I'll kill you" and was banging on her door - assuming it's true, is that sufficient for a reasonable fear? for 'imminent' danger?

So IANAL, but I do enjoy law as a hobbyist - so take my answers with that in mind.

As far as I know, every state in the US now has it such that if you claim self defense and meet a very low standard, the burden goes to the state to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt that you did not act in self defense. The state does that typically by attacking at least one of the pillars, as if they can disprove any one pillar beyond a reasonable doubt, they win.

So for the scenario you laid out, it really depends - it would probably meet reasonable fear, but if the lady has done this once a week for years without anything coming of it, well then, probably not. If the door was well secured and locked, then that cuts against the imminence pillar - as she still needs to get through that door and close distance. However, if the door banger is armed with a gun, well, bullets can go through doors, so it may be a more reasonable argument on imminence.

Also, if the person performing self defense was in her house, it becomes a castle doctrine issue, not stand your ground, just fyi - but that is just one more thing people mix up.

At the end of the day, the defendant has to hope the prosecution can't convince 12 random people that the defendant broke one of those pillars beyond a reasonable doubt; and given the number of trials I've watched where I was shocked with the jury result given the legal and factual claims on the table, I'd always try to avoid using deadly force until I had no choice remaining, even if that means I am taking actions not required to meet the legal standard.

I know in that situation I would personally have retreated and called the police and had my gun trained on the door in case she breaks it down - but that doesn't mean what this person did was illegal, I just wouldn't bet on a jury to save me if I am firing on someone through my front door without knowing they were armed (it also breaks several of gun safety rules to do so, though those aren't laws, just best practices).

If you want the serious legal talk you'll either need to pay for it or go to a Massad Ayoob seminar, but Cornered Cat's summary is pretty reasonable for the state of the law in most* Red States. For a tl;dr, it's not enough for someone to want to express the desire to kill you: they must be reasonably perceived as able to do so at that time, and reasonably perceived as trying to do so. That's fundamentally fact-based to be evaluated by the jury, but a jury is going to treat someone outside trying to beat a door down with their bare hands very differently from someone taking a fireax to one.

/* a tiny number of red states allow lethal force to defend property in limited situations; these are outside of the current scope of discussion.

The Perfect Neighbor

In the real case, the white woman shot the unarmed black woman through a closed and locked door, which probably had a lot more to do with the conviction than racial issues.

How would you go about shooting someone you thought was attacking you? Let them in first? If someone is on my property trying to break in to my house, Stand your Ground clearly applies.

The issue that was apparently more significant in the conviction was the discrepancy between the woman's self-reported timeline of the events and the real timeline, as I mentioned. But that discrepancy only overcomes reasonable doubt if there's a viable alternative, namely that the white woman shot the black woman in cold blood. This in turn relies on the context of the conflict between them, which was argued as racially motivated.

Regardless, I'm talking about the documentary, in which the creators made it clear they think it was a racial issue. Again, they specifically cite disproportionate death rates of black Americans under SyG laws. What about that do you dispute?

How would you go about shooting someone you thought was attacking you? Let them in first? If someone is on my property trying to break in to my house, Stand your Ground clearly applies.

If they're on the other side of the door without a weapon, they don't present an imminent threat and you can't legally shoot them. Further, she'd already retreated to get the gun.

Stand Your Ground is something I generally still support, but my mind could be changed if simple Bad Neigbor fights end up with more orphans.

They take this angle only after their actual prediction, a massive spike in murders didn't happen.

Well, it did, but not because of carry laws and Stand Your Ground. It happened because of BLM and pro-crime policies from people who want to use the state against normal gun owners.

So now they're reduced to mendicious phrasings to scaremonger about an increase in "citizens defending themselves from violent, crazy drug addicts". Literally their own second example is a methhead with a history of violence and a chainsaw acting aggressive.

However much you hate journalists, you don't hate journalists enough.

However much you hate journalists, you don't hate journalists enough.

The KiwiFarms.st Articles & News section is the best expositor to date of this idea. Frankly it’s a sigh of relief and restores my faith in humanity to some degree. They tear apart the words of propagandists that pathetically go by the title of “journalist,” and it’s refreshing to see.

Thanks, I didn't even know that section of the farms existed. I'm not a regular there (don't even have an account) and mostly just go there when drama involving internet personalities hits my radar and I want to get the details unfiltered/uncensored. But now I have another reason to go there, thanks!

That section of the site used to be private until recently and you had to register an account to be able to view it. I was banned after the first comment I made and an admin marked it as “spam.” But it occasionally offers up some funny commentary on things.

You know, this reminds me of when Rittenhouse was found innocent, and a forum I no longer frequent was losing their damned minds that it was now "legal to shoot progressives". I wanted to make a snarky reply along the lines of "Worry not, it's rather simple to avoid getting Rittenhoused. First, don't riot. In the event you riot, don't attack an innocent bystander with a gun. In the event you attack an innocent bystander with a gun, and he runs away, don't chase him. In the event you chase him, run away when he stops and points at you. If you follow even these simple steps, you too can avoid getting shot by Kyle Rittenhouse." But before I could say anything I got banned for reacting to people having panic attacks with the "Awesome" button.

I'm reading this article, and every single one reads like a "When keeping it real goes wrong" sketch. Two people get out of their cars, armed, to fight over a parking space? Someone refuses to get off someone else's property with a chainsaw while high on meth? Some drunk lady needs to give some other drunk dude a piece of her mind in a bar parking lot?

People “feel compelled to imagine living in a world where everybody might be armed,” said Caroline Light, a Harvard professor who wrote a book on the history of stand-your-ground laws. “Suddenly it isn’t just an annoying confrontation with somebody who’s being a jerk on the road. Suddenly it’s that split second decision, is my life actually in danger? What if that person’s armed? Well, I better get to my gun first.”

You know, I brought this up when talking about a 14 year old carjacker who was killed in DC. Liberals act like the person who shot the congenital felon was the one who decided their life wasn't worth a car. I said it was the carjacker that decided their life wasn't worth a car. And likewise here, these people decided their life isn't worth a parking space, or a few tree limbs, or your wounded pride. If two people are maladjusted enough to go "Fuck it, two men enter, one man leaves" over a parking space, I'm not exactly against it. In every story provided, I'm not unconvinced the world was made a better place by 1 unit, despite the friends and family of the deceased, even admitting the dead had anger issues, grieving the loss of their unhinged husband or son.

Frankly I'm shocked the article wasn't loaded with more inflammatory anecdotes. Like wildly implausible scenarios akin to all the squatters saying "I have a lease" so that the police won't kick them out of the home they obviously broke into. Felons breaking and entering a house, and then claiming "self defense" when the homeowner draws on them, or shit like that.

I'll never miss an opportunity to link this.

that it was now "legal to shoot progressives"

Why is that strange?

What they said was trivially true- someone had shown that non-progressives could kill their footsoldiers and the government legitimizing their presence would not only refused to stop it, but outright judge progressives to be in the wrong for the first time in several months.

This demoralized them, because (like conservatives) their cognition of right and wrong comes mostly from authority, so to have that authority suddenly reject them and tell them they were in the wrong was a massive wake-up call. Once that happened, the people who did have a sense of right and wrong had enough, went home, and stopped posting; those left were more likely to double down due to that social evaporative cooling effect.

Progressives act like the person who shot the congenital felon was the one who decided their life wasn't worth a car.

That's what they say, yes. But killing a man in self-defense is an attack on the privilege of mothers (and those that may become mothers) everywhere, and that is what they're actually objecting to. (And if ~12% of mothers produce 52% of the bad sons, it suddenly becomes extremely relevant if those mothers are alike in some way, so it would be even more important to further protect the way they're alike. Rights/privileges are only preserved by successfully defending scoundrels, after all.)

Killings like this being permitted is an explicit statement that it's possible to raise a child so badly and so selfishly that someone else can not only kill him, and people will not just celebrate his death, but they claim that killing the children [of bad mothers] underpins society in general. Self-defense only further legitimizes the right to kill those sons.

When you see Blues/progressives/women in jubilation over the killing of Charlie Kirk, this is what and why they're celebrating- a strike against the people who cheer on, encourage, and legitimize killing bad sons [and perhaps by extension, them]. (The fact that involved killing someone else's son is not relevant.)

When you see Blues/progressives/women in jubilation over the killing of Charlie Kirk, this is what and why they're celebrating- a strike against the people who cheer on, encourage, and legitimize killing bad sons [and by extension, them]. (The fact that involved killing someone else's son is not relevant.)

I know that logical thinking is explicitly and openly anathema to a lot of these people, and you haven't claimed otherwise, but how does this square with the fact that jubilation over the killing of Kirk is also an act of cheering on, encouraging, and legitimizing the killing of a son that has been judged to be bad? Doesn't that point to just different ideas of what constitutes "bad" rather than a rejection of the notion that it is possible for a son to be bad enough to deserve killing? That is, things judged to be "bad" by conservative, traditional, "common sense" morality aren't actually bad, while things that they judge to be "bad" by their own personal shiny new progressive morality are actually bad, and sons who are actually bad deserve killing, not sons that have merely been judged by traditional morality.

Thinking on it a bit more, maybe sons are more properly seen as foot soldiers for their mother's goals, and men shooting them is more an intra-mother proxy fight than anything else. I think about that every time a society with equal representation but unequal draft votes itself into a war, where the old send their young to die for the goals of the old. The designated caring gender seems to strategically forget its role in these scenarios.

Considering fathers do this with opposite-gender offspring, it would be strange to think mothers don't have a similar reflex with their opposite-gender offspring, and since the two genders are close to parity mothers have a lot more resources to throw at each other (and correspondingly, more to lose).

By the way, with respect to "not logical thinking": I think people who do this are running on instinct, and that instinct generally gives people whose brains are not good enough to outperform instinct a baseline on which they can otherwise compete/survive (so they might have a brain, but using it doesn't give them good results; this is what education is supposed to fix, or it did before an overwhelming incentive to fail to educate people arose). But instinct is generally mediated by environment (this includes other humans), so if a bunch of the inputs instinct depends on to moderate itself change or disappear things tend to go off the rails quickly.

Male instinct wasn't as unconstrained by technological development, so female instinct becomes more salient. And I think it's that female instinct that mediates the general case of "every other son is morally obligated to give resources to mine".

Perhaps the real problem is that intelligent women don't trust their child-raising abilities any more just like intelligent men don't trust their abilities to take risks, and so everyone's depressed and unwilling to resist the instinct-driven?

But on the other hand, some forms of protecting people from the damage they can do to themselves and others in a fit of passion seem to be very popular. We have laws against drugs and gambling, contra any "it is good that druggies slowly poison themselves/compulsive gamblers surrender their money to someone who is more responsible with it" arguments; the state mandates that you were a seatbelt while driving; most people ban assisted suicide, do not recognise consent to major amputations and maimings to the chagrin of cannibals and trans-disabled everywhere; and, indeed, all have largely banned legal duels.

Your line of argument particularly reminds me of ones about gambling. As it happens, I play a lot of gacha video games (F2P games with a significant "lootbox" component, where you can spend in-game currency that can be either very slowly gained from playing or straight up bought with real money on a probability to obtain a character or item). I have never had issues with self-control, and probably spent a grand total of $50 on all such games in my lifetime, only buying small top-ups to signal to the developers that I especially liked what they did in a particular patch now and then; so for me, these are just ridiculously high-production-value live-service games I get to play for free (but where sometimes I can not get access to some content). However, in these games, if you must get an item and RNGesus is not on your side, it is not uncommon to have to blow $2k or more on gacha rolls. A friend, who likewise plays a lot (of the same games, and then some more), has spent more to the tune of $20k, and continues spending heavily.

A while ago, we both entered an argument about whether gacha should be banned, instigated by a third friend (who does not play it, but is very European). I took what is essentially the pro-gun position: the lack of impulse control of some should not be a reason to stop consenting adults from engaging in business transactions, even if there is a probabilistic component, and rejecting even the polite fiction that adult members of society can be trusted with making decisions for themselves and shouldering any consequences leads you down a path whose endpoint can not really be described as liberal democracy anymore, etc. The addict friend, who continues indulging in his addiction and happily spamming me every day about what haul his most recent $500 of paid pulls got him, took the "ban it all" position. At the end of the argument, the two of them expressed what seemed like genuine, if slightly brainrotten, concern that I am out of sheer contrarianness drifting towards becoming a "libertarian trumptard" (their words!).

(On the other side of the divide, drugs? I would wager that "adults who can use drugs responsibly should not have to take restrictions due to irresponsible addicts" is a much more Blue position.)

I would wager that "adults who can use drugs responsibly should not have to take restrictions due to irresponsible addicts" is a much more Blue position

It's a liberal position that happens to be closer to Blue, and [within Blue] is a holdover from when Blue was the more liberal-friendly Tribe.

Blue still technically espouses this policy but only as an incidental to the race/marginalized angle.

The addict friend, who continues indulging in his addiction and happily spamming me every day about what haul his most recent $500 of paid pulls got him, took the "ban it all" position.

People who are poor in virtue are better off if virtue is redistributed. They're virtue-communists.

People who are rich in virtue are better off if allowed to capture that value. They're virtue-capitalists.

The stereotype that complains about "all these commie rules" are directionally correct, they're just not capable of telling you why.

People who are poor in virtue are better off if virtue is redistributed. They're virtue-communists.

People who are rich in virtue are better off if allowed to capture that value. They're virtue-capitalists.

That is an outstanding way to put it and gave me much food for thought. Thanks for the jolt.

On a personal level I am an advantage player at some types of gambling (mostly poker and sports betting), but have a tendency to tilt when losing at other games (e.g. craps) and have found that online gaming is really bad for me. So I've self-excluded from online gaming platforms, most of which are currently quasi-legal at best in my state anyway. If they ever are legalized fully, that will be a harder decision. It's simply too easy to throw electrons at a website, and I am much less averse to doing so compared to a brick and mortar casino.

All that said, I am still in favor of allowing access to gambling from a freedom perspective, but much less interested in state-sponsored gambling such as lotteries. I could certainly see an argument for restricting advertising similar to what is done for cigarettes. That's probably the easiest practical method at present.

It's entirely consistent to believe there should be laws restricting adult's ability to ruin their own lives, and also laws allowing others to not have to deal with the consequences. Carjackers are FAFOing, yes, and carjacking is already illegal.

I would argue that whether society should protect people from their own bad judgement depends in large part on whether said bad judgement can profit others, who then have an incentive to encourage more of it. I see there's already a discussion of the newly widespread advertising for sports betting in this thread, and I've certainly seen other people publicly worry about the potential for gambling apps to ruin a lot more lives than casino gambling ever did. Idiots starting fights and getting killed doesn't seem to make money for anyone, and nobody runs ads extolling the benefits of waving a gun around in petty disputes.

We have laws against drugs and gambling

At this point both seem to have dropped off the radar somewhat. I need to do an effortpost sometime about the state of the insane amount of grey market gambling proxies there are (as an industry participant), and how so many are prettymuch onshore camped out in random stupid loopholes.

Here, online gambling gets away with advertising on TV (which they are not allowed to do) using the stupidest loophole: they advertise a different website (onlinecasino.net) where you can only play with pretend money for free. But if you go to the obvious website (onlinecasino.com) then of course you get into real gambling.

In the USA? It's insane sweepstakes is lasting so long on this incarnation when it's literally already been banned previously on a model that used to run on buying and redeeming internet cafe minutes essentially.

But on the other hand, some forms of protecting people from the damage they can do to themselves and others in a fit of passion seem to be very popular. We have laws against drugs

I guess I've just hardened against these arguments, as I've watched all the people we protect from themselves drag society down. Also, I clipped this quote where I did because, per the article, 2 out of 3 of the anecdotes in the article about "Stand your ground gone 'wrong'" involved drugs. The drugs we allegedly protect people from themselves from.

I almost want more people to die at this point. I'd be for regulating gambling because it doesn't even kill anyone. But lets lace more drugs with fentanyl, lets give everyone with a clean record who can pass a piss test a gun for free and free legal counsel about self defense. I want more poor life choices to have immediately fatal consequences, not less. Our polity needs some drano.

I'm all for more aggressive policing of drugs. The current legal metagame has sprung downstream out of 'let's not ruin the lives of promising college students for trying some weed and LSD' then with 50 years of iteration has reached the point of insanity, especially in the form of the strength and risks of modern drugs.

Gambling more complicated. I do think some people are degenerates but also slamming everybody all the time with gambling ads whilst trying to watch sports is just exacerbating standing societal issues. I'd rather that particular rock required a bit more upturning and less automatic takeover

I feel like one thing that has been lost in modern life is the ability to have something that is disapproved of, but still permitted. What I'm thinking of here is that we can't just tolerate that some people are making different choices - we must celebrate them and take them up to 11.

We aren't permitted to say "Nothing wrong with gay men, but I wouldn't want my son to be gay" - that's considered hate speech.

We aren't permitted to say "It's fine if people take drugs, but it's an indicator of low class." Instead, we must have legal dispensaries and be unable to arrest the fent zombie screaming at me about the KGB.

We can't say "You're unattractive because you're overweight and unclean" - instead we have to celebrate "healthy at every size."

And we apparently aren't permitted to allow gambling without turning it into an aggressive in-your-face advertising blitz.

I long for the days where things could just be "not your cup of tea" (or as my sister puts it, "Not everything has to appeal to my delicate sensibilities"). Friction can help people avoid ruining their lives, while still permitting people who really want it to achieve what they want.

Who exactly is “we”?

Out of the five things you “aren’t permitted to do,” three of them are speech restrictions, one is a resource-allocation problem, and the last is due to the free market. Those are categorically different.

  • You can say you wouldn’t want your son to be gay, or worse; large swathes of society will just be very upset with you.
  • You can express that drugs are low-class. There aren’t even that many people who will be upset!
  • You can’t always arrest the fent zombies, but it’s not because people will be upset with you. More like they’ve set up systems to disincentivize it.
  • You can fat-shame. We’re back to things society will complain about, but not imprison you over.
  • You can run a subdued gambling business so long as you aren’t trying to compete with the big dogs. If they’re luring people via ESPN and you refuse out of principle, you will never match their reach.

See the different categories? There is a vast gulf between things society will complain about and things it’ll materially punish. The complaints are friction.

In Canada, #1 and #4 count as hate speech. #3 is actually an example of what I'm talking about - we aren't arresting them, and we can't meaningfully defend ourselves against them (in Canada).

So perhaps by "we" I mean "Canada and Canadians".

What I'm thinking of here is that we can't just tolerate that some people are making different choices - we must celebrate them and take them up to 11

Yeah, but a lot of that's just the standard warfare between the redistributionists (generally because they lack the thing but can still convince someone sympathetic to take it away from someone with more) and everyone else.

Fat people want beauty redistributed.
Stupid people want [the fruits of] intelligence redistributed.
People without self-control want [the prosocial effects of having] self-control redistributed. ("If I'm not trustworthy with the right to self-defense then you should go without too.")

If you've lost the ability to say that some things are better than others it's a sign that they've taken over.

Gambling can be very, very nasty. An extended family member was a mathematician, very cheerful chap, into horse-racing and various other things long before internet poker started blighting the world. Then when he died, we discovered that he'd lost everything. The house, the car, everything. His wife of 50 years was left destitute, almost literally penniless, so now she survives on the government pension and the charity of friends and relations. Everyone loved him but now it's a bit hard to talk about him without that casting a shadow over everything.

EDIT: this is no reason not to approach regulation with caution, just an indication that a gambling addiction, like a drug addiction, can happen to many people and has a damage radius considerably greater than just the person with the problem.

I recently came by a quote about comparing gambling to drugs - "Even at the height of my using I could never blow $10k in 20 minutes on drugs."

AFAIK truly great fortunes are almost always lost on investments and stocks (for lesser men it's the 3 F's). Even the most profligate spender finds it hard to spend more than a few million on cars - where do you put them? And there is only so much Dom Pérignon that a man can shove down his gullet before it comes back up.

I have heard it said that 1MDB fraudster Jho Low was the only person ever to spend a whole billion dollars on debauchery and loose living. And he had to do things like paid dates with Miranda Kerr in order to do it.

AFAIK truly great fortunes are almost always lost on investments and stocks

Above the "sufficient to endow an upper-middle class standard of living for life" level, the biggest destroyers of generational wealth are division (which overlaps with the 3 F's in that one of the things that divides fortunes is divorce settlements, but the central case is division between children) and confiscation. Investing your entire life savings in pets.com is what retired dentists who think they are smart do. The failure mode of dumb old money is to halve a fortune over a generation by overpaying for mediocre investment advice, which does about the same amount of damage as the entirely standard practice of splitting it between two siblings, and a lot less damage than being in the wrong place at the wrong time when Lenin or Harold Wilson comes calling.

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Yeah. To a certain degree I think that's one of the 'benefits' of the Gambling industry in that it allows that money to be recirculated, especially before the modern eras where a lot of the big gambling operators were also insane degens in their own right so there was a natural recycling effect for failsons to turn large fortunes into nothing. Also generally the sort of personality that's capable of massively running it up is going to be a bad combination of addictive and prone to all-inning which doesn't mix great when exposed to gambling.

Also people end up gambling since they've essentially capped out their local scenario. If you're sitting on a pile of crypto obtained shadily, already paid for maximal lifestyle in Albania, Costa Rica or whatever (which really doesn't cost that much in grand scheme of rich person things) and can't travel that much due to potential sanctions then you might as well start blasting 200k a hand blackjack. Atleast I've seen a lot of ultra highrollers that essentially describes.

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Stupid question but how did this not become apparent till after he died? Was everything reverse mortgaged to the hilt or was he trying to outrun markers?

You can just... have bad credit. It's pretty easy to be in debt up to your eyeballs, and if you're smart you can put off the day of reckoning for a while.

Reverse mortgage. And his background, age and personality made it easier for him to pass himself off as ‘liking a flutter’ rather than having a serious problem, so people didn’t go looking.

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