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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   23041 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 27, 2025

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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.

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