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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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Why? Under that logic, any arrest can negate fear for their life. An arrest is placing themselves into a situation with people who have not been following the law, who may decide to react violently to losing their freedom. If we followed your statement, then any arrestee has carte blanche to behave as violently as they want, as the arresting officer placed themselves into danger, so is not permitted to defend themselves.

I also think that your rules would make Good forfeit her right to behave in panic, if we followed them through. She chose to put herself in a situation that was deliberately antagonizing ICE, which (by your logic) means that it should negate or at least seriously make harder whether [Good] can claim fear for [her] life.

Why? Under that logic, any arrest can negate fear for their life. An arrest is placing themselves into a situation with people who have not been following the law, who may decide to react violently to losing their freedom.

The difference is that in that case the officer would be shooting people who are intentionally violent, not nonviolent people who looked violent because the officer set up the situation in a way that made it hard to tell. It would be as if the officer arrested someone, handcuffed a knife to his hand, and then shot the suspect when he tried to flee because of fear that the suspect would use the knife on him.

(Obviously there is a sliding scale of such things. An arrest causes some increase in nonviolent reactions that appear violent and standing in front of a car causes some increase in actual violence. But I'd say that standing in front of the car is much farther along the scale.)

The difference is that in that case the officer would be shooting people who are intentionally violent, not nonviolent people who looked violent because the officer set up the situation in a way that made it hard to tell.

The police arrests people for non-violent offenses all the time, you still don't get to floor it to get away from them, and flooring your car at them is violent in itself.

The police arrests people for non-violent offenses all the time, you still don't get to floor it to get away from them, and flooring your car at them is violent in itself.

The police are not permitted to shoot you if you floor your car to get away. Even though you "don't get to" do it, the procedure the police must follow in that situation is different. They should not be permitted to blur the difference between that and a situation where they do get to shoot you, and then shoot you because they can't tell the difference.

The police are not permitted to shoot you if you floor your car to get away.

Yes they are, if you floor it at them. We've been sharing this video that shows what happens when they're not fast enough. Another poster mentioned they were watching police cam videos in thr wake of BLM and seen plenty of cases of policemen shooting cars driving at them, all of which were ruled justified.

Yes they are, if you floor it at them.

They can shoot you if you drive at them, but they can't shoot you if you are just fleeing.

If you think they should be able to shoot you for just fleeing, make a law that says they can. If not, don't have policies whose effect is that it's hard to distinguish between fleeing and driving at them, thus letting them shoot you for fleeing.

They can shoot you if you drive at them, but they can't shoot you if you are just fleeing.

Right, which is the scenario relevant to the discussed case.

If not, don't have policies whose effect is that it's hard to distinguish between fleeing and driving at them

There's nothing to distinguish. It doesn't matter if you were "just" fleeing, if you do so by means of driving your car at the police. If you choose to do that, you are putting their life in danger, and they have a right to defend themselves.

It doesn't matter if you were "just" fleeing, if you do so by means of driving your car at the police. If you choose to do that, you are putting their life in danger, and they have a right to defend themselves.

In this case it takes two to choose. Unless you're really aiming the car at the police intentionally, I would say that it's not you who are putting their life in danger, it's them, by creating the situation where fleeing can't be distinguished from a threat.

If they handcuffed a knife to your hand almost anything you do would "choose" to put them in danger. Nevertheless, I wouldn't give the police the benefit of the doubt for "danger" when they handcuff knives to suspects' hands.

In this case it takes two to choose.

No, it doesn't He wasn't putting himself as a roadblock. You can argue he should have been more careful and thought about all the things that can go wrong, but the argument is pretty dubious. Arresting people is inherently dangerous, and they can fuck you up whether you're in front of the car or approaching it from the side. But setting it aside for the sake of argument, a tactical error does not negate your right to self defense.

She on the other hand had the actual choice of simply not putting anyone's life in danger.

Unless you're really aiming the car at the police intentionally

Whether you're doing it intentionally or not is irrelevant, thr police can't read your mind.

Even if they did, and in her mind she would pull off some badass maneuver to escape without hitting anyone, there's still the issue of thr car's actual trajectory which did hit the guy, and would hit him harder and sooner were it not for the ice on the road.

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