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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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"Carjacking" is a form of armed robbery. Whether there is justification for shooting an armed robber while he is committing armed robbery is something that has very often been answered in the affirmative in politics.

I think the topic was karon blake's shooting? And he doesn't appear to be armed.

Although my last paragraph in GP is ... rather poorly phrased, to the extent it's basically meaningless. What I meant is that, if all lives matter equally (but at the same time each life is unique and incomparable because trading one life for another is bad), it's difficult to justify killing someone for a crime that doesn't involve killing others (as a non-armed carjacking probably wouldn't).

What would you call it if a criminal runs up to a car at a stoplight, yanks the door open, drags the driver out, gets in and drives away? That seems like a carjacking to me, but no weapon would be involved. I'd say carjacking is forcible robbery, whether that force is armed or unarmed.

OK, I guess there are strongarm carjackings as well as armed ones. Either way, you can find justification for shooting robbers, though you can probably find more justification for shooting armed ones. But Karon Blake's case, as described above, wasn't carjacking. Might have been vandalism and/or theft from vehicle, both of which are property crimes.