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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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almost any way of holding someone other than the really specific RNC position is less lethal.

This is either wildly wrong or extremely pedantic. And less lethal for who exactly?

This is either wildly wrong or extremely pedantic.

…it isn’t though? Fitting your hand behind the back of somebody’s head and pushing down isn’t a natural, easy-to-fall-into movement - you might have to literally force your hand up in between their body and yours while they’re struggling - and that move is specifically what causes the blood flow to cut off. Almost every other form of back control doesn’t have that immediate risk because the RNC isn’t back control, it’s a submission. Even just take the same hand and use it to pin his arm to his body and you have a movement both less dangerous and more natural for beginners, whereas as the RNC isn’t something people know intuitively without being taught.

As for your comment about lethality, in every conversation I’d had about this event, including my comment above, I’ve very explicitly said I’m not condemning the use of lethal force, which may have literally been necessary if the guy was attacking him or somebody else on the train. I’m disagreeing with the people who are for some reason arguing that choking someone out for a long ass time doesn’t have obviously lethal potential. And if it turns out the guy wasn’t attacking anyone, for better or for worse you don’t get to knock people out just for being awful.

This is bogus.

"No, you can't carry a gun for self defense, just use martial arts"

:guy gets punched, hits head, dies:

"He should have known the risk hitting someone, he should totally have used something less damaging"

:guy gets choked, dies:

"Obviously lethal, should have used some other secret squirrel thing that only exists in the keyboard warrior's head"

:guy gets tased, dies:

" Yeah, 'less than lethal' means lethal, should have known that this could happen, deploying a taser is lethal force!"

:Guy gets pepper sprayed, dies:

"Why are people allowed to carry obviously lethal pepper spray"?

Strange how there are exactly zero responsible and reasonable uses of force, at least after the fact if something goes badly and someone dies. All the good uses of force exist.......mostly in the minds of critics.

I‘m fine with people carrying and using guns, tasers, and pepper spray in self defense. Not that these are valid comparisons, the latter two are pretty obviously less likely to result in a dead guy than choking.

Strange how there are exactly zero responsible and reasonable uses of force, at least after the fact if something goes badly and someone dies.

Maybe you think you’re responding to someone other than the guy who’s said like five times that lethal force could be valid in this situation.

In fact, the pepper spray one happened less than a week later. Nobody died, the pepper-sprayer was charged.

New York State prohibits civilians carrying tasers; while this law was found unconstitutional by a federal court, weapons decisions don't count so you can still get busted for it.