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Yeah. I'd say so. Thank you for including that article. Given what was presented in the article by the prosecution, there is no reason to feel that juries are systematically stanning for Black victims or defendants. That was his headline case, it's shit, I can dismiss the whole argument. To say nothing of his misuse of the word Systemic, if the Right starts redefining words the same way the Left does, we're fucked.
In general the law frowns on jumping from fists to guns as proportional escalation. Getting punched does not entitle you to shoot. This is actually a fairly old-fashioned remnant of an era of masculinity, today violence is treated as an on/off switch, and in that environment it seems totally rational to chickenhawks to say "Well getting punched by a Black man is like, totally super scary and he felt threatened!" When the rational response there, given that he was not restrained from retreating in any way, was to walk away and call the cops.
The "gang sign" and "he said he was from California" bit is also pretty hilarious. Are gang hand signs even a real thing?
To say nothing of carrying concealed in a bar being, on net, a bad idea for this exact reason.
Getting punched by anyone large enough to knock you down (outside a controlled environment) is legitimately, non-sarcastically, a totally super scary thing, and if you don't feel threatened when it happens to you then the outside view says that's probably just because head trauma can negatively impact your ability to assess threats. Homicides with "personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc)" typically outnumber homicides with rifles 2-to-1 in the USA. A handful of those each year are deaths from a single punch. Gunshots are much more lethal, but "much more" is still only a 22% fatality rate from handgun gunshots.
This is legally correct (though I'd walk backwards and not take my eyes off the assailant...), if the premise is true. "He's currently punching me" can be justification for lethal force (ref: George Zimmerman); "he hit me 26 seconds ago and now I'm pissed" not so much.
Is it morally correct, too? Someone commits battery and risks committing murder, but because they haven't (yet?) escalated to a higher probability of death I should be upset that their victim does so first? The outcome was still a tragedy, but I'm not sure "always trust that a violent assailant is going to carefully calibrate their violence level" is a Schelling point that doesn't lead to greater tragedy in the long term.
Why did you pick homicides with Rifles? My pre-condition was that homicides with long guns are essentially irrelevant in the USA. Just seems silly, I would equally place homicides with rifles as among the things people get too conspicuously upset over as compared to their statistical relevance.
You cite the fatality rate of handgun shots, and that one punch can kill. The article you link cites 80 deaths between 2007 and 2017 in England, so around eight deaths a year from single punches. I'm having trouble finding how many fights involving punches there are per year in England, but there are about two million crimes against the person per year. That seems like a relevant pool to draw those eight deaths out of.
I understand where this seems super rational if in your life you are never the subject of violence. But if you have been, you realize that the vast majority of fights do not end in deaths, or even in serious injuries or concussions, they end in a few bruises and a lot of adrenaline. There are about 200,000 Aggravated Assaults with fists etc in the US every year, that does not count the probable-majority of fistfights that end in no charges or lesser charges. ((I have been in a few fights, probably "lost" them all, none resulted in charges filed against anyone, I don't know how to parse that beyond anecdote to be honest)) There were 26,000 total homicides, including justifiable ones, and the vast majority of those were committed with firearms. The numbers are just entirely off.
Now, if strong evidence were presented that he showed the gun, threatened Washington with it, and then Washington came at him anyway, I would take his side. Threatening with the firearm is probably a proportional escalation, and if he continues after the firearm is shown than you are justified in using lethal force because he clearly intends to. Rittenhouse was in that situation, because the group escalated against him despite his firearm he clearly had to use it. But using the firearm against him when he is several feet away from you, against merely being punched, is not reasonable.
I don't disagree with this at all, not least because once a threat isn't imminent we have a whole system for doling out punishments that's way better than vigilante retribution. I'm just annoyed at the "well, as long as nobody died it wasn't lethal until a gun came out" attitude
That's one reasonable guess, anyway. In the other thread I said that I'd be much much less sure about the morality of lethally punishing a 0.001%-lethal attack; if even that was an overestimate and we're talking about 0.0004% lethal then yeah, lethal punishment would be grossly excessive.
If we were to take 200,000 / 5 as the pool (your aggravated assaults with fists number scaled down to UK population) we'd be at 0.02% lethal, which ... still isn't enough to make me want lethal punishment, but is enough for me not to feel too awful when it happens.
Curious: how many of them were of the "let's take this outside" variety, and how many of the sucker-punch variety? There's something about the latter in particular that makes it hard me to fault victims for making poor choices.
My only remaining quibble is that it's a little cruel to expect someone who's just been brained to clearly and rapidly deduce the extent to which the attack is ongoing and/or lethal, and to assume responsibility on both sides of the risk profile for guessing too high and guessing too low.
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How do you know it's a "mere punch' and not just the first punch of you getting beaten to a cripple or to death? How do you know that this isn't the last opportunity to use your gun before it'll be taken from you and possibly used against you?
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