site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

40
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Reposting on request from Zorba:

The discussion of defensive gun usage in a major survey in the CW thread got me thinking about an experience I had some years back. I thought I'd tell the story to illustrate the sorts of things that can happen around violent or potentially violent situations. For what it's worth, I'm not sure if I classify this as a defensive gun use or not, but it qualifies under the terminology of the survey. It was very much a memorable night, and made me rethink the way I carry guns and the sorts of scenarios I prepare for.

First thing: I was drunk. Dancing-in-public drunk. My girlfriend and I had attended a wedding of some friends, someone else was the DD, so I took full advantage. At the time, my girlfriend lived with another single girl in a house outside town. Isolated, quiet. Cornfields and scattered houses. The housemate had been on a date, and the two of them were back at the house when we got dropped off. We said hello and left them to do whatever people on dates do on darkened living room couches while we went upstairs to bed. I passed out almost immediately.

The GF woke me up a short time later, there was a commotion downstairs. A strange man had arrived and was banging on the main door of the house, loudly demanding to speak to the housemate's date. I went downstairs, the date said he knew the man, that it was his pastor. He said he'd handle it, so I went back upstairs. As a precaution, I retrieved my carry gun and kept it close to hand. At this point, I was regretting the drinking. Waste of a good drunk.

Outside, the date had gone out onto the porch to talk to the guy, we could hear muffle conversation, then escalating in volume. There was a series of loud crashes, and the housemate started screaming that she was calling the police. Fuck me running. I remember clearly getting out of bed the second time, gun in hand, wearing basketball shorts, dress socks and nothing else. An ironic thought occurred to me: "so this is why people look like this on 'Cops'". Not the sort of situation I had envisioned when I started carrying a firearm.

I got downstairs and the date was bleeding from his face, apparently his pastor had assaulted him. The housemate had called the police, but it would be over twenty minutes before they arrived (given where we were, that was probably a fast time). Meanwhile, the pastor had discovered a hatchet that had been left out of the shed and started walking around the house, hitting the siding with the hatchet and shouting for the date to come back out and talk to him. Needless to say, that dude didn't seem enthused about the proposition. The crashing I'd heard had been the date falling into and through the screen door on the porch after the guy decked him.

The GF was curious, but I sent her back upstairs, told the housemate to lock the door behind me, and went out onto the porch. I might be tanked, but it was not my first rodeo. I leaned against the wall of the house (casually, I hoped) both to stay steady on my feet and to conceal the pistol I was now holding behind my leg. The situation was fairly simple: The man would have to make a 90-degree turn to come up the steps to the porch, after which I'd be within arms reach. I set my line at the bottom of the steps. If he tried to come up onto the porch, I would shoot him.

For a lunatic who was banging a hatchet on the side of a random house at 2AM in the middle of a cornfield, the pastor sounded lucid. He just wanted to talk, he felt bad, the whole thing had gotten out of hand etc. etc. Whole time he had the hatchet in his hand. In my hazy state, I decided to go with simplicity. "Put down the ax, go back to your car, and drive away". He'd try to argue something, and I'd just repeat it. This went on for maybe ten minutes. I was feeling like a broken record, but finally, finally he walked away. He dropped the hatchet, got into his car, and drove away. Shortly thereafter, the police showed up.

I went back to bed.

The coda is that the date didn't press charges, turns out the "pastor" was a self-proclaimed one with a long history of mental illness, sort of a street-preacher type. The housemate had to pay for the siding repair herself. The police were little help, and the prosecutor's office wasn't interested in dealing with a mental patient over property damage.

So that's the story. It's weird, but in my very limited experience it looks a lot more like the median "DGU" than a shootout in a pawn shop. These are the sorts of stories that do not generally make the papers or the police reports, but happen on a daily basis, many many times.

While this would certainly qualify as a defensive gun use, this is the kind of use that makes me highly suspect of the actual utility of it. Yes, from the story you tell it sounds like you would have had a clear case of self-defense, but I (and presumably anyone else reading this) is going to be biased toward your side of the story. The police, however, are not necessarily going to share this natural bias. Suppose you shoot and kill the guy; what then? Your story makes a good case for self-defense: The guy had already assaulted the housmeate's date and was brandishing a dangerous implement, which he was already using to vandalize the house. He refused to leave when asked to, and approached you with the hatchet in a presumably threatening manner.

There's another side to this, though. You were drunk. The guy didn't enter the house. You didn't know the guy and weren't involved in the initial altercation. You deliberately left the safety of the house and went outside with a gun looking to confront the man. I'm not trying to say that your actions were unreasonable given the circumstances, just that the cops don't know what happened and they aren't going to just take the word of the guy in basketball shorts and dress socks who has a pretty good reason to tell stories.

Unless you're incredibly stupid, you aren't saying anything without a lawyer present, and given that it's 2 am on a Sunday morning and you're drunk, you can pretty much guarantee that you'll be spending the rest of the night in a police holding cell. Best case scenario you can raise a lawyer the next morning, the police buy your story, and they let you go right away without pressing charges. All it cost you was at least $500 in attorney's fees (put probably more like a thousand) and the worst night of your life.

More likely, though is that the police do an investigation that lasts months. This is a homicide, after all, and it isn't a clear-cut case of self-defense like a home invasion or attempted robbery. the victim's family could pressure the police. The story you give might not match up with ballistics. The investigators could simply not believe you. The police are going to interview everyone who was in the house last night, and who there can corroborate your story? Your girlfriend was upstairs the whole time and probably can't do anything but testify to the banging and yelling. The housemate might be able to provide a little more detail about the altercation, but probably not too much. The date can provide the most information, but given that he didn't want to press charges against the guy (and he presumably looks to him for spiritual support) there's a good chance he downplays the whole incident and makes it look like your actions were unjustified. Now you're looking at months of hell and thousands in attorney's fees, even if it all ends with the DA declining to press charges.

There was a case in Western PA last winter where a guy at a hunting camp was shot after erratically firing an AK-47 and forcing the other people at the camp to stay at gunpoint. The incident happened in December but the investigation dragged on until the middle of March before the DA announced that they couldn't overcome their burden of proof in a self-defense case. This was in a rural area that is generally pro-gun. Alternatively, had you stayed inside, ordered the others upstairs, and waited with the gun in case the shit hit the fan, the police probably would have arrived before he was able to break in (if that was even his intention), and if you had to shoot him, the self-defense case in much clearer.

There was a case in Western PA last winter where a guy at a hunting camp was shot after erratically firing an AK-47 and forcing the other people at the camp to stay at gunpoint. The incident happened in December but the investigation dragged on until the middle of March before the DA announced that they couldn't overcome their burden of proof in a self-defense case. This was in a rural area that is generally pro-gun.

Would that be this case? It's a little interesting, but this summary seems to be skipping over a couple details, especially given that the out-of-state interest in the matter driven by reporting certain it was a hate crime, which was so severe and widespread that today, months after the conclusion of the investigation, the Venango DA's website still has a brightly-highlighted statement emphasizing that he's taking a "complete and thorough investigation".

If this is the case you're referencing, "couldn't overcome their burden of proof" does not seem an accurate summary where the DA explicitly called it justified self-defense.

And, yes, more broadly, this seems like a central example of the_nybbler's "Anti-self-defense people have managed to rig the system so completely against self-defense that even someone who shoots someone dead for good reasons will be made to seriously regret it". This says a lot about a lot, but not about self-defense itself.

I actually deliberately left that information out in the hope that an enterprising individual such as yourself would track down the story and find out that there was a bit more to it than a straightforward case of self-defense. The point I'm trying to make is that the way I presented it is the way it looked to the shooter at the time: Guy on shrooms waving a gun around, acting crazy and refusing to let them leave. Then once the deed is done more complications come out of the woodwork. There's a bias investigation because the guy was black. There's the fact that the guy never made any direct threats. There's the fact that he was shot nine times in all parts of his body. When you're the one in fear of your life all these things seem like pointless details that you don't even remember. But the police aren't in your shoes. The victim's family isn't in your shoes. The police can't just take your word for what happened, no matter how reasonable it may seem to you. That's why statements like "Anti-self-defense people have managed to rig the system so completely against self-defense that even someone who shoots someone dead for good reasons will be made to seriously regret it" don't quite make sense to me. I mean, yeah, it's certainly possible that that's true at least in some places, but it doesn't really say much about what I'm getting at. If someone is shot dead the police have to investigate. If they were simply to take every self-defense claim at face value then we'd effectively have legalized murder, especially in gangland situations. Unless you can prove that the other guy didn't shoot first, you can't arrest anyone. And if you're taking the guy at his word that the victim did shoot first, then there's not much else to do. As soon as you agree that an investigation needs to be completed, and it's not going to be some half-assed investigation meant to corroborate the shooter's claim of self-defense, then the shooter needs to get an attorney. And the more inconsistencies and complications that investigation uncovers, the worse it's going to be. It's not a question of whether the legal system is unfairly biased against self-defense claims, it's a question of what needs to occur to have a functioning legal system at all.

There's the fact that the guy never made any direct threats.

uh:

"Spencer then became extremely angry that the others refused to follow his instructions to gather wood and started swearing at the Mercer man and pointing the AK-47 into his face, according to the report. Investigators wrote that Spencer also started demanding to know where the female in the group had gone, according to the report. The Mercer man said he tried to calm Spencer, but Spencer repeatedly demanded to know where the girl was and stated he would "shoot up the place if (he) needed to," according to the report."

I think that's kinda gonna count.

There's the fact that he was shot nine times in all parts of his body.

uh:

The autopsy report revealed that Spencer was struck nine times. There were two entry wounds to the front torso and upper right chest (exiting the back), one entry wound to the face (non-lethal, through the lower lip exiting side of neck), two closely-grouped entry wounds to the side under the right arm, two entry wounds to the back (superficial, grazing wounds), and two closely-grouped entry wounds in the buttocks.

The family's attorneys have found a forensic pathologist who disputed the self-defense claims, but that focused on which direction the shots went, with Wecht holding that most of the wounds on Spencer's back were entry wounds, and the state's forensics department saying they were exit wounds. There are professionalism arguments in favor of not magdumping. This shot list does not, on its own, raise serious questions about the self-defense claim. It is, charitably, a bit of a stretch to call the head, torso, and buttocks "all parts of his body".

If someone is shot dead the police have to investigate. If they were simply to take every self-defense claim at face value then we'd effectively have legalized murder, especially in gangland situations.

There's been people making similar arguments over the Rittenhouse, and the Gardner cases, and a good few others.

In one sense, it's true! Someone claiming "they were coming right for us!" alone isn't reason for the police to pack it up and go home! In one sense, yes, there's a reason self-defense experts like Masaad Ayoob recommend having a lawyer on retainer.

((I mean, not actually, descriptively true, but that's more because there's a number of police departments that are garbage.))

But for this specific case, day one had every witness at the scene says that the shot guy was threatening to shoot up the place and was trying to block their escape, his pockets are filled with their keys and one of their cell phones, and there's a bunch of recently-used shell cases matching the shot guy's gun, and tons of gunpowder residue up and down shot guy's arms. Nothing to contradict the self-defense claim comes up. And then on day two, the post-mortem tox report lights up like a Christmas tree in ways that support the suspect's claims, and completely unaffiliated witnesses from the camp owners -- who the suspect might not even have know were there -- give testimony about the shot pattern that matches. Still nothing to contradict the claim.

((And that's ignoring the stuff probably not admissible in court and shouldn't be considered by prosecutors but often is, like the rifle with an obliterated serial number and the already-active ATF investigation.))

Notably, unlike your hypothetical, no one was arrested or detained overnight. Now, this isn't the clearest-cut case of self-defense, since there was no video evidence. But I'm exceptionally skeptical that an honest and impartial prosecutor, not having the force of the state attorney general, the state police hate crimes side, national media coverage, international media coverage, so on, hits your parade of horribles.

And, what a coincidence! The same group is all, every single one, conveniently also opposed to civilian gun ownership and self-defense.

As soon as you agree that an investigation needs to be completed, and it's not going to be some half-assed investigation meant to corroborate the shooter's claim of self-defense, then the shooter needs to get an attorney.

Yes, tradeoffs exist. But the opening framework was not whether an investigation could occur, but that "this is the kind of use that makes me highly suspect of the actual utility of it." The scale of the tradeoffs matter. 1K USD and a bad night is not actually that bad compared to axe wounds and/or tens of thousands of dollars in property damage. There's a lot of things people will deal with for even a moderate reduction in the chance them and three of their friends of getting shot in the head by someone hopped up on shrooms, demanding that they sprawl out and call him a good, and confiscating their keys and cellphone.

What do you mean by "it" in:

this is the kind of use that makes me highly suspect of the actual utility of it.

This is all true, and it's why I didn't make a statement to the police at all. I'm fairly sure I was on firm self-defense territory, but I'm glad we never got to find out. You never know when you're going to fall into a media scandal, or an overzealous prosecutor, or just a bad cop. At the time, my thought was that with the hatchet, he could break the sliding glass door on the other side of the house and be inside in seconds. It is also the case that staying on the porch was on purpose, as it is legally part of the house (or curtilage).

Of all of it, the intoxication thing got to me the most. Prior to that night, it never occurred to me that just because I don't carry a gun to the bar doesn't mean I might not have to use a gun while drunk. There's no straightforward solution except to not have guns or not drink, and neither option appeals to me. I drink less now, and the lessons of that night are one reason.

All this reads as "Anti-self-defense people have managed to rig the system so completely against self-defense that even someone who shoots someone dead for good reasons will be made to seriously regret it". Except, of course, there's that other counterfactual. The one where nobody has a gun and the "pastor" kills one or more people with that hatchet. That one still seems worse than months of hell and thousands in attorney's fees.