“When the state is unjust, citizens may use justifiable violence” by Jason Brennan

[RevolverRob]

Once upon a time in a sky far far away, I was flying Royal Jordanian when some fellow acted out in some manner and found himself in a duct tape cocoon being thumped by the crew and a few helpful passengers. I immediately recognized this as neither my circus nor my monkeys and continued to watch Big Bang Theory.

Some places in the world still allow the educational beat-down. Intervening in such is unwise, particularly when you are within the authority of those administering the educational beat-down. I'm stuck in an airplane hours from any landmass heading to a foreign country who's laws on such things I don't know to intervene for a guy who's prior actions I don't know because why? No thanks. And that's just an aircrew. You think I'd step in if a Jordanian cop was beating someone? Lulz, no. My mission is to get me and my family home, and angering local authorities by interjecting myself in a scenario I know nothing about in a context I know nothing about in a set of laws I'm not clear on isn't helpful to that mission.

Once upon a time in a land far away on a different continent. I witnessed two men have a disagreement over a gyro. One was the proprietor of the gyro stand, the other an ostensible customer. I watched in detached interest as the customer threw his gyro across the counter at the proprietor. Who promptly came out from behind the counter and began whipping the ass of his, past-tense, customer, with one of those relatively long bendy spatulas you might use for scooping meat off of a grill. The 'customer' went down and the proprietor bodily drug him out into the street and threw him out, after delivering a short kick to the ribs.

I continued to each my gyro and fries (it was delicious) and tipped the proprietor on my way out for the good show.

In other words, I fully agree, stay the fuck out of it. I stayed the fuck out of it, not my monkey, circus, county fair, country, or language. No clue what was said, since it was in a language I am not fluent in, but it clearly wasn't polite. Regardless, the matter was resolved quite rapidly without significant damage to either party and it was simultaneously entertaining to watch.

I find the entire possibility vanishingly small in the US and an extremely foolhardy thing to insert yourself in to physically if it did.

I fully agree. Which is another reason why I don't think there needs to be any special legislation in this realm. I concur with @Trooper224's assessment that there is ideological merit to the ideas proposed in the OP, but promotion of such a mindset is needless and dangerous.

From a purely academic point of view - If one were to find oneself in this, exceptionally unlikely, situation and if one were inclined to insert themselves into the situation, I believe that the justice system could separate out the good and bad actors. Partly, because the situation would have to be so extreme and extenuating that circumstances surrounding it would be thoroughly investigated and partly because if you (universal) were inclined to get involved for whatever set of reasons, you'd damn well better be able to articulate your decision making chain leading up to it.

[GNiner]

The idea presented in this thread is a totally alien concept to me.

Maybe I've lived a sheltered life, but I truly cannot imagine it any other way. I understand there are some bad characters serving in the LE role, but I truly find the concept posed in the OP distasteful and appalling.

I am right there with you. Maybe it is a generational thing (pushing 60). However if I came upon a civilian "intervening" with a police officer and getting into shootout with said officer, I would be very likely to shoot such civilian. Even with no knowledge of the prior situation. My only assessment is that the officer is in trouble, and HE is the good guy. There is no other room in my consciousness for any other possibility.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

I might point out to those who found the idea distasteful that the linked piece had an ending section that discussed the use of force against agents of the state engaged in systematic acts of tyranny as in racial and ethnic oppression. Some of the acts were cultural, some were actually enforcing laws.

That gives nuance to the discussion beyond intervening in the individualistic 'beat down' scenario. Systematic beat downs of innocents of a community are acts of oppression and a different beast.

How to deal with a rogue and the personal risk to you is different from resistance to the governmental agents of true oppression. By that I want to differentiate from nuts arguing about cattle grazing or the like.

Would one fight the Paris police rounding up Jews for the camps? Would one fight legal slave catchers in the period of the Fugitive Slave Acts? There was great debate then of resisting and helping such escaped slaves vs. the need to 'obey' the law.

There is not a clear set of principles as self-interest and risk, what determines a moral action (abstract principles of conscience, obedience to the law) all intersect in one's decision making. Isn't like moral decision making principles haven't been a problem for many years.

I once posed to a class, if Jehovah turned someone to salt in the modern USA for violating the God's moral principle - not self-defense, should the deity be arrested for murder or manslaughter depending on circumstance. Quite a conundrum for the 18 year old mind.

[Joe in PNG]

My $0.02:
If the state itself has turned properly tyrannical, then one has a moral obligation to do what one can to fight it. The ammo box comes into play.

If individual agents of the state are tyrannical, then it is better to use the soap, jury, and ballot boxes.

[willie]

As a forum member, I am uncomfortable with the question. One reason is that if taken out of context, some comments might come across as something other than possible events and possible action taken under extreme circumstance. Then when taken out of context, we all appear in a bad light. In no way am I an apologist for police. My primary profession was teaching. I'm not an apologist for this group either, which by the way seems to attract pedophiles. It all boils down to competent leadership. In its absence quality degrades. My post has zero to do with any particular post or any other members viewpoint. I sense a can of worms .

[JRB]

Many of my very good friends are in LE. One of my oldest and closest friends is a local LEO that's had to use lethal force far more often than the average - and while activist types have grabbed his name and tried to smear it in the mud as best they can to make that use-of-force seem excessive or tyrannical or whatever, I know he did the right thing every time, and that right thing was easily spun into a bad thing with willful ignorance and the desire to make cops look bad.

Knowing that makes it difficult for me to even entertain using lethal force on an LEO even if that LEO was 100% in the wrong. The only incredibly unlikely possibility would be if I saw an LEO about to shoot or otherwise delivering loss of life/limb/eyesight levels of force on a loved one that I knew 100% to be innocent of any crime and not resisting. The chances of that happening are so incredibly small and so incredibly and stupidly unlikely that even entertaining the construct of the possibility is ridiculous. Might as well ponder what it'd be like to hit the Powerball every week for a year straight.

That said, the defense of LEO's is starting to get a smidge excessive, and tends to value the lives of LEO's more than the lives of normal lawful citizens.
I first observed this when a psycho fuckup in ABQ ambushed and murdered two APD officers and then went on to murder three more people - a 54 year old man, a 26 year old man, and a 17 year old boy. The names of the two officers were everywhere in support of the loss to APD.
But is the murder of an innocent 17 year old not a worse thing than the murder of an LEO that damn sure knew the risks, and voluntarily subjected himself to those risks? The respect due an LEO is specifically because they chose to accept those risks and that is profoundly commendable and in today's LE management and legal environment it's even MORE commendable. But I don't believe that makes their lives more valuable than the lives of regular lawful folks.

When I hear of enhancements to sentencing for murdering LEO's, I cringe inwardly. If the sentence for murdering a lawful honest person is insufficient, if the system cannot effectively punish those who murder innocent kids, why enhance it only for LEO's? Why not simply make the sentence for Murder a harsher one across the board?

But I'm also the same guy that cringes inwardly when nice old ladies see me in my uniform and thank me for my service. So maybe it's just me.

On someone in custody, right?

I don't have 100% faith in any system or device made by man, and the legal system is pretty far down the list of 'Systems I trust implicitly'.
To that end, yes, due process of law and constitutionally sound conduct is important at all times and I do emphatically believe it should be carried out.

But in those particularly despicable, outlandishly egregious cases like that one, where the crime is that chillingly depraved, brazen, and obvious, those suspects used to get quite a bit of extra 'attention' before belt recorders and body cams and worldstar. The community and PD's and everyone else damn well knew it and damn few people had a word to say about it being a bad thing in the rare cases like this.
That 'privilege' (for want of a better term) was abused, and used unjustly, and the fact that body cams and belt recorders happened isn't a bad thing overall by any means. In these kinds of rare cases, though....
I guess we can hope those soulless pieces of shit end up in genpop and that everyone in that building knows what they did.

[Trooper224]

When I hear of enhancements to sentencing for murdering LEO's, I cringe inwardly. If the sentence for murdering a lawful honest person is insufficient, if the system cannot effectively punish those who murder innocent kids, why enhance it only for LEO's? Why not simply make the sentence for Murder a harsher one across the board?

Harsher sentencing for the killing of an LEO has nothing to do with the belief that their lives are worth more than the average citizen. It's predicated on the belief that anyone who would kill an armed officer of the law poses a greater threat to society at large. Whether this is factual is open for debate. However, if there's any group of people who don't especially value LEO lives it's law making politicians and the court system.

[Hambo]

Saw this piece via the economics blog: MARGINAL REVOLUTION.

Thoughts?

It gets a lot of traffic on the blog.

[TGS]

When I hear of enhancements to sentencing for murdering LEO's, I cringe inwardly. If the sentence for murdering a lawful honest person is insufficient, if the system cannot effectively punish those who murder innocent kids, why enhance it only for LEO's? Why not simply make the sentence for Murder a harsher one across the board?

Like Trooper noted, it's not about the value of the LEOs life. Aggravating factors are usually lumped into a category that includes more than just LEOs....pregnant women, young children, in the furtherance of some other heinous or severe end state (terrorism, drug trafficking, etc.). It's simply the court system believing that the person committing the crime is self-evidently more worse of a human being and that much less fit for society, in simpleton terms.

I guess where we went off track is losing the nuance, and instead turning the sentencing guidelines and prosecutorial threshold into a series of stacking discount coupons as a coping mechanism for under-resourced courts that don't have the docket space and manpower to effectively prosecute crimes at the appropriate level, and under-resourced prison systems that can't hold enough prisoners because of the extra luxuries they're entitled to in current day America. Take that and multiply it with the new feel-good bail reform and non-prosecution theories held by a particular political party, and we have the inmates running the asylum.

[ER_STL]

This thread has went about as well as I suspected it would.



Once upon a time in a sky far far away, I was flying Royal Jordanian when some fellow acted out in some manner and found himself in a duct tape cocoon being thumped by the crew and a few helpful passengers. I immediately recognized this as neither my circus nor my monkeys and continued to watch Big Bang Theory.

Some places in the world still allow the educational beat-down. Intervening in such is unwise, particularly when you are within the authority of those administering the educational beat-down. I'm stuck in an airplane hours from any landmass heading to a foreign country who's laws on such things I don't know to intervene for a guy who's prior actions I don't know because why? No thanks. And that's just an aircrew. You think I'd step in if a Jordanian cop was beating someone? Lulz, no. My mission is to get me and my family home, and angering local authorities by interjecting myself in a scenario I know nothing about in a context I know nothing about in a set of laws I'm not clear on isn't helpful to that mission.

I find the entire possibility vanishingly small in the US and an extremely foolhardy thing to insert yourself in to physically if it did.

And we won't even talk about what happened in the Jordanian rest-stops you visited...