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No, what he did had legal authority. Use of force against threats to life (and that is what it was deemed by officials both during and after the fact) is one of
by microcolonel 9y ago
No, what he did had legal authority. Use of force against threats to life (and that is what it was deemed by officials both during and after the fact) is one of the natural rights the U.S. is officially constituted to protect.
Cowardice is not a civic duty, nor a virtue. Use of force by civilians in perceived service of the law is often justified. Going out looking for a fight is one thing, serving the public is another.
Ideally, the law can be upheld without force; when force is required to uphold the law, we could ideally rely on peace officers to be ready, willing, and able to take on that burden; but in the end, it is the responsibility of society as a whole to uphold the law and prevent suffering.
When force is necessary, and when peace officers aren't around, a person who uses the necessary degree of force to rescue old people from a drone who would rather watch them wade naked in their own faeces until they go hypothermic or fall ill, than violate a workplace policy is not a vigilante, but an upstanding citizen.
It's natural to scrutinize and question the motivations of somebody who has used force, but it is a disservice to us all to hold common people to a higher standard of conduct than the police.
- muzz 9y agoYou didn't cite any statue; your use of "constituted" was as a regular verb ie not referring to the capital-c Consitution. Therefore, your comment appears to be an opinion
- reactor4 9y agostatute
- fleitz 9y agoIt's always hilarious when the grammar nazi has a spelling mistake in his grammar nazi post.
- jimmywanger 9y agoTo be honest, it's a spelling mistake, not a grammar mistake. The misspelling of a word does not destroy the sentence structure.
- reactor4 9y agoNo it doesn't destroy the sentence structure but it does destroy his argument, especially given that the "mistake" he was pointing out was very far fetched and not really a mistake at all.
- fleitz 9y ago"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It's the first fucking sentence in the document that started teh United States, natural rights don't come from the government, they are inherent to being human. Also, everything is just an opinion, including your much vaunted 'statues' edit: Downvote away, I've got 13,000 karma to burn, I wish karma was like money so I could use 100 to light a smoke.
- JasonFruit 9y agoYes, exactly! When someone asks you to name the statute that gives you a right, they're asking, "Who's your tyrant?"
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoYou are being really childish and confrontational about this, and I'm not clear why.
- fleitz 9y agoProbably because even children know about the declaration of independence... Also the whole thing about thing being an opinion sounds as dumb as when someone says gravity is just a theory...
- sctb 9y agoWe've already asked you repeatedly to read the guidelines and start following them, so we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll post civilly and substantively in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- TheAdamAndChe 9y agoAre there places in the world where this "opinion" isn't considered the way the world works? Is vigilantism during a disaster frowned upon in other parts of the world? Because I'd think self-regulation under times of stress would be a good thing.
- rdl 9y agoYeah; there's really no legal difference between what a private citizen can do to protect the life of an innocent vs. what a police officer can do, at least as far as deadly force goes. In situations other than immediate/unavoidable threat to the life of an innocent, police are allowed to overmatch force for compliance, vs. some situations where non-police are supposed to use similar force, but once you hit a situation which allows deadly force, it's basically the same. (This is common law, and was settled well before the US Constitution; the law on homicide is remarkably static. The only interesting change has been the fleeing felon stuff in the US.) The legal questions which are a lot more interesting around this kind of rescue operation are property damage, unintentional harms, incompetence, liability, etc. (like, if volunteers direct people to a shelter which is itself unsafe, or if people get harmed during rescues. Government agents have a lot of immunity there, relative to private citizens.)
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoAt what point is drawing a gun on an unarmed person justified?
- crystalmeph 9y agoWhen that person is endangering lives by holding several helpless people in lethal conditions.