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I don't think it's a good look to try to justify police shooting unarmed civilians. Being a QAnon conspiracy theorist shouldn't be reason enough to shoot her in

I don't think it's a good look to try to justify police shooting unarmed civilians. Being a QAnon conspiracy theorist shouldn't be reason enough to shoot her in cold blood.

pfarrell 5y ago
If she had not stuck her head through the window, she’d have walked out with all the other people in that room. It’s incorrect to categorize her death as due to her beliefs. It was her actions.
- honkdaddy 5y ago
  I'm trying to find a charitable way of interpreting this comment but I'm not able to. If I break the law and an officer shoots me in cold blood, it was my actions, not my beliefs which led to my death. Does that mean I deserved it?
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    “Unarmed” is usually relevant because the other facts framing the event make clear that only an armed person could have been a imminent threat to officers or others so aa to justify deadly force. Babbitt was at the head of a mob breaking through a barricade preventing them from access to members and staff of Congress, against whom the mob was threatening violence, and whom had only seconds before cleared the lobby (and who therefore were in imminent danger of being overtaken by the mob had the mob not been stopped at the barricade.) There were insufficient officers present to control the mob even with deadly force were they not stopped at the barrier. > If I break the law and an officer shoots me in cold blood, it was my actions, not my beliefs which led to my death. Does that mean I deserved it? If you break the law in a way which poses an imminent serious threat to other people’s lives, and no other means are available that are likely to stop you, then an officer is certainly justified in using deadly force. (Whether you deserve it is a question of the morality of your act, not the officer’s, which is not germane to the shooting. Maybe your threatening act is under some kind of external compulsion or internal mental disorder that would make you not fully culpable and thus not deserving of the consequences of the justified response to your action. That you don't, in that case, deserve death doesn't make the justified action which proximately causes your death unjustified, though.)
freen 5y ago
If the people storming the capital has been brown, it would have been a massacre.
- honkdaddy 5y ago
  You're almost certainly right. But doesn't that mean you agree that cops shooting unarmed civilians is a bad thing?
  - freen 5y ago
    Of course: police evolved out of fugitive slave posses. Their funding should be decreased and the social safety net increased. And you agree that if it was brown people, it would have been called a coup and there would people on trial for treason.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    The cops shooting people who don't pose an imminent threat to the officers or others justifying shooting is a bad thing. In lots of circumstances, other clear and undisputed facts make it so that “unarmed” added to them implies “no imminent threat”, but “unarmed” is not, otherwise, decisive.

I don't think it's a good look to try to justify police shooting unarmed civilians. Being a QAnon conspiracy theorist shouldn't be reason enough to shoot her in cold blood.

pfarrell 5y ago

If she had not stuck her head through the window, she’d have walked out with all the other people in that room. It’s incorrect to categorize her death as due to her beliefs. It was her actions.

honkdaddy 5y ago
I'm trying to find a charitable way of interpreting this comment but I'm not able to. If I break the law and an officer shoots me in cold blood, it was my actions, not my beliefs which led to my death. Does that mean I deserved it?
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  “Unarmed” is usually relevant because the other facts framing the event make clear that only an armed person could have been a imminent threat to officers or others so aa to justify deadly force. Babbitt was at the head of a mob breaking through a barricade preventing them from access to members and staff of Congress, against whom the mob was threatening violence, and whom had only seconds before cleared the lobby (and who therefore were in imminent danger of being overtaken by the mob had the mob not been stopped at the barricade.) There were insufficient officers present to control the mob even with deadly force were they not stopped at the barrier. > If I break the law and an officer shoots me in cold blood, it was my actions, not my beliefs which led to my death. Does that mean I deserved it? If you break the law in a way which poses an imminent serious threat to other people’s lives, and no other means are available that are likely to stop you, then an officer is certainly justified in using deadly force. (Whether you deserve it is a question of the morality of your act, not the officer’s, which is not germane to the shooting. Maybe your threatening act is under some kind of external compulsion or internal mental disorder that would make you not fully culpable and thus not deserving of the consequences of the justified response to your action. That you don't, in that case, deserve death doesn't make the justified action which proximately causes your death unjustified, though.)

freen 5y ago

If the people storming the capital has been brown, it would have been a massacre.

honkdaddy 5y ago
You're almost certainly right. But doesn't that mean you agree that cops shooting unarmed civilians is a bad thing?
- freen 5y ago
  Of course: police evolved out of fugitive slave posses. Their funding should be decreased and the social safety net increased. And you agree that if it was brown people, it would have been called a coup and there would people on trial for treason.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  The cops shooting people who don't pose an imminent threat to the officers or others justifying shooting is a bad thing. In lots of circumstances, other clear and undisputed facts make it so that “unarmed” added to them implies “no imminent threat”, but “unarmed” is not, otherwise, decisive.