14 ms·

So, you’ve been challenged to a duel. What are the rules? (2016)

134 points by SerCe 4y ago

litoE 4y ago
There's the story that when Abe Lincoln was challenged to a duel, he responded with his choice of weapons: cow dung at 10 paces. Needless to say, the duel never took place.
- opo 4y ago
  >...he responded with his choice of weapons: cow dung at 10 paces. That is not correct. >...Since Lincoln was challenged by Shields he had the privilege of choosing the weapon of the duel. He chose cavalry broadswords "of the largest size." "I didn't want the d—-d fellow to kill me, which I think he would have done if we had selected pistols," he later explained. For his own part, he did not want to kill Shields, but "felt sure [he] could disarm him" with a blade. At six feet, four inches tall, Lincoln planned to use his height to his advantage against Shields, who stood at a mere five feet, nine inches tall. >The day of the duel, September 22, arrived and the combatants met at Bloody Island, Missouri to face death or victory. As the two men faced each other, with a plank between them that neither was allowed to cross, Lincoln swung his sword high above Shields to cut through a nearby tree branch. This act demonstrated the immensity of Lincoln’s reach and strength and was enough to show Shields that he was at a fatal disadvantage. With the encouragement of bystanders, the two men called a truce. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/abraham-lincolns-duel https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/abraham-lincolns...
giantg2 4y ago
It would be interesting if they made this legal again. Maybe there'd be less people caught up in gang shootings etc if you had them dual it out in a controlled space... assuming they aren't cowards.
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
  As crazy as it sounds, I cant easily disagree with you . Every boiling pot needs to relieve pressure. People need an outlet for their frustrations. Wars are far rarer, quite impersonal, and harder to shake off (as is the uniform). Even fistfight by consenting adults can get you in trouble. So many turn to crime. Maybe there is room for a middle layer between anger and crime, between consenting adults with clear rules.
  - jrumbut 4y ago
    You could always box. As far as I know there is almost no pre-qualification required for a private sparring session and even the qualification to be a professional is a very low bar (IIRC it is primarily a matter of eyesight, since you can't wear glasses in the ring).
    - wellthisisgreat 4y ago
      box to the death? that's rough. I imagine that a conflict that warrants a duel has at least one of the parties seeing death of their opponent
      - jrumbut 4y ago
        You obviously aren't allowed to box to the death and shouldn't be, but it represents a meaningful middle ground between anger and crime.
      - Turing_Machine 4y ago
        In my understanding, it wasn't actually a given that someone would die as the result of a duel. While certainly a possibility, the poor accuracy of pistols of the day (if pistols were chosen) and the possibility of the duel being stopped by the physicians after blood was drawn (if swords were chosen) meant that honor was often deemed to be satisfied well short of anyone being killed. It was also not uncommon for either or both combatants to simply fire their pistols into the air. Again, honor was generally deemed to be satisfied if this happened. This took some courage if you were the first one to fire into the air, as you were still required under the code to stand there and let the other guy take a shot at you if he so chose.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  You can already still duel. It's hard for anything to happen if neither presses damages due to respecting the duel.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    That's not actually true. The prosecutor and police can still come after you for most charges. For example, if you end up killing the other person, the prosecutor will still come after you for murder. The reason they tend to ignore lesser crimes if someone doesn't want to press charges is because they don't want to waste their time if nobody else is interested in taking it to court, and usually they need the witness testimony from the victim (although not always, and they could hold them as a material witness if they wanted to).
- tshaddox 4y ago
  Why would someone who is willing to plan a surprise attack on an enemy instead agree to a formal duel?
  - smabie 4y ago
    Well no legal liability in the duel
    - kmoser 4y ago
      Dueling was largely illegal, which means lots of legal liability for the combatants as well as any one who facilitated the event.
    - komali2 4y ago
      Gang members tend to prefer to exist outside all forms of legality. A formal duel would probably just be seen as cop shit.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    Because these are not mostly disputes over money or material goods. They’re over honour. If the broader society showed some sign of caring about honour the way petty thugs who do drive by shootings to receding slights do they’d shift to the societally airbed way quickly. In the bourgeois society we have where dignity not honour is how worth is ascribed there’s no script for them to follow. Insofar as society is becoming victimhood based on how it conceived worth that’s equally unappealing. https://scholars-stage.org/honor-dignity-and-victimhood-a-tour-through-three-centuries-of-american-political-culture/ https://scholars-stage.org/honor-dignity-and-victimhood-a-to...
- sublinear 4y ago
  I am very certain that most gang violence is far more complicated than a couple of conflicting egos and cowardice is irrelevant.
- duxup 4y ago
  Why would they choose to duel? They can still commit crimes like usual. They could even duel now, but don’t.
- krapp 4y ago
  Yes, that's the problem with gang warfare nowadays, the violence not being governed by a rigid class-based hierarchy of protocols and rituals.
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    It is though. Lack of a formal structure for who is sovereign in deciding disputes is what gets us the chaos of gang warfare. That’s … why there’s the warfare part.
    - krapp 4y ago
      We have a formal structure for who is sovereign in deciding disputes - civil society and the courts. The actual problems of gang violence are endemic - poverty, trauma, systemic racism, underfunded education, poor nutrition, easy access to guns, lack of role models, the romanticizing of criminality in pop culture, to name a few. Nowhere on the list will you find "lack of clearly defined rules for setting order of initiative."
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > We have a formal structure for who is sovereign in deciding disputes - civil society and the courts. We do. But other people reject that system. And we (in the universal sense, in this case) also have a system of resolving that dispute, and it’s, in practice however much it gets gussied up in theory, to borrow a phrase, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”.
      - DennisP 4y ago
        For some people, that formal structure has deficiencies, like throwing you in prison if your complaint is "he stole the meth I was going to sell."
      - s1artibartfast 4y ago
        I would add an enormously profitable market for illicit substances to the top of your list. If you legalized all drugs, gang violence would evaporate practically overnight.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  What do you think a lot of inner city shootings are? Two people beef, guns get drawn, and shots fired. Sometimes your second gets involved, and if he thinks you were treated dishonorably he might hunt down you shooter and that man’s second. It’s even the same kind of honor culture, and was brought from the rural south which was the last bastion of high class American dueling.
  - somenameforme 4y ago
    Dueling has always been an upper class/urban affair, generally between men of wealth and substantial education. Traditionally only the nobility dueled but this was gradually liberalized into all upper class individuals. Even in the article for this thread (which is relatively late in the dueling game), it requires that you view the person you are dueling as a "Gentleman" alongside the all the connotations of such. You can see a list of some US duels (and the participants involved) here [1]. The article also has some interesting backstory. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_duels#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_duels#United_States
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > Traditionally only the nobility dueled but this was gradually liberalized into all upper class individuals. Looked at another way, traditionally only the upper class dueled, and that didn’t change when the capitalist class displaced the feudal aristocracy as the upper class.
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      This is in my opinion far too narrow a view of aristocratic honor culture in the US and how that influenced Southern culture even among lower socioeconomic strata. By the civil war, dueling was pervasive throughout the south[1][2]. Over time this filtered down to "redneck" culture for lack of a better name for lower class southern whites. This in turn had effects on southern black culture and was carried north during the Great Migration[3] to some extent. So what you see in inner city shootings is the direct lineage of early American dueling imported to the south from French aristocrats who fought in the American Revolution. History is truly strange. [1] https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/3655 https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/3655 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dueling_in_the_Southern_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dueling_in_the_Southern_United... [3] https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/31/4/race_crime_and_culture https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/31/4/race_crime_and_c...
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Maybe there’d be less people caught up in gang shootings etc if you had them dual it out in a controlled space… Probably not. While a small part of gang violence deals with situations that might otherwise be handled by duels, a lot of it is more like war between factions which don’t happen to be states. Duels aren’t going to replace turf wars, even if they are legal.
deleted 4y ago
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rippercushions 4y ago
Duelling with swords lives on in Germany, albeit in a very ritualistic, controlled fashion: https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/69224/how-can-a-tourist-obtain-an-authentic-duelling-scar https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/69224/how-can-a-t...
- groby_b 4y ago
  It is actually not permissible to duel. You can engage in "friendly combat", but duelling to restore your honor is both illegal and dishonorable. (The German fraternities, which are responsible for these fights, gave their word of honor that there would be no more duels to satisfy insults to honor) It is also an extremely stupid idea that scars are somehow an "authentic mark". As somebody who fought three of those "mensuren": Scars are a sign that you thought you are better than you actually are. It's the embodiment of "Dunning Kruger walks here".
  - somenameforme 4y ago
    This seems analogous to claiming that an MMA fighter with cauliflower ear just thought they were better than they were. One of the great thing about sports is that they teach humility. You're going to lose a lot on your way up. And it's going to hurt - sometimes quite literally. Even when you don't lose in your pro career, these are the ears of an undefeated champion: https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-13f49281504e1359e87fecade92dbcec https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-13f49281504e1359e87fec...
    - dav_Oz 4y ago
      Since he wrestled his whole life and will probably continue in some way or another to keep himself fit, he doesn't care. However you can easily prevent your ears from "cauliflowering" after severe ear trauma if you drain the accumulated blood before it dries completely out after 2-3 days. At some point if you train a lot some soft/protruding parts of your ears will harden a bit and some edges aren't as smooth as before but it isn't really noticeable to other people.
  - 4y ago
arealaccount 4y ago
People say politics are out of hand these days but man things were wild in 1904. Dueling aside… > Discredited by the duel with Hamilton, Burr sought to regain political power by a filibustering adventure, which led instead to his indictment for treason https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/july-11/ https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/july-11/
- alwayslikethis 4y ago
  *1804 I can't help but think dueling would make politics more honest. I would expect not many to be willing to die to defend their positions if these positions were just paid off by corporations.
  - duxup 4y ago
    Depends on how money is at stake or if you’re just crazy… People put their lives at risk for very little.
    - MikeTheGreat 4y ago
      Agreed. Adding on to what you said - I think it also depends on where you start. If you inherit wealth and/or good opportunities then why risk it, but if not then it would make a lot of sense. After all, lots of people voluntarily enlist in the military, and one factor is not having (m)any other options. (This isn't the only reason, nor is it a factor for everyone) Plus, dueling / fighting is a skill. If you need people who are good at fighting in order to get legislation passed then the rich will hire skilled fighters to go be legislator-duelists for them.
      - germinalphrase 4y ago
        I will yield my time for rebuttal to my cosponsor on this bill - Khabib Nurmagomedov.
      - nwiswell 4y ago
        > then the rich will hire skilled fighters to go be legislator-duelists for them I'm going to be honest: considering the smorgasbord of possible dystopias, this one sounds pretty rad. Can we do cyberpunk corpocratic gladiatorial parliament? Anyone?
jaza 4y ago
First step is for the combatants to agree on whether they do their killin' before or after breakfast.
LeonB 4y ago
The musical Hamilton (spoiler alert) involves several Duels, and the rules are introduced with a quite formal explanation. (It’s a nicely choreographed piece of exposition). In the musical the first step to having a Duel is to go across the river to Jersey, as it’s legal there (“everything is legal in Jersey”) Another interesting part is that a doctor attends, and turns his back during the duel itself, in order to provide plausible deniability.
- khy 4y ago
  Didn't Chernow say that at the time that Hamilton and Burr dueled, that dueling wasn't really a thing anyone did?
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Didn’t Chernow say that at the time that Hamilton and Burr dueled, that dueling wasn’t really a thing anyone did? It was declining in the North (where it occurred), not so much in the South and elsewhere. The last notable political duel in the United States might be the Broderick-Terry duel in San Francisco in 1859.
  - ubermonkey 4y ago
    I suppose it was probably on its way out, but nb. that Hamilton's son had died in a duel only 3 years before. Andrew Jackson fought in at least two, killing a man in 1806, and was later president. Apparently, Mark Twain only narrowly escaped dueling with a rival newspaper editor (!) in 1864. Given the accounts of folks taking bullets to the torso and surviving, it's hard to avoid concluding that dueling perhaps only continued because of the relative inefficacy (lower energy & accuracy) of firearms of the era. Jackson took a bullet to the CHEST and survived, as noted.
- Bad_CRC 4y ago
  It's the ten duel commandments! Came here just for the Hamilton reference tbh.
  - LeonB 4y ago
nerdponx 4y ago
This was written in 1847, well after dueling had fallen out of fashion, and well after the USA had begun to develop its own distinctly American cultural identity. So it sounds like this was meant to be a "fun lighthearted history" book, rather than a documentation of how people actually behaved in the 1840s. Not unlike my favorite bathroom reader of all time, The Strange Laws Of Old England.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  According to Mark Twain in Pudd'nhead Wilson the 1850s was a time when 'The people took more pride in the duel than in all the other events put together, perhaps.'
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    I stand corrected!
- penguinvondoom 4y ago
  Duelling was very much going on in the mid 19th century, tho ...
- bravura 4y ago
  Eye gouging remained quite popular in America through the 1800s
- JamesSwift 4y ago
  The subtitle of the book includes "with amusing anecdotes illustrative of dueling" so I think it was definitely a whimsical look back in time.
dukeofdoom 4y ago
Reminds me when Saddam Hussain challenged George Bush to a Duel as an alternative to war. Was turned down.
- IncRnd 4y ago
  I'd think twice before dueling the Duke of Doom. Maybe there is merit to the theort that the presence of dueling creates a polite society.
- papandada 4y ago
  Never heard of this! Fascinating. I guess it was the Iraqi vice president's suggestion. https://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/10/03/iraq.bush.duel/ https://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/10/03/iraq.bush.duel/
jackcviers3 4y ago
I live in Iowa. Apparently it's still legal here: > In 2010 in the case of the State of Iowa vs Christopher Spates, the Supreme Court judge Justice Ternus states that Iowa only considers the mutual combat law if two combatants agree to the use of deadly weapons, so you can see how different the law varies from state to state. https://law.justia.com/cases/iowa/supreme-court/2010/05-0883.html https://law.justia.com/cases/iowa/supreme-court/2010/05-0883... I wonder if the state would actually adhere to that judgement again. Mutual combat laws apparently exist in many U.S. states - Texas, unsurprisingly, is one of them too.
- aaron695 4y ago
  [dead]
dannyobrien 4y ago
Of course, hackers have their own dueling rules: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Code_Arduino https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Code_Arduino
liotier 4y ago
Let's fight first - we'll figure out the rules later !
fermigier 4y ago
Why do I keep hearing Händel's sarabande in my head while reading the post?
forinti 4y ago
Uruguay had duels up to 1971, and they were only abolished in 1992.
mytailorisrich 4y ago
On the subject, the last recorded duel in France took place as late as 1967 and between two sitting MPs/Representatives because of an insult uttered in the Chamber. Article in French with a picture of the duel, fought with swords: https://www.lemonde.fr/m-moyen-format/article/2017/04/21/il-y-a-cinquante-ans-le-dernier-duel-de-france_5114729_4497271.html https://www.lemonde.fr/m-moyen-format/article/2017/04/21/il-... "le facétieux Defferre ne manquait pas de rappeler qu’il avait visé l’entrejambe de son adversaire pour lui gâcher sa nuit de noces, celui-ci se mariant le lendemain." Essentially: "I aimed between his legs to spoil his wedding night", as one of the MPs was due to wed the day after the duel.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  Interesting. But I found an english article about it, for those of us whose french is a bit rusty: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/last-sword-duel-1967/ https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/last-sword-duel-1967/
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    Nice one, thanks.
- publicola1990 4y ago
  There was also news reports that Saddam Hussein was trying to challenge George Bush Jr to a duel before the second Iraq war. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2297371.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2297371.stm
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  So about ten years before their last guillotine execution.
mooseknees 4y ago
[dead]
eternalban 4y ago
One of Ridley Scott's first (but relatively obscure) films was "The Duelists". This is a fairly unique film. Apparently a cinematic response to Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. It has a lot of future famous actors, and all the drama and manners around dueling in Napoleonic France. The Duelists, 1977 France, 1801. Due to a minor perceived slight, mild-mannered Lieutenant d'Hubert is forced into a duel with hot-headed irrational Lieutenant Feraud. The disagreement ultimately results in scores of duels spanning several years. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075968/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075968/
- billfruit 4y ago
  It is based on the famous Conrad story I think. There is also Ridley Scott's recent 'Last Duel', which is set farther in the past, in mediaeval France.
  - eternalban 4y ago
    Hah, didn't realize Last Duel was his as well. (Something about that film bugged me -- may have to revisit to determine precisely what.) But that (his) first film (!) is exquisite imo. (Thanks for the Conrad heads-up.)
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Old Norse dueling, the Holmgang, was outlawed when griefers turned it into a cynical thing, challenging weaker neighbors over trivia so they could kill them and take their land, legally.
- jackothy 4y ago
  Reminds me of the Fremen people in Dune by Frank Herbert. In the book, a man is challenged to a duel. When he wins the duel, he gains the wife, property, and children of the one that he killed. In the book, the legality of this form of dueling seems to be justified by an absolute need for strength, and the survival of (only) the fittest, in order to adapt to the hostile environment that they live in. When physical superiority stops being a necessity for the survival of the community, this type of dueling law becomes a problem.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    "This real thing reminds me of this fictional thing that was possibly based on it" is definitely a thing that you can say. Anyway though wasn't a major theme of the back half of that book that this practice was always wasteful and unbeneficial. That there is no situation where a community becomes stronger by losing a cunning leader to merely a stronger fighter. That this was possibly one of the ways their culture had been manipulated to make them fragmented and susceptible to control.
    - jackothy 4y ago
      Major spoilers for Dune: Yes, towards the end of the book Paul convinces the tribe to let go of the old "way" so that they can be as strong as possible for the (imminent) battle. They allow him to become their leader without killing Stilgar, the previous leader. However, the book makes it very clear that the totally ruthless environment, culture, and way of life on Arrakis (and on Salusa Secundus) is the cause of the Fremen (and Sardaukar) making such vastly superior soldiers. But of course that only matters over long stretches of time. Putting your infighting ways on hold temporarily when you are gearing up for a massive offensive would always make sense. "Do you smash your knife before battle?" Paul asks in his speech. So I don't think the point is that it "was always wasteful and unbeneficial", but that even if the ruthless duels were good for the tribe's fitness in the long term, right then it was more important that in the short term they needed all the strength they could get.
motohagiography 4y ago
Code Duello is a pretty ancient concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_duello https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_duello While duels have been outlawed, I don't think we have really replaced the necessary role they play in managing disputes and incentivising a self organizing social correction in a way that rewards virtue and has consequences for dishonesty. Ironically, the main thing that maintained social order in small groups up until recently was humor. It wasn't mere cutting remarks either, it's a subtle understanding of power dynamics in a group that lets humor equalize and revert to shared values. The unspoken rules of humor were pretty close to those of Code Duello, particularly regarding punching down, and accepting when you had been beaten - then moving on once order was re-established. Duels provided a similar reversion to a shared understanding of order and values. These rules are still around in an implied way, where boys involved in sports or group activities tend to learn a variation of them, and someone who fights without an understanding or respect for them is considered just a criminal and not trustworthy, tough, or masculine.
KappaFromHell 4y ago
Funnily enough, I was challenged to a formal duel when I last visited Paris in 2020
ubermonkey 4y ago
I'd probably start with a rewatch of Hamilton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Duel_Commandments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Duel_Commandments
AlbertCory 4y ago
In the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey / Maturin books, dueling is a frequent subject. Stephen Maturin is said to have "been out" many times, and a deadly accurate shot.

134 points by SerCe 4y ago

There's the story that when Abe Lincoln was challenged to a duel, he responded with his choice of weapons: cow dung at 10 paces. Needless to say, the duel never took place.

opo 4y ago
>...he responded with his choice of weapons: cow dung at 10 paces. That is not correct. >...Since Lincoln was challenged by Shields he had the privilege of choosing the weapon of the duel. He chose cavalry broadswords "of the largest size." "I didn't want the d—-d fellow to kill me, which I think he would have done if we had selected pistols," he later explained. For his own part, he did not want to kill Shields, but "felt sure [he] could disarm him" with a blade. At six feet, four inches tall, Lincoln planned to use his height to his advantage against Shields, who stood at a mere five feet, nine inches tall. >The day of the duel, September 22, arrived and the combatants met at Bloody Island, Missouri to face death or victory. As the two men faced each other, with a plank between them that neither was allowed to cross, Lincoln swung his sword high above Shields to cut through a nearby tree branch. This act demonstrated the immensity of Lincoln’s reach and strength and was enough to show Shields that he was at a fatal disadvantage. With the encouragement of bystanders, the two men called a truce. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/abraham-lincolns-duel https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/abraham-lincolns...

giantg2 4y ago

It would be interesting if they made this legal again. Maybe there'd be less people caught up in gang shootings etc if you had them dual it out in a controlled space... assuming they aren't cowards.

IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
As crazy as it sounds, I cant easily disagree with you . Every boiling pot needs to relieve pressure. People need an outlet for their frustrations. Wars are far rarer, quite impersonal, and harder to shake off (as is the uniform). Even fistfight by consenting adults can get you in trouble. So many turn to crime. Maybe there is room for a middle layer between anger and crime, between consenting adults with clear rules.
- jrumbut 4y ago
  You could always box. As far as I know there is almost no pre-qualification required for a private sparring session and even the qualification to be a professional is a very low bar (IIRC it is primarily a matter of eyesight, since you can't wear glasses in the ring).
  - wellthisisgreat 4y ago
    box to the death? that's rough. I imagine that a conflict that warrants a duel has at least one of the parties seeing death of their opponent
    - jrumbut 4y ago
      You obviously aren't allowed to box to the death and shouldn't be, but it represents a meaningful middle ground between anger and crime.
    - Turing_Machine 4y ago
      In my understanding, it wasn't actually a given that someone would die as the result of a duel. While certainly a possibility, the poor accuracy of pistols of the day (if pistols were chosen) and the possibility of the duel being stopped by the physicians after blood was drawn (if swords were chosen) meant that honor was often deemed to be satisfied well short of anyone being killed. It was also not uncommon for either or both combatants to simply fire their pistols into the air. Again, honor was generally deemed to be satisfied if this happened. This took some courage if you were the first one to fire into the air, as you were still required under the code to stand there and let the other guy take a shot at you if he so chose.
charcircuit 4y ago
You can already still duel. It's hard for anything to happen if neither presses damages due to respecting the duel.
- giantg2 4y ago
  That's not actually true. The prosecutor and police can still come after you for most charges. For example, if you end up killing the other person, the prosecutor will still come after you for murder. The reason they tend to ignore lesser crimes if someone doesn't want to press charges is because they don't want to waste their time if nobody else is interested in taking it to court, and usually they need the witness testimony from the victim (although not always, and they could hold them as a material witness if they wanted to).
tshaddox 4y ago
Why would someone who is willing to plan a surprise attack on an enemy instead agree to a formal duel?
- smabie 4y ago
  Well no legal liability in the duel
  - kmoser 4y ago
    Dueling was largely illegal, which means lots of legal liability for the combatants as well as any one who facilitated the event.
  - komali2 4y ago
    Gang members tend to prefer to exist outside all forms of legality. A formal duel would probably just be seen as cop shit.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  Because these are not mostly disputes over money or material goods. They’re over honour. If the broader society showed some sign of caring about honour the way petty thugs who do drive by shootings to receding slights do they’d shift to the societally airbed way quickly. In the bourgeois society we have where dignity not honour is how worth is ascribed there’s no script for them to follow. Insofar as society is becoming victimhood based on how it conceived worth that’s equally unappealing. https://scholars-stage.org/honor-dignity-and-victimhood-a-tour-through-three-centuries-of-american-political-culture/ https://scholars-stage.org/honor-dignity-and-victimhood-a-to...
sublinear 4y ago
I am very certain that most gang violence is far more complicated than a couple of conflicting egos and cowardice is irrelevant.
duxup 4y ago
Why would they choose to duel? They can still commit crimes like usual. They could even duel now, but don’t.
krapp 4y ago
Yes, that's the problem with gang warfare nowadays, the violence not being governed by a rigid class-based hierarchy of protocols and rituals.
- remarkEon 4y ago
  It is though. Lack of a formal structure for who is sovereign in deciding disputes is what gets us the chaos of gang warfare. That’s … why there’s the warfare part.
  - krapp 4y ago
    We have a formal structure for who is sovereign in deciding disputes - civil society and the courts. The actual problems of gang violence are endemic - poverty, trauma, systemic racism, underfunded education, poor nutrition, easy access to guns, lack of role models, the romanticizing of criminality in pop culture, to name a few. Nowhere on the list will you find "lack of clearly defined rules for setting order of initiative."
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > We have a formal structure for who is sovereign in deciding disputes - civil society and the courts. We do. But other people reject that system. And we (in the universal sense, in this case) also have a system of resolving that dispute, and it’s, in practice however much it gets gussied up in theory, to borrow a phrase, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”.
    - DennisP 4y ago
      For some people, that formal structure has deficiencies, like throwing you in prison if your complaint is "he stole the meth I was going to sell."
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      I would add an enormously profitable market for illicit substances to the top of your list. If you legalized all drugs, gang violence would evaporate practically overnight.
ch4s3 4y ago
What do you think a lot of inner city shootings are? Two people beef, guns get drawn, and shots fired. Sometimes your second gets involved, and if he thinks you were treated dishonorably he might hunt down you shooter and that man’s second. It’s even the same kind of honor culture, and was brought from the rural south which was the last bastion of high class American dueling.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  Dueling has always been an upper class/urban affair, generally between men of wealth and substantial education. Traditionally only the nobility dueled but this was gradually liberalized into all upper class individuals. Even in the article for this thread (which is relatively late in the dueling game), it requires that you view the person you are dueling as a "Gentleman" alongside the all the connotations of such. You can see a list of some US duels (and the participants involved) here [1]. The article also has some interesting backstory. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_duels#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_duels#United_States
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Traditionally only the nobility dueled but this was gradually liberalized into all upper class individuals. Looked at another way, traditionally only the upper class dueled, and that didn’t change when the capitalist class displaced the feudal aristocracy as the upper class.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    This is in my opinion far too narrow a view of aristocratic honor culture in the US and how that influenced Southern culture even among lower socioeconomic strata. By the civil war, dueling was pervasive throughout the south[1][2]. Over time this filtered down to "redneck" culture for lack of a better name for lower class southern whites. This in turn had effects on southern black culture and was carried north during the Great Migration[3] to some extent. So what you see in inner city shootings is the direct lineage of early American dueling imported to the south from French aristocrats who fought in the American Revolution. History is truly strange. [1] https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/3655 https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/3655 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dueling_in_the_Southern_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dueling_in_the_Southern_United... [3] https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/31/4/race_crime_and_culture https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/31/4/race_crime_and_c...
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Maybe there’d be less people caught up in gang shootings etc if you had them dual it out in a controlled space… Probably not. While a small part of gang violence deals with situations that might otherwise be handled by duels, a lot of it is more like war between factions which don’t happen to be states. Duels aren’t going to replace turf wars, even if they are legal.

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rippercushions 4y ago

Duelling with swords lives on in Germany, albeit in a very ritualistic, controlled fashion: https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/69224/how-can-a-tourist-obtain-an-authentic-duelling-scar https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/69224/how-can-a-t...

groby_b 4y ago
It is actually not permissible to duel. You can engage in "friendly combat", but duelling to restore your honor is both illegal and dishonorable. (The German fraternities, which are responsible for these fights, gave their word of honor that there would be no more duels to satisfy insults to honor) It is also an extremely stupid idea that scars are somehow an "authentic mark". As somebody who fought three of those "mensuren": Scars are a sign that you thought you are better than you actually are. It's the embodiment of "Dunning Kruger walks here".
- somenameforme 4y ago
  This seems analogous to claiming that an MMA fighter with cauliflower ear just thought they were better than they were. One of the great thing about sports is that they teach humility. You're going to lose a lot on your way up. And it's going to hurt - sometimes quite literally. Even when you don't lose in your pro career, these are the ears of an undefeated champion: https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-13f49281504e1359e87fecade92dbcec https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-13f49281504e1359e87fec...
  - dav_Oz 4y ago
    Since he wrestled his whole life and will probably continue in some way or another to keep himself fit, he doesn't care. However you can easily prevent your ears from "cauliflowering" after severe ear trauma if you drain the accumulated blood before it dries completely out after 2-3 days. At some point if you train a lot some soft/protruding parts of your ears will harden a bit and some edges aren't as smooth as before but it isn't really noticeable to other people.
- 4y ago

arealaccount 4y ago

People say politics are out of hand these days but man things were wild in 1904. Dueling aside… > Discredited by the duel with Hamilton, Burr sought to regain political power by a filibustering adventure, which led instead to his indictment for treason https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/july-11/ https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/july-11/

alwayslikethis 4y ago
*1804 I can't help but think dueling would make politics more honest. I would expect not many to be willing to die to defend their positions if these positions were just paid off by corporations.
- duxup 4y ago
  Depends on how money is at stake or if you’re just crazy… People put their lives at risk for very little.
  - MikeTheGreat 4y ago
    Agreed. Adding on to what you said - I think it also depends on where you start. If you inherit wealth and/or good opportunities then why risk it, but if not then it would make a lot of sense. After all, lots of people voluntarily enlist in the military, and one factor is not having (m)any other options. (This isn't the only reason, nor is it a factor for everyone) Plus, dueling / fighting is a skill. If you need people who are good at fighting in order to get legislation passed then the rich will hire skilled fighters to go be legislator-duelists for them.
    - germinalphrase 4y ago
      I will yield my time for rebuttal to my cosponsor on this bill - Khabib Nurmagomedov.
    - nwiswell 4y ago
      > then the rich will hire skilled fighters to go be legislator-duelists for them I'm going to be honest: considering the smorgasbord of possible dystopias, this one sounds pretty rad. Can we do cyberpunk corpocratic gladiatorial parliament? Anyone?

jaza 4y ago

First step is for the combatants to agree on whether they do their killin' before or after breakfast.

LeonB 4y ago

The musical Hamilton (spoiler alert) involves several Duels, and the rules are introduced with a quite formal explanation. (It’s a nicely choreographed piece of exposition). In the musical the first step to having a Duel is to go across the river to Jersey, as it’s legal there (“everything is legal in Jersey”) Another interesting part is that a doctor attends, and turns his back during the duel itself, in order to provide plausible deniability.

khy 4y ago
Didn't Chernow say that at the time that Hamilton and Burr dueled, that dueling wasn't really a thing anyone did?
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Didn’t Chernow say that at the time that Hamilton and Burr dueled, that dueling wasn’t really a thing anyone did? It was declining in the North (where it occurred), not so much in the South and elsewhere. The last notable political duel in the United States might be the Broderick-Terry duel in San Francisco in 1859.
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  I suppose it was probably on its way out, but nb. that Hamilton's son had died in a duel only 3 years before. Andrew Jackson fought in at least two, killing a man in 1806, and was later president. Apparently, Mark Twain only narrowly escaped dueling with a rival newspaper editor (!) in 1864. Given the accounts of folks taking bullets to the torso and surviving, it's hard to avoid concluding that dueling perhaps only continued because of the relative inefficacy (lower energy & accuracy) of firearms of the era. Jackson took a bullet to the CHEST and survived, as noted.
Bad_CRC 4y ago
It's the ten duel commandments! Came here just for the Hamilton reference tbh.
- LeonB 4y ago

nerdponx 4y ago

This was written in 1847, well after dueling had fallen out of fashion, and well after the USA had begun to develop its own distinctly American cultural identity. So it sounds like this was meant to be a "fun lighthearted history" book, rather than a documentation of how people actually behaved in the 1840s. Not unlike my favorite bathroom reader of all time, The Strange Laws Of Old England.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
According to Mark Twain in Pudd'nhead Wilson the 1850s was a time when 'The people took more pride in the duel than in all the other events put together, perhaps.'
- nerdponx 4y ago
  I stand corrected!
penguinvondoom 4y ago
Duelling was very much going on in the mid 19th century, tho ...
bravura 4y ago
Eye gouging remained quite popular in America through the 1800s
JamesSwift 4y ago
The subtitle of the book includes "with amusing anecdotes illustrative of dueling" so I think it was definitely a whimsical look back in time.

dukeofdoom 4y ago

Reminds me when Saddam Hussain challenged George Bush to a Duel as an alternative to war. Was turned down.

IncRnd 4y ago
I'd think twice before dueling the Duke of Doom. Maybe there is merit to the theort that the presence of dueling creates a polite society.
papandada 4y ago
Never heard of this! Fascinating. I guess it was the Iraqi vice president's suggestion. https://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/10/03/iraq.bush.duel/ https://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/10/03/iraq.bush.duel/

jackcviers3 4y ago

I live in Iowa. Apparently it's still legal here: > In 2010 in the case of the State of Iowa vs Christopher Spates, the Supreme Court judge Justice Ternus states that Iowa only considers the mutual combat law if two combatants agree to the use of deadly weapons, so you can see how different the law varies from state to state. https://law.justia.com/cases/iowa/supreme-court/2010/05-0883.html https://law.justia.com/cases/iowa/supreme-court/2010/05-0883... I wonder if the state would actually adhere to that judgement again. Mutual combat laws apparently exist in many U.S. states - Texas, unsurprisingly, is one of them too.

aaron695 4y ago
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dannyobrien 4y ago

Of course, hackers have their own dueling rules: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Code_Arduino https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Code_Arduino

liotier 4y ago

Let's fight first - we'll figure out the rules later !

fermigier 4y ago

Why do I keep hearing Händel's sarabande in my head while reading the post?

forinti 4y ago

Uruguay had duels up to 1971, and they were only abolished in 1992.

mytailorisrich 4y ago

On the subject, the last recorded duel in France took place as late as 1967 and between two sitting MPs/Representatives because of an insult uttered in the Chamber. Article in French with a picture of the duel, fought with swords: https://www.lemonde.fr/m-moyen-format/article/2017/04/21/il-y-a-cinquante-ans-le-dernier-duel-de-france_5114729_4497271.html https://www.lemonde.fr/m-moyen-format/article/2017/04/21/il-... "le facétieux Defferre ne manquait pas de rappeler qu’il avait visé l’entrejambe de son adversaire pour lui gâcher sa nuit de noces, celui-ci se mariant le lendemain." Essentially: "I aimed between his legs to spoil his wedding night", as one of the MPs was due to wed the day after the duel.

hutzlibu 4y ago
Interesting. But I found an english article about it, for those of us whose french is a bit rusty: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/last-sword-duel-1967/ https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/last-sword-duel-1967/
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  Nice one, thanks.
publicola1990 4y ago
There was also news reports that Saddam Hussein was trying to challenge George Bush Jr to a duel before the second Iraq war. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2297371.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2297371.stm
giraffe_lady 4y ago
So about ten years before their last guillotine execution.

mooseknees 4y ago

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eternalban 4y ago

One of Ridley Scott's first (but relatively obscure) films was "The Duelists". This is a fairly unique film. Apparently a cinematic response to Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. It has a lot of future famous actors, and all the drama and manners around dueling in Napoleonic France. The Duelists, 1977 France, 1801. Due to a minor perceived slight, mild-mannered Lieutenant d'Hubert is forced into a duel with hot-headed irrational Lieutenant Feraud. The disagreement ultimately results in scores of duels spanning several years. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075968/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075968/

billfruit 4y ago
It is based on the famous Conrad story I think. There is also Ridley Scott's recent 'Last Duel', which is set farther in the past, in mediaeval France.
- eternalban 4y ago
  Hah, didn't realize Last Duel was his as well. (Something about that film bugged me -- may have to revisit to determine precisely what.) But that (his) first film (!) is exquisite imo. (Thanks for the Conrad heads-up.)

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

Old Norse dueling, the Holmgang, was outlawed when griefers turned it into a cynical thing, challenging weaker neighbors over trivia so they could kill them and take their land, legally.

jackothy 4y ago
Reminds me of the Fremen people in Dune by Frank Herbert. In the book, a man is challenged to a duel. When he wins the duel, he gains the wife, property, and children of the one that he killed. In the book, the legality of this form of dueling seems to be justified by an absolute need for strength, and the survival of (only) the fittest, in order to adapt to the hostile environment that they live in. When physical superiority stops being a necessity for the survival of the community, this type of dueling law becomes a problem.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  "This real thing reminds me of this fictional thing that was possibly based on it" is definitely a thing that you can say. Anyway though wasn't a major theme of the back half of that book that this practice was always wasteful and unbeneficial. That there is no situation where a community becomes stronger by losing a cunning leader to merely a stronger fighter. That this was possibly one of the ways their culture had been manipulated to make them fragmented and susceptible to control.
  - jackothy 4y ago
    Major spoilers for Dune: Yes, towards the end of the book Paul convinces the tribe to let go of the old "way" so that they can be as strong as possible for the (imminent) battle. They allow him to become their leader without killing Stilgar, the previous leader. However, the book makes it very clear that the totally ruthless environment, culture, and way of life on Arrakis (and on Salusa Secundus) is the cause of the Fremen (and Sardaukar) making such vastly superior soldiers. But of course that only matters over long stretches of time. Putting your infighting ways on hold temporarily when you are gearing up for a massive offensive would always make sense. "Do you smash your knife before battle?" Paul asks in his speech. So I don't think the point is that it "was always wasteful and unbeneficial", but that even if the ruthless duels were good for the tribe's fitness in the long term, right then it was more important that in the short term they needed all the strength they could get.

motohagiography 4y ago

Code Duello is a pretty ancient concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_duello https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_duello While duels have been outlawed, I don't think we have really replaced the necessary role they play in managing disputes and incentivising a self organizing social correction in a way that rewards virtue and has consequences for dishonesty. Ironically, the main thing that maintained social order in small groups up until recently was humor. It wasn't mere cutting remarks either, it's a subtle understanding of power dynamics in a group that lets humor equalize and revert to shared values. The unspoken rules of humor were pretty close to those of Code Duello, particularly regarding punching down, and accepting when you had been beaten - then moving on once order was re-established. Duels provided a similar reversion to a shared understanding of order and values. These rules are still around in an implied way, where boys involved in sports or group activities tend to learn a variation of them, and someone who fights without an understanding or respect for them is considered just a criminal and not trustworthy, tough, or masculine.

KappaFromHell 4y ago

Funnily enough, I was challenged to a formal duel when I last visited Paris in 2020

ubermonkey 4y ago

I'd probably start with a rewatch of Hamilton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Duel_Commandments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Duel_Commandments

AlbertCory 4y ago

In the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey / Maturin books, dueling is a frequent subject. Stephen Maturin is said to have "been out" many times, and a deadly accurate shot.