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I (very much a "gun guy" and an avid motorcycle rider) feel the same way about armed self defence as I feel about motorcycling:
People often get in motorcycle accidents and say "it wasn't my fault!" Maybe technically you're right, and by the laws of the road it wasn't "your fault". Maybe a car failed to yield to you, or ran into you at a stop light, or just merged into you. All clear violations of the law. Congradulations, you're still in the hospital or dead. There are steps that you could have taken to prevent this outcome, and you're paying the price for not taking them. You can be "right" or you can be upright.
There are hundreds of off ramps to almost every violent confrontation, and when it comes to guns, everybody is as vulnerable as a motorcyclist is on the road. Sure, they had no right to block the freeway. Sure, its real fucking sketchy to have one of them come up to your car with a rifle in his hands. Sure, you're probably legally and ethically justified in shooting, so long as you keep the frame of reference constrained to the immediate circumstances. But our ethical lives are not constrained to the immediate circumstances, and Daniel Perry made a series of dumbfuck decisions that led him to the moment his car was being approached by a guy with an AK. I don't think he should be convicted of murder, I would have acquitted, and I also think he is an irresponsible dipshit. His refusal to take the obvious pragmatic precautions like avoiding the protest altogether led to this nightmare, and the retarded culture warrior convictions that led him there were not to his or anyone's benefit.
While I'm grateful for this guy bringing a little bit of 'find out' to the infamously popular 'f around' vibe, I still find his mode of operation quite bold.
Wasn't there a way to escape that barricade using the vehicle rather than shooting his way out? How would he know that escalating with his firearm would not start a broader shoot-out with other armed protesters? Was he ready to shoot at a crowd if needed?
While social distancing from Democrats is the generally advisable move, it's hard to see how this can reasonably generalize spatially and temporarily.
'Did you hear that so-and-so passed away in a brutal bout of acute democracy?'
'Oh dear, good lord...'
'Yes, they foolishly decided to visit LA. Can you imagine?'
'May God have mercy on their soul!'
You know, I was going to put together a whole post about how, for whatever reason, it seems less legally dubious to shoot a protestor pointing a gun at you in your car, than it does to run over dozens in an attempt to flee an angry mob. But as I kept trying to find supporting evidence, minus the poor bastard in Charlottesville, it seems people who run over protestors that are menacing them get away with it. And a lot of Republican states have specifically enshrined your right to do so.
I mean, I still wouldn't roll my dice on that in a district with a Soros DA. You'll just spend 5 years behind bars without bail fighting in the appeals courts, over behavior that was specifically legalized by your state. And you'll probably still lose, and be bankrupted to boot.
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Ah, the law-and-order conservative position. If something bad happens to you it was your fault; just ignore the decisions made by others in that situation and work back until you find a decision by the person something bad happened to and mark that as the wrong choice. And take it further -- make this not only a practical wrong, but a moral one. Thus justifying punishment for Perry.
Of course, you could apply the same reasoning to Foster instead of Perry. Which makes this sort of reasoning "who/whom" at it basis.
My argument is not a moral argument, it is a practical argument. Did you not read that I said I would acquit?
It wasn't worth it. He accomplished nothing of value and severely damaged his own life. He even damaged his tribe by stepping into the villain role that the blues laid out for him, the same way J6 protesters did (Yarvin is completely right about this).
Of course the same argument applies to Foster, any reasonable reading of the facts utterly condemns him.
That doesn't mean Perry was in the right. They were two retards with guns on a collision course and it ended terribly and predictably.
We're all already in the villain role. His problem was that he stepped into enemy territory, started fighting, then gave up and was captured.
The people of Austin should have started cheering for the death of a thug terrorizing their city. But they did not. They booed. Yet he stopped shooting, while he was still surrounded by hostile enemies.
The J6 picnickers' mistake was not attempting to visit the Capitol without getting shot. Their mistake was showing up empty-handed.
In your brief time on this board, you’ve picked up a wide variety of warnings and bans. The common thread? You’re clearly more interested in waging the culture war than understanding it.
Please take your outrage somewhere else.
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Wasn’t Daniel Perry doing his job?
Saying he could have avoided it is like blaming a poor person for a crime because he was poor. Hey Mr. Poor person. It’s your fault you were mugged at knife point. You could have deescalated and protected yourself by living in a neighborhood with low crime. It’s your fault for living in the bad neighborhood.
Also not a big fan of giving up our commons to the veto vote.
It was not his job to drive through a road blockade.
How would he know there was a blockade. I believe he was following app instructions.
Are you kidding?
If I said it I meant it. Google sucks and I tried pull up his dash cam video for me; it wasn’t there, but by my memory he was just following google maps.
I can’t get myself anywhere without using google maps.
Well, there's your problem!
Knowing how to read a map and find your own way can save your life!
The girls should have been smarter and not wore that skirt it’s her fault she was raped
Yes, my argument is exactly that: Perry should have been smarter and he had plenty of opportunity to avoid what happened.
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You don't have to do what google maps tells you to, you're still responsible for driving your car. If a road is flooded, or there's an accident, or there's a blockade of armed, screaming people...go around even if your phone doesn't tell you to. Obviously.
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There is a saying for cyclists here, which is widely applicable and succinctly describes what you're talking about: "Saying 'but I had the right of way' does not help after you got run over".
This works up until you discover a pattern of motorists intentionally running over cyclists.
Being "run over" in this case is not a regrettable accident that all parties were trying to avoid. The "protestors" made a general tactic of willfully breaking the law in an effort to force altercations, and the police and authorities let them do it. In numerous cases, including this one, they deliberately escalated the altercations in an effort to intimidate and victimize the law-abiding. It's true that their tactics were trivial to avoid for a large majority of the population, so long as we ignore the small minority they viciously brutalized, which most people were entirely willing to do. That doesn't make it right. Perry's response is straightforwardly preferable, and by no small margin.
FWIW, I actually apply this moreso to the protesters, in particular Foster, than to Perry. Even if they technically stay within the realms of the law, they're just asking for something to happen. I mostly read Armed's first paragraph, thinking he would be talking about Foster, and skipped straight to the comment, not noticing that in the second paragraph he calls out Perry in particular.
To be clear, I have no sympathy for Foster at all.
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