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Do you actually believe people have an obligation to respect iniquitous laws? Do you feel like a revolutionary when you jaywalk? The law is just a crude model and reminder of morality, of course it yields to it when they conflict. If I get to decide how everyone should act, I ask that they behave morally, not legally.
According to you, this is the reasoning of an antifa: ‘Man, it would obviously be the right thing to do to beat up those fash motte guys, that would really help the oppressed. I don’t care about the danger, or going to prison. What really stops me is the unspoken contract not to do anything illegal. My hands are tied because my enemies respect all the contracts between us. I could never knowingly break the rules of this in no way corrupt system I admire. Etc etc. ‘
Is your argument here that homicide laws are iniquitous?
Was your argument not that people should obey the law regardless of other considerations, lest it mean the end of the rule of the law, and possibly your own death?
Okay, you asked first. Yes, they are iniquitous.
Iniquitous in what way? How would you rewrite the homicide statutes to correct whatever iniquity you find there?
Those guys should be institutionalized for their repeated violations, but since they are released as soon as caught, it requires the creation of a new legal category to accommodate their deplorable presence in the public sphere: Let’s call them Prisoners on Parole.
“When robbed or assaulted by pops, citizens and cops may use all the force they deem necessary. “
So how do you define a PoP?
Someone incapable of obeying the law who nonetheless has not been incarcerated long-term.
Law-Abiding Citizens don't need to know someone is a PoP when interacting with them, but if they get in a fight with someone who turns out to be a PoP, nudge the presumption of innocence considerably in the LAC's favor.
How's that sound?
That doesn't sound like a particularly good definition, seeing as there's a lot of room for maneuvering in "incapable of obeying the law". What law? How major do the crimes have to be? Does someone with enough traffic tickets qualify? What about DUIs, those are fairly major? Failure to pay child support? More seriously, does it matter whether they're summary offenses, misdemeanors, or felonies? How many do you need to qualify? Do they expire after a certain period? How long does the person have to be incarcerated before they've paid their debt to society and are taken off the list? And if you kill someone who you think qualifies but it turns out doesn't, are you held strictly liable or is reasonable belief a defense? There's quite a lot to hash out here.
None of these questions seem to me to engage with the question at hand. It seems to me that you could yourself pick whichever answers you prefer, adding or removing criteria as you see fit. The argument isn't that a specific profile amounts to being "incapable of obeying the law", but rather that "incapable of following the law" is a plausibly-reasonable descriptor for some set of profiles of all those possible. I think we can both agree that littering once shouldn't cross the line, and that one's tenth premeditated murder certainly has crossed it, and then negotiate from there.
At no point have I argued that one should attack or try to kill people they think are PoPs, and it doesn't seem to me that @fuckduck9000 was arguing so either. In point of fact, it seems to me that you and the others arguing for the consensus here have a rather warped view of the interactions at play.
You and others frame the deceased in this situation as though they were an innocent bystander, and the LAC who attempted to subdue them pointlessly initiated a fight. For that to be true, you need to ignore the highly erratic, aggressive, and generally threatening behavior of the deceased, as though such behavior were harmless, and then go on to frame the LACs' attempt to intervene as intentional murder. Neither is true. Acting erratic, aggressive, and generally threatening in public is a fantastic way to get yourself killed in a fight, often with another PoP; this happens with monotonous frequency every day nation-wide. The absence of intervention here is not a certainty that the PoP lives to the age of 80 and dies quietly in bed; it simply allows him to go on rolling the dice with his own and other peoples' health and life.
Further, the LAC did not shoot him in the back of the head without warning, nor kick him over and stomp on his head. The LACs perceived him to be a threat to himself and others, and attempted to restrain him. That is fairly close to the optimal way for this to be handled. Unfortunately, they fucked up the restraint and didn't recognize that he was twitching in unconsciousness, not struggling, and so he died. That was not an inevitable consequence of intervening, on any level beyond the statistical: some number of interventions are going to go badly, but some number of non-interventions are going to go badly as well.
PoPs should not be allowed to menace the public and disturb the peace. When someone acts aggressive or menacingly toward others, it is reasonable to confront or restrain them. Attempting to guess whether they're a PoP or not is pointless; it is the behavior that should be targeted, not the legal status. My point was that the legal status should apply after the fact, to those who evidently acted as we wish them to: if a PoP gets in a fight with a LAC, unless there is a solid reason to do otherwise, err on the side of the LAC. Even a fatality, if pretty clearly accidental as in this case, should not change that arithmetic. There is no need for speculating on whether those around you are PoPs and thus can be victimized freely, because this rule does not allow free victimization. If an LAC attacks a PoP unprovoked, that's still a crime.
What is wrong with such a stance?
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