I think we've had enough

I've never been 100% libertarian (whatever that is), but I have always been for free speech, free association, freedom of thought--basically the almost completely unrestricted right of a person to do and think as they see fit, so long as it doesn't physically harm or physically threaten another.

But I am sick of the rioting, the violence, the ugliness, the lies, the misinformation, the nastiness, and the persistence of those things. And I suspect, a vast number of Americans are as well.

At what point does the right to protest--which now seems to invariably include rioting, violence and destruction of property--stop outweighing property rights, order, and a basic sense of I'm-pretty-sure-I-won't-get-shot-or-beaten-because-I-may-be-perceived-as-belonging-to-the-outgroup today?

I don't know, but I think at some point it does, and we're close to it, if not way past it.

I support protests, but I am against rioting. To state the obvious, which is feels less obvious today: Protesting is a Right; Rioting is a Crime. 

When those two things become impossible to differentiate, we will lose the right to protest. Or we may gain a right to crime. Neither is appealing, and something needs to be done, soon.

On the LaVoy Finicum shooting

I didn't really follow the whole Oregon occupier thing, much less support it. But I saw this video. About 9:00 minutes in, just before things go down. Then you see what looks like a man, clearly nervous, outnumbered, arms in the air, and shot.



If all it is to justify police shooting someone, is some combination of fear and/or hands briefly unseen, then we need to rethink things. Whether or not that is the legal standard, is, as I understand it, iffy, but seems to be de facto law on the more questionable police shootings.

According to the FBI, Finicum indeed had a pistol in his jacket. All good then, right? Hell no. There's almost zero chance any of the officers on the ground saw a gun on Finicum. Watch in full screen, slow motion if you have to, there is a snowflake's chance in hell either of those two officers saw a weapon.

So let's do a thought experiment. Let's say Finicum had no firearm that day. Which leaves you with two possible conclusions:

1. Finicum was shot because he may or may not have appeared to reach for something, and the officers feared for their safety--pretty much the go-to defense in every questionable police shooting.

2. Finicum was murdered, by the police.

Both of those are terrible, and it's ridiculous that in all too many police shooting cases we walk this ultra fine dichotomy between murder and virtually complete & guaranteed legal immunity for officers of the state.

If Finicum had actually pulled his gun, that obviously changes things and nobody would dispute the shooting. But he didn't. I know this isn't the fantastical Wild West with a gentleman's code of chilvarly, necessitating complete brandishing of deadly weapon prior to shooting, à la Tombstone. But we need something more than fear and subjective amounts of furtiveness. Otherwise we have no law, regardless of what's written.

That said, it'd be interesting to see the shooting officer's body cam footage, in the unlikely event it exists or will ever be released.

Mass Shootings and Earthquakes

I don't mean to downplay the terribleness of the San Bernardino shooting, nor the value in seeking preventative measures. But let's state the obvious: this sort of thing has happened before and will happen again.

Despite existing laws. Despite new laws.

I am opposed to virtually all gun control, not because it's proven to be completely ineffective, but because they take away from all for the actions of a few (I understand this argument is meaningless when taken to extreme, but so is anything: why have freedom at all if people violently misuse it?).

So let's step away from the philosophy and the triggery politics, and maybe look at it with a cold, practical perspective.

Let's assume there are no deus ex machinas around (always a good idea), i.e., everybody will not magically agree to ban guns and destroy every last trace of lethal projectile weaponry; nobody will come up with a new gun control plan that everyone agrees with AND is super effective; nobody will cure or effectively prevent crazy from happening; etc.

That doesn't leave us with much. My view on this is that there are essentially two approaches to crime:

1. Stop bad people from doing bad things.
2. Empower good people to stop bad things from happening to them.

For most things, #1 is good enough. Reasonable law enforcement, jail, fines, prison, social pressure is enough to deter and prevent most crimes, or force restitution. We can live with a few burglaries now and then, knowing that burglary is out of the ordinary. Even most bad people will go along to get along if that means they stay out of jail.

For everything else that isn't easily fixed, there are no good collective/top-down solutions. You can't stop an earthquake, but you can prepare for it. I don't think that means making our kids wear bullet-proof vests to school, but I do think it means making the average citizen a higher risk target for potential mass murderers.

In most places people are defenseless, which is nice and all, and is perfectly fine 99.9% of the time. But nobody ever shoots up a police department. And that .01% (or whatever the number is, I'm guessing, but I'd imagine I'm fairly close) is a big deal. If more good guys concealed carry, the average citizen would be higher risk for potential mass murderers. And what's nice about concealed carry is that for 99.9% of the time, it looks and feels just like those nice defenseless places, except they're not defenseless.

I guess the question comes down to what balance are we comfortable with? If we encouraged and trained a lot more good people to carry concealed, I'm pretty sure mass shootings would occur less often and with fewer casualties.* That's something I would be comfortable and happy with. But maybe not for others. That's the discussion I think we should be having, not the same gun control debate that goes nowhere and is largely made for easy political points and/or virtue signalling.

*Unlike most crimes and the criminals who commit them, there are far less data on mass shootings & shooters, but there is some. Counterfactuals are hypothetical and sketchy at best, but the logic is sound and the scant evidence that does exist, suggests that good guys with guns tend to stop bad guys with guns (plus it's impossible to calculate, even fuzzily, the number of shootings prevented). I'm lazy so I'm just going to say don't take my word for it and do your own research.

LAPD Pistol Target

Eh. Just because.

Inspired by Kevin.

Look at this truck

From the wrongful shooting that took place in Los Angeles the other day. Police apparently mistook the truck for the murder-spree suspect's.

This was an innocent lady's truck, and yes, she and a passenger were shot (luckily both survived) by seemingly neglignent police officers.

This wrongful shooting took place in what appears to be a neighborhood. And if you look closely at the truck, there are at least 20 bullet holes by my count, that have penetrated it. At least a few of those are at the very top of the cab.

Who the hell trained these guys how to shoot? Elmer Fudd? Elmer Fudd at least had the excuse of a legitimate and cunning target.

There are bullet holes all over that truck. If the police were aiming at all, they even aimed at the passenger! As if stopping the truck depended not only on incapacitating the driver. These women were not armed. Apparently identification of the type of truck is all that is needed to satisfy due process.

Maybe I'm assuming too much, maybe the driver of the truck tried to flee. But either way, the shooting pattern on that truck indicates some very poor control of fire. They're lucky no one else in the neighborhood took a stray bullet. If there were a good reason for gun control, this would be it.

I've circled the bullet-holes that were near misses on top of the cab, and several more apparently aimed at the passenger

I hope the driver and passenger sue.

Police perjury

I have been thinking this for years.

If, in a court of law, the issue at hand comes down to just a he-said, she-said and one of those persons happens to be a cop, that testimony shouldn't be considered any more or less true (unless the other person's account is an obvious lie AND the officer's account is factually unquestionable).

Why would we give dirtbag criminal suspects an equal footing with law enforcement? Because that could be you standing there, and the only thing preventing you from years of absolute misery is that cop's word. I don't trust anyone that much, let alone a guy I never met.

I mean why, in a court of law, would we give one person's testimony more weight than another's?  Especially if the defendant is presumed innocent! It's foolish to think police officers are somehow inherently more honest. Tell me how they are more honest than the rest of us? Show your work!

I was reminded of this via a commenter at Classical Values, by this NYT op/ed.  Almost shocking, but definietely sad:

But are police officers necessarily more trustworthy than alleged criminals? I think not. Not just because the police have a special inclination toward confabulation, but because, disturbingly, they have an incentive to lie. In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.