Okay, let's run it.
Here's the situation: you and your extended family have gathered in one room of your large house for some all-hands-on-deck thing you do regularly but not frequently -- working out income tax returns, watching The Wizard Of Oz, whatever. Your family isn't especially popular, and even internally, it has split into two groups that rarely see eye-to-eye. But you're all there, doing the thing.
Other people gather in a big group outside on the lawn and start yelling. Some of them break into the house. Some adult family members gather the kids and old folks, and get them to a place of safety. The mob reaches the (now barricaded) French doors that lead to the room you'd all been in. Some have signs. Some are shouting. Others just mill around. You shout, "Stop!" You draw your sidearm and point it at the threat. One of the members of the mob batters out the glass in the door. Another of them starts to climb through the breach. You shoot.
Are you a murderer?
What if a similar thing happened at your workplace and a security guard shot a member of the mob that had broken in while they were coming through a just-breach internal barrier -- is he or she a murderer?
If you are one of the people who has watched coverage of a BLM protest or riot, or saw antifa types running amok through a downtown, and asked why the police "don't just shoot them," then don't claim Capitol Police "murdered" Ashli Babbitt. She was killed in the commission of a crime, while presenting a direct threat to other people as part of a dangerous mob.
I'm all for solutions that lead to fewer dead people. I'm all for people making choices that lead to less deaths. But ideal solutions are not always possible. Don't want to get shot by Capitol Police? Then don't break into the U. S. Capitol as part of a mob, don't bash through doors while police stand on the other side with guns drawn telling you to stop, and don't go through the broken door.
Means count as much as ends, and must not be judged through a partisan filter.
The lesson to take from this is the same lesson to be taken from any political riot: mob rule is not democracy. Mobs do not lead to solutions. We knew it in 1776. We knew it in 1787 - 89. Most of us still know it.
Don't do stupid things with stupid people at stupid times and in stupid places.
ReplyDeleteAvoids a whole lot of pain all around.
Ashli Babbitt disgraced her service to the country that day while earning her death crawling through that broken door. She was one of many, like the active or retired LEO's in the mob, that should have known better.
ReplyDeleteTurns out that if you FA, you might well FO.
ReplyDeleteSeveral armed(guns, pepperspray, Handcuffs) trained officers in an empty hallway with lines of retreat does not match a deadend room being defended only by yourself.
ReplyDeleteThe first situation is the exercise of Castle Doctrine so depending on where you are "no".
ReplyDeleteDavid, Glenn -- haven't you got a Bund meeting to go to?
ReplyDeleteI regard the kind of people who make excuses for violent rioters as being even worse than the rioters themselves; at least the rioters have something at risk, however foolish and amoral they may be. You guys are just sitting on the sidelines, fat and happy, shouting, "FIGHT! FIGHT!" serenely confident the mob will never come for you.
Historically, that doesn't work out the way you're expecting.
David, you're particularly odious (not to mention invidious), distorting the situation (not "an empty hallway" on either side of the doors), the huge disparity of numbers, the proximity of the rioters to the people the police were charged with protecting, and your apparent disregard of the duty of those officers.
Stop making excuses for evil.
To this day I am amazed the police only shot one person. They'd have been fully justified in building a barricade of bodies.
ReplyDelete