Remember, kids: don’t be the aggressor.
Remember kids, escalating a snarky comment into a fight always ends well.
The acquittal is going to encourage more “stand your ground” shootings, which I think is a bad thing; public spaces may turn into the Wild West (though my understanding is that in the real western U.S., people were disarmed on entering town).
That guy scuffed my shoe! He tried to start something! BLAM BLAM BLAM
If you watch the news the major cities in the US are already the wild west.
But that’s not what happened. A younger man swung on an old man with a solid object in his hand. He escalated what was at most a rude remark into a fight against a weaker opponent.
That guy flipped me off! He’s trying to start something!! BLAM BLAM BLAM
But that’s not what happened. A younger man — wait, this already got covered.
I’m 80, but this guy behind me nudged me to get past me. He’s trying to start something! BLAM BLAM BLAM
Honest question: do you really believe there would have been an acquittal in that case?
What a court decides later is immaterial.
We’re now talking about people who’ve “earned shootings” and who need to learn the takeaway to be along the lines of “Don’t Start None, Won’t Be None.”
And the point is, the guy who got shot this time earned it, and so the shooter was acquitted, and so the takeaway is “Don’t Start None, Won’t Be None”; and, in a case where no shooting was so earned, there’d be no reason for an acquittal to ensue and we could have a somewhat different discussion about the takeaway.
Hey if you want to live in state where you want people to get killed for texting and embarrassing old men, so be it. Just don’t pretend it’s going to teach anybody any lessons other than it’s ok to shoot people who make you mad.
I don’t. Wait, is that why you think this guy got shot? I thought he got shot for something other than texting and embarrassing; I thought he should’ve stopped there, but, y’know, didn’t.
Wasn’t the confrontation started by the retired cop who yelled at the person in front of him to put his phone away during the previews?
As far as I know, that’s permissible: I’m allowed to do that sort of thing, and you’re allowed to do that sort of thing, and that‘s the kind of world I want to live in — one where it’s okay to initiate a nonviolent confrontation, and where it’s okay to nonviolently respond to that likewise. The problem comes when someone impermissibly escalates from nonviolence to violence.
And then at that point you kill them (for a very loose definition of violence — which could be looking at you wrong).
Are you saying all the escalation was one sided? Is there proof of that?
That would seem to involve proving a negative. As far as I know, until the gunshot the escalation from verbal to physical was one-sided — which would neatly explain the shooter’s acquittal, which after all happened for a reason — but, since I’m of course willing to admit that I could be wrong, I’m all ears if someone has evidence that (a) the facts were otherwise, such that (b) it was, uh, two-sided.
So all your sympathy is for the guy who served 8 years of sort-of house arrest, living in his own home, eating the food he wanted to eat, getting up and going to bed when he wanted to, watching TV or reading or doing anything fucking thing he wanted to do except leave his house. As distinct from the guy who has been dead for the past 8 years and will continue to be dead forever, the guy who was unarmed, and who did not respond perfectly to the guy yelling at him in the theater. Yes, he earned being dead because he got a little pissy about being yelled at. You and the others taking this line make me sick. I hope someday, somehow, you learn a little empathy.