I’m an activist street organizer, and I’ve put together a lot of protests, demonstrations, and direct actions. For a long time I’ve pondered the legalities and feasibility of what I’ll call a “mirror protest.”
The idea is, everyone shows up at a protest with a mirror. At a signal, everyone in the crowd, thousands of people, focus their mirror on a single riot cop. Whumpf! Up he goes in flames! As he runs off, everyone turns their mirrors to the next in line. And so on.
My question is two-fold. First, is it feasible? Would the sunlight from a few thousand hand-held mirrors be sufficient to set a riot shield aflame? Could that may people focus their light on that small an area? And how focused would it have to be to work? And secondly, is it legal? It’s perfectly legal for a single person to reflect light at someone. It’s only by the collective action of thousands of people, each of whom is engaged in a perfectly harmless action, that you get something capable of doing damage. Could anyone be charged, or would the courts be helpless to punish anyone for it?
No, it wouldn’t work, unless you had many thousands of people in a stadium, and the cop down below. In a normal situation, only the first few rows would be able to use their mirrors - all the other people would be blocked by the folks in front of them.
And, as you well know, it wouldn’t be legal, and more than inciting a crowd to violence in any other way is legal.
You may want to review the second Mythbusters episode on Archimedes’s death ray. The short version is that under ideal conditions it is possible to set things on fire using just mirrors and sunlight, but it’s really hard and takes a long time.
Add to this the fact that your hypothetical riot cop isn’t going to stand still for the experiment. He and his buddies are going to start making use of weapons which act a lot faster and more effectually than yours.
I’ll leave the legalities to someone qualified, but I’m sure there are situations in which just one person shining a mirror at another would be illegal – attempting to blind a driver or pilot for instance. Doing it en masse with the intent of causing injury isn’t going to be any more defensible.
>It’s only by the collective action of thousands of people, each of whom is engaged in a perfectly harmless action, that you get something capable of doing damage.
What? Its still murder if 100 people kick one person just one time in the head. All 100 are guilty of murder.
>Could anyone be charged, or would the courts be helpless to punish anyone for it?
I think I read such a plan in a short story (by Arthur C. Clarke?) once, except
it took place during a soccer match between two South American countries that were bitter rivals. The fans of one team were each given a game program with a reflective cover. At a predetermined point, each fan held up the program so that the sunlight was focused on the referee, who burst into flames.
I’m smiling as I think of how well the prison gurads will take this. “Do you think we will be convicted of murder if we each just him him once with our batons?”
Is that true? Consider the following:
a) it is an offense (assault with intent to cause bodily harm, or something like that) to kick someone.
b) it is a major offense (manslaughter, murder) to kill someone by physically assaulting them (kicking them)
c) it is a minor offense (may even be a misdemeanor) to kick a corpse
So the victim is alive at time T0, and is dead at time T101. That’s all we really know. Maybe we also know (cctv) who kicked the victim first, and who kicked him last.
Is there a legal basis (other than Agatha Christie novels) by which some of the people are not guilty of murder?
As mentioned, this won’t work. You won’t be able to co-ordinate that many people, or get enough people with a line of sight to your victim.
If someone does something with the intent to kill someone else that kills them, there isn’t a country in the world that wouldn’t consider it murder (special circumstances like war or self defense not withstanding). Whether they do it with 1 or 1 million co-conspirators makes little difference. In addition, even if they could argue that they didn’t know what the consequences would be, you, my sick little friend, as the one who planned it would be locked up (or worse) faster than you can say “Who would do that to a fellow human being!?”.
If you seriously think you have a moral right to burn someone to death just for wearing a uniform if you can get away with it…:smack:. It’s people like you who undermine the causes protests are intended to support.
If 100 people each put one milligram of cyanide into someone’s coffee knowing that the LD50 of cyanide is 1.1 mg/kg do you think the cops just throw up their hands and say, well, we don’t know which of the doses actually killed the victim, so it’s Ollie Ollie oxen free? Or do they arrest everyone and charge them with first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder on top of that?
This statement is not necessarily true. Actually, it’s almost certainly not true. For example, see the Pit thread on the Pennsylvanians who beat up the Hispanic victim.
He’s an “activist street organizer”. Thank God for brave people like him or the US would have to settle things by archaic means like voting and informed debate.
ETA: I can’t just leave this alone. The image of skinny, bandanna wearing, dread-locked WASPs that think smashing Starbucks’ windows is going to awaken a mass movement among the people that actually have to go to work each day. There are not enough rolly eyes in the world.
I assume they were giving the benefit of the doubt that the guy wasn’t serious. But I’m not sure that is warranted. Did you report the post? If not, the mods may not know about it.
Well, I could always say my jackboots were in the wash.
Yeah, we got a “report this post” early today, right after the thread started. I can’t answer for other GQ mods, but I though I’d let it run until we had some informed legal opinions. So, blame me.
