I see our local gun lovers laud people being being killed over noise complaints.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22330157&postcount=1739
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
I’m sorry, but that’s an incredibly dishonest summary of what went on.
They weren’t shot over noise complaints. They were shot because, after the noise complaint was made, the people who were making the noise entered the guys property and, after he pepper sprayed them and retreated into his own house, at least one of them followed him into the house.
I’m not a gun person, but if that happened to me and I had a gun, I’d probably use it too.
If someone made too much noise you’d escalate until someone was dead and then call it self defence?
Look, you fucking stupid cockwomble, the people who escalated this were the ones making the noise. Here’s what happened.
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A group of people were making loud noise outside at 2.30 a.m.
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A resident in a nearby house went out onto his own porch and told them to stop making noise and to leave the area.
That could have been it right there. All they had to do was stop waking people up in the middle of the night.
Instead…
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The group of people who had been making noise then “confronted the resident and became hostile toward him and entered onto his property.” My emphasis.
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The resident sprayed them with pepper spray and retreated into his own house. My emphasis.
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The people followed him into his own house. My emphasis.
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He fired his gun.
Tell me again who is doing the escalating here. If someone enters your property, and then your house, against your express wishes, in the middle of the night, you don’t just “call it self defence”; it IS self-defense.
First, we’re in the pit, so I am allowed to interpret things however I want, good faith or not.
Also, it’s a simplification, sure, but I do not consider it to be a dishonest summary. People were killed and injured over a noise complaint. Nothing about that is incorrect.
We don’t really know what went down yet, but I doubt that it was, “Hey, could you please keep the noise down?” to which violence was returned.
The homeowner was probably rude and insulting about it, given the reaction of the crowd. He may have even threatened them with violence if they didn’t keep it down.
The homeowner, knowing that he has a gun in the home, probably felt perfectly safe in yelling at a crowd of peaceful, if celebratory people. He probably felt safe in using any sort of hateful or inciting language he wanted.
That some people took the bait and chose to confront him over it is their fault, sure. But that he set up conditions where it was likely that someone would confront him over his actions, to which he would then be allowed to kill someone, seems more than reasonable.
I have not been able to find out exactly what words were exchanged, but lets say he came out on his porch and said, “You fucking N* need to get off the street before I shoot you pieces of shit in the face!”, then I would still not feel that them confronting him would be the right thing, but it would be every predicable thing, and would, IMHO put him in a position of culpability, ethically if not legally.
I’d like to hear the other side of the story before I join with MEBuckner in celebrating their death.
Also, as I said, our local gun lovers consider this to be a positive story, so they must think that it had a positive outcome, or they would simply call it a story of defensive gun use.
Also, “entered onto his property”?
All that means is that they were on the grass. If he started pepper spraying them because they had a foot on his grass, then he is definitely the escalator here.
The article is definitely worded to give high fives to all the gun lovers while intentionally skewing any information in the killer’s favor.
Lets say that you and a couple friends have just left a little shindig at your buddy’s house, and you are out standing by your car. You are standing out there and talking and laughing a bit before you get ready to go home.
Some guy comes out of his house and starts screaming at you. You apologize, and tell him you’ll keep it down, but when you step around to go to your driver’s side door to leave, he starts pepper spraying you because you stepped onto his grass.
You say “What the fuck?” and approach him to take the pepper spray away from him so that he will stop spraying you and your friends, at which time, he shoots you.
That fits the details in the article just fine. The details left out of the article are shaped almost exactly like that. The “aggressions” of the killed and injured are left just vague enough, but just technically illegal enough, and the actions of the homeowner are sanitized enough that I do suspect that’s exactly how it played out.
Well, not arguing in good faith is basically the textbook definition of trolling, but go ahead if you like.
I’ll remember your definition of what constitutes honest interpretation for future discussions. It doesn’t reflect well on your intelligence.
As for the rest, I’m not interested in wading into your fantasy hypothetical scenarios about exactly what may or may not have happened. I’ll simply reiterate my main point: if you enter someone else’s property, and especially their house, against their wishes and in the middle of the night, then you’re asking for trouble, and it really doesn’t matter who was the biggest asshole in the initial exchange.
That is, even if your wholly-fantasized argument about how rude the homeowner was is true, it still doesn’t justify an invasion of his property.
I come, originally, from a country that has significant restrictions on gun rights, and I’d be quite happy if no-one had a gun. I also think that America would be a better place if there were fewer guns, and tighter registration and regulation of the firearms that people own. It’s just a shame that some people on my own side of the debate can’t even bring themselves to address each particular instance honestly.
Thank you for that information. I did not say I was not arguing in bad faith, just saying that that actually is not really a useful criticism in the pit. For you to take it that way, however…
And your celebration of death as long as it comes at the hands of a legal gun owner doesn’t reflect well on you at all.
I did specifically say that that was speculation, based on my knowledge of the event, which is limited by a very terse and obviously biased article.
As “property” can be defined as loosely as anything off the street, then that doesn’t mean much to me. I enter my neighbor’s property every time I get into my car when I’m parked on the street. You are saying that my neighbor would have the right to pepper spray me for doing so?
If my neighbor starts pepper spraying me for stepping onto his lawn, and I try to take it from him to stop him from doing so, you are saying that he is now in his rights to shoot me?
I didn’t say it justified it, I said it made it a predicable outcome. If you goad someone into punching you in the face, that doesn’t justify them punching you in the face, but that does make it a predicable outcome that you instigated.
And it fits the details of the article just as well as the your fantasy of the homeowner being some peaceful old man who just wanted to sleep and was violently confronted by irrational violent criminals.
It’s a shame that people like you make the claim that you are for restrictions on gun rights, then justify the use of guns any time they can muster the legal cover to use it for homicide.
My point in bringing that point up was more the celebratory nature of the post of MEBuckener’s, when at most, it was a tragedy for all involved. The fact that he considers it to be a positive story is what I find most repugnant.
The fact that I question the story and wonder if it was really as justified as people are making it out to be is what you consider to be fantasy and bad faith. The fact that they just consider it to be great news that this person was shot, without any greater knowledge surrounding the case is what you consider to be addressing each particular instance honestly.
I will remember your definitions of bad faith and honest interpretation for future discussions. It doesn’t reflect well on your integrity.
Fuck you, you motherfucking piece of shit. I haven’t celebrated a thing. To argue that the shooting was probably justified by the invasion of his property is not to celebrate it. That you don’t acknowledge the difference shows your stupidity or your mendacity.
The article was simply describing the police report. Here’s the police report in full:
The news report says that six people were detained, suggesting that there was at least that many people involved. I guess it’s possible that he got up at 2.30 in the morning with no other intention provoke an altercation with a half-dozen strangers.
Wow, you really are fantasyland material, aren’t you? “Let’s see if I can make up the most benign and ridiculous hypothetical I can think of, and somehow bootstrap it to this case.”
I never once described him as peaceful or old, you lying piece of shit.
A person dying is never positive.
But the story itself is positive, in the context of that thread, precisely because the use of the gun might have saved the resident himself from severe injury or death. If he hadn’t had a gun, the headline might simply have been “Homeowner found bleeding in his house; hospitalized in critical condition” or “Resident found dead on his porch after late-night confrontation.”
THAT is the context in which gun use can sometimes be described as positive: when it protects the gun-owner from injury or death at the hands of an attacker.
As true as that may be, as k9bfriender noted, there is a great deal missing from the account. Yes, I would be incensed, perhaps to the point of homicide, if someone entered my house uninvited. However, if the homeowner threatened the victim, which is highly plausible given what we have of the story, I can imagine justification for it. If you tell me that you are going after that gun in your house in order to attack me, one valid reaction on my part would be to try to chase you down to prevent you from getting to it.
If you have a gun, and I am choked and burning from the pepper spray (you have thereby already demonstrated you inclination for attacking people), it stands to reason that trying to keep you from getting your gun may be my only chance to avoid getting shot, because I cannot get away from your house fast enough to escape your shooty wrath.
Because, you know, if those guys are loud and hanging around out there, it seems like contacting the police might be more sensible than directly making yourself a target.
You understand, right, that the only information we have right now is that the homeowner sprayed the pepper spray in order to deter people who had already entered his property? How does that demonstrate an “inclination for attacking people”?
This does not stand to reason at all.
First, it assumes a whole lot of facts not in evidence. Second, are you really telling me that, if you’re on a guy’s front lawn and involved in an altercation, and he tells you that he’s getting his gun, your first inclination is to follow him into his house to see if you can get it first? Quite frankly, if that’s what you say you would do, either you’re a liar, or braver than (conservatively) 99 percent of the population.
If I’m in that position, the first thing I do if he mentions going into his house to get a gun is run. I’m not especially fast, but I’m pretty sure I have a better chance of avoiding the gun if I run away rather than entering a house that I’m unfamiliar with, in pursuit of a guy who already has pepper spray in his hand.
And you have not a single shred of evidence that he explicitly threatened them with going back to get his gun. That is pure and rank speculation on your behalf.
I’ve dealt with noisy neighbors and people on the street before. I don’t consider myself a tough guy, and I’m certainly never interested in getting into a fight. But never once have I called the cops BEFORE asking noisy people to be quiet. Admittedly, when I ask them, I do it politely, but I would never call the cops for something like this without at least making an effort to deal with the situation myself first.
And again, “making yourself a target” suggests that it’s the homeowner’s fault for demanding some quiet at 2.30 in the morning.
Look you pantaloon-wearing, Brussels sprout eating, Nickelback listening tardigrade, escalation is shooting pepper spray. Standing on someones lawn is not.
That you have made the assertion that I don’t see a difference is all on you, not on me.
Legally, probably justified. But that the homeowner did nothing to escalate the tensions, and therefore, be culpable ethically, if not legally has not been established.
As long as you defend the story as “positive”, then, yes, that is a celebration. Positive means something good happened, and when good things happen, I celebrate.
Yes, and the report completely leaves out how the interaction actually took place. There are many details left out.
For instance, when he came out to confront them, he already had pepper spray with him. He was expecting an escalation.
I never said you did, but you are absolving the homeowner of any responsibility in this. So, old, no, that was hyperbole, but peaceful, yes, you certainly made that implication.
And yet, there it is, listed as a positive story.
Could be considered a defense gun use, sure. But positive, no, I disagree. I also do not think that the homeowner would have been as confrontational as he was, had he not known that he had lethal force available to him in case the confrontation escalated.
If no gun had been involved, he probably would have either not interacted with them at all, or would have called the police, rather than confronting them himself. The headline would be, “Nothing too weird happened last night.”
And that doesn’t in any way make my initial post on this wrong. There was a noise complaint that escalated into someone being dead. MEBuckener considers this to be a positive story. I think it was a tragedy for all involved. That was all I claimed there, and that is entirely true.
I disagree with you that a situation where someone ends up dead where they didn’t have to is ever a positive story. I don’t think that anyone had to die here. There were many of ways of handling the situation that would have had far more positive outcomes for all involved.
Any motivations or idiocies you have ascribed to me here have been all based on your own interpretation of my post, and your defense of their celebration of death.
If you want to back off on your disingenuous rhetoric and putting words into my mouth, and agree that the story is not positive, even if the homeowner was legally justified in his use of force, then I would no longer say that you are celebrating the death of this individual. But yeah, as long as you defend it as positive, then you are celebrating violence along with the rest of the gun lovers in that thread.
The fact that this is your description of what happened here says little for your intelligence.
From the police report:
But sure, let’s play the 74westy/k9bfriender fantasyland hypothetical game, shall we?
Give me a moment; got to think of a good scenario where the homeeowner is in the wrong.
OK, I think I’ve got it.
What if—wait for it, this is good—what if the group of people was just gathering on the road singing him a lullaby, trying to help him get to sleep. And then, he came out and told them that he wanted to give them all candy and pony rides for being so nice, and invited them onto his lawn. And then, because he is a complete and total meanie-pants, he waited until they gathered on his property and then started pepper-spraying them just for fun, and when they complained, he told them to come inside so they could wash the pepper spray out of their eyes, and then he just shot them instead!
I think you’re onto something here. I have to concede you’ve been right all along.
You do realize that “entered onto his property” just means, “set foot on his lawn”, right?
If you pepper spray people for simply setting foot on your lawn, you are escalating things.
No, that is ONE of its multiple possible meanings.
It could also mean, in the context of this case, that a group of people marched onto his property telling him that they were going to kick his ass. You seem to conveniently ignore, every single time, that the police report notes that the group “confronted the resident and became hostile toward him and entered onto his property.” But by all means, you carry on with your dishonesty.
I did not ignore, and it does not contradict anything that I said.
I say that we don’t know all the facts of the case, and to determine that the shooting was the best possible outcome is premature, and IMHO doubtful. You are saying that you know enough facts to determine that it was, in fact, a positive outcome. I’m not the one taking a dishonest position here.
Look, all my post was that you took exception to was a disagreement that it was a positive story. I’ve never been banned from the thread, but I’m sure I’m not too welcome, and that asking people to justify it’s positiveness would not go well. Which is why I criticized it here, rather than over there.
There are occasionally stories on there that make me say, “Hmmm, it’s actually a good thing that someone had a gun in that situation. The gun made the results more positive than they would have been otherwise.”
I do not feel that that was one of those times. You feel otherwise, that’s fine. I’m sorry that you feel that you have to attack anyone that disagrees with that assessment. I do not think that you or the people in that thread are dishonest in that you find such stories positive, I just disagree. That you have to attack me with such fallacious and flailing insults tells me that you cannot stand to have anyone disagree with you.
BTW, you really shouldn’t link these threads.
In case some of the PGNOFD people followed mhendo’s link over here, please note that I respected your thread and did not question the value of a gun in the story in your thread. It was mhendo who chose to bring this up to you.
This is perhaps the most hilarious thing you’ve posted today.
To summarize:
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You are permitted to link to that thread from this thread.
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I am not permitted to link to this thread from that thread.
Thanks for the laugh.
Perhaps the positive aspect to the incident is that the one guy never had to suffer through a long and painful death from COVID-19?