He had five accurate shots, out of five fired-only four lives were endangered. Not everybody is an incompetent. Apparently, Goetz wasn’t.
(I can’t say he was 100%, though…something about the fifth throws my calculations off).
“That was in motion”!!! You aren’t real.
Goetz, himself, was a terrified passenger.
We can turn that on its head completely, try this
For me, the contents of your wallet are worth less than my life. It’s that simple. That’s why I should retreat, or expect the use lethal means to resist robbery, or simply give up on stealing the contents of your pockets.
There I corrected that for you.
Perhaps the victims needed shooting - one of them went on to participate in the rape and sodomy of a pregnant woman, and the other two went on to careers in robbery.
It’s very hard to generate much hate for Goetz, especially in the climate of NYC at the time. These guys were criminals, not just some teenagers fooling around.
It’s a bit silly to talk about him retreating when he was on a bench and they surrounded him.
Beyond that while you do have the right to defend yourself, I don’t see how anyone can justify him shooting the man who was on the ground clearly incapacitated. By that time the danger was over and he was in no serious jeopardy.
Oh I don’t know, would the crim have done the same for him, I doubt it - upshot is, you attempt to rob someone , mercilessly, and you get it back more than you can handle
And this is why you are not a robber? Ok. But that doesn’t undermine Saintly Loser’s position. He (and I) think human life is more valuable what we carry around in our wallet. It appears that casdave disagrees, though he hasn’t stated so explicitly. He’s just claimed that risk of injury deters muggings. But we knew that. And we know that such deterrence has less than 100% effectiveness.
The 2 arguments don’t really conflict with one another.
Passively handing over your valuables serves only to encourage more such robberies, the value is not what is taken, but in the effects upon society, and that is definitely more valuable than the robbers life.
Sooner or later, emboldened by success, the robber is going to harm someone, I work with these types of thugs every day - they escalate until caught.
The reason I am not a robber is not merely personal risk, there is the moral aspect about imposing your requirements upon another person and the consequent lifelong fear that can be engendered - again, this is worth much more than the robbers life.
You do know that *none *of the victims were shot twice, right?
I believe you are correct. What is true, though (and confirmed by Goetz’s own statements), is that Goetz shot Canty when Canty was not threatening him, and after the other three men had already been shot.
I don’t see how it can be argued that this shot was fired in self-defense.
The right to “bear arms” cases might put an end to NYC’s discretionary concealed carry laws in their current form.
A lot of people think NYC’s concealed carry laws are unconstitutional in practice because its issuance is discretionary and is almost non-existent in practice.
By that logic, should someone who views murder as worse than rape submit to a rapist rather than kill them?
You cannot blame someone for not submitting to a criminal, thats just fucking crazy. The burden is not on the victim of a crime to prevent harm to the criminal. The criminal took their life into their own hands when they committed the crime.
He couldn’t retreat, he was surrounded and just displying a gun without being ready to use it is pretty stupid.
If Mr. Goetz had been convicted of all charges he would have spent a LOT of time in jail. NYC prosecutors never seek the death penalty even when it is available.
Mr Goetz was in fear of his life when he responded with deadly force. I used to take that train home from school in 1984 and I was robbed several times, I gave up the money and just HOPED that they would leave after that. I was never really sure that they valued my life as much as you seem to value theirs.
The last shot may have been unnecessary or he may have just been waiting for Goetz to turn his back and check on the other criminals.
I didn’t realize Goetz was even shot once.
First, I think you mean Cabey, not Canty.
Second, Goetz estimates that the entire five shots took less than two seconds, and all the eye witnesses testified that the shots were in extremely rapid succession. Somehow I doubt anyone is going to immediately determine that the person in front of you that doesn’t appear to be injured in anyway has gone from ‘one of four men surrounding you and trying to rob you or worse’ to ‘suddenly no longer a threat’, in the span of two seconds. There’s no indication that I’ve seen that Cabey made a ‘I give up’ or ‘don’t shoot me’ gestures (he may well simply not even have had enough time).
I’m definitely on the gun control side of things, but given the situation and the extreme speed that the events unfolded, there is zero rational for letting Goetz slide on the first four shots and not on the fifth.
Don’t want to risk getting shot? Don’t try and rob people. It’s not a difficult concept.
This.
On a lighter note, he seems to like squirrels. Subway Gunman, veggie Bernie Goetz plays with his squirrel - YouTube
Depending on your feelings towards squirrels, this means he’s either not all bad or a depraved lunatic.
I think this is yet another case of judging a case out of context. We forget that NYC was a fricking war zone at that time. Crime was completely out of hand there. Goetz was viewed as a hero by many there. Perhaps not the best judge of right or wrong, but not a bad judge of how bad things has gotten there.
Second, it’s early to view this from the comfort of one’s living room. Trying being there alone in a subway against four criminals. Let me know how you’d handle it.
He should retreat because it places the most amount of people in the least amount of danger.
He should give up his wallet because it would cause the least bit of trouble for everyone involved.
He should threaten with a gun instead of use it because it may have accomplished what he sought to do (protect himself and his property) better.
We are not judging the victim. Of course the criminals shouldn’t have tried anything in the first place. They should have all gotten jobs and became lawyers and went out to support wildlife conservation. But that’s the easy story and everyone knows what they should have done. In Goetz’s case though, all the wishing that those guys would have done that goes out the window as soon as the confrontation started. At that moment, its what he (as a stand-in for you and everyone else reading this) would do. In order to safeguard your own life and property, what is the best way to handle the situation? None of those include opening fire with an illegal weapon in a crowded subway car.
I’m going to assume you’ve been in a train or a bus. How do you retreat when four youths have blocked your path and separated you from the rest of the passengers?
I can understand someone being scared and surrendering their wallet without a fight. But to say they should do that because it’s less trouble for everyone involved, including the robbers, is ludicrous. Those passengers saw those four men isolated Goetz and knew what was going to happen. Sorry, if everyone involved is willing sigh in relief when they see the wolves come after me instead of them then I don’t see why I need to take them into consideration.
Nope. If I’m surrounded by four people within arm’s length or a few steps who appear to have a weapon and/or a willingness to attack me then they’re not getting a warning.
A jury came to a different conclusion for some reason.
:rolleyes: Retreat where? He’s on a moving train, sitting down on one of the benches, surrounded by four men. Where’s he supposed to go?
Well, it certainly causes the least bit of trouble for the *criminals *involved; I’m sure they’d be quite happy to hear you say everyone should just hand over their wallets with nary a struggle.
God, this is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read. Yes, ‘may have’ accomplished what he was after. Or maybe, threatening the four men surrounding him with a gun he has no intention of actually using means he’s now being threatened by four men holding his gun. Or maybe the four men now pull out the guns they already had.
Don’t get me wrong - I can’t really think of many situations where adding a gun to the mix improved prospects for anyone involved…but IF he has a gun and IF he’s going to brandish it, he absolutely needs to be prepared to use it, lest it just end up being used on him. I’m not even a gun proponent, and even I realize that.
In YogSosoth’s world, I don’t even know why you’d bother having a police force. Just handing all your valuables to every criminal that walks by clearly results in the least bit of trouble for all involved. :rolleyes:
Don’t want to get shot at? Don’t rob people. It’s not a difficult concept.
The first important step in handling that situation is accepting the fact that you don’t get to choose whether the contents of your wallet are more or less valuable than human life. That choice has already been made for you by the thugs, who knew going in that robbery has a pretty good chance of resulting in bodily harm or even death to either the victim or the perpetrators.
Opponents of self defense always get this confused. They believe that it is on the defender to decide how much human life is worth. The real situation was that the defender was surrounded by four thugs who had already decided that a wallet is worth more than human life. When you armchair quarterback your way through this scenario, make sure to take into account this mindset of the four thugs that are threatening you.
I find it odd that most people think that since Goetz was supposedly in fear, any action he took was automatically justified.
On the other hand, when Martin was in fear, and just gave the guy a few lumps in response to that fear, people said he had no right to hit Zimmerman. In fact, people say that Martin deserved to be killed, and that it is ok for his killer to be walking around free today.
I just don’t understand how in one case it’s totally ok to shoot people if you are scared, but in another case you can’t even hit them if your scared.
Do people actually think that? It hasn’t been my experience. The legal standard is a reasonable belief that force is necessary to “prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony.” Source.
(That’s the Florida statute, since you’re comparing Goetz to the Martin case).
Just being afraid isn’t enough.
Fear isn’t enough. Someone following you isn’t a forcible felony, nor does it represent the imminent use of unlawful force. Being mindful of this, some have speculated that Zimmerman must have attacked Martin, but it’s just that, speculation. There’s not much in the way of evidence to support that idea.
In neither case is it ok to shoot people because you are scared.
Regardless of the fear factor, let’s not hijack this thread with one more tedious exchange on the Martin/Zimmerman case.
[ /Moderating ]