No, not always. I’ve been pinned in a dangerous situation on a motorcycle before. I took a detour around a construction site and ended up behind a bus on a side street with LOTS of people in the street blocking traffic. It was in a seedy part of town where frequent gang activity and car jackings occur. It also happens to be a shortcut through the city during rush-hour. I got some nasty looks and if any one of them wanted to they could have pushed me off my bike and stole it. Or robbed me. I felt a bit panicked, but nothing happened.
My point is, sometimes you end up somewhere by making a bad decision. This bad decision could have ended differently. My intentions were good, I did not realize the route I took would be blocked until I committed to the turn.
If I would have been in a car and someone tried to car jack me, you can be assured I would have panicked and ran some people over.
This happened in Milwaukee where car jacking have been a** thing** lately.
Well, given what we know about him …
Under the legal doctrine established in Oh Yeah? v. Yeah!
You are free to “maintain” whatever you like. It doesn’t matter to me. The laws of the state I live in (and most states, really) disagree, and they are what will be applied if someone shoots a bat-wielding protester, not whatever you choose to “maintain”.
So, by the laws of your state, if someone is threatening you with a car, you may shoot them as well?
I’ve seen people try that tactic too, and it seems to rarely work.
Yes, generally. Car, bat, brick, any deadly weapon. There are a couple of caveats that you should understand though, because they might apply if you’re thinking that protesters can just take over a street arbitrarily and shoot anyone who tries to nudge their vehicle through. I’ll highlight some potentially-applicable ones below
This was a gang of people assaulting someone with dangerous weapons, it had nothing to do with anyone protesting anyone, or blocking anyone’s path.
No amount of inconvenience inflicted on your daily commute time justifies killing someone. Morally or legally.
Having your life threatened in an immediate way (e.g. by a gang of people attacking your car with a dangerous weapon) entitles you to take reasonable action in self defense.
Whether that happens in a protest or an back alley make no difference.
@griffin1977;20885368]
I think we’re largely in agreement.
Here is another video, this one happened at an anti-Trump protest in Portland. So far as I know, the driver didn’t actually run anyone over to make his escape, but I’m curious if you agree that he would have been justified in doing so, around say 1:10-1:20 in the video. If he had punched the accelerator at that point and squished some protesters to escape, and you end up on the jury at his trial, do you vote guilty or not (based off the information you have from the video)?
I don’t see anything in that that does not justify a protester shooting and killing a motorist who is pushing their way through the crowd. The car is posing a danger to them and to others. They are not the aggressor or provoking use of force.
Also, I note that in your response to Ravenman, you called the bat wielder a protestor. That is not the scenario here. In this scenario, you are the protestor, and the bat wielder is the person trying to get you to move out of the way.
If the car behind me had a bazooka aimed at me? Or if the cars around me were all illegally protesting?
We need more info…
Is he squishing protestors threatening him or just protestors in general?
It depends on the protest. Watch the Portland video I just posted. Those protesters were certainly the aggressors and provoking use of force (IMHO).
But even in the case of a peaceful protest, something like the video from the OP. Would you say that those guys blocking traffic in the street were “in a place where that person has lawfully entered or remained”? I would certainly not.
If someone is in a place that they have lawfully entered (and not otherwise subject to the various exceptions to the law), and someone else wants to dislodge them by swinging a bat and approaching them, they can shoot them, and the shooting will be a justified action by the laws of my state (and many other states).
Let’s go with protesters in general (at least at first), in the same way that Lien ran over a motorcyclist in general, not necessarily one of the ones causing the threat.
I work in downtown Portland.
A while back, a co-worker and I were looking down on Broadway at a nascent protest. He commented something along the lines of “Boy, I feel sorry for the people parked down there when the protesters start breaking things.” I was startled almost silent, then managed “Dude. It’s the Women’s March. They aren’t anarchists.”
His automatic assumption was that any protest–particularly by “liberals”–will always involve violence and vandalism.
IME, this knee-jerk thinking is not rare, particularly among the conservative, older, and white. If it’s a march, a rally, a protest, it’s just going to turn violent. Because that’s what plays on television and other media. The hundreds of peaceful protests are irrelevant; hell, they probably don’t even exist in some peoples’ minds. (Just as a small number of assholes turns any protest into a riot in some peoples’ minds.)
I think I bring this up only to suggest that this entire issue, the entire thread, is based on situations that are vanishingly rare…but are nevertheless seen by many as a very real, regular occurrence.
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Which he would probably have prosecuted for but for the fact one of the attackers turned out to be a undercover cop, so the DA decided it was not good for his career to bring the case to trial (at the same time as he was prosecuting the cop in question)
There are two basic facts here:
- Being inconvenienced by a protester or anyone else does not give you the right to run them over
- Being threatened or attacked by a protester or anyone else gives you the right to respond reasonably in self-defense, not the right run over anyone in the vicinity
Unless you can find an actual legal cite that says otherwise. I will maintain my position that if you deliberately run someone over, who is not presenting an immediate threat to your life, you are morally and legal guilty of assault or murder.
This much is not evident. If he was attempting to drive his vehicle into the gathering of people, then, no, I would say they were not the aggressors.
In the case of Portland, I would be very cautious about making pronouncements about what is “lawful entry”, but in any case, if there is someone or something in your way, your are very probably not entitled to run it/them down.
Do you have any evidence to support this claim? Did the DA make a public statement to that effect? Have there been other similar cases, without the UC wrinkle in which the fearful motorist was prosecuted? What makes you think “he would probably have” if not for the UC? The DA charged (and won convictions against) 10 other motorcyclists that were NOT undercover cops. As far as I can tell, if it had only been the 10 non-UC motorcyclists vs Lien, the DA still would have charged the 10 and not Lien.
I’ve already found a cite. You’re not legally guilty of assault in NYC. We’ve got a real-life example of that, and no assault charge, let alone a conviction. What have you got? “I will maintain my position” (in the face of all facts to the contrary)? Anything more than that?
That is the absence of a cite. There is no “state of NYC vs Lein”. That could be for a whole host of reasons. The fact they were pursuing a criminal prosecution against that cop is a pretty good one IMO, but we’ll never know. Someone getting away with running some people over is not a cite.
In order to prove the (pretty unbelievable IMO) claim that US laws says being threatened in your car gives you the right to run over anyone in the vicinity you’ll need to show a court case where that opinion was successfully presented in court.
Look, you are the one who literally said that someone swinging a bat and advancing on a person is merely hurting the feelings of a snowflake. I essentially asked if you would see it differently if you were the “snowflake” in question, and it is now clear that the answer to my question is a resounding YES.
Let me get back to the UCSD events. You said the driver was being treated poorly. I watched the video in which he basically went full speed toward a group of people who were stupidly in the freeway, but almost certainly well visible, and only hit the brakes after he entered the crowd. I must ask again how you think someone who appears to be under absolutely no threat is justified in going full speed into people, and what happened to him that you see as unfair.