The protestors are inconveniencing people, not threatening bodily harm. So far I don’t think being inconvenienced is sufficient reason to run them over.
If the protestors put themselves in a dangerous position like blocking a freeway at night and the first person coming along doesn’t see them in time and hits someone I presume that will be taken into account at trial.
If a person’s so out-of-control and shows so little respect for other humans, society and it’s laws by blockading the street and smashing up your car, is it much of a leap to assume they’ll smash you up with their deadly weapons once the get through the windows?
I see no reason for changing any laws. The laws justifying lethal force in self defense seem enough to me. There should be no other legal reason to hit people with an automobile. Heart attacks in progress or no.
That said, there are situations where the right thing to do might be to run over some violent pedestrians. Cars and trucks aren’t tanks. If Reginald Denny had managed to escape, I would not hold it against him if his truck ran over a few of his assailants on his way to safety. But that’s an extremely rare scenario that I don’t think requires any new legislation.
I suspect the courts are going to find that the driver has no liability for the collision. I guess we’ll see.
Smashing car windows and dragging people out is indeed “threatening bodily harm”.
If you have an emergency, you roll down your window, call one of the participants over and ask for help. Almost any protest will make way for a medical emergency if you ask them to. If you try to force your way through, no one is going to know that you are not just an impatient asshole or attacker, because cars tend to divide people between inside them and outside them.
Imagine for a moment that you are on vacation at a friend’s cottage in Bumfuckia. You have a medical emergency and have to get to the hospital now. But when you get to Poduncton, they are having a parade (that you had no way of knowing about because you are not from around there) and the hospital is on the other side of town. Do you just plow through Poduncton’s happy celebration without a word to anyone? Or, maybe, ask someone for help?
A) run down people in the street, B) die in the stopped car, or C) roll down the window and yell “Heart Attack!! Need hospital!!” and see if that gets you through. And yes, the choice is really only in effect if you’re at the front of the line of stopped cars. (should have previewed)
I meant to address this earlier.
Blocking streets is a time-honored result of people protesting.
Maybe you think they should rally in their church parking lot and stay there.
My usual route home, from points east of me, takes me past the rec center where Tamir Rice was killed. There were expected to be protests on the day the jury handed down the verdict on his killers. I therefore chose a different route home that day.
Now, if I had had some absolutely urgent reason that I must get home quickly on that day, and lives were depending on it, then I would have… made even more sure to take a different route home that day, because protestors are going to slow you down considerably even if you are allowed to drive through them.
If I had been anywhere near the protest, then it would have been either because I intended to protest, too, or because I was opposed to the protest.
Ok, then you face justice for your actions and accept the consequences.
That’s the choice there.
How often has that happened?
Which is to say it is often enough that you should just hit the accelerator and drive through the crowd when you see a BLM protest?
Gun control advocates want to pass new laws to help stop or reduce mass shootings. Gun rights activists say that criminals don’t follow laws, so new laws won’t stop criminals.
Conservatives don’t like liberal protesters inconveniencing them by being in the road, so they want to pass a law to reduce or prevent instances of protesters inconveniencing them by being in the road. However when I brought up just passing laws making it illegal to protest in the street rather than legalizing automotive homicide you said:
So you think passing the “run them over” laws will prevent something that you admit we already have laws against. Why will this new law do what the other law didn’t? I think its because these laws are really just designed to threaten and intimidate protesters and give cover to those that want to threaten and intimidate protesters. The fact that you admit that passing laws won’t stop them protesting in the streets makes this pretty plain in my estimation.
No, protests haven’t changed. Vietnam war protests, civil rights protests involved marching in the streets and over bridges, and got pretty uncivil sometimes, albeit mostly from the anti-side, rodney king riots in the 90s. French Revolution was pretty upsetting to the ruling class. The Boston Tea Party was all about destroying property and fouled the entire harbor. I mean this isn’t new, its just that right wing media is really pushing this as an urgent issue that must be fixed… now that the protesters are protesting against the right wing agenda. They focus on the few instances of bad actors to paint the entire protest, and the entire political movement behind them, as violent and law breaking. You are being painted a picture that isn’t a true depiction of reality when it comes to protests that are happening currently. The student walk out was 99.99% peaceful, heartfelt and inspirational, but if you look at what right wingers were sharing on facebook it was almost entirely about that one group of kids that went to walmart instead and caused problems (where were the teachers and security for that one school?). As if that one instance is enough to smear the entire movement. This is why all of a sudden we need to pass “its ok to kill protesters” laws when this has never been an issue before.
That sounds reasonable to me. So why do we need new laws? Looks to me like some people are trying to legalize unreasonable acts.
You should be able to defend yourself from a genuine danger. You should not be able to run people over because you’re annoyed and then claim it was self-defense.
I agree with the others who see no need to change any laws. If someone is being threatened, they are within their rights to use proportionate force to deal with that threat, whether it is punching back, firing a gun, or driving away.
The idea that protesters in the streets may be killed free of civil or criminal penalty regardless of the nature of the “threat” or the proportionality of driving through them, is really sickening.
Conservatives seem really bad at understanding laws like these cut both ways.
Today it is liberals protesting. Tomorrow it may well be conservatives protesting.
And of course you can always wash the blood and guts off, but hey, my dentist HATES it when I’m late because I’m too much of a pussy to avoid hitting people with my car.
(Seriously, WTF?)
If one of the protesters is legally concealed carrying, are they justified in shooting you to defend themselves?
Realised I forgot to actually answer the question in my first post, so here is the actual answer. Never. Whew, that was an easy one. It kinda boggles my mind that people are arguing over this, to be honest.
Jail’s not a pleasant place, but I find it completely absurd and somewhat offensive to suggest you are better off killing yourself than going there. That’s the definition of a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
And is someone else justified in killing the person who is about to kill the driver who is trying to get away from the murderous leftist who is assaulting your car?
Yes I do, because that not breaking any of society’s laws, and not harming innocent people by delaying them getting home to their families and infringing on their 5th amendment right to travel. There’s a reason we have laws against blocking roads- protestors rights end where someone else’s rights begin.
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