No. The law should come second to my right to be offended. :smack:
Is it reasonable to expect not be questioned if you are unrecognized in a gated community? I don’t think so.
They are gated for a reason. So if you’re there and not recognized, it wouldn’t hurt a thing to explain why you are there. Well, except if you had a teenager’s ego.
Do you actually go around doing everything you are legally permitted to do? I’m sure you don’t. Your behavior is guided by more than just the law. There are social and cultural standards that make it unacceptable to do things that do not necessarily constitute violation of law.
Have you ever seen a gated community? It’s just like a normal one, except with a fucking gate. We are not talking about the sort of place where there’s a guard at the front who makes a copy of your driver’s license. We’re talking about the sort where the gate is open all day.
I’ve lived in gated communities for the last fifteen years, and in the same one for the last four. I would recognize maybe a dozen of my neighbors. Should I be demanding to know what all the other people are doing here?
Where what, precisely, ends?
Yes. And the penalties for those breaches of social custom is social condemnation.
But being a neighborhood volunteer and asking questions is not one of them.
I absolutely love lefties who live in gated communities. There are a few in my family.
So that’s a no?
A private citizen has no business demanding explanations of another private citizen who is in a public place and is not visibly doing anything illegal, such as harming someone or something. A neighborhood volunteer’s role should be limited to keeping watch and calling the authorities if suspicion is high enough, and then letting the legal authorities take any necessary action.
It’s not a case of whether they have any business asking (rather than demanding), it’s whether they have the right to that matters. As long as the asking doesn’t constitute a threat or harassment, they have that right.
Demanding could be either of those things, depending on how forceful the demand is.
Nope. Whether a person has the legal right to do something is not the sole consideration. I will deny that every time you say it. As George Costanza would say, We’re living in a society!. Legal restrictions are not the only standards that govern our actions.
What sanctions should govern violations of these social norms?
When the question is whether someone should be allowed to do something, it’s the sole consideration.
You also have rights, and they include being able to choose not to interact with people who don’t meet your societal standards, to protest to change the law and/or people’s behaviour, and to stand for election to become a lawmaker.
Ultimately the law is a reflection of societal standards, with some amount of lag as those standards change. If enough people think a law is wrong, or the lack of a law is wrong as in this case (there’s no law against asking people what they’re doing in a public place), the law can be changed. If there aren’t enough people that feel that, or feel it strongly enough, your claim that it’s a societal standard looks weak.
Are yall reading the thread title? People are talking about whether they’d want to live in communities with armed civilians patrolling the streets.
In case that’s still unclear, the subject of this thread pertains to what people prefer their societies to look like. Questions about what is illegal or not have nothing to do with this.
Do I want to live in a community in which men leer at me when I walk down the street and violate my personal space by sitting unnecessarily close to me on public transportation? Hell no. Do I think such behaviors should be illegal? No.
I find it disturbing how stupid the rhetoric on this board has become in recent days. Just because an action lacks a legal penalty does not make it a “right”. Just because an action isn’t illegal doesn’t mean we’d have to put up with it our neighborhoods either. It’s not illegal to paint a house rainbow colors, but a HOA may agree that such an action would be unacceptable and pressure the owner to comply with the policy. There are ways to influence people’s actions without getting the law involved.
And I guarantee you that if jerks appointed themselves the official interrogator of anyone they identify as an interloper, they likely will earn social penalties that will make them stop pronto. That’s why this kind of behavior isn’t commonplace.
That’s an absolutely preposterous thing to say that not even you believe.
There is nothing technically illegal about me walking up to a stranger on the street and calling him a “stupid fucking asshole.” If I was doing it in the States, I could further add that the gentleman was a “worthless goddamned spic who should go back to Mexico” or some such offensive slur. That’s a legally permissible thing to do. But such behavior isn’t “allowed” in the sense that it is so socially inappropriate that I would be subject to such vehement condemnation and opprobrium of my peers that it would be virtually equivalent to legal sanction. My friends would not “allow” me to do such a horrible thing in their presence. My family would not “allow” me to do such a thing.
These is nothing illegal about telling a woman “your children are really goddamned ugly” but, again, there’s no way anyone would consider it “allowed.”
If I were to continually raise my voice in anger in my workplace I would soon be out of a job, though it’s legal to raise one’s voice.
You seem to be insisting, for what reason I do not understand, that “legal” and “allowed” are synonymous, and they simply are not. Legality is a very specific and narrow term. “Allowable” is highly context-dependent and is sometimes coincident with “legal” and sometimes it’s not - indeed, as a matter of practical course, a lot of things are technically illegal but allowed. (Fox example, tt is, technically, illegal to drive at a speed of 115 km/h on a 400-series highway in Ontario; however, it’s actually allowed.) Many things are legal but, unallowable in a practical sense (e.g. acts of such gross social inappropriateness that one would be castigated and shunned by decent people) or in the sense of affecting a formal relationship (e.g. cheating on your spouse, or violating an employer’s rules.)
And yet people choose to ride the subway every day.
Oh yes, and he made it so much safer, by killing Martin, in self-defense, which could have been completely avoided if there hadn’t been a Watch, with a self-important aggrandizing asshole. Even if you take EVERYTHING Zimmerman said as true (which I totally don’t), if he hadn’t followed Martin, if he hadn’t stalked him, if he hadnt been wandering around at night with a gun and his arrogance, Martin wouldn’t be dead now.
Nope. Doesn’t compute.
Actually Zimmerman allegedly made the neighborhood safer on his previous call to 911, where he reported what the neighbor believed to be a burglary in progress. Likewise his reports of a missing child, which is of a piece with his latest effort to help in a traffic accident.
I don’t either. Only the parts backed up with other evidence.
[ul]
[li]There is no evidence that Zimmerman was following Martin when the shooting occurred[/li][li]there was nothing that could be legally or morally referred to as stalking[/li][li]Zimmerman was not wandering around at night, he was on the way to the grocery store. Martin was the one wandering around.[/li][li]Martin wouldn’t be dead if he hadn’t doubled back from his father’s girlfriend’s condo and attacked Zimmerman. You left that part of the chain of events out.[/ul][/li]
Regards,
Shodan
Neighborhood watches are set up as eyes and ears. Their job is to call the police if they see something suspicious and stay out of it. Nobody has objected to setting up a neighborhood watch. The concern (as raised by the OP) is when these people carry guns, even if legally, and act as DIY police.
(I do not know what training Zimmerman has had to participate in a NW or firearms training. I feel that training is a factor in evaluating the question in the OP.)
I would say the level of training required for a typical concealed carry permit is not an acceptable level of training for a police officer.