A jury has found a delivery driver not guilty in the shooting of a YouTube prankster who was following him around a mall food court earlier this year

  • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Somebody approaching you, even though you’re trying to move away and telling them to stop, is not a “mild annoyance”. It’s dangerous because weapons are so freely available. It would be better if they weren’t, but while they are, you shouldn’t do something like this.

    • Grimy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s not enough to shoot someone in any civilised country.

      It’s important to realize that the confrontation lasted 30 seconds. That’s the amount of time he waited before almost killing someone.

      He wasn’t being chased in a dark alley or stalked for half a hour, someone played loud noises in his face and it took a total of 30 seconds for him to decide to shoot someone over it. Literally insane.

      • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It is in a civilized country where you have to assume everyone has a gun.

        It’s important to realize that the confrontation lasted 30 seconds. That’s the amount of time he waited before almost killing someone.

        Yes, I do realise that, and I did realise it when I wrote my initial comment. What is your point? That someone can’t become dangerous towards you if your interaction lasts 30 seconds or less?

        He wasn’t being chased in a dark alley and stalked for half a hour, someone played loud noises in his face and it took a total of 30 seconds for him to decide to shoot someone over it. Literally insane.

        See, if your point only makes sense due to leaving out important details, it’s not a good point. He wasn’t shot because “someone played loud noises in his face”.

        • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          a civilized country where you have to assume everyone has a gun.

          One of these things is not like the other

          • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Ah yes, let’s circlejerk around the definition of “civilization”.

            For the record, I’m not American (thank god!), but this is neither funny nor useful.

                • girlfreddy@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  They did, right here.

                  a civilized country where you have to assume everyone has a gun.

                  One of these things is not like the other

                  • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Are you trolling, or are you arguing on the level of a three year old?

                    Words have meanings. They don’t necessarily have one single meaning, but generally words only make sense in the context of commonly-understood definitions. If I make up a new definition, it’s not useful to use it, as long as other people don’t use it.

                    Now, I can argue that the sky is blurple, and I’m fully correct if I define blurple to be the color of the sky. But you will notice that this sentence doesn’t hold any meaning as long as blurple isn’t a commonly understood definition.

                    You’re free to show that loose gun laws are commonly understood to be an argument against something being a civilized society. But until you do that, you’re doing what I said earlier: just circlejerking with neither funny nor useful descriptions.

                    Do you understand now?

      • SheeEttin@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        30 seconds is a long time for someone to be harassing you. I can see why it escalated.

        But it still doesn’t justify deadly force. That’s a last resort.

      • He also did not warn the person.

        Say: “Stop or I’ll shoot.”

        If the person keeps coming at you after you say that, you can infer their intent to do serious harm.

        Have to have a fact to hang your hat on, or you end up charged, and need to get massively lucky, like this dude, to avoid prison.

    • It’s dangerous, it’s not an imminent danger to life and limb.

      If you’re about to catch a beating, you can’t just shoot.

      The police, prosecution, judge, and half the jury, and me, think this conduct exceeded any right of self defense the dude had.

      No question he could.lawfully have maced him or punched him and there’d have been no charge. But to try and kill the guy?

      The jury apparently fucked it up by rendering an inconsistent verdict on the sole conviction. It’s dangerous when the jury says it’s deadlocked. It generally means someone in the room isn’t being reasonable, or is not following the judge’s instructions. And it resulted with inconsistent verdicts.