Does that apply to people who keep guns at their home in the hope that one day they might be able to use them in "self defense" against some trespasser?
To be fair it should be noted that the home is a different animal than the street. Even most of the Liberal states that have so-called "duty to retreat" laws don't typically apply them to the home.
Here in New York State you have no duty to retreat from your home and can use deadly force to halt the commission of a burglary regardless of whether or not the burglar is armed. Burglary is defined as breaking into a building with the intent to commit a crime therein. What that means is that if your drunk neighbor comes into your house and passes out on the couch he isn't committing burglary (only trespassing) and you can't use deadly force against him. If he starts assaulting your family then it's a different matter.
Personally, even as a gun owner I think it's a lot of macho talk on the part of the people who are "waiting" for a trespasser. I think if actually confronted with one they would have a hard time pointing a firearm at him and pulling the trigger if their lives weren't threatened. Anyone who has seen a friend or family member go through the emotional and legal ordeal of taking a human life is not going to speak casually about doing so.
Were I to come home and discover my house being robbed I would leave and call the police. If I'm at home when they start robbing us then it's a different animal -- I will defend myself and my family -- but taking a human life over property that's insured? No way. I don't want to live with that for the rest of my life over a stupid television set.
The "there are no alternatives" excuse only goes so far. I'll excuse the behavior of someone who steals but I will not excuse the behavior of someone who uses violence to achieve the objective of stealing (i.e: robbery). If you are willing to use violence against your fellow human beings then your moral compass is so fucked up that you don't deserve to live among the rest of us.
Interesting. You never got into fights as a child, then? Because I certainly did. I still might, given the right circumstances.
Wow, so you read what I said and interpreted it as a desire to throw people into prison for life over playground fights as kids? Perhaps I should have qualified my statement better, since those who read my remark apparently can't apply a little bit of common sense. When you commit an act of unprovoked violence against another fellow human being you forfeit your right to live among the rest of us. It should be obvious that I'm talking about hardened criminals who use violence as a means to an end (i.e: to commit robbery, defend their drug turf, to commit rape, to intimidate witnesses against them, etc) and not children who have a playground altercation or adults who have a dispute with a friend or family member.
They get out of jail because we only punish people based on what they've done, not what they might do in the future
And when they've demonstrated that they are willing to use violence to obtain compliance from their victims they should be punished by a life sentence with no possibility of parole.
It might also be argued that you aren't granted freedom by the society, but have it by virtue of existing, and it may only be taken of by the most pressing circumstances.
Right, such as when you demonstrate that you have no regard for human life and are willing to maim and kill to achieve your criminal objectives.
Who is this "us" you're talking about, you who are willing to use violence to keep some of your fellow citizens in a jail forever?
Yep, that's exactly what I'm willing to do. Every single time someone is murdered by a thug who already had a violent criminal record that's a murder that could have been prevented if that thug had been appropriately punished for his prior crimes.
Or solving the cultural/social problems that cause there to be so many criminals in the first place, though obviously that's a harder nut to crack.
I'd like to see this happen but I also think it needs to happen in concert with a tougher policy towards violent criminals. I've seen statistics that say that at least 80% of murderers already had violent criminal records when they first committed murder. To me that begs the question of why did they get out of jail in the first place?
To my way of thinking, once you commit an act of violence against a fellow human being society owes you nothing except an 8'x10' cell for the rest of your miserable life. Prior to that we owe a fair shot at paying your debt to society and re-entering it as a productive citizen, but once you demonstrate that you are willing to use violence against your fellow citizens you forfeit any right to live among the rest of us.
What good is catching them if your penal system releases them back into society without reforming them? Most developed countries don't seem to have a problem catching criminals. The problem seems to be keeping them behind bars and/or showing them the error of their ways so that they don't commit more crimes upon their release.
I'm skeptical that a fancy camera system is going to change this underlying problem.
Umm, I wasn't West-bashing. I find this practice to be just as abhorrent as you do. The only difference is that I'm not going to judge another culture by the standards of my own. It shouldn't be our role to impose our morality on the rest of the world.
Just what are you arguing for? Jim crow laws? Apartheid? Kristallnacht?
I'm arguing for us minding our own business and not imposing our standards of right and wrong upon others.
Cultural relativism is a crutch the powerful use to assuage their guilt.
I don't have any guilt. I personally find every thing that you mentioned as well as Japanese xenophobia to be abhorrent. I just don't think it's a proper role for us to impose our own cultural standards on others. For that I guess I warrant a troll mod. Guess the PC crowd is the one with the mod points tonight.
and down right absurd and categorically wrong to say that the target culture is not in need of enlightenment to the universally held beliefs of the equality of Man.
What "universally held beliefs of the equality of Man" would those be? A good portion of this planet thinks that women should cover themselves at all times and need the permission of a male household member before leaving the home. A good portion of this planet thinks that chopping off the foreskin of males or the clitoris of females is an acceptable practice. A good portion of this planet believes in capital punishment while the remainder dismisses it as cruel and barbaric. A good portion of this planet thinks that freedom of speech should take a backseat to the security of the state.
There are no universally held beliefs in the equality of man. The fact that the UN has a piece of paper listing them means nothing.
What's the difference between skin color and place of birth? Did I have a choice in either?
Who said it was based on place of birth? If you don't like being an American then leave. Nobody is stopping you. Changing your skin color is a bit harder than changing your nationality -- unless your name is Michael Jackson;)
Just out of curiosity, how do you call a person who has three white and one black grand parent?
How about 'American'? I can't be the only one that is sick of the practice of identifying ourselves based on our racial background. If I wanted to I could call myself a Polish/German/Jewish/Native/English-American. Why I would do that when those connections are generations old is beyond me. I'm an American. Plain and simple.
What Japan needs is some enlightment that can only come with a few episodes of Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs.
Only a Westerner would think that another culture needs some "enlightenment" that is conveniently delivered via a media program with a Western perspective.
There was an adolescent in front of my house being stared down by a policeman. As I walked up the cop was staring him down and holding a bag of weed saying very loudly and very forcefully, "... yeah? And what skills you got? What has this shit been doing for you? How long have you been using? What are you going to do when you're a grown up providing for yourself?"
Last I heard, he was going into minimum security, not supermax.
Would you feel better if we draw and quartered him in the public square while forcing him to watch as people assraped his family? He's spending the rest of his life behind bars. Unless you are looking for some sort of cruel and unusual punishment I don't see why we are even still talking about him.
The problem is, that's everybody. Thanks to the way things were deregulated, there are NO honest men in the financial industry- at all.
Yes, there isn't a single honest person left in the financial industry. Every single actor ranging from the Wall Street tycoon to the loan officer at my community credit union is a con-artist looking for the fastest way to screw the American people.
The writing was on the wall in 1970. Only an idiot would use the petrodollar as a reserve currency after what the FED has been doing.
Pray tell, what other reserve currency would you use?
An HONEST man, which is more than I can say for any manager I've ever met or heard of.
Another sweeping generalization. It's getting hard to take you seriously.
The profit incentive doesn't fuel productivity, the profit incentive fuels fraud.
That profit incentive that you condemn helped to create the computer/software/internet that we are having this conservation on.
which is something else I'm against- any corporation that serves customers more than 10 miles from it's home office, or has more than 500 customers/workers/managment/investors total
So what you are really against is success. Gotcha.
Yes. Wouldn't you be?
I've had my share of misery. I was accused of a crime that I didn't commit and had to spend thousands of dollars to clear my name. It contributed heavily to my bankruptcy a few years ago. You don't see me making sweeping generalizations about the justice system and condemning every single actor within it.
Yes, because that is science- to take experiences and draw conclusions from them.
A proper use of the scientific method would seem to demand a larger data set than the experiences of one individual.
But they limit your choices to the funds they want you to invest in.
Well, given the fact that you've ruled out stocks as a scam and cash/bond investments as foolhardy, I'd hazard a guess that you wouldn't be happy with any form of investing other than a 401(k) plan that provides you with solar cells and firearms for that compound you are constructing to weather the collapse of civilization.
Anything less is just betting your future on a roulette wheel. No, strike that- the roulette wheel has a better return on investment if you bet on red or black (48% instead of 10%).
Speak for yourself. I've made a lot of money on that roulette wheel. Let's mark down a calendar and have this conversation again in 2013. If civilization has collapsed I'll give you one of my solar cells or firearms. If it hasn't then I think you owe me a beer and a single share of the stock of my choice;)
If someone doesn't have enough of a point for them to make it without name-calling, then I have no problem at all with that speech being suppressed.
Then you and I disagree. Who is going to decide what constitutes "name calling"? The Government? Hmm, no potential for abuse there at all.....
The only difference between your speech and ours seems to be a perceived "right to be rude" - and it's not like your speech weren't limited by libel, slander, community standards, "fire in the theatre" etc. already anyway
Libel and slander are civil actions, not the Government telling you what you can say. Community standards laws are almost always shot down if people deem to challenge them. The 'fire in a crowded theater' example is almost as overused as Nazi references around here so I'm not going to get drawn into an argument about it.
The US? 8 years of Dubya. News that aren't. One and a half parties, conservative and very conservative. Not offense intended, but from abroad it's hard not to think, "Yeah, fat lot of good all that "speech" did you.
It worked just fine for the 51% of this country that wanted Dubya to be in office. The other 49% got to condemn him at the top of their lungs. Seems like speech worked just fine.
I don't think either of us said we don't need any lawyers. The main thing that I object to is the fact that lawyers are basically running this country. What percentage of Congress is made up of lawyers? What was our current President's background before he got into politics?
A more balanced system would see people from all occupations serving in Congress if for no other reason than to provide perspective.
Madoff, for instance, posted huge returns 9/10 reporting periods- all based on fake info.
And he's going to Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison for the rest of his miserable life for his crimes. I've already said that anyone who commits fraud should be held accountable for their actions.
If we base it on the next 10 years, we'll both be negative. Strongly negative, because the petrodollar is a dead duck.
We'll see I guess:)
Yeah, that's one way anyway. The other bit though is that the cost of wages should be increased to 98% of profits, porportioned by what people actually DO for the company. (In other words, a line worker who adds a million in value to the product, should be paid $900,000- and his manager, who just pushed paperwork and added far less value to the end product, should be paid less).
Who are you to judge what the manager contributed to the project? What you are purposing is a Governmental mandate to interfere in business that would destroy the profit incentive that fuels productivity. Such a system has failed miserably every single time it's been attempted. To quote Churchill: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
Don't have the link anymore- I learned my lesson after I lost everything with them in 2001, and haven't taken a 401k since. They were Schwab based though.
So you are bitter about what happened to you and are making sweeping generalizations about everyone and everything because of your own experience?
You aren't allowed to do your homework with a 401(k)- you have to take what your company offers.
My company doesn't tell me which funds within the 401(k) I can invest in. That's left up to me. I could invest it all in cash, all in stocks or some balance of the two. I do agree with you that I'd rather see it more open ended than this (the IRA example given previously) but you must admit that the reality of the situation isn't quite what you are claiming it to be.
But in many states, the petite female has to at least retreat
If you can safely retreat then your life isn't in danger, now is it?
while they use center of mass body shots to kill suspects
They use center of mass shots because that's the best way to ensure a hit under a stressful situation. Given that they wouldn't (or rather shouldn't) be shooting unless their lives are threatened I really don't have a problem with this concept. If a criminal threatens the life of a police officer (or anyone else for that matter) then he forfeits his right to complain about deadly force being used in response.
In such a scenario it was not the policemen who made the decision that someone was going to die that day. It was the criminal. The policemen just made the decision that it wasn't going to be him who died.
or shoot fleeing suspects in the back because they are merely have a gun.
How do you know they are fleeing and aren't just running to a more advantageous location (i.e: cover) before they resume shooting at the officer? I'm sorry but if you draw a firearm on a police officer then all bets are off.
This is one of the reason's I don't like many southern states, because they have a stupid castle law--if someone reach's for a gun, that's consideration to kill them, even though they may be reaching for it because THEY feel endangered.
WTF does the castle law have to do with this? The castle law says that you don't have an obligation to retreat from your own residence or (less common) public areas where you have a lawful right to be. It has nothing to do with "if they reach for a gun you can kill them". If someone reaches for a gun and you have a reasonable belief that they intend to use it against you then you can respond with deadly force in every state in the country, regardless of whether or not they have a castle law.
Indeed, sorry to dwell so much on this point. I do agree with your observations in the original post and wish we could get back to the roots of our legal system (the Common Law) instead of the current situation where the legal system seems to be wielded as a sword to regulate behavior rather than a shield to protect people from harm.
I don't think I was talking specifics, although perhaps my 300 pound male vs. 90 pound female example gave you that impression. The general theory is that you can't use deadly force upon another human being unless your life is in danger. Danger to your life can take many forms, ranging from a physical assault where you are woefully outmatched to a bad guy with a gun or knife.
Yes, but that still has nothing to do with authorization for no-knock warrants
Yeah, so what? The GP said the police belong the Executive Branch. You responded with some remark about how the police aren't part of the Federal Government. My point was to remind you that the White House is not the sole Executive Branch in this country.
I've never needed a lawyer to interpret any of the leases I've ever signed for an apartment. Most of it was common sense stuff like I need to pay the rent on time, I shouldn't dispose of my trash by flushing it down the toilet, I can't blast music after 10pm, etc, etc. It wasn't that hard to interpret at all.
I don't think I'm that much smarter than the average person so I must conclude that you are exaggerating your argument to prove your point or have had the misfortune of always dealing with asshole landlords.
Slashdot Mirror
Does that apply to people who keep guns at their home in the hope that one day they might be able to use them in "self defense" against some trespasser?
To be fair it should be noted that the home is a different animal than the street. Even most of the Liberal states that have so-called "duty to retreat" laws don't typically apply them to the home.
Here in New York State you have no duty to retreat from your home and can use deadly force to halt the commission of a burglary regardless of whether or not the burglar is armed. Burglary is defined as breaking into a building with the intent to commit a crime therein. What that means is that if your drunk neighbor comes into your house and passes out on the couch he isn't committing burglary (only trespassing) and you can't use deadly force against him. If he starts assaulting your family then it's a different matter.
Personally, even as a gun owner I think it's a lot of macho talk on the part of the people who are "waiting" for a trespasser. I think if actually confronted with one they would have a hard time pointing a firearm at him and pulling the trigger if their lives weren't threatened. Anyone who has seen a friend or family member go through the emotional and legal ordeal of taking a human life is not going to speak casually about doing so.
Were I to come home and discover my house being robbed I would leave and call the police. If I'm at home when they start robbing us then it's a different animal -- I will defend myself and my family -- but taking a human life over property that's insured? No way. I don't want to live with that for the rest of my life over a stupid television set.
The "there are no alternatives" excuse only goes so far. I'll excuse the behavior of someone who steals but I will not excuse the behavior of someone who uses violence to achieve the objective of stealing (i.e: robbery). If you are willing to use violence against your fellow human beings then your moral compass is so fucked up that you don't deserve to live among the rest of us.
Interesting. You never got into fights as a child, then? Because I certainly did. I still might, given the right circumstances.
Wow, so you read what I said and interpreted it as a desire to throw people into prison for life over playground fights as kids? Perhaps I should have qualified my statement better, since those who read my remark apparently can't apply a little bit of common sense. When you commit an act of unprovoked violence against another fellow human being you forfeit your right to live among the rest of us. It should be obvious that I'm talking about hardened criminals who use violence as a means to an end (i.e: to commit robbery, defend their drug turf, to commit rape, to intimidate witnesses against them, etc) and not children who have a playground altercation or adults who have a dispute with a friend or family member.
They get out of jail because we only punish people based on what they've done, not what they might do in the future
And when they've demonstrated that they are willing to use violence to obtain compliance from their victims they should be punished by a life sentence with no possibility of parole.
It might also be argued that you aren't granted freedom by the society, but have it by virtue of existing, and it may only be taken of by the most pressing circumstances.
Right, such as when you demonstrate that you have no regard for human life and are willing to maim and kill to achieve your criminal objectives.
Who is this "us" you're talking about, you who are willing to use violence to keep some of your fellow citizens in a jail forever?
Yep, that's exactly what I'm willing to do. Every single time someone is murdered by a thug who already had a violent criminal record that's a murder that could have been prevented if that thug had been appropriately punished for his prior crimes.
Or solving the cultural/social problems that cause there to be so many criminals in the first place, though obviously that's a harder nut to crack.
I'd like to see this happen but I also think it needs to happen in concert with a tougher policy towards violent criminals. I've seen statistics that say that at least 80% of murderers already had violent criminal records when they first committed murder. To me that begs the question of why did they get out of jail in the first place?
To my way of thinking, once you commit an act of violence against a fellow human being society owes you nothing except an 8'x10' cell for the rest of your miserable life. Prior to that we owe a fair shot at paying your debt to society and re-entering it as a productive citizen, but once you demonstrate that you are willing to use violence against your fellow citizens you forfeit any right to live among the rest of us.
The point is to catch criminals.
What good is catching them if your penal system releases them back into society without reforming them? Most developed countries don't seem to have a problem catching criminals. The problem seems to be keeping them behind bars and/or showing them the error of their ways so that they don't commit more crimes upon their release.
I'm skeptical that a fancy camera system is going to change this underlying problem.
I'm really getting tired of this West-bashing
Umm, I wasn't West-bashing. I find this practice to be just as abhorrent as you do. The only difference is that I'm not going to judge another culture by the standards of my own. It shouldn't be our role to impose our morality on the rest of the world.
Just what are you arguing for? Jim crow laws? Apartheid? Kristallnacht?
I'm arguing for us minding our own business and not imposing our standards of right and wrong upon others.
Cultural relativism is a crutch the powerful use to assuage their guilt.
I don't have any guilt. I personally find every thing that you mentioned as well as Japanese xenophobia to be abhorrent. I just don't think it's a proper role for us to impose our own cultural standards on others. For that I guess I warrant a troll mod. Guess the PC crowd is the one with the mod points tonight.
and down right absurd and categorically wrong to say that the target culture is not in need of enlightenment to the universally held beliefs of the equality of Man.
What "universally held beliefs of the equality of Man" would those be? A good portion of this planet thinks that women should cover themselves at all times and need the permission of a male household member before leaving the home. A good portion of this planet thinks that chopping off the foreskin of males or the clitoris of females is an acceptable practice. A good portion of this planet believes in capital punishment while the remainder dismisses it as cruel and barbaric. A good portion of this planet thinks that freedom of speech should take a backseat to the security of the state.
There are no universally held beliefs in the equality of man. The fact that the UN has a piece of paper listing them means nothing.
Or maybe I just think that 'cause i'm a Westerner...
Hey, I'm one too. I just don't think we need to go about "enlightening" other cultures based on our own standards of morality.
What's the difference between skin color and place of birth? Did I have a choice in either?
Who said it was based on place of birth? If you don't like being an American then leave. Nobody is stopping you. Changing your skin color is a bit harder than changing your nationality -- unless your name is Michael Jackson ;)
Just out of curiosity, how do you call a person who has three white and one black grand parent?
How about 'American'? I can't be the only one that is sick of the practice of identifying ourselves based on our racial background. If I wanted to I could call myself a Polish/German/Jewish/Native/English-American. Why I would do that when those connections are generations old is beyond me. I'm an American. Plain and simple.
What Japan needs is some enlightment that can only come with a few episodes of Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs.
Only a Westerner would think that another culture needs some "enlightenment" that is conveniently delivered via a media program with a Western perspective.
Right now many of these companies have been granted a public monopoly on RF spectrum
Umm, they weren't "granted" it, they paid billions of dollars for it......
The hooker took one look at us, laughed, and walked out the door with our money.
You gave her the money before the services were rendered? Amateur.....
There was an adolescent in front of my house being stared down by a policeman. As I walked up the cop was staring him down and holding a bag of weed saying very loudly and very forcefully, "... yeah? And what skills you got? What has this shit been doing for you? How long have you been using? What are you going to do when you're a grown up providing for yourself?"
That policeman sounds like a real buzz kill ;)
Unless this was posted by the girlfriend
Or his "girlfriend" is someone he met on the MMO. Do the keys on his keyboard stick?
Last I heard, he was going into minimum security, not supermax.
Would you feel better if we draw and quartered him in the public square while forcing him to watch as people assraped his family? He's spending the rest of his life behind bars. Unless you are looking for some sort of cruel and unusual punishment I don't see why we are even still talking about him.
The problem is, that's everybody. Thanks to the way things were deregulated, there are NO honest men in the financial industry- at all.
Yes, there isn't a single honest person left in the financial industry. Every single actor ranging from the Wall Street tycoon to the loan officer at my community credit union is a con-artist looking for the fastest way to screw the American people.
The writing was on the wall in 1970. Only an idiot would use the petrodollar as a reserve currency after what the FED has been doing.
Pray tell, what other reserve currency would you use?
An HONEST man, which is more than I can say for any manager I've ever met or heard of.
Another sweeping generalization. It's getting hard to take you seriously.
The profit incentive doesn't fuel productivity, the profit incentive fuels fraud.
That profit incentive that you condemn helped to create the computer/software/internet that we are having this conservation on.
which is something else I'm against- any corporation that serves customers more than 10 miles from it's home office, or has more than 500 customers/workers/managment/investors total
So what you are really against is success. Gotcha.
Yes. Wouldn't you be?
I've had my share of misery. I was accused of a crime that I didn't commit and had to spend thousands of dollars to clear my name. It contributed heavily to my bankruptcy a few years ago. You don't see me making sweeping generalizations about the justice system and condemning every single actor within it.
Yes, because that is science- to take experiences and draw conclusions from them.
A proper use of the scientific method would seem to demand a larger data set than the experiences of one individual.
But they limit your choices to the funds they want you to invest in.
Well, given the fact that you've ruled out stocks as a scam and cash/bond investments as foolhardy, I'd hazard a guess that you wouldn't be happy with any form of investing other than a 401(k) plan that provides you with solar cells and firearms for that compound you are constructing to weather the collapse of civilization.
Anything less is just betting your future on a roulette wheel. No, strike that- the roulette wheel has a better return on investment if you bet on red or black (48% instead of 10%).
Speak for yourself. I've made a lot of money on that roulette wheel. Let's mark down a calendar and have this conversation again in 2013. If civilization has collapsed I'll give you one of my solar cells or firearms. If it hasn't then I think you owe me a beer and a single share of the stock of my choice ;)
If someone doesn't have enough of a point for them to make it without name-calling, then I have no problem at all with that speech being suppressed.
Then you and I disagree. Who is going to decide what constitutes "name calling"? The Government? Hmm, no potential for abuse there at all.....
The only difference between your speech and ours seems to be a perceived "right to be rude" - and it's not like your speech weren't limited by libel, slander, community standards, "fire in the theatre" etc. already anyway
Libel and slander are civil actions, not the Government telling you what you can say. Community standards laws are almost always shot down if people deem to challenge them. The 'fire in a crowded theater' example is almost as overused as Nazi references around here so I'm not going to get drawn into an argument about it.
The US? 8 years of Dubya. News that aren't. One and a half parties, conservative and very conservative. Not offense intended, but from abroad it's hard not to think, "Yeah, fat lot of good all that "speech" did you.
It worked just fine for the 51% of this country that wanted Dubya to be in office. The other 49% got to condemn him at the top of their lungs. Seems like speech worked just fine.
I don't think either of us said we don't need any lawyers. The main thing that I object to is the fact that lawyers are basically running this country. What percentage of Congress is made up of lawyers? What was our current President's background before he got into politics?
A more balanced system would see people from all occupations serving in Congress if for no other reason than to provide perspective.
Madoff, for instance, posted huge returns 9/10 reporting periods- all based on fake info.
And he's going to Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison for the rest of his miserable life for his crimes. I've already said that anyone who commits fraud should be held accountable for their actions.
If we base it on the next 10 years, we'll both be negative. Strongly negative, because the petrodollar is a dead duck.
We'll see I guess :)
Yeah, that's one way anyway. The other bit though is that the cost of wages should be increased to 98% of profits, porportioned by what people actually DO for the company. (In other words, a line worker who adds a million in value to the product, should be paid $900,000- and his manager, who just pushed paperwork and added far less value to the end product, should be paid less).
Who are you to judge what the manager contributed to the project? What you are purposing is a Governmental mandate to interfere in business that would destroy the profit incentive that fuels productivity. Such a system has failed miserably every single time it's been attempted. To quote Churchill: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
Don't have the link anymore- I learned my lesson after I lost everything with them in 2001, and haven't taken a 401k since. They were Schwab based though.
So you are bitter about what happened to you and are making sweeping generalizations about everyone and everything because of your own experience?
You aren't allowed to do your homework with a 401(k)- you have to take what your company offers.
My company doesn't tell me which funds within the 401(k) I can invest in. That's left up to me. I could invest it all in cash, all in stocks or some balance of the two. I do agree with you that I'd rather see it more open ended than this (the IRA example given previously) but you must admit that the reality of the situation isn't quite what you are claiming it to be.
But in many states, the petite female has to at least retreat
If you can safely retreat then your life isn't in danger, now is it?
while they use center of mass body shots to kill suspects
They use center of mass shots because that's the best way to ensure a hit under a stressful situation. Given that they wouldn't (or rather shouldn't) be shooting unless their lives are threatened I really don't have a problem with this concept. If a criminal threatens the life of a police officer (or anyone else for that matter) then he forfeits his right to complain about deadly force being used in response.
In such a scenario it was not the policemen who made the decision that someone was going to die that day. It was the criminal. The policemen just made the decision that it wasn't going to be him who died.
or shoot fleeing suspects in the back because they are merely have a gun.
How do you know they are fleeing and aren't just running to a more advantageous location (i.e: cover) before they resume shooting at the officer? I'm sorry but if you draw a firearm on a police officer then all bets are off.
This is one of the reason's I don't like many southern states, because they have a stupid castle law--if someone reach's for a gun, that's consideration to kill them, even though they may be reaching for it because THEY feel endangered.
WTF does the castle law have to do with this? The castle law says that you don't have an obligation to retreat from your own residence or (less common) public areas where you have a lawful right to be. It has nothing to do with "if they reach for a gun you can kill them". If someone reaches for a gun and you have a reasonable belief that they intend to use it against you then you can respond with deadly force in every state in the country, regardless of whether or not they have a castle law.
Indeed, sorry to dwell so much on this point. I do agree with your observations in the original post and wish we could get back to the roots of our legal system (the Common Law) instead of the current situation where the legal system seems to be wielded as a sword to regulate behavior rather than a shield to protect people from harm.
I don't think I was talking specifics, although perhaps my 300 pound male vs. 90 pound female example gave you that impression. The general theory is that you can't use deadly force upon another human being unless your life is in danger. Danger to your life can take many forms, ranging from a physical assault where you are woefully outmatched to a bad guy with a gun or knife.
Yes, but that still has nothing to do with authorization for no-knock warrants
Yeah, so what? The GP said the police belong the Executive Branch. You responded with some remark about how the police aren't part of the Federal Government. My point was to remind you that the White House is not the sole Executive Branch in this country.
I've never needed a lawyer to interpret any of the leases I've ever signed for an apartment. Most of it was common sense stuff like I need to pay the rent on time, I shouldn't dispose of my trash by flushing it down the toilet, I can't blast music after 10pm, etc, etc. It wasn't that hard to interpret at all.
I don't think I'm that much smarter than the average person so I must conclude that you are exaggerating your argument to prove your point or have had the misfortune of always dealing with asshole landlords.