they should resist pests, fix lots of nitrogen from the atmosphere
There are other methods of reducing pests like breaking up large monocultures, for nitrogen fixing, use legumes. As for higher yields, you can raise yields/acre for many crops (organic or not) by more intensive methods. That requires far more labor. The summary says organic farming was compared to "comparable conventional farming practices".
The trade off of industrialized farming as it exists today is that fewer people can produce much more by use of large tracts of land and mechanization. Labor availability and cost was the constraining factor, more so than land. If we need a higher yield per acre because land availability and cost have become the constraining factor, we can deal with that by having more people using intensive methods or building machinery more suitable for intensive methods. In either case, food costs will rise, probably leading to people growing more food for themselves, utilizing their yards, increasing the acres used for production (though not commercial production) and not paying for labor by doing it themselves.
But you don't know there isn't a more efficient system we haven't discovered yet that would improve yields - it seems unlikely I admit but that covers a "by definition" claim.
It's not at all unlikely, it is pretty much inevitable. Organic farming isn't a rejection of all technology, generally just a couple of specific ones, applying artificial chemicals and using GMOs. Improvements in weather forecasting, planning, machinery, irrigation techniques, planting methods, mechanical, biological and environmental pest control methods will all have an impact on organic farming yields (yields will improve but not necessarily in comparison to other farming methods).
While I do not personally use spanking, I think that categorizing it as being for "an adult who knows no other options or who chooses not to take the time needed to solve the situation" is incorrect.
Parents, in the mini society we call the family, perform the role of government. If we, as adults, do things like use violence and intimidation to get our way we will find the police using state sanctioned violence against us. I personally think smacking is an appropriate response to violent, bullying behavior in children and most kids will try that out at some stage. It is better for society that we learn this lesson at the hands of our parents as children rather than at the hands of police as an adult. I do note that it isn't the only method I'd recommend to correct bullying.
Additionally, sometimes behavior correction needs to be immediate. Where disobedience will lead to the child's life being in danger taking "the time needed to solve the situation otherwise" could be interpreted as neglect. If you are in a situation where you need to correct behavior right now, smacking could be the best option.
The author of that page seems to be wrong about this. I started checking a few more instances of that word. Although it may well have been translated as miscarriage in that passage it is certainly not necessarily meaning that.
Gen 1:12 And the earth brought forth grass
Gen 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind...
Gen 8:16 Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee.
and several more similar references until we come to a genealogy of Noah's sons:
Gen 10:14 And Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (out of whom came Philistim,) and Caphtorim.
and after a few more references we find Melchizedek's prophesy to Abram:
Gen 15:4 And, behold, the word of the LORD [came] unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir
So not even getting past Genesis and there are at least two instances of the word being used to refer to a live birth. I'd need to see much stronger reasoning to be convinced that it's use in one particular passage must only refer to a stillbirth. It variously refers to plants coming out of the ground, people coming out of a structure (ark), residence, city or land, and people being born. Where is any evidence that in Exodus it means stillbirth when it doesn't have that meaning everywhere else (indeed does not have it anywhere else that I have found)?
I'm not really motivated to further effort to convince you, if you're really interested, look at the definition, look at the references, believe what you want.
But someone's also been fucking with the translation in recent years. Imagine that, politically inspired tinkering with the Inerrant Word. Seems seriously wrong to me.
I can't understand how they justify having copyright on the bible. It seems to me that a copyright notice is an explicit declaration that it is not the word of god.
Nevertheless Exodus 21: 22-25 in the KJV
If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Strong's Concordance (Hebrew 3318) indicates the "depart" is literally to go out of, without the implication of death, so that premature birth rather than miscarriage seems a reasonable reading of this passage, with the penalty based on "eye for an eye" revenge of damage to the baby.
The same word is used in Genesis 1:12 as: And the earth brought forth grass... and occurs over 900 times in the old testament. I glanced over a few and none were talking anything like a miscarriage.
Are you a Christian that supports abortion based on this passage? I suspect not, but if not, why do you care what the bible says anyway?
The General rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of it's enactment and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it. An unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed.
Apparently from Sixteenth American Jurisprudence, Second Edition http://constitution.org/uslaw/16amjur2nd.htm
I took a telemarketing job for a couple of months once. I live in a country with fairly comprehensive welfare, so I could have gone on the dole instead. I figured calling people up and asking for money in exchange for a product was less offensive than taking it from them by force via taxation. All the people I annoyed at least had the chance to say no. I think that is treating them as people, even if they never realize it.
The product was holiday packages and I took my honeymoon on those same holiday packages. I genuinely believed I was offering a good deal. I would not have done it for a product I didn't think was good.
Very few got angry, I tried to make them laugh. One call went something like this:
Me: Hello, I'm rohan972 from [company name] (obviously I didn't really use my/. nick)
Him: [immediate anger and raised voice, not buying]
Me: Well do you have any friends who might be interested?
Him: [even angrier] I wouldn't do that to my friends!
Me: Well do you have any enemies you'd like to have rung up by telemarketers?
At that point he burst into laughter and said goodbye. It didn't always work, but I tried my best to leave people feeling good at the end of the call.
Only a minority of people got angry, I had no way of knowing who that would be before I made the call. Some people were happy and bought from us repeatedly. I always hoped to get the happy ones, I didn't choose what numbers to call or the temperament of the person at the end of the line.
I'm sorry, when my toilet is spewing sewage and the plumber asks for money to fix it, that's pretty heavy handed coercion!
No, it isn't coercion at all:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercion
Coercion is the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats or intimidation or some other form of pressure or force.
"If you don't pay me I won't work for you" is not a threat. To the extent you are being forced, it is your own sewerage doing the forcing, not the plumber and you are the one who put it there. You can also call another plumber if you don't want to pay the one who first quoted the job. Expecting people to work for you unpaid is entirely unreasonable so I won't explore that further.
If you really can't see the difference between a tradesman refusing to do your work for free and the government taking money by force I suggest to you that you may have become a member of one of those political religions yourself.
The desire to see absolute parity between men and women in every field is a bedrock tenet of feminist ideology and is born of the assertion by professional feminists that there is no inherent difference between men and women.
There is no feminist desire to see absolute parity in every field. Low paid unpleasant work is left to males without protest. Where are the demands for gender equality in garbage collecting?
If your idea of a weekend's recreation is to go to a bar, get drunk, and get into a frontier fight, yes, if you kill somebody with an unlucky punch and you can't establish self-defense, you might be convicted of homicide or murder, in Australia or the civilized parts of America. That's what homicide is.
You made the point that unarmed people had been shot and that you didn't consider it self defense if someone else used a gun. You consistently want to avoid the implications of your arguments. For many people a gun a reasonable tool to defend themselves from an attacker, even an unarmed one.
The reason stand your ground laws have so much support is because they are just. Self defense is an inalienable right.
Stable doesn't mean implements all features or supports all versions, it means it won't crash your computer.
What I want is to be able to play video with default drivers that install with the system. A card a few generations old will do this and playing video hasn't been cutting edge performance for a long time.
My needs can be met by intel and ATI cards, now nvidia has joined them. So from my perspective, there is now more competition. For someone whose needs would not be met by these drivers, I can see why they might not be very impressed, but it has changed my buying criteria for my next box, and I am considering getting two more low end boxes soon.
So you won't say whether your friend's killer got let off, you don't have any examples of drug dealers killing people and getting let off. Of the three examples you give:
One, Billy Kuch, mentally ill and drunk, lurched toward someone who had informed him that he was armed and told him to leave his property. Undoubtedly an unfortunate affair, but not sufficient reason to change the law IMO. Simply not getting drunk and screwing around on other people's property at 4 in the morning will protect you from this without changing the law.
Two, Rodney Peairs was acquitted by a jury and found liable in a civil suit, so it appears that stand your ground laws and immunity were not the issue, and
Three, George Zimmerman has been charged, which took some protest but did not require a change in the law.
These [not your examples but the increase in justifiable homicides] are "justifiable" homicides because that's the category the stand-your-ground put them in.
Yes. That's intentional. The law was written specifically with the purpose of moving more homicides into the category of legally justifiable. It has not increased the number of homicides, so what is your complaint? You said it was people getting shot that you didn't like, but what you're complaining about is people not going to prison.
You may think that if two people get into a fight and one of them "defends" himself by pulling a gun and killing the other guy, who is unarmed, that's a good outcome. I disagree. These are routine assaults, where nobody would have gotten killed without the gun.
Here in Queensland, Australia there has been a prolonged government advertising campaign "One punch can kill" trying to make people stop and think before getting into bar fights. This has been prompted by the fact that there have been deaths from one punch, particularly by someone being knocked down and hitting their head. I disagree that any assault should be considered routine or that it can be assumed that it won't result in serious injury or death. To punch someone, particularly in the head, is to put their life at risk.
How do you know they were getting unjustly convicted? The juries had more of the facts and obviously disagreed with you.
I presume the juries were applying the law, and the legislators had unjust prosecutions and convictions brought to their attention so they changed the law. Remember that much of our legal system is based on making it hard to get convictions, based on the idea that it is better for many guilty to go free than for one innocent to be punished.
If we could only choose between:
1 - No murderers going free but some people who were genuinely defending themselves being imprisoned for life, or
2 - Some murderers going free but no people who were genuinely defending themselves being imprisoned for life,
I would choose option 2. How about you?
According to the Florida newspapers that have investigated the results of the laws, the rates of justified homicides have tripled. Most of those are cases that the prosecutors would have prosecuted as murder under the old laws, but didn't think they could convict under the new laws.
[snip]
So the result of the laws have been to convert violent crimes to justified homicides, and let people get away with what used to be murder.
Of course. It was considered that people were getting unjustly charged and convicted when defending themselves, so the law was changed with the intention of having exactly the effect you've described. People being allowed to defend themselves is a good thing. If it is possible to amend the law to make it more difficult for actual murderers to abuse, then good, let's do so. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater and resume prosecuting genuine cases of self-defense.
Some of them involved people provoking a fight, getting beaten up, and killing the guy they originally attacked (which is what the prosecutor is charging Zimmerman with). A fair number of them involved drug dealers.
I have been unable to find an article in which drug dealers used these laws to escape justice, although I did find a couple of quotes from "Buddy Jacobs, general counsel of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association cited the Stand Your Ground law's unintended effects on cases involving drug killings in calling for its repeal during a task force hearing". It would be good if he gave an example, perhaps he has and I just can't find it. I did find on the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17693084 a case of a gang shootout although they didn't mention drugs.
He told jurors Mrs Falls' defence lawyers did not have to prove she was acting in self defence when she shot and killed Rodney Falls, but rather the prosecution must prove she wasn't acting in self defence at the time.
Guns are the main technology that equalizes capacity for violence. Old, young, male, female, tall or short, all are equal with a gun. Without guns, self defense is available mostly to large, strong men or those few with the time and dedication to become martial arts experts. Others are assigned compulsory victim status.
That's an untested hypothesis. Here in Australia, the highest recorded murder rate was after our gun laws were introduced, although it has since fallen. However, our murder rate was already falling before the gun laws were introduced nationwide and all the mass killings that prompted their introduction happened in states that already had similar laws. Now the most common murder weapon is knives. What makes you so sure that the person who killed your friend would have been unwilling to use a knife? And you didn't originally object to gun laws but to the strength of self defense laws, which operate independently of the weapon used. Did your friend's murderer get let off or not and what self defense laws were in place at the time?
By the time they realized what was going on, six people were dead.
That's a problem of situational awareness, not a failure of gun ownership. If you are armed you ought not walk around oblivious of your surroundings. Well, you shouldn't walk around oblivious of your surroundings even unarmed. This article claims that "everyone hit the ground" after the first shot, which was apparently from a very short distance. Unsurprisingly, if you lie down and make a passive victim of yourself, carrying a weapon won't help you. Even if they were all unarmed if they had rushed him it is unlikely that he could have killed 6 people. It's not that those armed people couldn't have stopped him, they decided not to stop him. In a panic, sure, but a decision nonetheless.
There are a few rare cases in which somebody with a gun did or might have stopped a shooter, but they're far outweighed by cases like this in which two people got into a fight, somebody died because of the presence of a gun, and nobody would have died if there was no gun.
Have violent crime rates gone up or down in American states that have liberalized their gun laws? It is my understanding that violent crime rates have gone down, but if you have evidence to the contrary please let me know.
The other side of the coin is that if you kill somebody with a gun, and the shooting wasn't legally justified, you can go to jail for a long time.
I agree that this is as it should be, but it should be so regardless of what weapon was used. Why should you get of easy for killing with a knife? Murder is murder, no matter how it is done.
So you don't lose the right to have one in your home, or carried in plain sight, just to conceal it? Is that only if you are charged for it or just if they apply for restraining orders? How long does your ban last?
What happens if a policeman's wife accuses him of domestic violence? Does he still get paid while unable to work, or get put on desk duty? It seems pretty unjust to me that without any standard of proof you could lose your right to self defense and maybe even your right to do your job. Mind you, we don't have very strong self defense protection here in Australia anyway, unless you are a woman.
You don't get to claim self defense without having to prove it.
I thought it was the government that had to prove their case of murder, so they wouldn't they have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he was NOT defending himself?
Besides, has it slipped your mind that Zimmerman was accused for domestic violence and shouldn't even have got a gun license?
Do Americans lose their 2nd amendment rights as a result of merely being accused, without even a trial? What's the point of having a Bill of Rights? I'm an Australian and there is some discussion here about whether we should have a bill of rights. I like the idea, but in practice I'm not sure I see the point. Seems like a waste of paper, particularly since ours would be written by an established government, not recently successful revolutionaries, so the chances of us getting anything worthwhile written in are remote.
I'm sorry to hear about your friend, yet you are against laws that would have allowed him to defend his life without fear of prosecution. How fascinating people's emotional responses are. Strong protection of self defense does not condone or allow murder. Is your friend's murderer free? If so, on what basis, stand your ground (or other self defense) laws, lack of evidence or some other reason?
I just don't like people getting shot.
I presume you mean you don't like people getting killed. Surely you would be no happier about the situation if a different weapon such as a knife had been used to kill your friend, right?
I think you're making the unfounded assumption that extremists like the Taliban can be reasoned with.
Understanding them may not make them more reasonable but may make them more predictable. Also, if TV's are a threat to them, we should be getting as many over there as we can, if it's communication that's the threat then there are better ways of achieving that communication than through TV.
The Liberals in Australia aren't even close to being libertarian. They are another big government party.
Labor is big government in favour of unions, sort of left wing but mainly big government.
LNP (Liberal National Party) is big government in favour of corporations, sort of right wing but mainly big government.
Slashdot Mirror
For being prepared to give up getting your way for the sake of legitimate government, I commend you.
they should resist pests, fix lots of nitrogen from the atmosphere
There are other methods of reducing pests like breaking up large monocultures, for nitrogen fixing, use legumes. As for higher yields, you can raise yields/acre for many crops (organic or not) by more intensive methods. That requires far more labor. The summary says organic farming was compared to "comparable conventional farming practices".
The trade off of industrialized farming as it exists today is that fewer people can produce much more by use of large tracts of land and mechanization. Labor availability and cost was the constraining factor, more so than land. If we need a higher yield per acre because land availability and cost have become the constraining factor, we can deal with that by having more people using intensive methods or building machinery more suitable for intensive methods. In either case, food costs will rise, probably leading to people growing more food for themselves, utilizing their yards, increasing the acres used for production (though not commercial production) and not paying for labor by doing it themselves.
But you don't know there isn't a more efficient system we haven't discovered yet that would improve yields - it seems unlikely I admit but that covers a "by definition" claim.
It's not at all unlikely, it is pretty much inevitable. Organic farming isn't a rejection of all technology, generally just a couple of specific ones, applying artificial chemicals and using GMOs. Improvements in weather forecasting, planning, machinery, irrigation techniques, planting methods, mechanical, biological and environmental pest control methods will all have an impact on organic farming yields (yields will improve but not necessarily in comparison to other farming methods).
While I do not personally use spanking, I think that categorizing it as being for "an adult who knows no other options or who chooses not to take the time needed to solve the situation" is incorrect.
Parents, in the mini society we call the family, perform the role of government. If we, as adults, do things like use violence and intimidation to get our way we will find the police using state sanctioned violence against us. I personally think smacking is an appropriate response to violent, bullying behavior in children and most kids will try that out at some stage. It is better for society that we learn this lesson at the hands of our parents as children rather than at the hands of police as an adult. I do note that it isn't the only method I'd recommend to correct bullying.
Additionally, sometimes behavior correction needs to be immediate. Where disobedience will lead to the child's life being in danger taking "the time needed to solve the situation otherwise" could be interpreted as neglect. If you are in a situation where you need to correct behavior right now, smacking could be the best option.
The author of that page seems to be wrong about this. I started checking a few more instances of that word. Although it may well have been translated as miscarriage in that passage it is certainly not necessarily meaning that.
...
http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/Lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H3318&t=KJV&cscs=Gen
Here's an online concordance search I found with the definition and list of references:
Gen 1:12 And the earth brought forth grass
Gen 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind
Gen 8:16 Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee.
and several more similar references until we come to a genealogy of Noah's sons:
Gen 10:14 And Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (out of whom came Philistim,) and Caphtorim.
and after a few more references we find Melchizedek's prophesy to Abram:
Gen 15:4 And, behold, the word of the LORD [came] unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir
So not even getting past Genesis and there are at least two instances of the word being used to refer to a live birth. I'd need to see much stronger reasoning to be convinced that it's use in one particular passage must only refer to a stillbirth. It variously refers to plants coming out of the ground, people coming out of a structure (ark), residence, city or land, and people being born. Where is any evidence that in Exodus it means stillbirth when it doesn't have that meaning everywhere else (indeed does not have it anywhere else that I have found)?
I'm not really motivated to further effort to convince you, if you're really interested, look at the definition, look at the references, believe what you want.
But someone's also been fucking with the translation in recent years. Imagine that, politically inspired tinkering with the Inerrant Word. Seems seriously wrong to me.
I can't understand how they justify having copyright on the bible. It seems to me that a copyright notice is an explicit declaration that it is not the word of god.
... and occurs over 900 times in the old testament. I glanced over a few and none were talking anything like a miscarriage.
Nevertheless Exodus 21: 22-25 in the KJV
If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Strong's Concordance (Hebrew 3318) indicates the "depart" is literally to go out of, without the implication of death, so that premature birth rather than miscarriage seems a reasonable reading of this passage, with the penalty based on "eye for an eye" revenge of damage to the baby.
The same word is used in Genesis 1:12 as: And the earth brought forth grass
Are you a Christian that supports abortion based on this passage? I suspect not, but if not, why do you care what the bible says anyway?
The General rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of it's enactment and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it. An unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed.
Apparently from Sixteenth American Jurisprudence, Second Edition http://constitution.org/uslaw/16amjur2nd.htm
I took a telemarketing job for a couple of months once. I live in a country with fairly comprehensive welfare, so I could have gone on the dole instead. I figured calling people up and asking for money in exchange for a product was less offensive than taking it from them by force via taxation. All the people I annoyed at least had the chance to say no. I think that is treating them as people, even if they never realize it.
/. nick)
The product was holiday packages and I took my honeymoon on those same holiday packages. I genuinely believed I was offering a good deal. I would not have done it for a product I didn't think was good.
Very few got angry, I tried to make them laugh. One call went something like this:
Me: Hello, I'm rohan972 from [company name] (obviously I didn't really use my
Him: [immediate anger and raised voice, not buying]
Me: Well do you have any friends who might be interested?
Him: [even angrier] I wouldn't do that to my friends!
Me: Well do you have any enemies you'd like to have rung up by telemarketers?
At that point he burst into laughter and said goodbye. It didn't always work, but I tried my best to leave people feeling good at the end of the call.
Only a minority of people got angry, I had no way of knowing who that would be before I made the call. Some people were happy and bought from us repeatedly. I always hoped to get the happy ones, I didn't choose what numbers to call or the temperament of the person at the end of the line.
Big media copyright is truely a case where "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" applies.
I suspect that eternal vigilance won't be enough and that in this case, the enemy must be bankrupted and their companies dissolved for us to win.
I'm sorry, when my toilet is spewing sewage and the plumber asks for money to fix it, that's pretty heavy handed coercion!
No, it isn't coercion at all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercion
Coercion is the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats or intimidation or some other form of pressure or force.
"If you don't pay me I won't work for you" is not a threat. To the extent you are being forced, it is your own sewerage doing the forcing, not the plumber and you are the one who put it there. You can also call another plumber if you don't want to pay the one who first quoted the job. Expecting people to work for you unpaid is entirely unreasonable so I won't explore that further.
If you really can't see the difference between a tradesman refusing to do your work for free and the government taking money by force I suggest to you that you may have become a member of one of those political religions yourself.
The desire to see absolute parity between men and women in every field is a bedrock tenet of feminist ideology and is born of the assertion by professional feminists that there is no inherent difference between men and women.
There is no feminist desire to see absolute parity in every field. Low paid unpleasant work is left to males without protest. Where are the demands for gender equality in garbage collecting?
I embraced female programmers and got done for sexual harassment! You can't win.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/09/07/long-island-man-arrested-for-defending-home-with-ak-47/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/01/20/man-faces-jail-after-protecting-home-from-masked-attackers/
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/07/15/20110715arizona-guns-special-report-self-defense-story.html
If your idea of a weekend's recreation is to go to a bar, get drunk, and get into a frontier fight, yes, if you kill somebody with an unlucky punch and you can't establish self-defense, you might be convicted of homicide or murder, in Australia or the civilized parts of America. That's what homicide is.
You made the point that unarmed people had been shot and that you didn't consider it self defense if someone else used a gun. You consistently want to avoid the implications of your arguments. For many people a gun a reasonable tool to defend themselves from an attacker, even an unarmed one.
The reason stand your ground laws have so much support is because they are just. Self defense is an inalienable right.
Stable doesn't mean implements all features or supports all versions, it means it won't crash your computer.
What I want is to be able to play video with default drivers that install with the system. A card a few generations old will do this and playing video hasn't been cutting edge performance for a long time.
My needs can be met by intel and ATI cards, now nvidia has joined them. So from my perspective, there is now more competition. For someone whose needs would not be met by these drivers, I can see why they might not be very impressed, but it has changed my buying criteria for my next box, and I am considering getting two more low end boxes soon.
One, Billy Kuch, mentally ill and drunk, lurched toward someone who had informed him that he was armed and told him to leave his property. Undoubtedly an unfortunate affair, but not sufficient reason to change the law IMO. Simply not getting drunk and screwing around on other people's property at 4 in the morning will protect you from this without changing the law.
Two, Rodney Peairs was acquitted by a jury and found liable in a civil suit, so it appears that stand your ground laws and immunity were not the issue, and
Three, George Zimmerman has been charged, which took some protest but did not require a change in the law.
These [not your examples but the increase in justifiable homicides] are "justifiable" homicides because that's the category the stand-your-ground put them in.
Yes. That's intentional. The law was written specifically with the purpose of moving more homicides into the category of legally justifiable. It has not increased the number of homicides, so what is your complaint? You said it was people getting shot that you didn't like, but what you're complaining about is people not going to prison.
You may think that if two people get into a fight and one of them "defends" himself by pulling a gun and killing the other guy, who is unarmed, that's a good outcome. I disagree. These are routine assaults, where nobody would have gotten killed without the gun.
Here in Queensland, Australia there has been a prolonged government advertising campaign "One punch can kill" trying to make people stop and think before getting into bar fights. This has been prompted by the fact that there have been deaths from one punch, particularly by someone being knocked down and hitting their head. I disagree that any assault should be considered routine or that it can be assumed that it won't result in serious injury or death. To punch someone, particularly in the head, is to put their life at risk.
How do you know they were getting unjustly convicted? The juries had more of the facts and obviously disagreed with you.
I presume the juries were applying the law, and the legislators had unjust prosecutions and convictions brought to their attention so they changed the law. Remember that much of our legal system is based on making it hard to get convictions, based on the idea that it is better for many guilty to go free than for one innocent to be punished.
If we could only choose between:
1 - No murderers going free but some people who were genuinely defending themselves being imprisoned for life, or
2 - Some murderers going free but no people who were genuinely defending themselves being imprisoned for life,
I would choose option 2. How about you?
According to the Florida newspapers that have investigated the results of the laws, the rates of justified homicides have tripled. Most of those are cases that the prosecutors would have prosecuted as murder under the old laws, but didn't think they could convict under the new laws.
[snip]
So the result of the laws have been to convert violent crimes to justified homicides, and let people get away with what used to be murder.
Of course. It was considered that people were getting unjustly charged and convicted when defending themselves, so the law was changed with the intention of having exactly the effect you've described. People being allowed to defend themselves is a good thing. If it is possible to amend the law to make it more difficult for actual murderers to abuse, then good, let's do so. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater and resume prosecuting genuine cases of self-defense.
Some of them involved people provoking a fight, getting beaten up, and killing the guy they originally attacked (which is what the prosecutor is charging Zimmerman with). A fair number of them involved drug dealers.
I have been unable to find an article in which drug dealers used these laws to escape justice, although I did find a couple of quotes from "Buddy Jacobs, general counsel of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association cited the Stand Your Ground law's unintended effects on cases involving drug killings in calling for its repeal during a task force hearing". It would be good if he gave an example, perhaps he has and I just can't find it. I did find on the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17693084 a case of a gang shootout although they didn't mention drugs.
That's not how it works.... You're confusing this with a different situation where there is no "smoking gun"
It's not that I'm confused, that is how it works here in Australia. At least, it does if you're a woman shooting her husband with an illegal handgun.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/susan-falls-not-guilty-of-murder-20100603-x2xv.html
Justice Applegarth took several hours to sum up the case to the jury, beginning his address to them yesterday afternoon and continuing from 10am today.
He told jurors Mrs Falls' defence lawyers did not have to prove she was acting in self defence when she shot and killed Rodney Falls, but rather the prosecution must prove she wasn't acting in self defence at the time.
Why does self defense have to be a gun?
Guns are the main technology that equalizes capacity for violence. Old, young, male, female, tall or short, all are equal with a gun. Without guns, self defense is available mostly to large, strong men or those few with the time and dedication to become martial arts experts. Others are assigned compulsory victim status.
If there was no gun, he wouldn't have died.
That's an untested hypothesis. Here in Australia, the highest recorded murder rate was after our gun laws were introduced, although it has since fallen. However, our murder rate was already falling before the gun laws were introduced nationwide and all the mass killings that prompted their introduction happened in states that already had similar laws. Now the most common murder weapon is knives. What makes you so sure that the person who killed your friend would have been unwilling to use a knife? And you didn't originally object to gun laws but to the strength of self defense laws, which operate independently of the weapon used. Did your friend's murderer get let off or not and what self defense laws were in place at the time?
By the time they realized what was going on, six people were dead.
That's a problem of situational awareness, not a failure of gun ownership. If you are armed you ought not walk around oblivious of your surroundings. Well, you shouldn't walk around oblivious of your surroundings even unarmed. This article claims that "everyone hit the ground" after the first shot, which was apparently from a very short distance. Unsurprisingly, if you lie down and make a passive victim of yourself, carrying a weapon won't help you. Even if they were all unarmed if they had rushed him it is unlikely that he could have killed 6 people. It's not that those armed people couldn't have stopped him, they decided not to stop him. In a panic, sure, but a decision nonetheless.
There are a few rare cases in which somebody with a gun did or might have stopped a shooter, but they're far outweighed by cases like this in which two people got into a fight, somebody died because of the presence of a gun, and nobody would have died if there was no gun.
Have violent crime rates gone up or down in American states that have liberalized their gun laws? It is my understanding that violent crime rates have gone down, but if you have evidence to the contrary please let me know.
The other side of the coin is that if you kill somebody with a gun, and the shooting wasn't legally justified, you can go to jail for a long time.
I agree that this is as it should be, but it should be so regardless of what weapon was used. Why should you get of easy for killing with a knife? Murder is murder, no matter how it is done.
So you don't lose the right to have one in your home, or carried in plain sight, just to conceal it? Is that only if you are charged for it or just if they apply for restraining orders? How long does your ban last?
What happens if a policeman's wife accuses him of domestic violence? Does he still get paid while unable to work, or get put on desk duty? It seems pretty unjust to me that without any standard of proof you could lose your right to self defense and maybe even your right to do your job. Mind you, we don't have very strong self defense protection here in Australia anyway, unless you are a woman.
You don't get to claim self defense without having to prove it.
I thought it was the government that had to prove their case of murder, so they wouldn't they have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he was NOT defending himself?
Besides, has it slipped your mind that Zimmerman was accused for domestic violence and shouldn't even have got a gun license?
Do Americans lose their 2nd amendment rights as a result of merely being accused, without even a trial? What's the point of having a Bill of Rights? I'm an Australian and there is some discussion here about whether we should have a bill of rights. I like the idea, but in practice I'm not sure I see the point. Seems like a waste of paper, particularly since ours would be written by an established government, not recently successful revolutionaries, so the chances of us getting anything worthwhile written in are remote.
No, a good friend of mine was murdered.
I'm sorry to hear about your friend, yet you are against laws that would have allowed him to defend his life without fear of prosecution. How fascinating people's emotional responses are. Strong protection of self defense does not condone or allow murder. Is your friend's murderer free? If so, on what basis, stand your ground (or other self defense) laws, lack of evidence or some other reason?
I just don't like people getting shot.
I presume you mean you don't like people getting killed. Surely you would be no happier about the situation if a different weapon such as a knife had been used to kill your friend, right?
I think you're making the unfounded assumption that extremists like the Taliban can be reasoned with.
Understanding them may not make them more reasonable but may make them more predictable. Also, if TV's are a threat to them, we should be getting as many over there as we can, if it's communication that's the threat then there are better ways of achieving that communication than through TV.
The Liberals in Australia aren't even close to being libertarian. They are another big government party.
Labor is big government in favour of unions, sort of left wing but mainly big government.
LNP (Liberal National Party) is big government in favour of corporations, sort of right wing but mainly big government.