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“Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

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Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#91

Post by Gigablah »

seiji wrote: post #63
benihana wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment sums up what Hacker News has become perfectly. Front and center is the sentence correcting some slight, inconsequential anachronism that has nothing to do with the overall point of the comment and only serves to show the perceived intelligence of helpfulness of the commenter. Then there is a short sentence, more of an afterthought, addressing the point of the comment.

Well, have you met these people? It's common in work/life too. "You're smart and do good work, but stop being so pedantic and socially inept!" You can't break out deep thinking from the surface layer aspie absent-social-mindedness. Just smile, accept them for what they are without pitying them, and keep making the world a better place together.

You could start by not masking your condescension with some sort of vague higher purpose.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#92

Post by danbruc »

wavefunction wrote: post #7

Again and again we see questionable or outright illegal police shootings of dogs and people and nothing ever comes of it. The responsible parties are never charged with manslaughter or even fired. I want to support the police, but the thin blue line bullshit has to stop! I get that police work is often dangerous but individuals that have shown poor judgement are retained on the force. That police officer that shot th…

Are there any reliable statistics quantifying this? I found some numbers for Germany on Wikipedia [1] but not for the US. The article states that per year for the period of 2007 to 2011 the German police fired between 36 and 57 bullets at humans killing between 6 and 12 of them. Older numbers are less reliable but similar regarding the number of people killed (peak since 1970 24 in 1983) but with a larger number of bullets fired where reported. Are the numbers for the USA way worse after compensating for the difference in population?

[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_D...

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#93

Post by strathmeyer »

mds wrote: post #72
[deleted] wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

I think he meant "training in dealing with barking dogs"

No American police are generally resistant to training of any type, such as firearm training. They don't like other people telling them they don't know how to do their jobs, that would make them lose confidence. It's why they need to shoot at you sixty times in order to hit you once.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#95

Post by strathmeyer »

tokenadult wrote: post #38
wavefunction wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to take away from your message but you can just say "Native Americans" and leave the "Indian" part off. Otherwise I totally agree with your post.

"American Indian" is an official term, and moreover it is a term DESIRED by some aboriginal rights activists in the United States, like the founders of the American Indian Movement (AIM). http://www.aimovement.org/

Some blacks like to be called nigger, what's your point??

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#96

Post by sophacles »

llamataboot wrote: post #46
GFischer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't live in the United States, but the LAST thing you want to do over there is to film an officer. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2008566,00.ht... By the way, my father recalls from when my country was a dictatorship that "you couldn't take photos of police or military, or you were arrested". Democratic U.S.A. is doing the same..

You may be harrassed if you film cops, but it is plainly legal[1], and the courts have recently begun to be more aggressive about slapping down municipalities that try to restrict it.[2] Normalizing it will go a long way to keeping police from thinking they can harass activist-types that are filming cops. I have been filming cops with copwatch groups from the days we had to carry big shoulder mounted video cameras. 1…

Legality doesn't stop regular occurrences of filmers being arrested for "obstruction of justice".

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#97

Post by anonymous »

alexvr wrote: post #17

In order to stay safe from the government, 1. Don't buy sparkling water if you're a college student 2. Don't bet with friends because an arbitrary threshold of about $2k warrants your execution 3. Don't tell American citizens that their government abuses its power, or you'll be charged with espionage 4. It's probably a bad idea to bear arms these days, because saying "Officer, I have a weapon in the trunk of my car"…

6. Become a mormon (mormons are highly regarded by the NSA as naturally suited to following orders).

7. Become a cop. A proper one, not just a security guard or something.

I wonder how applicable 7 is if you're an immigrant. You might get charged with espionage or something.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#98

Post by stcredzero »

mikeash wrote: post #87
Ovid wrote: post #23

Is this really the America that America wants? The article mentions one case where a judge refused to issue a search warrant for a narcotics investigation and instead the police brought representatives from the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and raided the place with a swat team to conduct an alcohol inspection. What did they find? Two sample bottles of beer that weren't labeled as samples and a bo…

Sadly, yes, it is the America that America wants, as far as I can tell. I think this is where efforts to fight these problems fall down. They're almost all based on the assumption that the populace doesn't want this stuff to happen, but that the government pushes it through by abusing power, subverting democracy, etc. But from what I see, this is not the case. Most Americans want this. Whether it's gun-wielding mania…

> Sadly, yes, it is the America that America wants, as far as I can tell.

Many young people coming out of school seem to have no conception of rights. To them, it's excusable for rights to be violated if they feel enough justified anger. They are unclear on the concept that rights apply to people and situations in ways they may not like.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#99

Post by stcredzero »

mtgx wrote: post #84
akiselev wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans vote for those who are tough on crime. I think CATO estimated (on the high end) about 40,000 SWAT/paramilitary raids a year and the public perception is that the targets are all criminals. To them this is just "acceptable collateral damage."

The problem is the public thinks that those being targeted are all dirty evil criminals, and I also think America as a whole doesn't have an "innocent before guilty" mentality. It's not just the American leaders that have corrupt minds. It's also a lot of Americans, who are supporting this sort of stuff. The media is also not helping at all, and making the problem worse, because they are usually on the government's s…

The presumption of innocence is not directly enshrined in the constitution, and in the case of some crimes, like rape, has been deliberately and explicitly weakened.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#100

Post by falcolas »

stcredzero wrote: post #98
mikeash wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, yes, it is the America that America wants, as far as I can tell. I think this is where efforts to fight these problems fall down. They're almost all based on the assumption that the populace doesn't want this stuff to happen, but that the government pushes it through by abusing power, subverting democracy, etc. But from what I see, this is not the case. Most Americans want this. Whether it's gun-wielding mania…

> Sadly, yes, it is the America that America wants, as far as I can tell. Many young people coming out of school seem to have no conception of rights. To them, it's excusable for rights to be violated if they feel enough justified anger. They are unclear on the concept that rights apply to people and situations in ways they may not like.

Well, they did just come out of schools where metal detectors and police patrolling the halls was the enforced norm. They rode to school in busses with cameras that watched their every move.

How can we expect them to suddenly expect freedom, when they've never had it?

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