Earlier quoted context omitted.
The relevance is that you don’t need to assume that the knife wielding person can hit you from a distance. One way or the other, this doesn’t seem to be a problem in other countries.
Pulling a percentage out of my ass that can't be terribly inaccurate, 99% of police encounters with guns drawn the police are under 21 ft away, at which distance a knife is as dangerous as a gun. If someone is less than 21 ft from you and they are going to be using a knifes against you, then you should still draw a gun just as often as if they had a gun. So at <21 ft you think guns should be drawn less because they h…
Afroman found not liable in defamation case
561–570 of 798 posts
Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case
#562I highly recommend people watch video from the trial--specifically the officer testimonies. It's absurd this lawsuit was even fit for trial.
Is it just me or did the judge seemed biased towards the cops? He also dismissed Afroman's counter-suit.
Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case
#563Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty clear issues with this line of reasoning. One, even if all police in the U.S. did start as slave patrols it is a textbook case of a genetic fallacy. Two, your article discusses several origins of police forces in the US. In Boston it had nothing to do with slaves because Massachusetts was not a slave state when they created a police system in the 1830s. And since Afroman was raided in Ohio, also never a slave…
> In Boston it had nothing to do with slaves because Massachusetts was not a slave state when they created a police system in the 1830s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1793 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850 "It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to the slave-owner and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate ." Boston's police dep…
This is from your Time.com article.
Second, fugitive slave extradition was controversial in northern states and from your Wikipedia article several northern states even passed legislation to protect fugitive slaves.
And why would northern states spend their own tax dollars to fund police forces to capture slaves? It doesn’t make sense. They created police for public safety reasons in cities.
And even if none of that were true it still does not address the genetic fallacy. Just because some police forces started as slave patrols does not imply that all police today are inherently white supremacist.
Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case
#564I have a potentially silly question, and obviously naive - but why so many drawn guns? Fun music videos aside, what was the background here? Were they coming in on a Massive gang fortress? Or are all the stereotypes of American police forces true and they just come guns a-blazing all the time? I mean, that wasn't even police officers with hand guns, they have army-like guys with massive automatic rifles, and they see…
Meanwhile American police are consistently depicted as trigger happy, shooting at any minor provocation.
Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case
#565It gives me immeasurable delight seeing afroman at the top of HN. Love me some freedom, sweet soulful music, and pie in the face of bad cops. Dang/Tom, please don't downrank this. America needs this win.
I love the Afroman story so much. Everything about it. It does more to expose just how incompetent, entitled and corrupt the average cop really is, something I wish was better known. The cops who brought this suit are basically the biggest crybabies, are too dumb to realize it and too entitled to realize that others wouldn't see it that way. It's fantastic. Compare this to policing in Japan [1]: > Koban cops go to ex…
Not only did they not stop the shooter, but they actively prevented parents—who were willing to risk their lives—from intervening. They didn't just not help, they proactively ran interference for the shooter.
Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case
#566Earlier quoted context omitted.
indeed, and this is unironically cited by the "shall not be infringed" crowd as a reason that they should be allowed to bring guns anywhere and everywhere, potentially turning any movie theater disagreement or minor road annoyance (or traffic stop, to bring this back to the police) into a violent life ending incident. to quote jwz out of context, "now you have two problems".
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> Insane take truly. First, CCW carriers are statistically the least likely to be involved in any kind of "violent life ending incident".
Sure, you could argue this, with the exception of suicide, found guns (usually by kids in the home), and stolen guns. It's not just the person certified, it's everyone around them who can obtain access to the gun they now own
>The number of non self-defense homicides caused by them is approximately 0 per year.
Only because there's no public data on this particular statistic. A nonprofit produced a database based on news headlines and limited state data, though, and found 1700 suicides and 600 convicted murders by CCW carriers between 2007 and 2025: https://vpc.org/concealed-carry-killers/
A better way to phrase it would be that the number of homicides are far less than the violence that a lack of CCW would enable, though that on its own is statistically shaky.
> Second, to suggest that people should allow themselves to be victims to violent crime because it's safer for the whole is some sort of collectivist trotskyite nonsense we will never agree on. Under no circumstance should an innocent person forfeit life or property for a violent criminal.
You're right, we (the USA) probably won't ever agree on it, due to the intense financial incentives behind firearms manufacturing and ownership and the subsequent lobbying and influence over public influence that those companies fund, but every other country apart from the US is a sweeping counterexample to this. We lose 45,000 people per year to guns (~60% by suicide). It's the #1 cause of death for children since 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/firearm-violence/data-research/facts-sta... https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
It's reductive to suggest that the only thing having more guns around does is "prevent victimization" when the guns themselves enable violence to so many nearby parties, including to the owner themselves.
> Its astonishing to me people can look at FBI statistics, total gun deaths trending down for the last 30 years, and then suggest people who are statistically the most safe with guns shouldn't be able to carry them.
The figure you're quoting appears to be the graph from page 1 of https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/tpfv9323.pdf, which is nonfatal victimization, which hasn't trended down--it's hovered between 1 and 2 per 1000 since 2003, and appears to be more of a reflection of improved medical skill than anything about guns.
Anyway, you were quoting gun deaths--that's page 13. That chart has stayed roughly the same since 1999: 4-5 per 100k persons (except for the spike during covid)
>The qualifications for CCW are harder than police qualifications in most states. But you wouldn't know this because Everytown, MSNBC, CNN, and others have spent the last 12 or so years lying through statistics so that the government has the monopoly on violence.
No permit required for CCW in 27 states. You also have states like Utah that will mail you a permit that's valid in 30 different states and doesn't require proof of live-fire training.
But yes, in CA, for example, it's a 16 hour course, background check, fingerprints, clean record, (sometimes) psych evals, and even then there are restrictions.
This isn't an indicator that CCW is difficult to obtain, though, since this is a reasonable barrier--it's an indicator that police qualifications are laughable. (While we're on that topic, by the way, law enforcement officers (both active and inactive) are allowed to concealed carry in all 50 states)
https://aliengearholsters.com/blogs/news/how-to-get-a-concea...
Share more feedback if you have it. Would love to learn more
Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case
#567Earlier quoted context omitted.
A president can not make a law, only sign them into existence. He can also direct enforcement or lessen it. As far as I understand, the Schedule of Cannabis is written into the US Code. So Congress would need to amend it. https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim...
It's under the purview of the executive branch to determine drug scheduling > The term "list I chemical" means a chemical specified by regulation of the Attorney General ... until otherwise specified by regulation of the Attorney General
Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case
#568I have a potentially silly question, and obviously naive - but why so many drawn guns? Fun music videos aside, what was the background here? Were they coming in on a Massive gang fortress? Or are all the stereotypes of American police forces true and they just come guns a-blazing all the time? I mean, that wasn't even police officers with hand guns, they have army-like guys with massive automatic rifles, and they see…
Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case
#569Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
I thought this was interesting, so I checked your sources > Insane take truly. First, CCW carriers are statistically the least likely to be involved in any kind of "violent life ending incident". Sure, you could argue this, with the exception of suicide, found guns (usually by kids in the home), and stolen guns. It's not just the person certified, it's everyone around them who can obtain access to the gun they now ow…
Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case
#570Earlier quoted context omitted.
"All they have to prove is that they fear for their life. It does not have to make sense, does not have to be 'justified', etc." That's not really true. The standard is a reasonable fear for your life. That's reasonable standard is evaluated in court by how a reasonable person would have reacted. Yes, they do give some deference to the individual who was actually there (police or civilian). The real problems happen b…
Police officers in court cases don't have to meet that standard until it established that they do not have qualified immunity. In vastly more than 9 out of 10 cases, they do, and thus that standard is completely irrelevant.