Vigilante

[aspire1670]

I am enjoying aspire's posts. He has made such a fool of Seth and Collector. Keep it up, mate!

You mean himself, with his willful ignorance, yep he sure has.

Hey, collector, I bet your internet penis is way bigger than your real life one. Fear will do that to you.

[Seth]

I am enjoying aspire's posts. He has made such a fool of Seth and Collector. Keep it up, mate!

You mean himself, with his willful ignorance, yep he sure has.

Hey, collector, I bet your internet penis is way bigger than your real life one. Fear will do that to you.

Hey Aspire, you have an unseemly and pathological fixation on the size of other people's penises. Must be penis envy caused by the nanoscopic size of yours.

[Blind groper]

Nar

The last three posts were not funny at all. Standards are falling.

[Collector1337]

I am enjoying aspire's posts. He has made such a fool of Seth and Collector. Keep it up, mate!

You mean himself, with his willful ignorance, yep he sure has.

Hey, collector, I bet your internet penis is way bigger than your real life one. Fear will do that to you.

You know you've won the debate the second your opponent brings up penis size.

I graciously accept your submission of defeat.

[Blind groper]

And with that, the debate has now scraped the very bottom of the barrel.

[aspire1670]

I am enjoying aspire's posts. He has made such a fool of Seth and Collector. Keep it up, mate!

You mean himself, with his willful ignorance, yep he sure has.

Hey, collector, I bet your internet penis is way bigger than your real life one. Fear will do that to you.

You know you've won the debate the second your opponent brings up penis size.

I graciously accept your submission of defeat.

You can always trust a gun fondler to miss the point but then paranoia, fear does that to them. I mention penis size (internet and real) because size is dependant on fear. The measure of your fear is the number and calibre of the guns you own, which makes you a very frightened person indeed. It is well known fact that fear regulates the size of your penis; it shrinks. In real life you have a very small penis and you over compensate by being an internet blowhard hence you give yourself a very much larger internet penis. But what really gets to you is your inability to infect the majority of physically and morally courageous people with your fear, and that shrinks you even more.

[Seth]

You can always trust a gun fondler to miss the point but then paranoia, fear does that to them. I mention penis size (internet and real) because size is dependant on fear. The measure of your fear is the number and calibre of the guns you own, which makes you a very frightened person indeed. It is well known fact that fear regulates the size of your penis; it shrinks. In real life you have a very small penis and you over compensate by being an internet blowhard hence you give yourself a very much larger internet penis. But what really gets to you is your inability to infect the majority of physically and morally courageous people with your fear, and that shrinks you even more.

Get some psych care to deal with this delusional obsession you have with penis size before you hurt yourself.

[Seabass]

And with that, the debate has now scraped the very bottom of the barrel.

Dude, this "debate" started at the bottom of the barrel. As do most of your 'Merkins-are-stoopid threads.

[Seth]

And with that, the debate has now scraped the very bottom of the barrel.

Dude, this "debate" started at the bottom of the barrel. As do most of your 'Merkins-are-stoopid threads.

[Gallstones]

RE Zimmerman-Martin-wuss-blah, blah, blah [AKA being punched can't hurt no body bad enough to have to shoot 'em]

One Punch in Bournemouth, Dorset

[Blind groper]

To Gallstones

When people use examples like this, it makes me despair of the level of intelligence in the human species. I am sure there have been many cases where people have been killed with normally innocuous means. You could envisage a person tickling another person with a feather, and the evasion reaction leading to someone falling, cracking his/her head against cement, and dying. It does not mean a feather should be called a lethal object.

A punch can be damaging, but is very, very rarely fatal. There will be thousands of punches landed for one that kills. Any insinuation that a punch is in the same category as a gun is pure, unmitigated, dishonesty.

[JimC]

To Gallstones

When people use examples like this, it makes me despair of the level of intelligence in the human species. I am sure there have been many cases where people have been killed with normally innocuous means. You could envisage a person tickling another person with a feather, and the evasion reaction leading to someone falling, cracking his/her head against cement, and dying. It does not mean a feather should be called a lethal object.

A punch can be damaging, but is very, very rarely fatal. There will be thousands of punches landed for one that kills. Any insinuation that a punch is in the same category as a gun is pure, unmitigated, dishonesty.

That is true, but a punch is also more damaging than Hollywood films would make you believe. Significant damage is done by drunken punches, including death at times.

None of which makes for any pro-gun argument, of course, but it does make mean that I approve of the public campaigns that occur against alcohol-fuelled violence in young people...

[Hermit]

That is true, but a punch is also more damaging than Hollywood films would make you believe. Significant damage is done by drunken punches, including death at times.

None of which makes for any pro-gun argument, of course, but it does make mean that I approve of the public campaigns that occur against alcohol-fuelled violence in young people...

Yes. The rate of violent crime in Australia has risen over many years because it became acceptable to actually report having one's nose busted, getting a shiner or whatever during an alcohol fuelled altercation in a pub, club or massive New Year's Eve gatherings in public places to police, rather than just going home and bewailing one's bad luck. In the past five years that rate has dropped because license holders have become increasingly mindful of their responsibility to refuse serving customers when those people have become clearly erratic due to their consumption of alcohol. Neither the rise nor subsequent fall of those rates are in any way connected with firearm availability.

[Seth]

To Gallstones

When people use examples like this, it makes me despair of the level of intelligence in the human species. I am sure there have been many cases where people have been killed with normally innocuous means. You could envisage a person tickling another person with a feather, and the evasion reaction leading to someone falling, cracking his/her head against cement, and dying. It does not mean a feather should be called a lethal object.

Actually, it mean exactly that. The law says that anything at all may be deemed a "deadly weapon" if it is factually used to cause the harms specified in the law, which you'll find below. Whether the actual incident is a murder or a criminally negligent homicide or a manslaughter or merely an unfortunate accident that is properly a civil matter due to lack of criminal intent is up to the DA, judge and jury. But if you spit in someone's eye and this causes them to stumble off a cliff, you have assaulted that person with a deadly weapon and can be charged and convicted.

A punch can be damaging, but is very, very rarely fatal. There will be thousands of punches landed for one that kills. Any insinuation that a punch is in the same category as a gun is pure, unmitigated, dishonesty.

No, in point of legal fact you're wrong.

It's not in the same category as a gun, but it is in the category of physical assaults which can and do (not nearly as rarely as you suggest) cause death. The rarity with which a single punch causes death is completely irrelevant because the victim's right to not be killed by a single punch (or the fall resulting therefrom) by anyone, ever, even unintentionally, is absolute and is not subject to a statistical analysis of his chances of dying from any particular punch. Such arguments are completely inadmissible at trial. As far as a criminal conviction is concerned, you either did or did not punch the individual without legal justification, and any and all injury or harm resulting from that unlawful assault is your direct responsibility even if you did not "intend" to do such harm.

Such punches also very commonly cause serious bodily injury, permanent disfigurement, permanent brain damage, loss of eyesight, hearing, taste, speech and other permanent disabilities that qualify under the law as exactly the kind of threat anticipated by the law for which a response using deadly physical force may be justified:

18-1-704. Use of physical force in defense of a person

(1) Except as provided in subsections (2) and (3) of this section, a person is justified in using physical force upon another person in order to defend himself or a third person from what he reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of unlawful physical force by that other person, and he may use a degree of force which he reasonably believes to be necessary for that purpose.

(2) Deadly physical force may be used only if a person reasonably believes a lesser degree of force is inadequate and:

(a) The actor has reasonable ground to believe, and does believe, that he or another person is in imminent danger of being killed or of receiving great bodily injury; or

(b) The other person is using or reasonably appears about to use physical force against an occupant of a dwelling or business establishment while committing or attempting to commit burglary as defined in sections 18-4-202 to 18-4-204; or

(c) The other person is committing or reasonably appears about to commit kidnapping as defined in section 18-3-301 or 18-3-302, robbery as defined in section 18-4-301 or 18-4-302, sexual assault as set forth in section 18-3-402, or in section 18-3-403 as it existed prior to July 1, 2000, or assault as defined in sections 18-3-202 and 18-3-203.

18-1-901. Definitions

(1) Definitions set forth in any section of this title apply wherever the same term is used in the same sense in another section of this title unless the definition is specifically limited or the context indicates that it is inapplicable.

(c) "Bodily injury" means physical pain, illness, or any impairment of physical or mental condition.

(p) "Serious bodily injury" means bodily injury which, either at the time of the actual injury or at a later time, involves a substantial risk of death, a substantial risk of serious permanent disfigurement, a substantial risk of protracted loss or impairment of the function of any part or organ of the body, or breaks, fractures, or burns of the second or third degree.

Note that "serious bodily injury" and "great bodily injury" mean the same thing, even though the legislature has screwed up harmonizing this language for a long time.

The conclusion here is that it is entirely possible for a person to use lethal force lawfully to defend him or herself against a single punch if the threat and his or her belief meets the standards set forth in the above statute.

Having spent many years in both law enforcement and emergency medicine, I've seen the results of "single punches" quite a bit, and they are not at all pretty or harmless. So I have a very, very reasonable and well-informed fear of being punched, particularly in the head. As we see in this case the "knockout game" is in fact an intentional assault that has deadly consequences and in my opinion therefore is justifiably rated as a potentially lethal attack justifying the use of deadly physical force in self defense or the defense of others if the circumstances meet the requirements of the use-of-force law cited above.

[Blind groper]

Once more, Seth, you show your total inability to think in terms of statistics and probability. A gun will kill 1 in 5 times a person receives a bullet (or 1 in 9 if you discount suicides). A punch will kill perhaps once in 10,000 times that a punch is landed (my estimate, since I have not seen the figures).

If you are capable of thinking with modern ideas of stats and probability, you will understand that this is a major, major difference.