Man accused of fracturing 13-year-old’s skull for not removing hat during national anthem

[cycomiko]

Why shouldn’t a violent asshole with a gun not have a gun? I know many (and boy don’t i mean many) violent assholes with guns. There’s a few that most certainly shouldn’t have guns, but it’s not because they’re violent assholes with guns.

But do they use the guns during their violence? I guess a violent asshole can still be a responsible violent asshole.

 

[TSwizzle]

"In that 2010 incident, Brockway pulled up to a parked vehicle, got out and pulled a gun on a family and stated he was going to kill them."

Perfect time for those red flag laws (or whatever we're calling them) to swing into action. This dude is obviously violent and shouldn't have access to weapons.

Absolutely. Gun ownership needs to be licensed, the type of gun you may own, the number of guns you may own and if you step out of line the guns get confiscated and your license to gun ownership suspended or revoked permanently.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

"In that 2010 incident, Brockway pulled up to a parked vehicle, got out and pulled a gun on a family and stated he was going to kill them."

Perfect time for those red flag laws (or whatever we're calling them) to swing into action. This dude is obviously violent and shouldn't have access to weapons.

I don't always remove my hat during the anthem and have never had anyone say one cross word to me. It's just a song and not sure why anyone would care. I'm also not a 13 year old boy for some cowardly tough guy to pick on.

This isn't a reason for red flag laws--those are about actions which are scary but not illegal. This is a reason to deny weapons to someone that should be (I don't know if he is) a felon.

 

[Gun Nut]

Don't BELIEVE IN MENTAL ILLNESS?? Are you fucking serious?

BEING A VIOLENT ASSHOLE WITH A GUN DOES NOT MEAN YOU HAVE A MENTAL ILLNESS! Do you get that or are you intentionally being OBTUSE?

This guy should not have a gun. Period. Because he's an ignorant and violent twatwaddle. Not because he's depressed or bipolar.

I agree.. it's a shame that so many Dems don't believe in mental illness, though, and are unwilling to entertain new laws that address this root cause of violence



This tough guy is not going to do so well in prison. They don't take kindly to the type of criminals that target children.

Your knowledge of what is or isn't a mental disorder that can / should be treated seems to be limited to extreme cases of complete insanity. It's a spectrum. Being a violent asshole (with or without a gun) is indeed without any question to any reasonable healthcare professional, a mental disorder... specifically, it would be a sociopathic behavioral disorder. Wanting to kill someone is not. Actually killing someone is. Lack of empathy and poor impulse control are symptoms. mass shootings are results.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

"In that 2010 incident, Brockway pulled up to a parked vehicle, got out and pulled a gun on a family and stated he was going to kill them."

Perfect time for those red flag laws (or whatever we're calling them) to swing into action. This dude is obviously violent and shouldn't have access to weapons.

I don't always remove my hat during the anthem and have never had anyone say one cross word to me. It's just a song and not sure why anyone would care. I'm also not a 13 year old boy for some cowardly tough guy to pick on.

This isn't a reason for red flag laws...

--those are about actions which are scary but not illegal.

And you don't suppose that the event supplies a hint at mental well being. Fuck, someone shouldn't have to be rubber room out of their mind to cross a threshold of not being allowed a weapon.

 

[fast]

But do they use the guns during their violence?

No. No way. Why would they?

When I was younger, I knew never to point a gun at someone. But, in the back of my mind, I thought (mistakingly thought) that if the situation was dire and pointing a gun could deescalate a highly volatile situation, it might be okay, but no. No no no. No one I know is going to point a gun to scare someone. If they do, they need to have the shit knocked out of them—even if it was for good intentions.

Knocking someone on their ass with your fists is one thing, and being quick-tempered is one thing; hell, talking shit is one thing, but let’s say you’re a stranger amongst me, my ole lady and a bunch of my friends. You talk some flirtatious shit to her and I tell you to watch your mouth. You’ve now been warned, and everybody now knows your ass been warned, but drunk ass you persist and I cold-cock the hell out of you. You get up and we scrap. If I go for a gun, not only will my friends consider disowning me, my old lady will probably threaten me.

We don’t play with guns. Whether you’re the piece of shit that’ll slap a bitch or the emotionally frazzled mofo that’ll throw bricks through strangers windshields for turning around in a drive-way, you don’t ever (ever) take out a gun and point it at someone, period.

I guess a violent asshole can still be a responsible violent asshole.

That was concise. I wish I could learn that.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Don't BELIEVE IN MENTAL ILLNESS?? Are you fucking serious?

BEING A VIOLENT ASSHOLE WITH A GUN DOES NOT MEAN YOU HAVE A MENTAL ILLNESS! Do you get that or are you intentionally being OBTUSE?

This guy should not have a gun. Period. Because he's an ignorant and violent twatwaddle. Not because he's depressed or bipolar.

Excellent point.

 

[laughing dog]

Why shouldn’t a violent asshole with a gun not have a gun?

Because violent assholes should not have guns.

 

[fast]

Why shouldn’t a violent asshole with a gun not have a gun?

Because violent assholes should not have guns.

Although it may be true that not all violent assholes should have guns, it’s not true that no violent asshole should have a gun, and that’s because being a violent asshole with a gun is insufficient justification for them not having them.

 

[laughing dog]

Why shouldn’t a violent asshole with a gun not have a gun?

Because violent assholes should not have guns.

Although it may be true that not all violent assholes should have guns, it’s not true that no violent asshole should have a gun, and that’s because being a violent asshole with a gun is insufficient justification for them not having them.

It is makes sense to limit the weapons available to violent assholes. You have presented nothing to support your assertion/opinion. To say the least, it is unconvincing.

 

[WAB]

...you don’t ever (ever) take out a gun and point it at someone, period.

Unless you're in an episode of Supernatural. Have an altercation with someone, simple: just pull out your gun and aim it menacingly. The gun-enchanted audience will melt!

 

[fast]

Although it may be true that not all violent assholes should have guns, it’s not true that no violent asshole should have a gun, and that’s because being a violent asshole with a gun is insufficient justification for them not having them.

It is makes sense to limit the weapons available to violent assholes. You have presented nothing to support your assertion/opinion. To say the least, it is unconvincing.

Violent assholes should have just as much right (if not more) to guns as do others.

 

[fast]

...you don’t ever (ever) take out a gun and point it at someone, period.

Unless you're in an episode of Supernatural. Have an altercation with someone, simple: just pull out your gun and aim it menacingly. The gun-enchanted audience will melt!

Hmmm. That might be a possible exception. Good point. I accept that.

 

[ronburgundy]

Wearing a hat with a racist slogan in support of a white supremacist who inspires the mass murder of immigrants is no different from being an adolescent and not taking off a hat. Both involve hats. I am very smart.

That's a bad example in reference to Pyramidhead's point about speech that actively promotes violence . While those two hat-wearers are not morally equivalent, violence against either would and should be both illegal and treated as morally reprehensible. There is way too much assumption and uncertain inference to go from "he's wearing a hat that people who voted for Trump wear" to "therefore, he's knowingly promoting violence against other people."
The person needs to at least rather directly promote ideas that encourage violence or say things that enable others to target people with violence (such as the doxing Ngo is accussed of), before any violence against them becomes ethically "understandable". And even then, that violence should still be treated as illegal (not all ethically understandable acts should be legal, just as not all unethical acts should be illegal).

As to Pyramidhead's point, I only partly agree. I agree that there is a big moral difference between violence against speech that promotes immoral harm to innocent people and violence against speech that you merely disagree with. And much of conservative ideology (especially white supremacy) promotes harm to innocents, which includes the harm of unequal rights, and the harm caused by having one's poor outcomes caused by the injustice of others be treated as one's inferiority (e.g., that blacks are poor or more prone to crime due to some innate quality). Basically, punching a person who expresses Nazi views is somewhat like the dad of a rape victim who attacks the rapist who just got off on a technicality. In both cases the attack on the fucking asshole is and should be illegal, but I wouldn't personally hold it against them morally or likely interfere (unlike acts that are both crimes and seriously immoral).

But I disagree with the insinuation in "violent speech" that such speech is itself actual violence and therefore, as violence, should not be legally protected. Suggestions that breaking a law might be warranted should not be treated by the law as a though the law was actually broken. That is extremely dangerous and will lead to far greater injustice and harm to innocents than the speech it's trying to eliminate. Unless you have some form of soundwave superpowers, speech is never in itself "violence". It can be a causal factor in promoting violent acts by someone, but an cause of something, especially an insufficient cause like speech itself is, is not the thing itself. Since a person must choose to act on the speech, the prevention of the violence can be accomplished by prohibitions on the physical action. So, only in those rare circumstances where the actor themself has been so coerced (such as with threats) that they essentially did not "choose" to act, is the speech then enough of a direct cause do hold the speaker legally responsible. That has no bearing on holding them morally responsible, since morality isn't really about actual outcomes but about intended outcomes and if one intends harm by one's speech, no matter the mediating mechanism, then one is morally responsible for that harm.

I don't have any interest in the legality angle, as the United States is an oppressive nation with oppressive laws that nobody should use as a benchmark for anything except by coincidence.

I am curious, which nations in the world would you consider has "less oppressive" laws than the US? Are you using some esoteric personal definition of "oppressive" regarding laws? Because, the standard meaning of the term implies laws that restrict personal actions which cause no clear and direct harm to others. You comment implies that the majority of nations have a net total of fewer restrictions on personal behavior, so it should be easy to list several that you think are definitively less "oppressive".

Sure, there are counties where sexual speech and nudity are less restricted, but do they have less personal restrictions on the whole?

And restricting speech is about the most clearly oppressive thing a government can do, since unlike almost any physical action, is not possible for anyone to be directly physically hurt by speech itself (again, unless you have woo beliefs in soundwave superpowers).

So, contrary to what many people here accuse me of, I have no strong opinions about state prohibition of violent speech nor state sanction of violence against it. That is not and has never been of primary importance; the nature of the problem (rising fascism in a colonial capitalist nation that participates in and materially abets it) places the issue outside of the institutional mechanisms of government power and into the purview of popular resistance. I continue to find it ironic that the professed libertarians among us are apparently unable to conceive of popular mobilization and autonomous action, independent of the government, as a legitimate defense against threats the government fails to acknowledge.

I certainly don't deny the legitimate right of people defend themselves against objective threats, and doubt that many of the people you label "libertarians" (both rightly and wrongly) do either. Protecting oneself against actions that actually cause material harm is widely accepted as legitimate. What I don't recognize as legitimate is the philosophically and scientifically absurd assumption in your argument that speech itself causes physical harm, because, well, that is intellectually and scientifically absurd, indefensible nonsense.

This reveals the selectivity of libertarian concerns about one's rights being trampled upon. If said trampling is being done by a state power, everything up to and including lethal force is acceptable as a means of resistance. But if the state merely turns a blind eye to trampling by other parties, libertarians suddenly lose the capacity to critically evaluate the government's role, and become bootlicking sycophants for police authority and the criminal justice system.

I am sure that there are right wing authoritarians who do want government to trample people's rights to defend themselves against harm by others. However, those people also regularly attack free speech when it suits their objectives, similar to how the left is increasingly doing, which you appear to support. Those of us who are not right wingers, but liberals in the long-standing, classic, enlightenment-influenced sense of the word strongly support the rights of people to resist and even use force in response to actual force being used against them. But physical force against words that contain no physical force is not acceptable because it escalates all conflicts in ways that make civil society impossible and inherently favors the empowerment of the most brutal and unethical factions of society most willing to abuse physical force when inappropriate.

The problem with violence against white nationalists who organize in public, to the ideology that normally rails against the government as a burden on our freedom, is that it's against the government's rules.
It's as if there are no standards with which to evaluate human behavior except those that are handed down by whatever government is in power.

The problem with violence against white nationalists for speaking to each other in public is that without laws against it, there is no principled basis to have laws against violence against anyone for saying anything. When the law says who can and cannot be violently attacked, then who can be legally attacked is entirely up the arbitrary whim of whoever controls the laws at that moment. In the long run, this will always favor those who are least ethical and thus most willing to engage in violence for personal gain.
This problem exist and thus the laws protecting speech and criminalizing violence against speech must exist, even if those that are attacked do not deserve moral sympathy due to the immorality of the content of their speech.

Free speech is not important b/c some guys 200 years ago said it was. It is important, because any rational understanding of history and society says that it has been a neccessary and arguably the most import factor in anything resembling moral, political, and scientific progress in over the last few centuries. And by any rational analysis, that progress has been exponential relative to the infinitely more oppressive and unjust societies from which our current society evolved. And the only way that free speech can be protected is to defend it on principle without regard to content or how anyone feels about it. Otherwise, the only speech allowed is that preferred by those with majority power.

 

[ronburgundy]

Why shouldn’t a violent asshole with a gun not have a gun?

Because violent assholes should not have guns.

Although it may be true that not all violent assholes should have guns, it’s not true that no violent asshole should have a gun, and that’s because being a violent asshole with a gun is insufficient justification for them not having them.

IF the term means anything, "violent asshole" refers to a person who is prone to use violence against others without legal provocation and/or to use a level of violence that exceeds what is warranted in a self defense situation. It is perfectly justified to prohibit such a person from possessing an object whose primary function to kill people, and which objectively increases the probability that any conflict leads to death.

In fact, it is far more justified to prevent them for having a gun than preventing a person with mental illness, since most mental illness does not lead to violent behavior where a gun would increase the consequences, whereas being a violent asshole does, by definition.

 

[Angry Floof]

This whole "violence against people whose speech we disagree with" thing is getting out of hand.

This whole "blind worship of group identity and violence against those who don't conform" thing is beyond out of hand. It's a fucking disease of humanity.

 

[dismal]

This whole "violence against people whose speech we disagree with" thing is getting out of hand.

This whole "blind worship of group identity and violence against those who don't conform" thing is beyond out of hand. It's a fucking disease of humanity.

People got the right to blind worship. But when it leads to violence against those they disagree with it's a problem

 

[Toni]

Name a single Dem who doesn't believe in mental illness or who opposes the mentally ill getting access to guns. What they oppose is the illogical and antiscience lie that such illness is the sole causal factor and that easy access to weapons designed to kill as many humans as quickly as possible plays no role in people killing other people easily and quickly.

They also oppose the anti-science lie that mentally ill people are not causally impacted by others promoting irrational hatred and fears and encouraging them to engage in criminal violence against people, especially when those people are in positions of cultural influence, such as the president.

This tough guy is not going to do so well in prison. They don't take kindly to the type of criminals that target children.

Eh, he is very likely a white supremacist, as the majority of white conservatives are, especially the sort of fascist who'd get upset about "disrespecting the flag". So, He'll have the protection of the Ayran nation.

Wait: I'm a democrat and have been for decades.

I DO believe that some level of mental illness should preclude someone from having access to firearms, either temporarily or, if the situation called for it, long term or even permanent. I'm not a psychiatrist so I won't venture to name a level because it would be meaningless. I do not think that people with schizophrenia, for example, should be able to purchase or have access to firearms. Some other serious psychiatric disorders that cause instability and inability to think clearly and to determine right from wrong and to act on it appropriately. Possibly never should that change. On the other hand, someone who is going through an extremely difficult time and is having a temporarily very serious depression that is likely to or demonstrably has caused them to consider harming themselves and/or others should also have zero access to firearms. When they are stable again, with a good prognosis of remaining stable, that's different. They can resume hunting and skeet shooting.

I DO believe that serious mental illness is a feature of most, if not all of these mass shootings. I believe that such easy access to firearms, particularly semi-automatic, military grade weapons is also a strong factor in these shootings. We can control the second: access to firearms much more easily than we can compel or even provide effective mental health treatment.

Even if we had a 100% effective cure for mental illness likely to result in someone trying to kill themselves or other people and it was affordable, with easy access and had zero negative side effects, we would still need to get semi-automatic weapons out of the hands of private citizens and to enact much more stringent gun control laws than we have now.

 

[laughing dog]

Although it may be true that not all violent assholes should have guns, it’s not true that no violent asshole should have a gun, and that’s because being a violent asshole with a gun is insufficient justification for them not having them.

It is makes sense to limit the weapons available to violent assholes. You have presented nothing to support your assertion/opinion. To say the least, it is unconvincing.

Violent assholes should have just as much right (if not more) to guns as do others.

Why? Violent assholes are a danger to the community. It makes little sense to let them have access to firearms.

 

[ronburgundy]

Name a single Dem who doesn't believe in mental illness or who opposes the mentally ill getting access to guns. What they oppose is the illogical and antiscience lie that such illness is the sole causal factor and that easy access to weapons designed to kill as many humans as quickly as possible plays no role in people killing other people easily and quickly.

They also oppose the anti-science lie that mentally ill people are not causally impacted by others promoting irrational hatred and fears and encouraging them to engage in criminal violence against people, especially when those people are in positions of cultural influence, such as the president.

This tough guy is not going to do so well in prison. They don't take kindly to the type of criminals that target children.

Eh, he is very likely a white supremacist, as the majority of white conservatives are, especially the sort of fascist who'd get upset about "disrespecting the flag". So, He'll have the protection of the Ayran nation.

Wait: I'm a democrat and have been for decades.

I DO believe that some level of mental illness should preclude someone from having access to firearms, either temporarily or, if the situation called for it, long term or even permanent. I'm not a psychiatrist so I won't venture to name a level because it would be meaningless. I do not think that people with schizophrenia, for example, should be able to purchase or have access to firearms. Some other serious psychiatric disorders that cause instability and inability to think clearly and to determine right from wrong and to act on it appropriately. Possibly never should that change. On the other hand, someone who is going through an extremely difficult time and is having a temporarily very serious depression that is likely to or demonstrably has caused them to consider harming themselves and/or others should also have zero access to firearms. When they are stable again, with a good prognosis of remaining stable, that's different. They can resume hunting and skeet shooting.

I DO believe that serious mental illness is a feature of most, if not all of these mass shootings. I believe that such easy access to firearms, particularly semi-automatic, military grade weapons is also a strong factor in these shootings. We can control the second: access to firearms much more easily than we can compel or even provide effective mental health treatment.

Even if we had a 100% effective cure for mental illness likely to result in someone trying to kill themselves or other people and it was affordable, with easy access and had zero negative side effects, we would still need to get semi-automatic weapons out of the hands of private citizens and to enact much more stringent gun control laws than we have now.

Just to be clear, you realize that everything you said is in agreement with what I said, right?

The "Wait" at the start of your post suggested that maybe you thought you were arguing against something I said.
We don't often agree, so I don't want this rare moment of agreement to go unnoticed