b) What is wrong with my sentence structure?
You wrote:
I and ksen were discussing the difference between police shooting a suspect and executing a convict. He refuses to see any difference.
The preferred structure would have been Ksen and I.
But that is part of my point. They are very different things. Not same at all, as ksen claims. With police shootings the perp/suspects poses an imminent threat. With an execution the convict is a captive, completely at the mercy of correction officers. The two things are not very comparable.
Unfortunately for your point, the person killed is not representing an imminent threat to anybody. The person shot was shot in the face, chest and had shots on his hands where he put his hands up to shield himself from the assault.
BTW, the (former) police officer, who had previously killed an unarmed suspect and posted racist comments about him and his family on FB, and who was not allowed on patrol for 3 years afterwards has now been convicted of the charges against him in this current discussion.
If we take ksen's (and presumably yours) argument to its logical conclusion then no police shooting is ever justified unless the perp has already been convicted and sentenced to death. Do you think that makes any sense whatsoever?
I'm not arguing that no police shooting is ever justified. In this case, and in far, far too many other cases (which you enthusiastically defend!), the suspect was unarmed and not a threat to anyone.
No. You claim police shoot to stop/remove a threat. Jarhyn points out that soldiers are trained to shoot to kill. Period. You are just quibbling with what 'remove a threat' really means.
It carries a rather high (still less than .5 though) chance of death, no questions there. But death is not a goal. It just happens to be the most effective way to stop a threatening subject we have to date. If we ever get Star Trek phasers that are effective in stun mode police would be using those. Because the goal is not to kill.
I'm sorry. You are just misinformed. One only shoots to kill. One does not shoot anyone multiple times in the face and chest with any intention other than to kill. Which is what happened in this case.
If you are talking about guns, it means killing someone. That's what it means. The fact that you quibble with the meaning demonstrates how very uncomfortable you are with your stance
Not uncomfortable, just desiring accuracy. Police shootings are not executions.
Pretty often, that's exactly what they are. An armed police officer feels threatened and decides the only course of action is to fire his weapon into the face and chest of another person. Frequently an unarmed person. If anyone who wasn't a police officer did this, 'execution' is exactly the term which would be used in court when the shooter was brought to trial. Police are people. They are not above the law. They are sworn to uphold the law, to serve and to protect. That serve and protect does not apply narrowly to themselves and their own persons but even to the person before them, the one they deem a suspect.
that police can and should kill unarmed citizens at will. For things like shoplifting. Or a broken tail light.
This guy was not shot for shoplifting. Philandro was not shot for a broken tail light. Michael Brown was not shot for walking in the street.
We know. They were shot for being black.
Really? You have source to back up your claim?
What claim? That death is not the goal in police shootings? Does anybody really genuinely believe the opposite?
Of course it is the goal! One does not ever, ever, ever shoot--or point a gun- at a person intending to not kill them. Something I was taught as a child, ffs.
Certainly you do not possess the intellectual integrity required to admit that firing a shot into the center mass of another human being is likely to result in the death of said human being. And that death is intentionally caused.
That death is not the goal.
Really? So Rankin shot an unarmed Chapman in the chest and face, while Chapman's hands were shielding his face from the attack--because he wanted to...wound him? No.
If the suspect is stopped without being killed police are happy with that.
Sure. Most of them.
They do not desire to kill a fellow human being.
Sure, that's true of most of them. But for too many, black person = suspect = dangerous threat = not quite human = must shoot!
It's just that sometimes use of lethal force is necessary.
Yes, sometimes it is necessary against an armed suspect who is firing his or her weapon. In this case and in so many others, the suspect was not armed. And was suspected of.. extremely trivial offences. Not convicted. Suspected. Not armed. Not dangerous.
But it is still very different than an execution where the subject is not posing any imminent threat and death is the goal, not a side effect (no matter how likely).
No. In a legal execution, a person is convicted of a capital offense by a jury and has received due process and a death sentence. I don't agree with capital punishment but I recognize that it is the penalty for some crimes in some states. After a trial and numerous appeals and other hearings.
We aren't debating capital punishment. We are talking about cowardly armed people who fire their weapons at other people who pose no threat, who are unarmed and not dangerous. This happens over and over and over again. It's an execution. It would be called an execution if anyone other than a police officer carried out such an attack. It's just not a legal execution.
And the likelihood of dying from a gunshot wound is not as high as you might think. If vital organs are missed the odds are actually rather high.
How many vital organs are located in someone's chest? Behind someone's face? Because that's where Rankin shot Chapman. Do you honestly believe that he was attempting to subdue a shoplifting teenager?
NY Times said:
If a gunshot victim’s heart is still beating upon arrival at a hospital, there is a 95 percent chance of survival, Dr. DiMaio said. (People shot in vital organs usually do not make it that far, he added.)
The heart is a vital organ.
Shots to roughly 80 percent of targets on the body would not be fatal blows, Dr. Fackler said. Still, he added, it is like roulette.
One Bullet Can Kill, but Sometimes 20 Don’t, Survivors Show
This guy survived several gunshots and lived to see one of the cops convicted of assault.
Jury finds Baltimore Police Officer Wesley Cagle guilty of assault in shooting of unarmed man
The odds of surviving lethal injection, electric chair, hanging or even a firing squad are much lower.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
No. Once again, I will remind you that a criminal facing execution has received due process.
I am baffled in why you think that bolsters yours and ksen's ridiculous position. It merely underscores that we are dealing with very different things.
Yes, one is a legally sanctioned penalty for a criminal offense. I don't agree with it, but it is legally sanctioned. The other is unjustifiable murder. They are quite different.
You win.
A person shot by police because of a broken tail light has not.
Who was shot by police
because of a broken tail light? This is classic
post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Philandro was shot after being pulled over for a broken tail light, therefore he was shot because of the broken tail light.
I believe that's what I said. But according to the officer who killed him, he was pulled over because he resembled a suspect in a robbery from a couple of days ago. That officer must have had super human powers to be able to distinguish features in a person driving an automobile in traffic, presumably while the officer was also driving his vehicle. Unfortunately for the officer, Castille was not the suspect in that robbery and was in fact a perfectly nice guy who got pulled over and then shot point blank by a stupid, inept, racist police officer who panicked at the idea that a black man had a concealed gun--which the black man was disclosing and attempting to comply with the various shouted contradictory orders given by the police officer.
Excuse me: I was being euphemistic when I stated 'shot by police because of a broken tail light.' The person I am thinking of was shot because of the panic, cowardice and ineptitude and racism of the police officer who shot him.
I would say you were ergopropterhocish instead.
Is there any evidence the cop was "racist"? Yes, he panicked. But we do not know exactly what order was given when. That part was not filmed by Diamond. So we still don't know what exactly happened and we certainly have no reason to believe the cop was in any way racist.
Sure we do. We have the officer's claim that he pulled over Castille because 'he had a broad nose' like the one described on the suspect of a robbery from a couple of days previous. Talk about eagle eyes! To be able to discern features of a driver of another moving vehicle when you are driving your own! Wow.
Do you not understand the meaning of the word lethal?
Yes. It means capable of killing, not that death necessarily occurs.
Let's use a dictionary:
Lethal: a : of, relating to, or causing death <death by lethal injection> b : capable of causing death <lethal chemicals>
Or do you think there are degrees of lethal?
You are right. Sometimes a person survives being shot in the chest or face.
Of course there are degrees of lethality. You would have pretty good odds of surviving a .22 handgun shot to the chest
Did Rankin use a .22?
You would have lesser odds of surviving a 5.56x40 (roughly .22) round form an M16 or a .44 Magnum hollow point round. You would have small odds indeed of surviving a 20mm Vulcan gun round (even if only one of them hit you).
What kind of weapon did Rankin fire multiple times into Chapman's face and chest?
Like: a little bit lethal but not really?
Odds of dying are very different from weapon to weapon.
What kind of weapon did Rankin use to shot the unarmed Chapman in the face and chest, multiple times?
I mean, don't most people survive shots to their chest? (no, they don't.)
Actually, yes they do. A lot depends on what hits you (caliber, speed, FMJ vs. hollow point), what it's fired from and from what range. It also depends on what part of your body is hit and how fast the paramedics arrive and get you to a hospital.
Really? You have sources for that?
What kind of weapon and ammunition did Rankin use? How many shots did he fire? Where was Chapman struck? Which and how many of the shots was fatal?
You don't believe that yourself. You are being too careful to acknowledge that shooting someone center mass is shooting with intent to kill. Removing threat is a euphemism. Please have the courage to own what you are advocating.
Not intent to kill, but with acceptance of a certain likelihood of a deadly outcome. There is a difference.
Sure there's a difference. Anybody who can't take a few bullets to the chest and face really isn't worth surviving anyway, right? It's not like it was the officer's fault that the unarmed teenager he shot--at close range-- in the face and chest died. It was totally an accident. A fluke. I mean, who would have guessed?
So are you saying the perp was justified in knocking the taser from the cop's hands?
I'm saying that a taser is well known to cause uncontrolled movements from those who are hit by the taser. And that it is human to try to stop the source of pain. And yes, unlike you or Rankin, I believe that Chapman was human.
