Tuesday, August 9, 2011

More on Shooting the Rioters

In the previous post I called for the police to shoot rioters who use firebombs against the police, or who set fire to occupied buildings. John Hawkins at Right Wing News agrees, although he goes much further.
Many people think of defense of a nation as the very first job of government, but there’s actually an even more basic task that the government has to fulfill: Maintaining order.

In extraordinary situations, when you have widespread breakdowns of public order and shops are being looted, cars are being burned, rocks and bottles are being thrown at police, and civilians are being murdered in the street, if the government can’t quickly re-establish order using normal means, it’s completely justified in using lethal violence to do it

I think lethal police response should be more selective, but I agree with his view of the responsibility of government. And he makes a key point.
you may say this is unfair to thugs in the street, but we should be much more worried about the lives of innocent people who are being assaulted and property owners whose livelihoods are being unfairly destroyed.
Exactly. This attitude tends to separate the right and the left, and is one of the many reasons I will always be on the right. When I look at a riot, my sympathy is with the people being assaulted, the owners of the cars being destroyed, the families left homeless when their buildings burn, the shopkeepers who are robbed, and all the other victims. The last thing I worry about are the feelings and rights of the scum doing the rioting.

4 comments:

  1. Ah, fascism... the last refuge of the frightened authoritarian.

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  2. I seriously doubt you have any idea what the word fascism even means. Here's a hint, it doesn't mean actions by the government in a crisis situation that you happen to disagree with.

    And if you aren't frightened by massive riots you are either someone who is rioting, or a moron.

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  3. that you happen to disagree with

    Yeah, I just happen to oppose firing live ammunition into a crowd...

    Crisis is not the time when rights can be stomped on, it is the moment rights were created for.

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  4. "Yeah, I just happen to oppose firing live ammunition into a crowd..."

    My argument was that people throwing firebombs should be targeted and shot, not that police should fire indiscriminately into crowds. In any event, neither response to a riot has anything in particular to do with fascism.

    "Crisis is not the time when rights can be stomped on, it is the moment rights were created for. "

    People in the act of rioting have no more rights than any other criminal in the act of committing a crime. Force can & should be used to stop their crimes and protect the public. Their rights don't even apply until they are in custody.

    Whether or not live ammunition, plastic bullets, water cannon, batons, or any other method of riot control should be used is a question of appropriate force, not of rights.

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