Are you following the Ahmaud Arbery case?

I haven’t followed the trial, but I am watching the defense closing arguments. It’s astounding to me how they turned it around to make it like the victim Ahmaud Arbery is a terrible person who was headed in the wrong direction in life.

If these guys are found not guilty, the cities are going to burn the fuck down, and rightly so. I have not ever approved of looting and burning, but in this case, as with the Rodney King case, it’s so clear cut (to me).

@jca2 The “dirty toenail” remark by the defense. SMH

I don’t know the first thing about it.

@jca2 I understand the frustration and anger when people loot and destroy property but it’s giving more ammunition to white supremacists, white nationalists and other anti-BLM movement forces to swing the narrative around to their favor. And the real issues get muddled. I wish angry people can channel all that fury by other means as strategically effective but not at all destructive.

What do I think the outcome will be versus what it should be?
Should be guilty of Murder.
Will be a mockery of human rights if it is anything else.

Let’s see. Almost all white jury judging whether three white trash good ol’ boys were justified in killing a black man.

And the trial is taking place in South Georgia.

I would completely gobsmacked if they are found guilty.

I think the father & son will be found guilty. I think the guy trailing in the car will either walk or have some lesser sentence. This is too clear cut a case. They are guilty and will be found guilty.

I haven’t followed this case. I saw the videos up front and just look at what the story is. Three guys gang up on and kill another. Kinda hard to say self-defense. Kinda hard to claim anything. You can say all you want about Aubery’s history or his apparent path through life. It doesn’t matter. The three had no way of knowing anything about him. So this is one of those cases (on all appearance) that you had people doing whatever they want, figuring they can get away with it. I liken these three to the rioters in Kenosha. Destroying property and beating whomever they wanted because they figure they can get away with it.

Just a question though…if Aubery had pulled out a gun after they started attacking him and he blew them all away, would he be the bad guy?

@Blackwater_Park What is the “dirty toenail” remark?
I have only been following off and on. So I can’t say what is happening with it.
@seawulf575 Funny, I’ve wandered the same thing.

@jca2 While I agree with you that this seems clear cut and that there ought to be a murder conviction or two, I disagree that rioting and looting are an answer to injustice. Injustice is never the answer for injustice. Mindless violence is not a solution to mindless violence.

Both sides made mistakes.
If someone pulls a gun on you, you don’t try to take it away from them. ESPECIALLY when it’s shotgun!
Stay well away from the person you are holding (or attempting to hold) at bay with a gun lest they try to take it from you..
The victim brought a lot of what happened upon himself. He should have submitted to being held until the police showed up. What was he afraid of??
The guy who had the shotgun broke one of the most important rules of proper gunplay: You only pull a gun as a last resort!
The three men who tried to hold him were trying to make a citizen’s arrest. What happen with the gun could have also happened to any police that showed up.

My opinion as to what will be decided by the jury? The guy who had the gun will be found guilty of manslaughter, not first or second degree murder.

^What was he afraid of!??
He was afraid of being a black man in Georgia being chased by 3 white rednecks.

Well, He was a black kid being chased by three belligerent white guys. Put yourself in his shoes. If you’re unarmed and someone with ill intent pulls a gun on you what would you do? I’ll tell you I’m fighting. “Citizens arrest” is not something they said to him. As far as he knew he was about to be murdered. There is so much wrong here it’s hard to spin it any other way.

Just a question though…if Aubery had pulled out a gun after they started attacking him and he blew them all away, would he be the bad guy?

@seawulf575 – oh, the endless moral quandries of a population armed to the teeth…

@Smashley Better for all to be fully armed than fully helpless.

@chyna I guess you missed my meaning.
If he wasn’t afraid, why did he grab the gun instead of just submitting to wait for the police? Why was he so afraid that he felt he had to try to take the gun away?
Sounds suspicious to me…
I think your comment about what I meant in my prior post was too generic.

@kritiper I kinda disagree with the idea of “being held” by someone just because. I do understand the aspect of not attacking the guy with the gun, but being illegally detained at gunpoint is not necessarily the only option.

@Smashley The issue, once again, is not the arms. It is how people react to them. In my view, if you are being attacked and you use a gun to defend yourself, you are perfectly okay. However much of society these days wants to make the person defending themselves the monster and wants to treat those attacking him as the helpless innocents. Look at the Kenosha case. There were many documented cases of the mob ganging up on and beating innocent, unarmed civilians. Yet as soon as they try doing it to a kid with a gun, he defends himself and they are suddenly the innocents and he is the bad guy.

The view that it is somehow wrong to defend yourself, that you should have allowed yourself to be beaten to a pulp, is foreign to me.

@kritiper – “No way to prevent this” says only nation where this routinely happens.

@seawulf575 The issue with the arms is that they are indiscriminate death dealers. Efficient, high capacity death dealers. Rittenhouse was attacked with a skateboard because he was perceived to be a killer with an efficient death machine in hand. To not attack him was morally suspect, frankly. Arbery died because someone decided pointed a fucking shotgun at him was appropriate for his perceived wrongs. He tried to go after the gun, because it is an efficient death dealer and it was pointed at him. He died in a split second because shotguns are efficient death dealers and take zero judgement or consideration to deliver death, once they have been introduced to a situation. Any conflict with an armed member is more likely to end in death than that same conflict without a gun, and in a world where legitimate fear is a legal defense to homicide, we are introducing unprecedented levels of fear.

@Smashley And it could be so much worse, not better. The lesser of two evils.

@kritiper – pro-life=proliferation?

Well, regardless of the outcome, they then face federal hate crime charges.

@Smashley Let me educate you a little bit. Guns are neither discriminating or indiscriminate. They are inanimate. Those that hold the guns are the ones that make them safe of not. Whether you use them as a deterrent, to defend yourself, or to flat out kill someone has no bearing on the gun at all. So let’s start with that understanding….guns are not alive and have no feelings one way or the other.
Now let’s look at what you are saying about Rittenhouse. You are suggesting that if someone has a gun that performs its function, you should charge that person, beat them and try taking the gun away from them. Remember, Rittenhouse was not threatening anyone. It was the rioters that were threatening everyone. We know that they beat unarmed people and tried to beat an armed person. They weren’t doing something heroic or something morally admirable…they were thugs. You suggest that beating tripping someone that is running from you, kicking them while they are down, and then beating them with a skateboard is somehow something that is a moral necessity. Here’s thought for you: Rittenhouse was running away. If they had let him go he was no threat to anyone. It was only when they threatened him with possible death that he fought back.
So let me ask you this: if you suddenly had someone attack you because they felt it was their duty to beat you silly, and they had a weapon, and a cop shows up. He shouldn’t use a weapon to save your life because it is an indiscriminate killer, right? Let’s make it closer to what Rittenhouse had to deal with. Let’s say 5 or 6 people decided to attack you. Now if the cop jumps in without being armed he is likely to get killed as well. So you should just be beat, possibly to death, and you shouldn’t fight back and no one really has a right to defend you. That is the summation of what you are saying.

Look, if you don’t want a gun, don’t get one. If you never want to touch one, don’t. But don’t make that decision because you believe that thugs are good and people defending themselves are bad.

@seawulf575 It’s simply BS Rittenhouse wasn’t threatening anyone. Him in that place and in that situation touting a gun like an idiot was already a threat. May not be to you but to someone else. Is it too hard to educate yourself on that one?

@seawulf575 – the fact that guns do not have brains is not lost on me. However, I happen to believe that the degree to which firearms can cause death, the heartbeat of intent or accident it takes to kill others, or more often, yourself, with them put them in an entirely different class of tools. When we deputize the entire nation and give them the means to kill easily, and protect their fear based mistakes, we get… well… you see what we get. Death death and more death. I would have more people get beaten up by mobs, if it meant, on balance, less violent death, but I understand this is a minority viewpoint. Anyway, if we go with this whole everyone gets guns thing, can we at least revisit abolishing the police? I mean its not even fair to the poor guys anymore. Social workers are better for some things, and we can do the killings ourselves, at way lower cost to the taxpayer.

@mazingerz88 So you would agree then that these two are a threat? Oh! and the girl is only 16 which means it IS illegal for her to carry a gun in Wisconsin. So shouldn’t people be rushing to beat her to a pulp?

You say in that place and situation. Are you referring to a violent riot? So it is the situation and not the gun that is the problem. Well…if that is the case, then the rioters created the threat and then tried to beat a child who was just walking by with a gun. Kinda hard to say self-defense when you create the threat, eh?

@Smashley Then we ought to outlaw all vehicles as well. After all, there are more automotive deaths every year than gun deaths.

And here’s part of the problem with the dialogue over this topic in this country: People like you cannot actually bring yourselves to say the rioters were doing anything wrong. You insist on acting like vandalism, arson, assault, and murder are all wonderful things as long as you are doing it as a protest to something the left likes.

@seawulf575 The law in Wisconsin is “under the age of 16” That girl is legally carrying.

@seawulf575 They look terrifying to me. If I was at that protest, I would feel very nervous and leave immediately. 16? Teenagers are often awesome, but their reasoning and risk assessment skills are all over the place.

@Blackwater_Park According to what got Rittenhouse off, I thought it specified 16 or under was illegal. He was 17 at the time.

@longgone those two were there for protection of the protesters. Apparently none of the protesters have a problem with them. So what seems to be the issue is that if someone is carrying a gun such as these two or Grosskreutz and are in favor of protesting and rioting, it is okay. If they carry a gun for protection and aren’t working for the left, it isn’t. Does that about sum it up?

It’s not okay with me. I would like exactly noone to carry a gun on the street, carefully trained police officers exempted. And if I had to choose who especially shouldn’t carry a gun, I’d pick toddlers and teenagers.

@seawulf575 You’re comparing them to the idiot Rittenhouse, really? And this was after the idiot got away with his hate and his kills.

@seawulf575 That’s for a “deadly weapon” but there is an exception to the law regarding rifles that states 16 and over is ok. The media said it was “for hunting” but the law does not specifically mention that.

@mazingerz88 Those people were there doing essentially the same thing. I think they’re all idiots but I don’t believe Rittenhouse was there out of hate and wanting “kills”

Well, I feel justice was served here. I think the guy trailing in the car kinda got a raw deal. The rest got what they deserved.

@seawulf575 – the state failed to do it’s job. The police were ineffective. The rioters were doing lots of things wrong, and fuck them. That shouldn’t justify vigilantism. I understand that in this country it does. I just think it shouldn’t.

You arent being fair when you characterize every attack on Rittenhouse as equal. He shot and killed the first guy, after which the crowd obvioisly percieved him as what they all feared, a bad guy with a gun. A nutty maga high capacity brony on a rampage. Rightly or wrongly, it was a natural fear based decision, when the stakes of incorrectly judging him to not be a threat could have meant the lives of numerous people. It’s just the shit the happens when we come locked and loaded.

Deputizing and arming the nation is one solution to the failures of policing, but it is prone to more random and unintentional and unnecessary death like in the two examples going around here. In some ways, however I’m done on this issue. There frankly comes a time when there are just too many guns to ignore and not being armed starts to be reckless. I’m afraid that I’ve decided to get a gun, myself, even though it increases the chances that myself or someone I love will be killed with a gun. It’s just too late, and I think I need to accept that.

Something that’s bugging me is this though: In both of these cases had there not been so much video evidence Rittenhouse would have been found guilty and Arbery’s assailants would never have even been charged with a crime.

@elbanditoroso are you gobsmacked? Despite the nearly all white jury and despite it being in Georgia, the verdict was unanimous…guilty on all counts. You might want to rethink your misplaced discriminations.

This is an excellent article that is relevant to both cases:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/24/opinion/arbery-verdict-rittenhouse.html

Can someone please tell me why the guy that filmed the whole thing published the video? If he had not made the video public, 2 months after the murder, they all would be free. So why did he publish the video?

It will be another dog and pony show, and the far right rednecks will start in with bull shit excuses, like they did on the Rittenhouse thing. Land of the free my fucking ass. It’s obvious to me we haven’t progressed a bit from the early 20th Century. The justice system in America has become a farce.

@Nomore_lockout Have you been asleep for the last couple of days?

@chyna I thought that too.

@chyna: I haven’t followed the trial details closely, but did he publish the video or did the police take his cell phone and get the video from it? Maybe he thought the video showed he was innocent.

^ I’m not sure, because I wasn’t following that close either. But it makes more sense if it did happen that way.

The video went viral prompting the arrests. The small town police were going to sweep it under the rug. Not sure how the video got on the web.

Yeah I just googled and looked at the Wiki article. It appears that they posted the video online and a local attorney released it to the local radio or TV station, and then the Prosecutor got hold of it after an outcry.

No. I only heard about it through Instagram and YouTube.