Month: February 2012

Interesting development in Detroit:

Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as citizens in the long-suffering city armed themselves and took matters into their own hands. The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own. And they’re offering no apologies.

Police have been cut back so much that the average response time is 24 minutes now, compared to ten minutes in most of the rest of the country.

One high-ranking official in the county legal system, speaking to The Daily, said the rise in justifiable homicides mirrors a local court system that’s increasingly lenient of the practice.

“It’s a lot more acceptable now to get your own retribution,” the official said. “And the justice system in the city is a lot more understanding if people do that. It‘s becoming a part of the culture.”

This is the danger in the break down of law and order. To form governments, people surrender their natural right of retribution to the state. In return, the state administers fair and impartial justice. When the state fails to live up to its end of the bargain, people take matters into their own hands. Since juries are going to be composed of the same people mentioned in this article, prosecutors will have a hell of a time earning convictions on legitimate cases of vigilantism, and can forget about earning convictions on borderline self-defense cases, or cases such as shooting a burglar in the back after he dropped your stereo and is on his way out your front door.

And yet our opponents would rather have these people disarmed for their own good. Needless to say I strongly disagree with that statement. The residents of Detroit are doing what they can to keep some semblance of order. This is a failure of the state, and when the state fails, the people have a right to replace the administration of the state’s justice. That street justice is ugly, is why we have government to begin with. Our opponents view this as a failure of the individuals, whereas I believe we view it as a failure of the state.

It kind of makes me wonder in situations like this, if city budget cuts are the root problem here, why government doesn’t move in and do something particularly radical? Why not set up, dare I say it, the old concept of militia. Take the most responsible among the city residents, train them, and get them on the streets administering the state’s justice, rather than street justice.

But heavens no… we have to leave that to the “professionals” in modern society. You have to wonder, in polite society, which is the more abhorrent idea? Street justice, or the state organizing ordinary citizens to take care of their own? I think I know the answer for most of the elite, and probably our political opponents in the gun control movement.

From a former San Jose Mercury News Reporter, now turned freelancer, we learn that it’s hard for even hunting bloggers. Apparently Google’s policies “doesn’t allow the promotion of … violent concepts” including “the promotion of self-harm and violence against people or animals.” with an exception that it’s just fine for “self-defense, hunting and sporting events.” To me that still says guns, knives, and weapons are a no no, but Google is OK with events related to lawful activities with these items.

Not that remarkably surprising for a company that has it’s two big US sites being in Mountain View and New York. There used to be a time when tech people were almost universally “leave me the hell alone” types, but with the Gen Y and beyond, it seems to have taken a turn for the left. I’m thinking that might have to do with computers becoming less about ones and zeros (the realm of engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists) into a creative industry, not all that remarkably different from arts and philosophy.