That's because that wanted poster then stays around forever because of the internet and their records can't be wiped when they reach the age of majority.
Police typically don't release booking photos of minors, because there is nothing to gain, and there is the potential cost you mention. But surveillance footage that might assist in the apprehension of the criminals, even kids, is often released, and rightfully so.
In this case they write they have good hope that the department they are working with will be able to ID the suspects so there is as far as I can see no need to release the footage.
You should go into politics. Meanwhile, the law is the law and that's how it stands. What you (or I) personally feel they deserve or not doesn't matter.
That doesn't seem to be the law in California.[1] California prohibits the copying of photographs taken by or for the Coroner at a death scene, but that doesn't apply here. There's no expectation of privacy. It's not a juvenile court record. The video will probably be available eventually.
Some of the cameras on BART trains are dummies. After an embarrassment last year, BART has been replacing the dummies with real ones. Completion is scheduled for July 1, 2017.
Something similar to this happened on a train to Paris a few years back and at the time I remember thinking that it seemed like the stupidest crime you could commit. 40+ people to split the takings with, and you only need 1 of the 40+ people to get busted to lead to the rest (the french criminals weren't minors). I know I shouldn't try to apply logic to it, but... it just doesn't seem like a sound profit-making venture.
> The images cannot be shared publicly, she said, because the suspects appear to be minors.
Does anyone have info on the law here? Pictures that include minors in them are shared all the time over the internet and media - many times without having permission from all the people pictured - which I believe is still legal. Why is sharing a picture of a minor illegal in this instance?
Innocent until proven guilty, and once the images get out, they are automatically guilty in the eyes of the public. Should any minor get their record sealed when they turn 18, they would still be known to have committed those crimes.
As they have not been apprehended the suspects, it is unknown if they would be tried as an adult. The new outlet is erring on the side of caution here because if the case where a suspect is tried as a minor, gets their record sealed at 18, and will be liable for slandering the adult's name with a crime he or she committed as a juvenile.
> The new outlet is erring on the side of caution here because if the case where a suspect is tried as a minor, gets their record sealed at 18, and will be liable for slandering the adult's name with a crime he or she committed as a juvenile.
Wait, what? Are you saying that the Right to Be Forgotten already exists in the U.S. with respect to criminal convictions of minors?
I don't have the specific citations handy, but California law enforcement agencies are restricted in what information, and in what circumstances, they can share with regard to minors suspected of crimes.
This has nothing to do with limits on people in general sharing video or images of minors.
An earlier version of this article said something like "BART did not immediately report the incident" (can't recall exact wording). This statement or any equivalent appears to be removed. It looks like newsdiff.org doesn't track sfgate.com, so I can't find the exact change. Regardless, the article originally indicated BART didn't report the incident to the public right away.
That leads me to say: sweeping this kind of crime under the rug will not help. Instead, it will lead to a repeat of the Goetz vigilante incident in NYC in the early 1980s:
That last link in particular contains a stunning statement:
> The crime rate in the dangerous subways plunged dramatically — so much so the authorities even held back the numbers — the truth hurt too much.
The ugly and frightening truth about vigilantism is that it works. Please note I hate the idea of vigilantism and hope with every fiber of my being that things do not come to that, but it at first glance appears that things are headed in that direction, which I am immensely sad and scared to see.
You're justifying writing "The ugly and frightening truth about vigilantism is that it works" by including a link to an article written by a NRA spokesman that basically says "The ugly and frightening truth about vigilantism is that it works", without backing it up.
I've actually spent the last hour looking for statistics to back or not back you up. I've wasted my life.
> that basically says "The ugly and frightening truth about vigilantism is that it works", without backing it up
That's a quote from me, not from the HuffPo article. The article says "The crime rate in the dangerous subways plunged dramatically…", as I quoted originally.
> I've actually spent the last hour looking for statistics to back or not back you up. I've wasted my life.
I replied to you here with a source that only took a few minutes to find:
You seem very emotional about this topic. I would urge you to look at it more dispassionately. As I already stated (but it bears repeating), I absolutely do not want vigilantism to be the result of crimes like this, but I fear unless there is an open and honest conversation, things may end up there anyway. I believe the best (and perhaps only) way to avoid such an outcome is to consider the possibilities that may result from various actions (or inactions), unpleasant as they may be.
I'm not really sure what point you're making. Or rather I violently disagree with you that vigilantism works. How does it work? Are you saying Goetz shooting people on the NYC subway led to a dramatic reduction in crime? Are you basing your claim from one line from a Huffington post article from this author?
Somehow info from BART officials made it to the various news outlets. The news outlets wrote stories on it. I knew about the incident by Sunday. I read about it somewhere. I was not on the train.
I noticed you replied to me twice (once here and once in another subthread), saying you'd spent time looking and "wasted [your] life". You also seem to be going further down the road of ad-hominem, describing the author of the first article I wrote as an "NRA spokesman". You seem ideologically driven and therefore unlikely to listen. But here goes anyway:
"Vigilante Mobilization and Local Order: Evidence from Mexico"
> Our empirical approach traces the sources of recent self-defense groups to the early twentieth cen- tury Cristero rebellion and, using an instrumental variables approach, we show that contemporary community mobilization has succeeded in reducing a broad range of crimes.
Also I note that you're pushing back against my statement regarding things being swept under the rug (e.g., your statements about "somehow" this making it to the news). Did you also notice that the link to this article is gone from the HN front page? My intuition is that the public in general is going to turn a blind eye to this topic, until they can't any more (that's usually when something really bad happens). Note again that I am very unhappy with that idea and wish it were not so, but it strikes me as unfortunately very likely. I'd love to be wrong, but I see nothing to indicate otherwise. There is always hope I suppose.
> describing the author of the first article I wrote as an "NRA spokesman"
Go read the 1,000 articles Richard Feldman wrote for the NRA and his own gun lobbying group.
> "Vigilante Mobilization and Local Order: Evidence from Mexico"
Comparing current conditions in America with the Cristero Rebellion or the Mexico drug war is odd. I argue we're not there yet.
What I really wanted from you is evidence that Goetz shooting people on the NYC subway resulted in lower crime rates.
> Also I note that you're pushing back against my statement regarding things being swept under the rug (e.g., your statements about "somehow" this making it to the news).
You were claiming BART was deliberately not informing the public about the robbery incident, just like Richard Feldman was claiming that the NYC subway system was deliberately not informing riders that crime plummeted because of the Goetz shooting.
I argue that BART was not withholding details of the shooting. As evidence of this, I maintain that there are tons of newspaper articles about the robbery out there. If BART was suppressing the incident, they're not doing a very good job of it.
> Did you also notice that the link to this article is gone from the HN front page?
No I don't pay attention.
> My intuition is that the public in general is going to turn a blind eye to this topic
I realize that, but vigilantism is not always driven by a rational view of crime statistics. Fear can be a very powerful force. If people fear crime and feel they are being ignored and not protected by the state, they may take matters into their own hands, quite often irrationally. See for example the reaction to terrorism, despite the vast statistical unlikelihood of being a victim of it.
I notice that several people are responding to me as though I am advocating vigilantism even though I am doing the opposite, so I feel I must reiterate once again that I am fully opposed to it. Instead, I am trying to raise the alarm that if highly visible crimes like the one described in this article are not addressed sufficiently, the public may react with vigilantism. That is an outcome I want to avoid.
I wonder if commuting by BART constitutes a "good cause" w/r/t California's concealed-carry law. I doubt it, but it'd be kind of funny to hear a court say out loud that in Alameda County, "exposure to risk of coordinated gang train robbery" doesn't constitute a "non-mainstream circumstance" placing one in harm's way.
I highly doubt that in California and SF in particular, with their strict gun laws, but I could be wrong.
These flash mob robberies are quite common on the east coast. I've heard about a number of them in Philadelphia on reddit where a group of 'youths' shows up and attacks people.
It's a surprisingly little reported on phenomenon. Yet it sounds quite psychologically jarring.
> I wonder if commuting by BART constitutes a "good cause" w/r/t California's concealed-carry law.
Since the license is may-issue, it depends on the LEO you apply to. I was denied one on almost exactly these grounds. I told my local police chief that my business took me to high crime areas in San Francisco, and he said that wasn't good enough, and that I'd have to have evidence of a specific threat to my specific life to be considered for one.
I think the counter is that when the crowd is the aggressor, you don't know if anyone in it has guns of their own. If they see you as a threat then they'd take you out in kind, and there's more of them.
Sounds better than doing nothing while hoping a mob stops beating your mother because she doesn't have anything to give them.
Does any transit have actual security we give them millions per year where I live and there's not a visible cop in sight ever unless they are parked in front of a busy station handing out fines.
If you're in a situation when the personal safety of you or someone else you're with is directly being compromised with physical assault, you'd better be fighting back with everything you've got, including your bare fists.
You should be taking the course of action that's most likely to lead to the best outcomes. If it's one-on-60, it's not clear to me that fighting back is that course of action. (I really don't know what is best in that situation.)
A train is probably the optimal situation for deterring a large group with only a handgun, assuming you have a chance to draw before they swarm you.
Long straight lines, plenty of bodies in a row, ~10-15 rounds, and you could probably cut that 60 number down into the 40's surprisingly quickly. Depends on how crowded the train is in general though.
And kill a couple of innocent commuters with your ricochets and misses. Or did you think that your ability to tell the 16 year old that wasn't part of it from the 16 year that was when you're in a hurry mowing people down was still functioning? Life isn't a FPS.
I hope that if I'm ever in the subway and it's robbed that you are not in the same car, same for any other dirty Harry wannabe's. Better to hand over my wallet and cell phone than to end up with a bullet from a well meaning bystander.
It's estimated that guns are used defensively (not necessarily fired) by private individuals hundreds of thousands of times per year in the US, and yet we don't see an epidemic of innocent bystanders being accidentally shot. Why do you think that might be? Could it be that your characterization of concealed carriers as "dirty Harry wannabe's" is wildly inaccurate?
Read that comment again: the guy is seriously considering going on a shooting spree with a train full of commuters and robbers. What do you think the chances are of that working out? Do you think this upstanding citizen and class-A marksman will be able to place '10 to 15 rounds' (his words, not mine) with the precision required not to injure anybody else?
I don't think he was suggesting it would be a good idea to start unloading into the mob, only that it would be very effective in reducing the mob's numbers compared to other situations where the mob is more free to move around.
>How many links do you want?
Just 1, but this time to statistics. I didn't suggest no one has ever been hit accidentally in a defensive shooting, just that it's incredibly rare compared to the amount of times guns are used in self defense, and not worth fear mongering about by suggesting concealed carriers are dirty Harry wannabe's.
> And kill a couple of innocent commuters with your ricochets and misses.
Ever been in a situation where someone shoots at someone else? Ever been in a bar when you start hearing shots fired?
All it would take would be one gunshot and one person hitting the deck and it would be chaos. As soon as someone pulls a gun, people GTFO of that area. They don't continue to mind their own business or continue to try and rob someone, they're too busy trying to flee the scene and get to safety.
source: I've been in a packed bar twice when someone has pulled a handgun and started firing.
> A train is probably the optimal situation for deterring a large group with only a handgun, assuming you have a chance to draw before they swarm you.
It's ideal for deterring if you can draw before they enter. It's ideal for gunning down attackers (and, if you aren't an excellent shot, bystanders) in great number if you draw once they are on the train, but successful deterrence in that case requires no one to panic and fight when confronted in a crowded situation with limited exits, which is highly unreliable.
You seem to be thinking that mobs are rational, so that an optimal killing ground is also an optimal deterrence setting.
I should clarify, I wrote that comment with a fair amount of tongue in cheek.
However, I do want to make it clear that if you draw your concealed firearm, you do it with the intent to use it, not to brandish it as a form of deterrence. If there is any option on the table to avoid drawing, then you leave it in the holster.
CA should simply mandate that all taxpayers carry a jar of Vaseline. To make sure the objects of their oppression don't chafe needlessly during their reparations exercises.
Reminds me of the Warriors' slogan, "Strength in Numbers".
In all seriousness though, as a daily BART commuter, I hope this doesn't become a trend. I don't think there's any reason to panic just yet -- I feel a lot safer inside of a BART car than on the freeway.
Crime went down becausr wr locked up all the Urban Youth scum. Now theres chatter of letting em out and going soft on crime. If that happens, crime will back up.
What are you going to do, whip out your handgun and start taking down 16 year olds? Your iPhone 7 is totally worth a teen's life - or hell, 4 or 5 of them - especially if they're black, right?
One would think you Trump voters would have gotten a clue by now.
I didn't vote for Trump and have never owned a handgun. It's interesting that you go straight to tarring me as a racist for merely speculating on what I find to be an amusing hypothetical application of California's gun law and the 9th's circuit's language in the Peruta case that affects it.
Sorry. I jumped to conclusions and kneejerked. That said, the crazy-ass people out there who might read your comment and think, Pizza-gate style, that they now have a reason to ride BART packing heat makes me think you could have phrased your "amusing" hypothetical better, no?
Do people not have a right to defend themselves? You just want to wait around as you're robbed? How about you save me some time and just paypal me $800?
No matter how egregious a comment, it's never appropriate to respond uncivilly like this on HN. On contentious topics in particular, it's even more important to practice restraint. If this isn't something you're willing to do, please just don't comment.
I honestly am sorry that I see that as my last resort when cornered. I don't want people to get hurt, but most importantly I don't want to get hurt over some unwritten honor code that gets you killed.
Your iPhone 7 is totally worth a teen's life - or hell, 4 or 5 of them - especially if they're black, right?
On the other hand, they're threatening the lives of random innocent people over something as trivial as a phone, so why should we value their lives particularly highly?
Why are you singling out rich people that drive drunk?
By your reasoning, we should give less value to their lives.
How might we act on that lower valuation? We might demonstrate that we don't value a mugger's life very highly by shooting him in the act. How would we demonstrate that we don't value a drunk driver's life very highly? Shoot the car with a rocket launcher?
Because they're threatening the lives of random innocent people over something as trivial as a their easiness to avoid problems with the law.
You're suggesting that rich people commonly drive drunk solely because they get some kind of thrill out of endangering the lives of innocent people and being able to get out of the consequences more easily than other people?
Putting them on jail the same way we do with people that steal iphones. I mean Literally the same way, with a lot of punches and armlocks.
We're not talking about what happens to them after they no longer pose a threat to innocent people. The purpose of shooting a mugger is not to punish the mugger, it's to prevent harm from coming to you.
People have a right to defend themselves. People don't have a right to threaten the safety of others in order to deprive them of their personal property.
Of course a phone is not worth a life. That is not what this is about.
> One would think you Trump voters would have gotten a clue by now.
How do you know GP voted for Trump? Why jump to that conclusion and why is that relevant in this case? Gary Johnson had just as a "liberal" gun control agenda as Trump perhaps...
That's the interesting thing there. I mentioned the other day about how irrationality is getting out of hand. It seems like people try too hard, go overboard and then hurt their own cause. "Everyone I don't like is a Trump supporter" is not a great way to win arguments or advance your agenda. It seems cathartic, and that's nice, but that's about it. After that is just discredits your argument.
To anybody outside of California who is baffled by this comment - yes, this is actually how rich white liberals there actually think.
When you have such stark financial and class inequality in a dense urban environment like the bay, being mugged of your iPhone occasionally is literally seen as a kind of moral tax that you pay for your gentrifying presence. To defend yourself from it would be politically incorrect, both individually to the "victim" of your self-defense, and to your class as a whole, as you should essentially accept the mugging as a tax on your privileged position in the cultural landscape.
I know many tech workers who live/lived in Oakland who have been mugged (including pistol-whippings), who essentially just accepted it. Some did not even report it to the police, as in their world-view, to do so would be to enlisting an inherently oppressive, violent and racist force.
It is interesting, having lived in the Bay Area pretty much my entire life, spending more time up in what one might call "red country" -- rural Northern Sierra Nevada mountains (still in CA) -- the attitudes around conceal carry (and firearms in general) is significantly different.
I'm quite sure that the only one baffled is you. An iPhone is not worth a life. Robbery happens, and killing, or threatening to kill children to prevent it is wrong. This the moral decision, not a PC one.
Seriously, how do selfish, cowardly, sociopaths like yourself continue to operate in this world. The last people on Earth thst should be given weapons are people like you.
Again, this perfectly illustrates the attitude of white Californian liberals.
I didn't once advocate for, or even once mention, guns in this situation (obviously shooting at a crowd of people on a busy train is an absolutely terrible idea for a whopping number of reasons) - but now I - a person you have never interacted with previously - am a "selfish, cowardly sociopath" for simply explaining the attitude that accepts the fact that, as you put it, "robbery happens", that it is better to let 50 teenage gang members assault and rob a train full of passengers than to threaten a single one of them.
In fact, I never even actually disagreed with you! I'm just trying to explain to any other Europeans reading this the context of how your comments could possibly make sense, because outside of the Bay Area bubble, they seem quite shockingly absurd.
Heated topics absolutely don't give us permission to spark flamewars like this—we need to do better on this site. We detached this flagged subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14188392.
No mention of Guns or Knives in any of the stories. Does anyone know how these 'teens' successfully committed their robbery?
If I don't see a gun or a knife and some kid walks up to me and says "Hand me your wallet and iPhone", I'd simply tell the 'teen' "Yeah, let me see you take it."
And maybe that makes you a slightly less desirable target than the elderly lady in the next carriage over, but maybe it also means you get your ribs kicked in and your skull smashed by a dozen yobs. One stray kick in the nuts is all it takes.
93 comments
[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] threadReally? If you're old enough to rob a train, you should be old enough to have a wanted poster.
Some of the cameras on BART trains are dummies. After an embarrassment last year, BART has been replacing the dummies with real ones. Completion is scheduled for July 1, 2017.
[1] https://www.cga.ct.gov/2013/rpt/2013-R-0364.htm
It makes more sense if you look at it as a territorial dominance display. "They" are in "our" territory so we're going to assault and humiliate them.
Does anyone have info on the law here? Pictures that include minors in them are shared all the time over the internet and media - many times without having permission from all the people pictured - which I believe is still legal. Why is sharing a picture of a minor illegal in this instance?
Innocent until proven guilty, and once the images get out, they are automatically guilty in the eyes of the public. Should any minor get their record sealed when they turn 18, they would still be known to have committed those crimes.
As they have not been apprehended the suspects, it is unknown if they would be tried as an adult. The new outlet is erring on the side of caution here because if the case where a suspect is tried as a minor, gets their record sealed at 18, and will be liable for slandering the adult's name with a crime he or she committed as a juvenile.
Wait, what? Are you saying that the Right to Be Forgotten already exists in the U.S. with respect to criminal convictions of minors?
This has nothing to do with limits on people in general sharing video or images of minors.
That leads me to say: sweeping this kind of crime under the rug will not help. Instead, it will lead to a repeat of the Goetz vigilante incident in NYC in the early 1980s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_New_York_City_Subway_shoo...
http://nypost.com/2011/12/23/one-of-bernhard-goetzs-victims-...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-feldman/bernie-goetz-t...
That last link in particular contains a stunning statement:
> The crime rate in the dangerous subways plunged dramatically — so much so the authorities even held back the numbers — the truth hurt too much.
The ugly and frightening truth about vigilantism is that it works. Please note I hate the idea of vigilantism and hope with every fiber of my being that things do not come to that, but it at first glance appears that things are headed in that direction, which I am immensely sad and scared to see.
[ citation needed ]
I've actually spent the last hour looking for statistics to back or not back you up. I've wasted my life.
That's a quote from me, not from the HuffPo article. The article says "The crime rate in the dangerous subways plunged dramatically…", as I quoted originally.
> I've actually spent the last hour looking for statistics to back or not back you up. I've wasted my life.
I replied to you here with a source that only took a few minutes to find:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14189548
You seem very emotional about this topic. I would urge you to look at it more dispassionately. As I already stated (but it bears repeating), I absolutely do not want vigilantism to be the result of crimes like this, but I fear unless there is an open and honest conversation, things may end up there anyway. I believe the best (and perhaps only) way to avoid such an outcome is to consider the possibilities that may result from various actions (or inactions), unpleasant as they may be.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/sogfeld-774
Somehow info from BART officials made it to the various news outlets. The news outlets wrote stories on it. I knew about the incident by Sunday. I read about it somewhere. I was not on the train.
BART didn't pretend the robbery didn't happen.
"Vigilante Mobilization and Local Order: Evidence from Mexico"
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/522fc0aee4b06bf96fa60...
> Our empirical approach traces the sources of recent self-defense groups to the early twentieth cen- tury Cristero rebellion and, using an instrumental variables approach, we show that contemporary community mobilization has succeeded in reducing a broad range of crimes.
Also I note that you're pushing back against my statement regarding things being swept under the rug (e.g., your statements about "somehow" this making it to the news). Did you also notice that the link to this article is gone from the HN front page? My intuition is that the public in general is going to turn a blind eye to this topic, until they can't any more (that's usually when something really bad happens). Note again that I am very unhappy with that idea and wish it were not so, but it strikes me as unfortunately very likely. I'd love to be wrong, but I see nothing to indicate otherwise. There is always hope I suppose.
Go read the 1,000 articles Richard Feldman wrote for the NRA and his own gun lobbying group.
> "Vigilante Mobilization and Local Order: Evidence from Mexico"
Comparing current conditions in America with the Cristero Rebellion or the Mexico drug war is odd. I argue we're not there yet.
What I really wanted from you is evidence that Goetz shooting people on the NYC subway resulted in lower crime rates.
> Also I note that you're pushing back against my statement regarding things being swept under the rug (e.g., your statements about "somehow" this making it to the news).
You were claiming BART was deliberately not informing the public about the robbery incident, just like Richard Feldman was claiming that the NYC subway system was deliberately not informing riders that crime plummeted because of the Goetz shooting.
I argue that BART was not withholding details of the shooting. As evidence of this, I maintain that there are tons of newspaper articles about the robbery out there. If BART was suppressing the incident, they're not doing a very good job of it.
> Did you also notice that the link to this article is gone from the HN front page?
No I don't pay attention.
> My intuition is that the public in general is going to turn a blind eye to this topic
We're all talking about it!
crime rates are at 40 year lows and trending down
I notice that several people are responding to me as though I am advocating vigilantism even though I am doing the opposite, so I feel I must reiterate once again that I am fully opposed to it. Instead, I am trying to raise the alarm that if highly visible crimes like the one described in this article are not addressed sufficiently, the public may react with vigilantism. That is an outcome I want to avoid.
These flash mob robberies are quite common on the east coast. I've heard about a number of them in Philadelphia on reddit where a group of 'youths' shows up and attacks people.
It's a surprisingly little reported on phenomenon. Yet it sounds quite psychologically jarring.
Really not that surprising. The capacity to ignore anything that hurts the narrative is approaching delusional levels.
Since the license is may-issue, it depends on the LEO you apply to. I was denied one on almost exactly these grounds. I told my local police chief that my business took me to high crime areas in San Francisco, and he said that wasn't good enough, and that I'd have to have evidence of a specific threat to my specific life to be considered for one.
There's situations where concealed carry could help but I'm not sure if this case is one of them.
Does any transit have actual security we give them millions per year where I live and there's not a visible cop in sight ever unless they are parked in front of a busy station handing out fines.
You should be taking the course of action that's most likely to lead to the best outcomes. If it's one-on-60, it's not clear to me that fighting back is that course of action. (I really don't know what is best in that situation.)
Long straight lines, plenty of bodies in a row, ~10-15 rounds, and you could probably cut that 60 number down into the 40's surprisingly quickly. Depends on how crowded the train is in general though.
I hope that if I'm ever in the subway and it's robbed that you are not in the same car, same for any other dirty Harry wannabe's. Better to hand over my wallet and cell phone than to end up with a bullet from a well meaning bystander.
http://americablog.com/2013/02/vigilante-walmart-shopper-ope...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3252074/Police-looki... (uk)
http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/264755/carjacking-gone-wrong...
http://www.masslive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/10/vigilantes...
How many links do you want?
Those were much less complex situations.
And you think putting all that in a crowded subway car is going to improve matters?
>How many links do you want?
Just 1, but this time to statistics. I didn't suggest no one has ever been hit accidentally in a defensive shooting, just that it's incredibly rare compared to the amount of times guns are used in self defense, and not worth fear mongering about by suggesting concealed carriers are dirty Harry wannabe's.
Ever been in a situation where someone shoots at someone else? Ever been in a bar when you start hearing shots fired?
All it would take would be one gunshot and one person hitting the deck and it would be chaos. As soon as someone pulls a gun, people GTFO of that area. They don't continue to mind their own business or continue to try and rob someone, they're too busy trying to flee the scene and get to safety.
source: I've been in a packed bar twice when someone has pulled a handgun and started firing.
It's ideal for deterring if you can draw before they enter. It's ideal for gunning down attackers (and, if you aren't an excellent shot, bystanders) in great number if you draw once they are on the train, but successful deterrence in that case requires no one to panic and fight when confronted in a crowded situation with limited exits, which is highly unreliable.
You seem to be thinking that mobs are rational, so that an optimal killing ground is also an optimal deterrence setting.
However, I do want to make it clear that if you draw your concealed firearm, you do it with the intent to use it, not to brandish it as a form of deterrence. If there is any option on the table to avoid drawing, then you leave it in the holster.
In all seriousness though, as a daily BART commuter, I hope this doesn't become a trend. I don't think there's any reason to panic just yet -- I feel a lot safer inside of a BART car than on the freeway.
I'll stick to my peaceful train ride along the coast up here in Seattle.
I'll stick to my peaceful train ride along the coast up here in Seattle.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
One would think you Trump voters would have gotten a clue by now.
Cuck.
On the other hand, they're threatening the lives of random innocent people over something as trivial as a phone, so why should we value their lives particularly highly?
Why are you singling out rich people that drive drunk?
By your reasoning, we should give less value to their lives.
How might we act on that lower valuation? We might demonstrate that we don't value a mugger's life very highly by shooting him in the act. How would we demonstrate that we don't value a drunk driver's life very highly? Shoot the car with a rocket launcher?
Because they're threatening the lives of random innocent people over something as trivial as a their easiness to avoid problems with the law.
> How would we demonstrate that we don't value a drunk driver's life very highly?
Putting them on jail the same way we do with people that steal iphones. I mean Literally the same way, with a lot of punches and armlocks.
You're suggesting that rich people commonly drive drunk solely because they get some kind of thrill out of endangering the lives of innocent people and being able to get out of the consequences more easily than other people?
Putting them on jail the same way we do with people that steal iphones. I mean Literally the same way, with a lot of punches and armlocks.
We're not talking about what happens to them after they no longer pose a threat to innocent people. The purpose of shooting a mugger is not to punish the mugger, it's to prevent harm from coming to you.
Of course a phone is not worth a life. That is not what this is about.
How do you know GP voted for Trump? Why jump to that conclusion and why is that relevant in this case? Gary Johnson had just as a "liberal" gun control agenda as Trump perhaps...
That's the interesting thing there. I mentioned the other day about how irrationality is getting out of hand. It seems like people try too hard, go overboard and then hurt their own cause. "Everyone I don't like is a Trump supporter" is not a great way to win arguments or advance your agenda. It seems cathartic, and that's nice, but that's about it. After that is just discredits your argument.
When you have such stark financial and class inequality in a dense urban environment like the bay, being mugged of your iPhone occasionally is literally seen as a kind of moral tax that you pay for your gentrifying presence. To defend yourself from it would be politically incorrect, both individually to the "victim" of your self-defense, and to your class as a whole, as you should essentially accept the mugging as a tax on your privileged position in the cultural landscape.
I know many tech workers who live/lived in Oakland who have been mugged (including pistol-whippings), who essentially just accepted it. Some did not even report it to the police, as in their world-view, to do so would be to enlisting an inherently oppressive, violent and racist force.
Seriously, how do selfish, cowardly, sociopaths like yourself continue to operate in this world. The last people on Earth thst should be given weapons are people like you.
That's the robber's call to make, not yours.
I didn't once advocate for, or even once mention, guns in this situation (obviously shooting at a crowd of people on a busy train is an absolutely terrible idea for a whopping number of reasons) - but now I - a person you have never interacted with previously - am a "selfish, cowardly sociopath" for simply explaining the attitude that accepts the fact that, as you put it, "robbery happens", that it is better to let 50 teenage gang members assault and rob a train full of passengers than to threaten a single one of them.
In fact, I never even actually disagreed with you! I'm just trying to explain to any other Europeans reading this the context of how your comments could possibly make sense, because outside of the Bay Area bubble, they seem quite shockingly absurd.
I'd take one dude with an iPhone over an arbitrary number of people who premeditate assault and theft.
If I don't see a gun or a knife and some kid walks up to me and says "Hand me your wallet and iPhone", I'd simply tell the 'teen' "Yeah, let me see you take it."
https://np.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/6711kb/bart_theftcr...