Huh. I didn't realize the Pinkerton's were still a thing. Its interesting to see an example of how they operate nowadays when they aren't able to roll in armed and ready like the good ol' days.
That being said, I suppose them threatening to call in the police does that for them.
There was no evidence of wrongdoing on his part. Even if they had evidence that he stole something, a private militia shouldn't be called to enforce this, but a police investigation.
Yes, but it requires people to know their legal rights, and engage with them
Had the police been called most likely the police would have said "this is a civil matter" not done nothing, at most taken a report for a detective to investigate the alleged theft.
Also had the homeowner just said "leave my property", and then the police called, the private militia would then be trespassing and the police would remove them.
Here however the homeowner basically consented to the actions, the search, and the seizure while under threat of additional legal action they still consented.
That is a good description of what is, but not what ought to be.
It's very easy to discuss this after the fact, detached from the situation with a calm head, and be confident that this victim would have been legally in the clear. But rational analysis is sorely absent when an armed gang shows up at your door demanding something and threatening more violence if you don't comply.
The legal dynamic in the US has basically evolved to justify shakedown behavior, where it's technically possible to "stand up" for your rights if you know the exact song and dance at the right time, but practically most people don't and can't. Whereas what really needs to happen is for various aggressor parties to be legally restrained from using coercion to begin with.
And that's not even touching the dynamic where various types of aggressors end up shooting first despite being in the wrong, cry "self defense", and then successfully avoid getting charged with second degree murder.
>>But rational analysis is sorely absent when an armed gang shows up at your door demanding something and threatening more violence if you don't comply.
That is why my standing policy is to never answer the door unless I am expecting someone. Even for package delivery I have a table for them to leave the package on.
>>Whereas what really needs to happen is for various aggressor parties to be legally restrained from using coercion to begin with.
Examples of laws where this happens would be great.
>>And that's not even touching the dynamic where various types of aggressors end up shooting first despite being in the wrong, cry "self defense", and then successfully avoid getting charged with second degree murder.
> That is why my standing policy is to never answer the door unless
Sure. "Standing policy" implies that you've spent a bunch of time thinking it out, presumably thinking about the corner cases (police are there and they aren't leaving), and also concluding that you're willing to forgo answering the door in times it would have been beneficial. That's all work and preparation that you're taking for granted, that frankly most people don't have time for.
It would be akin to me railing against people for using GMail, as I run my own mail server. The world is too big to micromanage everything. If physical security is one of your hobbies that is fantastic. But it's wrong to assert that it's universal.
> Examples of laws where this happens would be great.
The point is that we're sorely lacking those laws, or at least enforcement of them. This particular situation should result in charges of armed robbery, but I doubt it will. But even my saying that is wrong, as it buys into this high stakes paradigm. Rather, how about a simple misdemeanor law that prohibits the bringing firearms onto someone else's residential real estate, unless a sign is posted that explicitly allowed it?
> Examples please
I feel bad for coming back to this example so often, but I don't stay up on the latest unjustified murder of the week and its details are beyond reproach - Breonna Taylor. That was perpetrated by "police" rather than corporate thugs, but it's exactly the dynamic of someone acting exactly as the legal system implies they should to preserve their rights, ending up with their girlfriend being murdered, and still no justice being served.
>> the corner cases (police are there and they aren't leaving),
That would imply they have a warrant which most likely means they have already busted down the door negating my policy in the first place.
>>and also concluding that you're willing to forgo answering the door in times it would have been beneficial
Such as? I have been doing this avoidance for 20 years in multiple locations, never been an issue so far.
>> If physical security is one of your hobbies that is fantastic. But it's wrong to assert that it's universal.
I dont think I asserted anything of the sort, pretty sure I implicitly said "I have a policy" not that others do or should.
That said outsourcing your personal security is the path to becoming a victim, when seconds count the police are minutes away
>Rather, how about a simple misdemeanor law that prohibits the bringing firearms onto someone else's residential real estate, unless a sign is posted that explicitly allowed it?
I am not sure what your antigun stance has to do with this story? There is no indication that the persons were armed, brandished any firearms or threaten the use of violence at all. They knocked on the door, said there were there to collect stolen property and if the home owner did not comply they would alert the police which could result in the homeowner being arrested. That threat of using state violence violence is a problem, but nothing you have stated here would prevent that.
Nor am I clear how your proposes law would even be enforced, or is applicable to this situation. It is clear you just anti-gun and likely anti-self defense in general and instead believes only the state should have that power... which is ironic as you likely are anti-police and pro "defund the police"
>>Breonna Taylor.
I was betting it was going to be that or Rittenhouse. Both of which have soo much disinformation spread about the cases that is hard to have a rational conversation about those events online.
The real solution to Breonna Taylor type situations is reform warrant policies and require the police to use the least confrontational means to effect the warrant, instead today police purposefully make the situations more dangerous IMO as a form a "street justice" but again that is not relevant to this situation as nothing even remotely like the events in Breonna Taylor happened here
> It is clear you just anti-gun and likely anti-self defense in general and instead believes only the state should have that power
Bad guess. I'm a gun owner who believes in the natural right of self defense. But guns are not a strong hobby, and taking a basic gun class is actually what made me realize I am not the type of person who wants to carry. It's just not how I'm wired. (I will, of course, do so if I have to because society devolves to that point).
> soo much disinformation spread
Walker was sleeping on a couch. Police executed a 2nd-amendment-incompatible "no knock" warrant, got pissy when Walker defended himself, and so rather than retreating they retaliated by using the place as a shooting gallery. What do I have wrong here?
The relevance to the situation is that Walker's self defense was exactly what the law indicates he should have done to preserve his rights, in light of rulings that have found the police have no duty to defend and as such that responsibility falls entirely on the individual.
> That would imply [the police] have a warrant which most likely means they have already busted down the door negating my policy in the first place.
The police can have an arrest warrant, and not just immediately bust down your door. This might be one of the reasons you'd want to preemptively answer your door, rather than getting your home unnecessarily damaged. Or maybe they're coming to notify you about a family member who was hurt. Or maybe someone is looking for a lost dog and you want to be a good neighbor. Or maybe you were about to go out and do some errands or yard work and don't want to wait 10 minutes for the Jehovah’s Witnesses to give up. Or maybe girl scout cookies.
> There is no indication that the persons were armed
I took a guess at the likely equipment of private security that would be part of their imposing image, to make an example of something that would be pretty clear cut and relatively easy to enforce.
> Nor am I clear how your proposes law would even be enforced
You make a police report, give them video evidence of someone coming to your house uninvited and armed, and they get a $500 fine or whatever. It doesn't turn into a high stakes criminal trial extravaganza because it's a misdemeanor that applies before escalation, rather than a capital crime xor completely innocent based on minute details after an escalation.
But yes one could certainly write a better tailored law to criminalize extortion by private "security" forces than the simplistic bit I threw out as an example. My point wasn't a fully fledged legal proposal, but to point out the difference between technically having rights that you can protect if you do everything exactly right, and proactive enforcement against attempts to strip you of your rights through implied coercion.
The fundamentalist "just do everything right" approach doesn't scale. It's like C and manual memory management. Sure, it's fine if you write bug free code (ie you're DJB). But moving most of the drudgery to a compiler frees you up to do more worthwhile higher level things.
> Whereas what really needs to happen is for various aggressor parties to be legally restrained from using coercion to begin with.
Agreed, but good luck. The police, the "actual" enforcement arm of the legal system, can pick you up without evidence, steal your money, lie to you until you're tricked into confessing to something you didn't do, and call it a successful mission.
The legal system is not intended to protect innocent people, it is only designed to provide enough protections so that more privileged people feel like it is, and don't side with the victims in trying to destroy/reform it.
The "intent" of the legal system was to enable distributed dispensing of the King's justice, at least from what I understand. In the modern day and age, we can say that there are many types of mal-intents behind various laws, but the legal system itself is what we make it. And describing a problem is the first step towards fixing it.
why would this necessitate a police investigation? Even greater waste of time, now affecting the taxpayer.
Guy bought item, company sent item. That's it. Company can ask for it back citing an internal misrelease, or not. Guy can ignore, or not. No breach, theft at all.
Quite Literally a non story I feel silly even commenting about. Why did OP share this a month later? Not HN material.
Yes, the Pinkertons are still a thing. There was an interesting post about them here: [1]
Some choice quotes from that thread:
They became famous when Lincoln used them as spies during the Civil War. They became infamous when American industrialists started employing them as union/labor strikebreakers & private police forces who weren’t held accountable by the US government.
For some of their most egregious examples of strike-breaking, check out their part in Carnegie’s Homestead Mill Strike & how they turned a peaceful assembly of strikers into Chicago’s Haymarket Riot.
From the US Library of Congress
What began as a detective agency in Chicago grew into a national private police force. *The Pinkertons stood against organized labor at nearly every turn* from Haymarket to Homestead and famously took down the Molly Maguires, while instilling fear in the hearts of fugitives across the country.
...
Ironically, the Pinkerton Detective Agency was a remarkably progressive organization under Allan Pinkerton. Pinkerton himself only escaped dying with John Brown at Harper's Ferry due to coming down with Pneumonia just before leaving Chicago (a significant number of Brown's 19 men were Pinkerton Agents); and was a staunch, radical abolitionist and supporter of the Union throughout the Civil War. Allan Pinkerton was a fantastic detective and analyst - he was one of the the primary inspirations for both Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes - Doyle didn't think one person with all those skillsets was believable (ironically, the other primary inspiration - Eugene Vidocq in France - had similar dual skillset). Under Lincoln, the Pinkertons became the prototype of the CIA, FBI, and modern Secret Service - and were fantastically good at all of them, as Pinkerton held little to traditional ideas about the capability of minorities and women, employing both enthusiastically and creating a large pool of talent as a result.
However, after the Civil War, the power of the Pinkertons in the Federal Government was a big issue for former Southern States. One of the first "Reconciliation" points was extracting the Pinkertons from their functions in the federal government. Those agents interested in investigation (including Pinkerton himself) ended up in the Justice Department and would eventually become the FBI, those in intelligence wound up under the Military as MI (later OSS and then CIA), those interested in protection joined the actual Secret Service.
. . . And those primarily interested in busting heads, became the private entity known as Pinkerton. Alan Pinkerton had mostly retired by then, and they became a sort of private army for strike-breaking and strong-arming citizens out of the way of the railroads. That's the "Pinkertons" most know, they of Western storybook bad guys and the villains of labour movements. Allan Pinkerton himself wasn't a big fan of labor unions, but only because most unions of the time were segregated, which he could not stand - but otherwise the later actions of the "Pinkertons" had little to do with his influence.
As would I, but the average person does not have that kind of wherewithal. It is still something we should be concerned about it, as I do not want to live in a world where this is commonplace, and I imagine you wouldn't want to either.
Yeah, people need to start teaching kids about their rights. Otherwise, kids who don't know about the 4th amendment (that you can tell actual police to go away and that's doubly true for rent-a-cops) are going to grow up and keep voting in politicians who'll keep chipping away at our rights more and more
So, is this guy done with Magic, or will he keep buying and promoting their products? WoC have been known assholes for years now, I would think people would figure it out by now.
I used to play MTG 20-15 years ago. I do not play anymore because of the constantly evolving playset, mechanics, and rules that I could not keep up with. I'm even more put off lately by the seemingly-cash-grab of incorporating other games/words such as Dungeons and Dragons and I think Lord of the Rings.
Sounds like the buyer should have ASKED for the sheriff.... Private police threatening fines and jail time? Let them say that with law enforcement around for any follow up lawsuit.
A purchase was made and the wrong product arrived at his door.. the seller had legitimate reason to have the product, but broke a street date... The customer did not ask for unreleased product...
Sounds like the dealer is at fault, but not "stolen property"... Do card dealers not own their inventory before a street date? (And, therefore, sold product that was not his?) (Vs. breach of contract)
He could've closed the door in their faces and there would be nothing they could do about it. The company relied on theatrics and false threats to get back a legitimately purchased product.
Could've, but theatrics are used because it's effective. A surprise morning visit by professional intimidators arguing that you "do what we say or you might spend the next decade in jail" can override a lot of logical reasoning.
I guess it depends what you mean by "impersonate." Are you asking whether they literally claimed to be a police officer? If so, they almost certainly did not. But they probably showed up with a uniform and a brass badge with words like "sergeant" and "national" and "service" on it next to maybe an eagle and a flag, and they probably talked about how the homeowner was in trouble with the law.
These types flash a badge, mumble the words "detective" and "agency" in the same sentence, then immediately pivot to babbling about fines and jailtime before you have a chance to question their authority. It's a high-pressure sales tactic masquerading as law enforcement, without crossing the line of impersonation.
To those ends, they back down quickly when you poke back with childish questions like "wait, so you're not the police?" (If they say yes, they're in trouble.)
It is but we also have PI’s. Usually ex-cops or ex-military members with an intelligence angle. These are intimidating people by design. If you had a squad of paramilitary at your door, and you were the typical magic player, you’d give them the keys if they asked.
"By design?" Let's dig into that. Their CV, or non-LEO uniform, or physical size does not give them license to walk into peoples' houses or to threaten to do so. Everyone knows that. Which means they probably made a threat, and if that threat in any way suggested that they represented law enforcement, it should absolutely be illegal and they should be locked up for impersonation.
If they used their physique and mentality to suggest that that they were affiliated with law enforcement, that's a problem. If they used their physique and mentality to threaten extrajudicial violence, that's a problem. If they were crystal clear that they didn't represent law enforcement and that they weren't threatening extrajudicial violence, cool.
Society has an interest in ensuring that goons can't bluff their way into LEO privileges, so if that's what they did, we have a problem.
> If you had a squad of paramilitary at your door, and you were the typical magic player, you’d give them the keys if they asked
I haven't played MtG since the 90s, so I'm maybe not clued in on what a "typical magic player" is, but I would expect them to be pretty rules-lawyer-y (both on and off the table) and would stand their ground on principle.
I think most rules-lawyers tend to lose their confidence in the power of those rules when you flip the table and leave… or when you threaten to hit them with a wrench.
Or threaten a 13 year old girl who happens to beat you in round 1 of FNM with her black deck. It’s all fun and games until someone flips a table or punches a child or says some really awful things that make said 13 year old give all her magic cards away.
If real law enforcement (or Pinkertons) showed any sense of legitimacy, the typical MtG player would bow to the authority. Whether it’s in the rule book or “unspoken rules by the venue”.
Particularly when your SO is becoming upset about it. What's more important, some cards that you hadn't intended to purchase in the first place, or the mental well-being of your wife?
Perhaps, but they could have broken it down, assaulted them, then claimed that they were violent. They get away with that kind of crap all the time, because mostly, they do this to criminals, and are friends with the local police. Sometimes they get caught, usually for things like shooting a dog that was chained and far out of reach, or because someone had it on video, but these thugs are the kind of people who got rejected from or fired from the police, so however incompetent, cowardly, and violent the cops are, these thugs are worse.
In the US, that would be an exceedingly bad idea on the part of the Pinkertons. They don't have the same protections law enforcement has: they are treated legally the same as anybody else, which means that in 38 US states they'd be justifying the homeowners use of deadly force.
I’m shocked the Pinkertons still exist. None of the bigger unions tried to pull strings to get them destroyed for past atrocities against the labor movement?
Yes, and had they continued to insist, showed their guns, and refused to leave he would have gotten away with getting a weapon and shooting them. But most homeowners are both unwilling and unable to take down a couple of armed thugs, assuming he even had a weapon at home that wasnt a fantasy sword replica.
Had he escalated and then drawn a weapon, odds are they would have shot him and may well have gotten away with it, claiming they were just asking questions and he immediately drew a weapon and tried to shoot them.
Remember that when some rednecks hunted down and killed a kid a while back for running while black(Ahmaud Arbery) the police initially wanted to drop the prosecution, and its quite possible that without the national attention of the Floyed case, and the murderers being dumb enough videotape themseles, they may well have gotten away with it. The simple fact that it was a discussion of if they would get convicted at all is just as telling. And police will generally back security companies more than rednecks in court.
If you want to go back to the Labor movement, the Pinkertons practically committed war crimes. When people say the police evolved from a misanthropic idea of keeping the peace, they are specifically thinking of the Pinkertons as an example. Hired thugs meant to keep those in power in power, not to protect the citizenry.
I don’t know if the Pinkertons directly, but their competitors have caused a lot of problems during our eternal war in the Middle East. That’s a problem of using a private police force like an army, and while the US government and military paid the bills and made requests, the triggermen bear their share of the blame.
You’re trying to make an extraordinary claims play to deflect this part of the conversation and I’m not biting. If you don’t know the sordid history of private armies go do your own research. Don’t imply other people are wrong because they aren’t spoon feeding you facts that people who employ tactics like you won’t hear even if offered in earnest. As many people I’m the civil rights and LGBT community are now saying, it’s not my job to educate you for free.
Then you probably should not have responded to a question specifically asking for an example of Pinkerton kicking down doors. As you've clearly stated that you can't answer the question, but rather prefer to go off on some vaguely related tangent, then I will go on about my day.
Dude, your whole energy is trying to shut down conversation and I already told you that’s not going to work.
I only knew the Pinkertons still existed reading about problems in the second gulf war, in which they were listed amongst the problem children. I thought that name was retired a century ago, turns out not. What I don’t know is any role they played in Afghanistan. Bracketing your base of knowledge is not weakness, it’s disclosure.
Also they all hire the same kind of people. Just because BP had the Deep Water fiasco doesn’t mean we forget about Exxon Valdez. There are no “good ones” just short memories and willful lack of imagination.
This is not high school debate class. Act like a grownup.
> I would like an example from within the last, say, 75 years. Regardless, you didn't even cite an example.
From Wikipedia[0]:
"In 2020, Matthew Dolloff, an unlicensed security guard contracted through Pinkerton, shot and killed Lee Keltner, a conservative protestor in Denver, Colorado."
Not exactly kicking down doors and assaulting the residents, I know, but hopefully we can agree that its adjacent.
Of course the premise is that "they get away with it all of the time." If such examples existed, citing them would be contrary to the act of getting away with it. I'm not saying that I know for a fact that the Pinkertons or other such similar organizations "get away with it." But I know the United States has produced numerous examples of police officers getting away with it, and in my mind it's very possible that detective agencies do all manner of reprehensible things, especially to people in poverty, and get away with it.
We're hearing about it in the case of a YouTuber because they have a platform.
Nothing that isn't stories by friends working for securitas (the main company for which pinkerton is a brand), or anecdotes. I am certain I could find a story like that just by googling for it, but real statistics are what are interesting, and I cant be bothered to research it. So let me instead ask, what evidence do you have that they are better than the police? because that is what you are arguing. In general you can become a security guard in a tiny fraction of the time it takes to become a police, and they have much lower requirements compared to becoming a police. Oh and by the way, most of them believe themselves to have the same powers and protections as police, that they do not does not matter much. The real shitheads get pruned pretty quickly, but the middling level assholes instead sometimes get shifted into one of the offbrands.
They're not arguing that they're better than police, they're saying that police have protections other people don't, and those protections are the only reason they feel comfortable kicking doors down. You're very, very unlikely to find some private security guy willing to kick a door down for some trading cards, because pretty much the first time they're wrong about it they're going to jail. You don't get qualified immunity as private security.
And that's an awfully long paragraph when "no" would have sufficed just fine.
Those protections are not the only reason the police are comfortable doing things like that, those protections are there, because the justice system could not get police to stop doing that regardless, and in extraordinarily rare cases its justified.
You’re trying to assert that people making claims based on some knowledge are wrong because they don’t have every fact, while claiming that you have no facts whatsoever.
Do you not see how completely fucked up that is?
We don’t talk to each other this way here. We shouldn’t talk to each other this way at all. The “gotcha” structure of debate will be the death of public discourse and with it, democracy, and with that the rule of law. When we live in Idiocracy it will substantially be because of people trolling “prove it” because it gets them out of thinking about uncomfortable things.
But this response isn’t about you. Not even a little. It’s for the other people reading this tree of replies, for the next time someone is trying to shut down conversation.
Its called fait accompli. If I go to someone who stole my bike, beat them and take the bike back, yeah I do get to keep the loot, even if they prosecute me, which is unlikely, and even if they succeed in prosecuting me which is also unlikely, I still get to keep the loot. Its not the way the legal system or the law is supposed to apply, but in reality the idea or intent of law is irrelevant, its its practical application that matters. It is why I explicitly say they get away with it because they mostly do it to criminals.
No one in their sane mind think the law is intended to allow the threats they made etc, or that they had the rights to do what they did, but they did it anyways, and as the story shows, they got away with it. Think about that again, they did this to some rich white geek with a platform and they got away with it. What do you think they would get away with against a known criminal...
Fait accompli is not a legal defence, it's a description of something that is now irreversible. And taking things entirely reversible.
This is not the same as taking back stolen property from a thief. If you want to stretch analogies, it's like beating up the kid that bought your stolen [still disputed] bike from a bike shop. The kid here didn't do anything wrong. If the goods were stolen, there might be an argument for a civil process to get them back to their owner, but if you commit a crime in the act of repatriating stolen goods, you could lose you right to them.
In this case they "got away with it" because this kid didn't know his rights, fell for the threats and let them taken the goods. It's nasty but a hundred million miles away from the felony B&E, assault and theft being described as acceptable a few posts up.
American law enforcement would overwhelmingly "side" with the buyer here, by virtue solely of siding with the status quo.
The moment they said "contract," Deputy Notmyjob will hold up a hand and say, "Sounds like a civil matter. Mr. Smith has advised you not to trespass on his property. Small claims office is at 1234 Fuckoff Street downtown. We'll be leaving now, and you will too, unless you'd like to take a trip to the station with us for booking."
It depends. If Dealer's lawyers decided they wanted to go after some transgression which may or may not have occurred, that can cause a lot of difficulty for Buyer. Individual officers are pretty likely to point them to small claims but not if a prosecutor is in the picture.
I've served as a prosecutor both in a state jurisdiction and within the military justice system. I am immensely skeptical that any competent lawyer would want to spend resources on pursuing charges based on a third party's NDA.
Fair enough. Recent disputes around copyright are likely distorting my view on the matter. That feels very much like a corporation going to a prosecutor to tattle on someone.
To your point, law enforcement would likely side with the buyer here but the buyer isn't necessarily going to be in a position to understand that (in fact, likely the other way).
Which would be great. Now we're rapidly travelling down the hundreds of thousands of dollars lawsuit path. Anything the cops do, apart from siding with the land owner (never mind buyer), would have an extremely high chance of being a constitutional violation.
> After local police officers searched the homes and business of Micah Jessop and Brittan Ashjian, more than $100,000 in cash and $125,000 in rare coins went missing. Jessop and Ashjian sued the officers and the City of Fresno under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a statute that authorizes damages actions against state and local officials for constitutional violations, arguing that the officers’ alleged theft violated their Fourth Amendment right to be free from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that under the doctrine of qualified immunity the officers cannot be sued because, according to the court, it is not “clearly established” that this type of theft violates the Fourth Amendment.
> For instance, last November the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that Tennessee cops who allowed their police dog to bite a surrendered suspect did not violate clearly established law. There, the victim cited a case where the same court earlier held that it was unconstitutional for officers to sic their dog on a suspect who had surrendered by lying on the ground with his hands to the side. That was not sufficient, the court reasoned, because the victim had not surrendered by lying down: He had surrendered by sitting on the ground and raising his hands.
What about these example cases makes you go “ah, yes, the courts really want to impose consequences on cops”?
Best case: you win after years of expensive litigation and harassment from the officer’s buddies, and they pay you a settlement out of your own tax dollars.
This scenario already happened with Jason Chen/Gizmodo and the iPhone 4G prototype that was left at a bar, and what happened is the cops raided his house and seized his stuff. You would think HN folks would at least remember that…
You think WOTC couldn’t have found a friendly judge if the guy didn’t comply with their thugs? The judiciary in the US is just as corrupt as the police.
Oh please, they’re not going to present it like that but use the same spiel the Pinkertons used on this YouTuber about being part of a criminal conspiracy etc. Judges in the US issue spurious warrants all the time, not the least at the behest of corporations. The iPhone prototype was no less ridiculous.
We’ll put aside the material differences between the iPhone/Gawker case, for instance, the reporter having knowingly purchased an object the seller found on a bar stool. What forcing due process also does is create a paper trail. That’s how Gawker got the warrant rescinded. It’s also notable that these miscarriages are newsworthy. I understand the comfort of conspiracies, but in this case, the lie of a corrupt judiciary does more of a corrupt cop’s work than the system’s failings themselves.
> Do card dealers not own their inventory before a street date? (And, therefore, sold product that was not his?) (Vs. breach of contract)
This is the key question. Almost all the comments in this story are on 1) WotC are jerks for sending Pinks, 2a) the guy shouldn't have given them the product, 2b) if Pinks showed up at your door you'd do it too,
... but if it is indeed the case that dealers don't own pre-release WotC products before the release date, then it goes from open-and-shut "he was within his rights to keep the cards forever" to something more messy.
If the dealers don't own pre-release products then it becomes messy for the courts, police, and lawyers.
There's no world in which Pinkertons (or anyone acting similarly in a private-enterprise fashion) should have ever been involved regardless of the legal owners of the product.
Please please PLEASE call 911 the next time this happens. This is an extra-judicial shakedown. There are consequences for idiots who pretend to be police like this.
They would be the ones going to jail if this person had called 911.
I get that the youtuber just wanted no trouble, but he may have really screwed himself by not insisting on a waver of liability, agreement that the existing videos can stay up (or, alternatively, compensation to replace the lost income from them), and compensation for his costs at a minimum.
Handing WOTC's paid thugs the material probably didn't do anything to reduce his risk and took away the little leverage he had -- they could even try to spin his willingness to hand it over as an admission that his possession was unlawful.
They could try, but all he has to do is mention the intimidation factor of Pinkertons at the door while under oath and I doubt a jury would find him liable for anything.
Plus, at that point, he could probably afford a really good lawyer from crowdfunded donations.
Wizards already has a PR issue from this happening in the first place. They'd be civilly negligent toward the Hasbro shareholders to push it any further.
From the comments it sounds like their "threats" were threats of legal action-- that isn't likely to count as intimidation... and if he's gone far enough in court to end up in front of a jury he would probably already be financially ruined. Now, if he asked them to leave and they didn't that would be something else.
Unfortunately when you're not very wealthy the question if you'd ultimately win or not isn't very important. That's why it's important to get bright line clarity such that if they brought any claims your odds of getting a summary dismissal would be very good.
Your point about the threat being limited by the specter of damage to their brand is a good one except if that were the motivation they wouldn't have opened with an in personal physical confrontation against a party with a highly visible public platform.
> he could probably afford a really good lawyer from crowdfunded donations
I doubt it. Sometimes that happens, but often people just blame the victim because there is always a never ending list of nitpicks ("Why didn't he tell the pinkertons they were tresspassing, ask them to leave and send a letter", "why didn't he insist on a release from the company", "he had to know this would happen when he put the video up in the first place!"). And even when the lawyers paid for, nothing can compensate you for the time, disruption in your life, and stress of being targeted.
Easy to say from your armchair and not when the gestapo are at your door. If thugs appear at my door demanding a $50 item or else, yeah....I will probably just give it to them. See if I can claw it back later.
The Pinkerton employees on the other hand, were less cordial to the YouTuber. Cannon told Kotaku over email that they had threatened to get the county sheriff involved if he did not return the MtG cards. They cited statures with punishments such as a $200,000 fine and up to a decade of jail time.
> Easy to say from your armchair and not when the gestapo are at your door. If thugs appear at my door demanding a $50 item or else, yeah....I will probably just give it to them.
Close the door and call the police if they don't go away.
I didn't intend it as a criticism but more of a "if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you may want to consider!".
The YTer had this dropped in his lap, he didn't have a chance to get advice or even consider it fully-- presumably strategic on the part of WotC. Any remotely reasonable response would be blameless in my eyes.
(and if I were determined to find fault, clearly the fault would be answering the door in the first place! :) )
While that may or may not be true, it's very easy to say things like that and much much harder to deal with the situation in a "rights above safety, to eternal ends" and "perfect world" perspective when in the situation as a flesh-and-blood version of ones self.
Private security appearing at your door may be intimidating, but it’s not a raid.
Threatening someone with fines or jail time, who took receipt of distributed but embargoed product, i.e. by no stretch of the imagination illegal to possess, is the sort of thing you might want to look into legal options for, though.
I'm surprised these private security goons don't get guns pointed at them more often. As I understand American law it would be legal to shoot them if they refused to leave your property in some states.
When I was in my teens, I spent a few months doing door-to-door canvassing. I had guns pointed at me on three separate occasions, just for knocking on the front door.
Notoriety is in the eye of the beholder. It doesn't matter whether the police are _actually_ trigger-happy; as long as they have a reputation for excessive use of violence, a threat to involve them is a perceived threat of violence.
I get my news from quite a few sources. But you're here on a social media site devoted to sharing news, commenting on a news article. Are you not getting your news from social media right here, right now?
What I wrote is entirely true, I didn't say that a threat to call the cops is %100 guarantee to shoot somebody. I said that there's a nonzero probability. SWATting, for example, has killed several people who did nothing wrong.
Personal experience: I've had a gun pulled on me a couple times while un-armed and non-threatening. Most amusing one: got pulled over for expired tabs and had a boffer sword (not even remotely realistic looking, mostly red duct tape) in my back seat.
Agree to disagree; forums are social media. Traditional forum software is purely temporal ranking (latest-comment-first) plus pinned posts. HN uses a ranking algorithm based on engagement, plus ads.
I think if you expand it that much, the term's useless. HN lacks a couple things that I'd consider necessary for something to for-sure qualify as "social media": a personalized queue/feed, and some sort of prominent and heavily-used "follow" action. Those are two distinguishing features of the first things I recall the term ever being applied to—as far as I'm aware, the term was coined for that kind of thing. If the "social network" and actions related to it aren't present or aren't central to the experience, I wouldn't call something social media.
I get my views on the police from the news and from observing them and hearing stories about them from relatives and friends, some of whom have worked with police or in other parts of the justice system.
My conclusion, after years and years of all that, is that you should only call them if you'd rather end up beaten and cuffed and facing charges, with a bunch of your shit broken and/or stolen, than let whatever's happening now keep happening. Bringing them into a situation comes with a serious risk of "now you have two problems". For lesser non-emergency stuff, they're not gonna do jack-shit except give you a report for insurance (and charge you money for it), so, do get in touch if you need that, but don't expect anything more from them, because you won't get it.
I also treat them as the most dangerous drivers on the road. From what I've seen of their driving, they're up there with a teenager in a sportscar who's simultaneously applying makeup and texting. Except that sometimes when they do something dangerous and stupid, you get a ticket (seen it happen).
It's this definition of raid: "quickly and illicitly take something from (a place)" (versus the law enforcement version, where illicit is used instead to describe the goods which are taken by the police).
If a PI knocks on your door and says "I represent X, you have in your possession property of theirs, you can turn it over to me now or you will face legal action" and then you turn the thing over... that is not them illicitly taking the thing. That is you and them resolving a dispute out of court.
If the PI brings a bunch of big goons with guns and they imply that they'll kill you if you don't turn the thing over, then sure, that's a raid. But also you'd presumably call 911 immediately and file a police report stating that you were robbed.
"sending heavy duty lawmen" that "made his wife cry first thing in the morning" talking about "stolen products and jailtime" who then "took everything, even the empty boxes and bags" seems like a surprise attack to me.
That the attack depended on surprise and intimidation doesn't invalidate the use of attack or raid imho, that's the preferred outcome of any police raid too (and websters definition of attack is "to set upon or work against forcefully", no mention of physical violence).
A police raid involves the express threat of violence if you don't comply -- that's what the guns and battering rams are for.
A PI who's even vaguely trying to obey the law DEFINITELY does not expressly threaten you with violence, and won't allow any more than the barest implication either.
I always wonder about stories like this what the internal process that lead to this insane overreaction was. At some point, did someone really make the decision "lets send Pinkertons to this guy's house, risking an enormous publicity backlash"? It's easy to blame "the legal department" for stuff like this, but it seems extreme even for the most zealous attorney.
My hunch is that they probably have some kind of security contract with the Pinkertons to safeguard secrets, and the Pinkertons acted on their own. Hasbro/WotC has done some sketchy stuff recently, but this seems extreme even for them.
This sort of response appears deranged to outsiders, but would be completely logical if you rationalize it as calling in a favor from your former colleagues. For someone like that, it's not a vulgar display of force-- it's just another Tuesday. Optics are overlooked in favor of ease.
For sure. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I was just saying I'm always curious about what the processes are in companies that lead to these disastrous results.
Or, less flippantly: everyone knows who the Pinkertons are and what they do. And the fact that everyone knows is, quite literally, the actual service that they offer. They will do such things without you have to explicitly tell them.
They have an outright ominous reputation from their historical involvement in violently suppressing the labor movement in the US. Because they’re still corporate security, they’ve kept this reputation as corporate goons for hire.
You should probably read up on some history. They have played a pivotal role (as the antagonists) in the labor movement in the United States. They were involved in some of the largest insurrections after the Civil War. Their name is scattered throughout American history, and not for their good deeds.
Movies and TV often sow them as a policing the West in the early days of the US but what they should be known for is as thugs and strike breakers for hire who intimidate and threaten whoever you ask while providing distance and cover.
Aside from the xkcd, this 'everybody knows' effect can be domain specific. The people who hired the pinkertons, and any party interested in stealing corporate secrets, know who they are.
I doubt most people do know the name. If you're not into westerns and haven't read about the history of the labor movement or of US law enforcement (and they sure as shit don't teach those things in most schools, so you'd have to find it out on your own) you could easily go through life without ever learning who they were/are.
The most interesting part of this (other than the completely unnecesary, tone-deaf corporate thuggery) is the involvement of the Pinkertons because many people don't know the history of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which was really prominent in the mid to late 19th century.
At this time, the US had no real Federal law enforcement to speak of. That came later, modeled after the Pinkertons. Fun fact: the FBI evolved as a result of the Mann Act [1], which was aimed at stopped at white women being "trafficked" across state lines by black men so really it was misagenation.
Anyway, the Pinkertons evolved as corporate muslce in the robber baron era. Strike-breaking, intimidation, sabotage, that sort of thing. At one point the Pinkertons were larger than the US Army. Thier downfall really began with with embarrassing incidents like the Homestead Strike [2].
Honestly two of the better depictions of the Pinkertons come from fiction: HBO's excellent Deadwood series and Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2.
The most important lesson here is that law enforcement in the US historically, culturally and actually exists to protect the interests of the wealthy, first and foremost.
as for WotC, they could've made good PR out of this by asking nicely for the cards back and giving the person something for their troubles since ultimately the mistake was WotC's. But no, let's choose violence.
Wizards of the Coast seems to be on a rampage to do as much damage to their brand as possible. Weren't they pretty beloved by fans before some of these more recent actions?
It's like they've turned into the Comcast of table top games.
What do they really have beyond their brand? People can play other games.
They said before the movie released that it was not their intention to make a franchise out of the movie. They were open to making a franchise, but the movie was designed to stand alone. In the age of cinematic universes making a D&D cinematic universe makes a lot of sense, but thats not what the authors wanted.
“It was never our intention when we came on board this film to make a franchise . . . I think that would cloud our ability to focus entirely on the film at hand. The cardinal mistake many studios make is to put the cart before the horse, where they start crafting a cinematic universe before they even make a good single film. So first and foremost for us was getting this right.”
> What do they really have beyond their brand? People can play other games.
Certainly Dungeons and Dragons has tons of competition from other systems and I won't be playing it anymore, but it does have the network effect and weekly hosted games and name recognition.
MTG, I think, doesn't have serious competition. It is a unique juggernaut. Playing a 5e D&D game today has no relation to old 2e adventures, but many forms of Magic make use of ancient cards with serious monetary value.
Magic is also such an intricate and surprisingly balanced game and has something that other games somehow always struggle with: exactness. There is, technically, no room for interpretation on any Magic card (please correct me if I'm wrong here, I haven't played in 5+ years). Every possible interaction has a precise outcome that can be derived from the rules, or at worst from card-specific errata which are available freely and easily online.
The combination of amazing art, historic value, well-known lore, a massive library, and exact gameplay makes MTG difficult to buck. I'm certainly not buying any more cards, but I don't know where I would start looking if I got the itch for a card game again.
Right, assuming players have access to the oracle text (the canonical post errata text for the card), and a copy of the comprehensive magic rules, it should be possible to deterministically determine the result of any interaction (modulo any specified randomness or opportunities for human choice).
The comprehensive rules are intended to be fully comprehensive, with only simply logic needed to connect the parts. If this has failed anywhere leaving something without a clear resolution this would be considered a defect in the comprehensive rules or the card's canonical text.
Such defects are not especially common, as they tend to get noticed before new cards or mechanics are released. This is especially true since WOTC ends up programming these mechanics into software not once but at least twice. (First for MTGO, and then again for MTG Arena's backend, and sometimes needing to program it again for the Arena's front end code.)
The need to program it into the software gives makes it much more likely than any remaining ambiguity in the Card's Oracle text or the comprehensive rules gets noticed and addressed.
Hasbro (who are actually the Comcast of table top games) bought WotC in 1999, initially operating it as a legal subsidiary. I only followed MtG from 2001 to 2005; at that time it seemed pretty clear to me that Hasbro was taking a fairly hands-off approach. I don’t know what has happened in the interim but recent news indicated WotC was something like 70% of Hasbro’s entire revenue, so I imagine what happened was, as WotC grew and Hasbro shrank, Hasbro started exercising more of the power of WotC that they have long held but rarely used - basically, becoming more hands-on as the profits grew (unsurprisingly).
There seems to have been several reshuffles of just how legally independent WotC is from Hasbro over the years, although I’m not sure those legal reshuffles are indicative of how much actual power Hasbro was exercising.
My general impression is that WotC had found a point on the Pareto curve of “greedy” vs “respectful” where they were quite greedy but also quite respectful, and Hasbro’s more recent influence has pushed them into “very greedy”, not realizing the Pareto curve was extremely steep and so this caused a corresponding move all the way from “quite respectful” to “very disrespectful”.
Whatever. Coming into someones house to make threats is very stupid idea.
One day I came into my kitchen, there is my wife crying, and three big threating guys I do not know. I ask them to leave, instead of heading to door, they are aggressive and surround me. What do you thing is going to happen?
Have you heard of the castle doctrine [1]? It's resulted in some really crazy (and imho horrible) situations where private citizens are allowed to use deadly force and literally murder people in cold blood.
This guy wasn't even on his porch. Stand your ground laws essentially allow gun owners to claim they were frightened for their lives so that becomes "their castle". Wouldn't be very hard to repurpose this kind of weaponized law to actually defend your household.
btw - castle doctrine was intended to apply within property lines. If someone is on your doorstep, they are likely already clearly on your property.
All of this is theoretical but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if this is used for exactly what you said it shouldn't allow.
According to the zimmerman trial, if you look into it at all, Zimmerman claimed that he was being attacked, got knocked over on the ground, and then while the attacker was on top of him, yelling that he was going to kill him, he defended himself with a gun, at that point.
And there was some physical evidence and injuries supporting this narrative.
You can say that his statement is a lie, or that you don't believe his testimony.
But, if that testimony is true, Shooting someone who is on top of you, assaulting you, yelling that you are going to die, while you are on the ground, is a much different situation than shooting someone who just knocked on your door.
I would really recommend you look up that case more, if you thought it was in any way similar to "just shooting someone, at your door".
> Zimmerman chased down Martin and threatened him.
> He put himself in danger for the sole purpose of being able to use his weapon
Possibly. That doesn't contradict my statement though.
It is still completely irrelevant to the idea that a person could just shoot someone, who is at their front door.
A more accurate comparison, would be if someone was at your front door, and then that person gets on top of you, yells that they are going to kill you, starts punching you while being on top of you, and causes verifiable head injuries and head bleedings too you, and then you shoot them.
So, at the end of the day, the comparison is still irrelevant to a situation where someone merely knocks on your door.
It sure sounds like it to me, even if only implicitly. They were certainly being intimidating, and intimidation rests on the foundation of the threat of violence.
There’s a massive list of bonehead decisions made by WotC and none have resulted in firing. It’s an interesting hobby where fans have played no matter what the company does and the company knows that.
That was d&d, I’m talking about magic stuff. Just off the top of my head, they just seem generally incompetent and people keep buying.
Here’s some stuff I remember:
-underprinting (legends) and overprinting (fallen empires)
-saying they wouldn’t reprint things (reserved list) then reprinting some, and monkeying around with it for 5 years
-original magic online in early 00s was completely poorly built at the time of lots of other MOOCs and a super lively IRC open source client, Apprentice, that they could have just cloned
-launching their new digital game, arena, as desktop only for its first three years
-killing their tournament play
-cutting out local stores with direct to consumer sales (and massive distribution through Amazon)
-$100 “vip” booster packs
-poor quality control that makes cards look like pringles
-multiple versions of each card with different foiling techniques
-firing artists over liking tweets
-new product every two months instead of 3-4 times per year
-freaking out over leaked spoilers
-telling some people what cards would be reprinted beforehand to have them purchase or sell accordingly
-not putting shandalar on steam/ never making sequels
So true, mtg players are kinda locked in and get roughed up way more than the d&D players by corporate bullshit. I normally only view WoTC through the d&d lens as thats where my hobby lies.
To add, regarding Arena at least, it seems like all they give a shit about now is releasing new and older cards meant for commander/brawl.
Sure those formats are fun, but they should still focus on the core format and at the very least release some older sets in their entirety rather than just for the sake of commander/brawl play.
Also <insert_unfounded_rant_about_the_shuffler>
Idk maybe im just getting old and grumpy, but I still love the original format.
Commander is the core format these days. It feels weird to me as someone who grew up on Standard/Modern, but Commander is apparently the most popular by far now. Arena is one of the only places it isn’t, and that’s because Commander isn’t actually supported. But paper still drives card development, not Arena, at least for now. But the rumor is they are working on getting Commander into Arena in the next year or two.
I think the 2 players thing is a major difference, unfortunately. My understanding (I don't play Commander) is that it is generally best played with 4 people. That said, someone pointed out that the 4 player requirement makes implementing it on Arena very difficult if not impossible. A single person going AFK or quitting ruins the experience for everyone. There is less of a social contract in place when playing anonymously via Arena, so it seems like it is ripe for frustration.
Huh, if Pinkerton thugs showed up at my door, I would have demanded a warrant + actual law enforcement to even start the conversation. It's not like they have any more privileges than regular people. On the other hand, if they showed up with regular employees and pleaded their case to me I would probably help them out.
Showing up with private heat is the best way ensure I'll think twice about being helpful.
Yeah, this is sort of a case of tearing defeat out of the jaws of victory.
Show up with some money, a bunch of magic swag + cards, and offer to create a card making them some sort of in game knight or king or something. Photograph everything and have them sign a non-disparage and suddenly you've got some PR that's worth it's weight in gold. And the next time a little card mishap goes down you'll get people volunteering to give them back in hopes of a tenth of what you gave out the first time.
Or you could just do nothing because almost definitely nobody actually cares or will notice.
Jumping to sending private security to someone else's private residence feels like an absolute last resort to a much more serious issue.
This really doesn't belong on HN.
Old story, editorialized, and ultimatley a non-story with no impact beyond WOTC looking foolish, which is not newsworthy.
1. No legal cause or case.
2. They were basically trespassing, if only the owner asked them to leave.
3. Person invited them in and let them take their property.
Geez people really just create the drama they want. Easily should've told them to pound dirt and slam the door in their face.
Instead the article goes on about one agent being apologetic, and the others not caring.
People really are not aware of their rights.
Remember, if someone has to ASK you or have you CONSENT you can say no. But it seems people don't know they can refuse anymore.
> Remember, if someone has to ASK you or have you CONSENT you can say no. But it seems people don't know they can refuse anymore.
"Just say no" on police matters is not good universal advice. It can have undesirable consequences.
Two immediate examples:
If you're pulled over and the cop wants to search your car for drugs, you can play roadside lawyer if you'd like. Say no-- it's your right. They'll bring in a drug dog, it'll ring positive (coerced or not), then they proceed to disassemble your car to punish you for being obstinate-- we're talking ripping off door panels and liners to look behind and underneath. Reassembly is for you to deal with. If you have nothing to hide, you save yourself some trouble by just consenting before they call in the dog, which only ever increases the invasiveness of the search. Fail early.
Same for DUI. You don't have to take a roadside sobriety test. Invoking your right to say no means you're getting detained anyway and will spend the next few hours in the hospital lab, which you will be billed for later. If you were drunk, you lose either way, but being stubborn is the costlier approach. Fail early.
You have some rights on land you own. Fewer rights on land you rent. No rights on the road.
While dogs can ring positive for coerced, you want to make sure the search is as illegal as possible so that any evidence can be tossed, no evidence == no case. A dog can signal falsely for "drugs" but let's say they found $8000, that you have a receipt from the bank? While they will attempt civil forfeiture -- the dog was only for drugs - meaning no drugs found == better attempt to get that case thrown. Same for other medications, or any contraband.
For your DUI example, many a lawyer I talked too and in my university days every law/pre-law professor stated if that ever happened, they would always refuse because it does not present evidence easily - a few hours in a hospital lab means any test result then will be delayed, and lets say you were drunk, (something I don't condone) - you now have more time to sober up and the further test results will be farther from when the stop was done.
It is much easier to defeat a DUI Charge if there was no evidence at roadside that you were actually impaired. Even if your car is towed and you're billed high for the forced blood test and what not - it is still cheaper than a DUI charge which runs $15,000 nowadays, not including the future insurance waivers/SR-22/FR-44 probably required.
You have rights, it is much easier to win a case/have your case dismissed if there is proof the police violated your rights. Lawyers glee and prosecutors will drop cases where there is overt police rights violation.
I would say depending on the area, and on your race/skin color is more of a issue if you're being pulled over vs not consenting to a search because bias exists and LEO will try and try more - but with dashcams and such - that's changing, marginally. Though the video of the uber lawyer lately has been making the laps, to the point where that officer in question did get a promotion.
By law, unsolicited merchandise received via mail is yours to keep. I wonder how this will play out in court, if the YouTuber chooses to go that route. I don't see any reason why WOTC wouldn't lose, and lose badly?
So many problems are avoided by just never answering the door (and figuring out some way to receive packages). If it's a uniformed police officer, "COME BACK WITH A WARRANT" or "CONTACT MY ATTORNEY AT X".
Wow, so much for treating your biggest fans with any respect. Not like he stole them, it would have been interesting had he stood his ground to see what they did. Shame he didn't have video of the encounter like Afroman did when raided.
If I were a fan, this would have sobered me out of it immediately.
Now I wonder what happened to the guy selling Zelda Tears of the Kingdom two weeks early that "fell off the back of the truck". Nintendo probably read this and put these thugs on retainer for the next major release, if they don't already.
I'd be curious to know what exactly these Pinkerton agents said, and if they flashed badges (as other commenters have suggested). My general rule is not to let anyone in who doesn't have a warrant, and I think that still works in light of this kind of tactic. But I hadn't considered the possibility that non-LEOs might fool me/my family into thinking they are LEOs, and that they might not be bound by the same rules regarding tricking someone into letting them enter their home.
Do not let anyone in your house unless it's a police officer with a warrant, and even then, verify their identity and the documents. You can easily do this by calling your police department. We have rights.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 257 ms ] threadIt has amazing creativity, novel and fun gameplay, a very strong personality and an opinionated design.
That being said, I suppose them threatening to call in the police does that for them.
Somebody at WotC should be held liable for this.
Are there no laws in America against this?
Had the police been called most likely the police would have said "this is a civil matter" not done nothing, at most taken a report for a detective to investigate the alleged theft.
Also had the homeowner just said "leave my property", and then the police called, the private militia would then be trespassing and the police would remove them.
Here however the homeowner basically consented to the actions, the search, and the seizure while under threat of additional legal action they still consented.
Know your rights.
It's very easy to discuss this after the fact, detached from the situation with a calm head, and be confident that this victim would have been legally in the clear. But rational analysis is sorely absent when an armed gang shows up at your door demanding something and threatening more violence if you don't comply.
The legal dynamic in the US has basically evolved to justify shakedown behavior, where it's technically possible to "stand up" for your rights if you know the exact song and dance at the right time, but practically most people don't and can't. Whereas what really needs to happen is for various aggressor parties to be legally restrained from using coercion to begin with.
And that's not even touching the dynamic where various types of aggressors end up shooting first despite being in the wrong, cry "self defense", and then successfully avoid getting charged with second degree murder.
That is why my standing policy is to never answer the door unless I am expecting someone. Even for package delivery I have a table for them to leave the package on.
>>Whereas what really needs to happen is for various aggressor parties to be legally restrained from using coercion to begin with.
Examples of laws where this happens would be great.
>>And that's not even touching the dynamic where various types of aggressors end up shooting first despite being in the wrong, cry "self defense", and then successfully avoid getting charged with second degree murder.
Examples please.
Sure. "Standing policy" implies that you've spent a bunch of time thinking it out, presumably thinking about the corner cases (police are there and they aren't leaving), and also concluding that you're willing to forgo answering the door in times it would have been beneficial. That's all work and preparation that you're taking for granted, that frankly most people don't have time for.
It would be akin to me railing against people for using GMail, as I run my own mail server. The world is too big to micromanage everything. If physical security is one of your hobbies that is fantastic. But it's wrong to assert that it's universal.
> Examples of laws where this happens would be great.
The point is that we're sorely lacking those laws, or at least enforcement of them. This particular situation should result in charges of armed robbery, but I doubt it will. But even my saying that is wrong, as it buys into this high stakes paradigm. Rather, how about a simple misdemeanor law that prohibits the bringing firearms onto someone else's residential real estate, unless a sign is posted that explicitly allowed it?
> Examples please
I feel bad for coming back to this example so often, but I don't stay up on the latest unjustified murder of the week and its details are beyond reproach - Breonna Taylor. That was perpetrated by "police" rather than corporate thugs, but it's exactly the dynamic of someone acting exactly as the legal system implies they should to preserve their rights, ending up with their girlfriend being murdered, and still no justice being served.
That would imply they have a warrant which most likely means they have already busted down the door negating my policy in the first place.
>>and also concluding that you're willing to forgo answering the door in times it would have been beneficial
Such as? I have been doing this avoidance for 20 years in multiple locations, never been an issue so far.
>> If physical security is one of your hobbies that is fantastic. But it's wrong to assert that it's universal.
I dont think I asserted anything of the sort, pretty sure I implicitly said "I have a policy" not that others do or should.
That said outsourcing your personal security is the path to becoming a victim, when seconds count the police are minutes away
>Rather, how about a simple misdemeanor law that prohibits the bringing firearms onto someone else's residential real estate, unless a sign is posted that explicitly allowed it?
I am not sure what your antigun stance has to do with this story? There is no indication that the persons were armed, brandished any firearms or threaten the use of violence at all. They knocked on the door, said there were there to collect stolen property and if the home owner did not comply they would alert the police which could result in the homeowner being arrested. That threat of using state violence violence is a problem, but nothing you have stated here would prevent that.
Nor am I clear how your proposes law would even be enforced, or is applicable to this situation. It is clear you just anti-gun and likely anti-self defense in general and instead believes only the state should have that power... which is ironic as you likely are anti-police and pro "defund the police"
>>Breonna Taylor.
I was betting it was going to be that or Rittenhouse. Both of which have soo much disinformation spread about the cases that is hard to have a rational conversation about those events online.
The real solution to Breonna Taylor type situations is reform warrant policies and require the police to use the least confrontational means to effect the warrant, instead today police purposefully make the situations more dangerous IMO as a form a "street justice" but again that is not relevant to this situation as nothing even remotely like the events in Breonna Taylor happened here
Bad guess. I'm a gun owner who believes in the natural right of self defense. But guns are not a strong hobby, and taking a basic gun class is actually what made me realize I am not the type of person who wants to carry. It's just not how I'm wired. (I will, of course, do so if I have to because society devolves to that point).
> soo much disinformation spread
Walker was sleeping on a couch. Police executed a 2nd-amendment-incompatible "no knock" warrant, got pissy when Walker defended himself, and so rather than retreating they retaliated by using the place as a shooting gallery. What do I have wrong here?
The relevance to the situation is that Walker's self defense was exactly what the law indicates he should have done to preserve his rights, in light of rulings that have found the police have no duty to defend and as such that responsibility falls entirely on the individual.
> That would imply [the police] have a warrant which most likely means they have already busted down the door negating my policy in the first place.
The police can have an arrest warrant, and not just immediately bust down your door. This might be one of the reasons you'd want to preemptively answer your door, rather than getting your home unnecessarily damaged. Or maybe they're coming to notify you about a family member who was hurt. Or maybe someone is looking for a lost dog and you want to be a good neighbor. Or maybe you were about to go out and do some errands or yard work and don't want to wait 10 minutes for the Jehovah’s Witnesses to give up. Or maybe girl scout cookies.
> There is no indication that the persons were armed
I took a guess at the likely equipment of private security that would be part of their imposing image, to make an example of something that would be pretty clear cut and relatively easy to enforce.
> Nor am I clear how your proposes law would even be enforced
You make a police report, give them video evidence of someone coming to your house uninvited and armed, and they get a $500 fine or whatever. It doesn't turn into a high stakes criminal trial extravaganza because it's a misdemeanor that applies before escalation, rather than a capital crime xor completely innocent based on minute details after an escalation.
But yes one could certainly write a better tailored law to criminalize extortion by private "security" forces than the simplistic bit I threw out as an example. My point wasn't a fully fledged legal proposal, but to point out the difference between technically having rights that you can protect if you do everything exactly right, and proactive enforcement against attempts to strip you of your rights through implied coercion.
The fundamentalist "just do everything right" approach doesn't scale. It's like C and manual memory management. Sure, it's fine if you write bug free code (ie you're DJB). But moving most of the drudgery to a compiler frees you up to do more worthwhile higher level things.
Agreed, but good luck. The police, the "actual" enforcement arm of the legal system, can pick you up without evidence, steal your money, lie to you until you're tricked into confessing to something you didn't do, and call it a successful mission.
The legal system is not intended to protect innocent people, it is only designed to provide enough protections so that more privileged people feel like it is, and don't side with the victims in trying to destroy/reform it.
Guy bought item, company sent item. That's it. Company can ask for it back citing an internal misrelease, or not. Guy can ignore, or not. No breach, theft at all.
Quite Literally a non story I feel silly even commenting about. Why did OP share this a month later? Not HN material.
Some choice quotes from that thread:
They became famous when Lincoln used them as spies during the Civil War. They became infamous when American industrialists started employing them as union/labor strikebreakers & private police forces who weren’t held accountable by the US government.
For some of their most egregious examples of strike-breaking, check out their part in Carnegie’s Homestead Mill Strike & how they turned a peaceful assembly of strikers into Chicago’s Haymarket Riot.
From the US Library of Congress
What began as a detective agency in Chicago grew into a national private police force. *The Pinkertons stood against organized labor at nearly every turn* from Haymarket to Homestead and famously took down the Molly Maguires, while instilling fear in the hearts of fugitives across the country.
...
Ironically, the Pinkerton Detective Agency was a remarkably progressive organization under Allan Pinkerton. Pinkerton himself only escaped dying with John Brown at Harper's Ferry due to coming down with Pneumonia just before leaving Chicago (a significant number of Brown's 19 men were Pinkerton Agents); and was a staunch, radical abolitionist and supporter of the Union throughout the Civil War. Allan Pinkerton was a fantastic detective and analyst - he was one of the the primary inspirations for both Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes - Doyle didn't think one person with all those skillsets was believable (ironically, the other primary inspiration - Eugene Vidocq in France - had similar dual skillset). Under Lincoln, the Pinkertons became the prototype of the CIA, FBI, and modern Secret Service - and were fantastically good at all of them, as Pinkerton held little to traditional ideas about the capability of minorities and women, employing both enthusiastically and creating a large pool of talent as a result.
However, after the Civil War, the power of the Pinkertons in the Federal Government was a big issue for former Southern States. One of the first "Reconciliation" points was extracting the Pinkertons from their functions in the federal government. Those agents interested in investigation (including Pinkerton himself) ended up in the Justice Department and would eventually become the FBI, those in intelligence wound up under the Military as MI (later OSS and then CIA), those interested in protection joined the actual Secret Service.
. . . And those primarily interested in busting heads, became the private entity known as Pinkerton. Alan Pinkerton had mostly retired by then, and they became a sort of private army for strike-breaking and strong-arming citizens out of the way of the railroads. That's the "Pinkertons" most know, they of Western storybook bad guys and the villains of labour movements. Allan Pinkerton himself wasn't a big fan of labor unions, but only because most unions of the time were segregated, which he could not stand - but otherwise the later actions of the "Pinkertons" had little to do with his influence.
[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/136zayf/whats...
https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/02/pinkerton-red-dead-...
Not that it's not worth discussing, just that I'm sure someone might otherwise wonder.
Yep. I took a couple of years off in the late 90s and there was no going back.
A purchase was made and the wrong product arrived at his door.. the seller had legitimate reason to have the product, but broke a street date... The customer did not ask for unreleased product...
Sounds like the dealer is at fault, but not "stolen property"... Do card dealers not own their inventory before a street date? (And, therefore, sold product that was not his?) (Vs. breach of contract)
I thought it was already, but here we are.
These types flash a badge, mumble the words "detective" and "agency" in the same sentence, then immediately pivot to babbling about fines and jailtime before you have a chance to question their authority. It's a high-pressure sales tactic masquerading as law enforcement, without crossing the line of impersonation.
To those ends, they back down quickly when you poke back with childish questions like "wait, so you're not the police?" (If they say yes, they're in trouble.)
Society has an interest in ensuring that goons can't bluff their way into LEO privileges, so if that's what they did, we have a problem.
I haven't played MtG since the 90s, so I'm maybe not clued in on what a "typical magic player" is, but I would expect them to be pretty rules-lawyer-y (both on and off the table) and would stand their ground on principle.
If real law enforcement (or Pinkertons) showed any sense of legitimacy, the typical MtG player would bow to the authority. Whether it’s in the rule book or “unspoken rules by the venue”.
edit this occurred to my daughter in 2012 at FNM.
In the US, that would be an exceedingly bad idea on the part of the Pinkertons. They don't have the same protections law enforcement has: they are treated legally the same as anybody else, which means that in 38 US states they'd be justifying the homeowners use of deadly force.
That may be starting to change, though.
Had he escalated and then drawn a weapon, odds are they would have shot him and may well have gotten away with it, claiming they were just asking questions and he immediately drew a weapon and tried to shoot them.
Remember that when some rednecks hunted down and killed a kid a while back for running while black(Ahmaud Arbery) the police initially wanted to drop the prosecution, and its quite possible that without the national attention of the Floyed case, and the murderers being dumb enough videotape themseles, they may well have gotten away with it. The simple fact that it was a discussion of if they would get convicted at all is just as telling. And police will generally back security companies more than rednecks in court.
That's a big claim, can you cite an example or two of Pinkerton kicking down doors an assaulting the residents?
I do not. I would like an example from within the last, say, 75 years. Regardless, you didn't even cite an example.
You’re trying to make an extraordinary claims play to deflect this part of the conversation and I’m not biting. If you don’t know the sordid history of private armies go do your own research. Don’t imply other people are wrong because they aren’t spoon feeding you facts that people who employ tactics like you won’t hear even if offered in earnest. As many people I’m the civil rights and LGBT community are now saying, it’s not my job to educate you for free.
Then you probably should not have responded to a question specifically asking for an example of Pinkerton kicking down doors. As you've clearly stated that you can't answer the question, but rather prefer to go off on some vaguely related tangent, then I will go on about my day.
I only knew the Pinkertons still existed reading about problems in the second gulf war, in which they were listed amongst the problem children. I thought that name was retired a century ago, turns out not. What I don’t know is any role they played in Afghanistan. Bracketing your base of knowledge is not weakness, it’s disclosure.
Also they all hire the same kind of people. Just because BP had the Deep Water fiasco doesn’t mean we forget about Exxon Valdez. There are no “good ones” just short memories and willful lack of imagination.
This is not high school debate class. Act like a grownup.
Dude... :(
From Wikipedia[0]:
"In 2020, Matthew Dolloff, an unlicensed security guard contracted through Pinkerton, shot and killed Lee Keltner, a conservative protestor in Denver, Colorado."
Not exactly kicking down doors and assaulting the residents, I know, but hopefully we can agree that its adjacent.
Of course the premise is that "they get away with it all of the time." If such examples existed, citing them would be contrary to the act of getting away with it. I'm not saying that I know for a fact that the Pinkertons or other such similar organizations "get away with it." But I know the United States has produced numerous examples of police officers getting away with it, and in my mind it's very possible that detective agencies do all manner of reprehensible things, especially to people in poverty, and get away with it.
We're hearing about it in the case of a YouTuber because they have a platform.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)
And that's an awfully long paragraph when "no" would have sufficed just fine.
Do you not see how completely fucked up that is?
We don’t talk to each other this way here. We shouldn’t talk to each other this way at all. The “gotcha” structure of debate will be the death of public discourse and with it, democracy, and with that the rule of law. When we live in Idiocracy it will substantially be because of people trolling “prove it” because it gets them out of thinking about uncomfortable things.
But this response isn’t about you. Not even a little. It’s for the other people reading this tree of replies, for the next time someone is trying to shut down conversation.
If you're assaulted at somebody's house but you overpower them, you don't get to loot them. This isn't D&D.
No one in their sane mind think the law is intended to allow the threats they made etc, or that they had the rights to do what they did, but they did it anyways, and as the story shows, they got away with it. Think about that again, they did this to some rich white geek with a platform and they got away with it. What do you think they would get away with against a known criminal...
Fait accompli is not a legal defence, it's a description of something that is now irreversible. And taking things entirely reversible.
This is not the same as taking back stolen property from a thief. If you want to stretch analogies, it's like beating up the kid that bought your stolen [still disputed] bike from a bike shop. The kid here didn't do anything wrong. If the goods were stolen, there might be an argument for a civil process to get them back to their owner, but if you commit a crime in the act of repatriating stolen goods, you could lose you right to them.
In this case they "got away with it" because this kid didn't know his rights, fell for the threats and let them taken the goods. It's nasty but a hundred million miles away from the felony B&E, assault and theft being described as acceptable a few posts up.
The moment they said "contract," Deputy Notmyjob will hold up a hand and say, "Sounds like a civil matter. Mr. Smith has advised you not to trespass on his property. Small claims office is at 1234 Fuckoff Street downtown. We'll be leaving now, and you will too, unless you'd like to take a trip to the station with us for booking."
To your point, law enforcement would likely side with the buyer here but the buyer isn't necessarily going to be in a position to understand that (in fact, likely the other way).
Not if the private security are off-duty or former cops with a strong relationship with local departments.
The courts will decide there's "no clearly established law".
https://www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/micah-jessop-br...
> After local police officers searched the homes and business of Micah Jessop and Brittan Ashjian, more than $100,000 in cash and $125,000 in rare coins went missing. Jessop and Ashjian sued the officers and the City of Fresno under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a statute that authorizes damages actions against state and local officials for constitutional violations, arguing that the officers’ alleged theft violated their Fourth Amendment right to be free from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that under the doctrine of qualified immunity the officers cannot be sued because, according to the court, it is not “clearly established” that this type of theft violates the Fourth Amendment.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/05/30/police-geo...
> For instance, last November the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that Tennessee cops who allowed their police dog to bite a surrendered suspect did not violate clearly established law. There, the victim cited a case where the same court earlier held that it was unconstitutional for officers to sic their dog on a suspect who had surrendered by lying on the ground with his hands to the side. That was not sufficient, the court reasoned, because the victim had not surrendered by lying down: He had surrendered by sitting on the ground and raising his hands.
Best case: you win after years of expensive litigation and harassment from the officer’s buddies, and they pay you a settlement out of your own tax dollars.
Worst case: they beat you to death and get away with it. https://www.npr.org/2022/10/08/1127580159/houston-tipping-la...
To randomly authorize a private search? No.
This is the key question. Almost all the comments in this story are on 1) WotC are jerks for sending Pinks, 2a) the guy shouldn't have given them the product, 2b) if Pinks showed up at your door you'd do it too,
... but if it is indeed the case that dealers don't own pre-release WotC products before the release date, then it goes from open-and-shut "he was within his rights to keep the cards forever" to something more messy.
There's no world in which Pinkertons (or anyone acting similarly in a private-enterprise fashion) should have ever been involved regardless of the legal owners of the product.
They would be the ones going to jail if this person had called 911.
Handing WOTC's paid thugs the material probably didn't do anything to reduce his risk and took away the little leverage he had -- they could even try to spin his willingness to hand it over as an admission that his possession was unlawful.
Plus, at that point, he could probably afford a really good lawyer from crowdfunded donations.
Wizards already has a PR issue from this happening in the first place. They'd be civilly negligent toward the Hasbro shareholders to push it any further.
Unfortunately when you're not very wealthy the question if you'd ultimately win or not isn't very important. That's why it's important to get bright line clarity such that if they brought any claims your odds of getting a summary dismissal would be very good.
Your point about the threat being limited by the specter of damage to their brand is a good one except if that were the motivation they wouldn't have opened with an in personal physical confrontation against a party with a highly visible public platform.
> he could probably afford a really good lawyer from crowdfunded donations
I doubt it. Sometimes that happens, but often people just blame the victim because there is always a never ending list of nitpicks ("Why didn't he tell the pinkertons they were tresspassing, ask them to leave and send a letter", "why didn't he insist on a release from the company", "he had to know this would happen when he put the video up in the first place!"). And even when the lawyers paid for, nothing can compensate you for the time, disruption in your life, and stress of being targeted.
If thugs appear at my door for any reason, that door gets slammed shut and I'll be on the phone to get the actual police.
I would have loved to see a video of him slamming the door in some Pinkertons' faces and possibly calling the actual cops
Close the door and call the police if they don't go away.
I didn't intend it as a criticism but more of a "if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you may want to consider!".
The YTer had this dropped in his lap, he didn't have a chance to get advice or even consider it fully-- presumably strategic on the part of WotC. Any remotely reasonable response would be blameless in my eyes.
(and if I were determined to find fault, clearly the fault would be answering the door in the first place! :) )
There is no law being broken so it does not matter what he said or did.
Threatening someone with fines or jail time, who took receipt of distributed but embargoed product, i.e. by no stretch of the imagination illegal to possess, is the sort of thing you might want to look into legal options for, though.
What I wrote is entirely true, I didn't say that a threat to call the cops is %100 guarantee to shoot somebody. I said that there's a nonzero probability. SWATting, for example, has killed several people who did nothing wrong.
Personal experience: I've had a gun pulled on me a couple times while un-armed and non-threatening. Most amusing one: got pulled over for expired tabs and had a boffer sword (not even remotely realistic looking, mostly red duct tape) in my back seat.
My conclusion, after years and years of all that, is that you should only call them if you'd rather end up beaten and cuffed and facing charges, with a bunch of your shit broken and/or stolen, than let whatever's happening now keep happening. Bringing them into a situation comes with a serious risk of "now you have two problems". For lesser non-emergency stuff, they're not gonna do jack-shit except give you a report for insurance (and charge you money for it), so, do get in touch if you need that, but don't expect anything more from them, because you won't get it.
I also treat them as the most dangerous drivers on the road. From what I've seen of their driving, they're up there with a teenager in a sportscar who's simultaneously applying makeup and texting. Except that sometimes when they do something dangerous and stupid, you get a ticket (seen it happen).
> 1a: a hostile or predatory incursion
> 1b: a surprise attack by a small force
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/raid
alternatively wiktionary:
> raid (plural raids)
> (military) A quick hostile or predatory incursion or invasion in a battle.
> An attack or invasion for the purpose of making arrests, seizing property, or plundering.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/raid
Raid seems like the perfect word for this. Though the headline could make it a bit more clear that no police were involved
If the PI brings a bunch of big goons with guns and they imply that they'll kill you if you don't turn the thing over, then sure, that's a raid. But also you'd presumably call 911 immediately and file a police report stating that you were robbed.
That the attack depended on surprise and intimidation doesn't invalidate the use of attack or raid imho, that's the preferred outcome of any police raid too (and websters definition of attack is "to set upon or work against forcefully", no mention of physical violence).
A PI who's even vaguely trying to obey the law DEFINITELY does not expressly threaten you with violence, and won't allow any more than the barest implication either.
My hunch is that they probably have some kind of security contract with the Pinkertons to safeguard secrets, and the Pinkertons acted on their own. Hasbro/WotC has done some sketchy stuff recently, but this seems extreme even for them.
I'm told their security executive used to be a pinkerton.
This sort of response appears deranged to outsiders, but would be completely logical if you rationalize it as calling in a favor from your former colleagues. For someone like that, it's not a vulgar display of force-- it's just another Tuesday. Optics are overlooked in favor of ease.
This is almost certainly the case, but Pinkerton was acting as agents of WotC here, so WotC are the ones ultimately responsible.
Play Pinkerton games, win Pinkerton prizes.
Or, less flippantly: everyone knows who the Pinkertons are and what they do. And the fact that everyone knows is, quite literally, the actual service that they offer. They will do such things without you have to explicitly tell them.
Movies and TV often sow them as a policing the West in the early days of the US but what they should be known for is as thugs and strike breakers for hire who intimidate and threaten whoever you ask while providing distance and cover.
Aside from the xkcd, this 'everybody knows' effect can be domain specific. The people who hired the pinkertons, and any party interested in stealing corporate secrets, know who they are.
At this time, the US had no real Federal law enforcement to speak of. That came later, modeled after the Pinkertons. Fun fact: the FBI evolved as a result of the Mann Act [1], which was aimed at stopped at white women being "trafficked" across state lines by black men so really it was misagenation.
Anyway, the Pinkertons evolved as corporate muslce in the robber baron era. Strike-breaking, intimidation, sabotage, that sort of thing. At one point the Pinkertons were larger than the US Army. Thier downfall really began with with embarrassing incidents like the Homestead Strike [2].
Honestly two of the better depictions of the Pinkertons come from fiction: HBO's excellent Deadwood series and Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2.
The most important lesson here is that law enforcement in the US historically, culturally and actually exists to protect the interests of the wealthy, first and foremost.
as for WotC, they could've made good PR out of this by asking nicely for the cards back and giving the person something for their troubles since ultimately the mistake was WotC's. But no, let's choose violence.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Act
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike
Interestingly enough, the Mann Act was used to prosecute a high-and-mighty in the KKK: https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2004/march/kk...
It's like they've turned into the Comcast of table top games.
What do they really have beyond their brand? People can play other games.
“It was never our intention when we came on board this film to make a franchise . . . I think that would cloud our ability to focus entirely on the film at hand. The cardinal mistake many studios make is to put the cart before the horse, where they start crafting a cinematic universe before they even make a good single film. So first and foremost for us was getting this right.”
https://www.polygon.com/23665427/dungeons-and-dragons-honor-...
No definitely not
Certainly Dungeons and Dragons has tons of competition from other systems and I won't be playing it anymore, but it does have the network effect and weekly hosted games and name recognition.
MTG, I think, doesn't have serious competition. It is a unique juggernaut. Playing a 5e D&D game today has no relation to old 2e adventures, but many forms of Magic make use of ancient cards with serious monetary value.
Magic is also such an intricate and surprisingly balanced game and has something that other games somehow always struggle with: exactness. There is, technically, no room for interpretation on any Magic card (please correct me if I'm wrong here, I haven't played in 5+ years). Every possible interaction has a precise outcome that can be derived from the rules, or at worst from card-specific errata which are available freely and easily online.
The combination of amazing art, historic value, well-known lore, a massive library, and exact gameplay makes MTG difficult to buck. I'm certainly not buying any more cards, but I don't know where I would start looking if I got the itch for a card game again.
The comprehensive rules are intended to be fully comprehensive, with only simply logic needed to connect the parts. If this has failed anywhere leaving something without a clear resolution this would be considered a defect in the comprehensive rules or the card's canonical text.
Such defects are not especially common, as they tend to get noticed before new cards or mechanics are released. This is especially true since WOTC ends up programming these mechanics into software not once but at least twice. (First for MTGO, and then again for MTG Arena's backend, and sometimes needing to program it again for the Arena's front end code.)
The need to program it into the software gives makes it much more likely than any remaining ambiguity in the Card's Oracle text or the comprehensive rules gets noticed and addressed.
There seems to have been several reshuffles of just how legally independent WotC is from Hasbro over the years, although I’m not sure those legal reshuffles are indicative of how much actual power Hasbro was exercising.
My general impression is that WotC had found a point on the Pareto curve of “greedy” vs “respectful” where they were quite greedy but also quite respectful, and Hasbro’s more recent influence has pushed them into “very greedy”, not realizing the Pareto curve was extremely steep and so this caused a corresponding move all the way from “quite respectful” to “very disrespectful”.
You cannot just shoot someone who is standing outside your doorway, And claim that they were trying to break in.
You would go to jail.
You could go to jail. In some state's in the US, it is by no way guaranteed.
One day I came into my kitchen, there is my wife crying, and three big threating guys I do not know. I ask them to leave, instead of heading to door, they are aggressive and surround me. What do you thing is going to happen?
You better hope they are not actually aggressive? How are you getting out of this scenario other than being submissive or hoping they are "nice".
There are so many Clint Eastwoods in this thread.
That is why it is very stupid idea, to threaten people at their property!
I had the impression you were one of these guys that daydream about their (unrealistic) home defense plans.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine
It does not allow you to just shoot someone, who is standing outside your door.
If they broke into your house, then yes it might apply.
But it absolutely does not allow you to just shoot someone, who knocked on your door.
This guy wasn't even on his porch. Stand your ground laws essentially allow gun owners to claim they were frightened for their lives so that becomes "their castle". Wouldn't be very hard to repurpose this kind of weaponized law to actually defend your household.
btw - castle doctrine was intended to apply within property lines. If someone is on your doorstep, they are likely already clearly on your property.
All of this is theoretical but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if this is used for exactly what you said it shouldn't allow.
According to the zimmerman trial, if you look into it at all, Zimmerman claimed that he was being attacked, got knocked over on the ground, and then while the attacker was on top of him, yelling that he was going to kill him, he defended himself with a gun, at that point.
And there was some physical evidence and injuries supporting this narrative.
You can say that his statement is a lie, or that you don't believe his testimony.
But, if that testimony is true, Shooting someone who is on top of you, assaulting you, yelling that you are going to die, while you are on the ground, is a much different situation than shooting someone who just knocked on your door.
I would really recommend you look up that case more, if you thought it was in any way similar to "just shooting someone, at your door".
> He put himself in danger for the sole purpose of being able to use his weapon
Possibly. That doesn't contradict my statement though.
It is still completely irrelevant to the idea that a person could just shoot someone, who is at their front door.
A more accurate comparison, would be if someone was at your front door, and then that person gets on top of you, yells that they are going to kill you, starts punching you while being on top of you, and causes verifiable head injuries and head bleedings too you, and then you shoot them.
So, at the end of the day, the comparison is still irrelevant to a situation where someone merely knocks on your door.
Reasonable? No.
But its a kind of unreasonable that is far from unheard of (even when it is “in their driveway” rather than “at their door”.)
It sure sounds like it to me, even if only implicitly. They were certainly being intimidating, and intimidation rests on the foundation of the threat of violence.
I don't think thats true. They walked back their license BS over fan outrage.
Here’s some stuff I remember: -underprinting (legends) and overprinting (fallen empires)
-saying they wouldn’t reprint things (reserved list) then reprinting some, and monkeying around with it for 5 years
-original magic online in early 00s was completely poorly built at the time of lots of other MOOCs and a super lively IRC open source client, Apprentice, that they could have just cloned
-launching their new digital game, arena, as desktop only for its first three years
-killing their tournament play
-cutting out local stores with direct to consumer sales (and massive distribution through Amazon)
-$100 “vip” booster packs
-poor quality control that makes cards look like pringles
-multiple versions of each card with different foiling techniques
-firing artists over liking tweets
-new product every two months instead of 3-4 times per year
-freaking out over leaked spoilers
-telling some people what cards would be reprinted beforehand to have them purchase or sell accordingly
-not putting shandalar on steam/ never making sequels
Sure those formats are fun, but they should still focus on the core format and at the very least release some older sets in their entirety rather than just for the sake of commander/brawl play.
Also <insert_unfounded_rant_about_the_shuffler>
Idk maybe im just getting old and grumpy, but I still love the original format.
There is a meaningful difference here.
Showing up with private heat is the best way ensure I'll think twice about being helpful.
This. If you want me to be cooperative, set the tone by being cooperative yourself.
Maybe really well?
Hiring security was the more expensive option, in short and long term.
Show up with some money, a bunch of magic swag + cards, and offer to create a card making them some sort of in game knight or king or something. Photograph everything and have them sign a non-disparage and suddenly you've got some PR that's worth it's weight in gold. And the next time a little card mishap goes down you'll get people volunteering to give them back in hopes of a tenth of what you gave out the first time.
Or you could just do nothing because almost definitely nobody actually cares or will notice.
Jumping to sending private security to someone else's private residence feels like an absolute last resort to a much more serious issue.
Geez people really just create the drama they want. Easily should've told them to pound dirt and slam the door in their face.
Instead the article goes on about one agent being apologetic, and the others not caring.
People really are not aware of their rights.
Remember, if someone has to ASK you or have you CONSENT you can say no. But it seems people don't know they can refuse anymore.
"Just say no" on police matters is not good universal advice. It can have undesirable consequences.
Two immediate examples:
If you're pulled over and the cop wants to search your car for drugs, you can play roadside lawyer if you'd like. Say no-- it's your right. They'll bring in a drug dog, it'll ring positive (coerced or not), then they proceed to disassemble your car to punish you for being obstinate-- we're talking ripping off door panels and liners to look behind and underneath. Reassembly is for you to deal with. If you have nothing to hide, you save yourself some trouble by just consenting before they call in the dog, which only ever increases the invasiveness of the search. Fail early.
Same for DUI. You don't have to take a roadside sobriety test. Invoking your right to say no means you're getting detained anyway and will spend the next few hours in the hospital lab, which you will be billed for later. If you were drunk, you lose either way, but being stubborn is the costlier approach. Fail early.
You have some rights on land you own. Fewer rights on land you rent. No rights on the road.
While dogs can ring positive for coerced, you want to make sure the search is as illegal as possible so that any evidence can be tossed, no evidence == no case. A dog can signal falsely for "drugs" but let's say they found $8000, that you have a receipt from the bank? While they will attempt civil forfeiture -- the dog was only for drugs - meaning no drugs found == better attempt to get that case thrown. Same for other medications, or any contraband.
For your DUI example, many a lawyer I talked too and in my university days every law/pre-law professor stated if that ever happened, they would always refuse because it does not present evidence easily - a few hours in a hospital lab means any test result then will be delayed, and lets say you were drunk, (something I don't condone) - you now have more time to sober up and the further test results will be farther from when the stop was done.
It is much easier to defeat a DUI Charge if there was no evidence at roadside that you were actually impaired. Even if your car is towed and you're billed high for the forced blood test and what not - it is still cheaper than a DUI charge which runs $15,000 nowadays, not including the future insurance waivers/SR-22/FR-44 probably required.
You have rights, it is much easier to win a case/have your case dismissed if there is proof the police violated your rights. Lawyers glee and prosecutors will drop cases where there is overt police rights violation.
I would say depending on the area, and on your race/skin color is more of a issue if you're being pulled over vs not consenting to a search because bias exists and LEO will try and try more - but with dashcams and such - that's changing, marginally. Though the video of the uber lawyer lately has been making the laps, to the point where that officer in question did get a promotion.
https://about.usps.com/publications/pub300a/pub300a_v04_revi...
If I were a fan, this would have sobered me out of it immediately.
Now I wonder what happened to the guy selling Zelda Tears of the Kingdom two weeks early that "fell off the back of the truck". Nintendo probably read this and put these thugs on retainer for the next major release, if they don't already.