[cherdano]

billw55, on 2014-August-29, 12:37, said:

What a strange thing to say.

In my view, deciding elections between two candidates in any other way than by popular votes is less democratic than deciding by popular vote.

In fact, I find this a truly obvious concept, and that it needs a lot of brain-washing/being used to other systems for someone to even find another opinion reasonable. Noone thinking about this question from first principles would come to any other conclusion.

Yes, I have read many arguments in favour of the electoral college. I'd say anyone who would propose them in a vacuum when you start a country from scratch would be laughed out of the room.

[hrothgar]

kenberg, on 2014-August-29, 15:51, said:

Yes, I see his point. If you give an Uzi to a 9 year old, you must remember to stand behind her instead of beside her. Regardless of just how crazy Americans are or are not, this guy is a true outlier.

This was obviously a tragedy. With this said and done, I'm no gun aficionado and even I know that uzi's drift up and to the left.
Standing to the left of an 8 year old firing a fully automatic uzi chambered for large rounds is near suicidal.

[kenberg]

I know nothing about uzis, and am content in my ignorance. However, if a person is attempting to hit a target directly in front of her, and if it is dangerous to be standing directly to the side of her, then that person really should not be firing that weapon. I find it very difficult to believe that standing directly to the left is dangerous, even suicidal, and standing elsewhere would be perfectly safe. If the experience of firing this thing is so unstable that it might fire 90 degrees to the left of the intended direction. it is not safe no matter where you are. In particular it is not safe for the child.

I repeat I do not know anything about uzis. But an argument that the mistake was standing to the child's left, rather than that the mistake was giving the child the uzi, seems out of whack to me. Sort of like partner opening on 8 points and five spades to the queen and then explaining to me the errors I made during the subsequent auction.

I juxtaposed the article about the uzi with an opinion piece by Petula Dvorak on the supervision of children. Anyone who is remotely my age, pretty much no matter where they grew up, will tell you that (middle class) kids today are far more supervised and watched over than we were. I in fact think the freedom that I had was very valuable, as Ms. Dvorak suggests. But really no one, and I mean no one, would have put such a weapon into my hands or the hands of any of my friends when we were 9.

I confess that it feels wrong to be discussing this. As you say, it's a tragedy. It's not my tragedy. It's too damn bad. But some things seem to be really stupid.

[hrothgar]

kenberg, on 2014-August-31, 06:42, said:

I know nothing about uzis, and am content in my ignorance. However, if a person is attempting to hit a target directly in front of her, and if it is dangerous to be standing directly to the side of her, then that person really should not be firing that weapon. I find it very difficult to believe that standing directly to the left is dangerous, even suicidal, and standing elsewhere would be perfectly safe. If the experience of firing this thing is so unstable that it might fire 90 degrees to the left of the intended direction. it is not safe no matter where you are. In particular it is not safe for the child.

This all goes back to Newton's third law. For any action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

When you fire a weapon, the bullet gets thrown out in one direction. However, you're going to have a recoil in the opposite direction.
In general, the line of the barrel is going to be above your hands. As a result, when you fire you get what's known as "muzzle rise".

IN a similar vein, uzi's eject and vent to the right (they throw shells and vent gas out of the right hand side of the weapon).
This causes the weapons to drift to the left when they are fired.

I've never fired an uzi. I have fired a fully automatic twelve gauge.
I'm a large guy. I was specifically warned about drift and rise.
I was being careful and started by firing short bursts.
I found the shotguns tendency to drift un-nerving.

I don't find it at all surprising that a nine year could lose control when firing an uzi
(And if she did lose control, I know where I wouldn't want to be standing)

[blackshoe]

It was two stupid mistakes, and the combination of the two was fatal. As you say, Ken, a tragedy.

[barmar]

kenberg, on 2014-August-31, 06:42, said:

I juxtaposed the article about the uzi with an opinion piece by Petula Dvorak on the supervision of children. Anyone who is remotely my age, pretty much no matter where they grew up, will tell you that (middle class) kids today are far more supervised and watched over than we were. I in fact think the freedom that I had was very valuable, as Ms. Dvorak suggests. But really no one, and I mean no one, would have put such a weapon into my hands or the hands of any of my friends when we were 9.

I'm sure that in rural areas, kids under 10 have been hunting for generations. That's presumably where the industry practice of allowing children 8 and older to shoot at gun ranges comes from.

It's not the same as firing automatic machine guns, but the gun lobby has managed to get Congress to ignore the difference between types of weapons in most gun laws.

[helene_t]

In Denmark, when I was young, you could get an air gun when you were 12. A friend of mine got one for his 12th birthday. On his first day with the gun I was standing next to him, he fired it, the projectile hit some metal bar close to the target and repelled back towards me hitting my face about two cms from my right eye.

This is a weapon that is harmless unless you specifically shoot someone in his/her eye. Still I don't think it is safe to let inexperienced people, regardless of age, use it without qualifed supervision, in an environment free of hard surfaces from which the projectile could repell.

OK, some would say that we allow people to use much more dangerous toys, like bicykles and kitchen knives, without qualified supervision. But the difference is that bicycles and kitchen knives serve a useful purpose and are difficult to replace by less dangerous equipment. An air gun is utterly useless. If people want to shoot for fun they can play computer games, or they can get one of those toy guns that shoots with water or ping-pong balls.

I suppose that I would count as an anti-gun extremist in the US. But the US is the country that bans Kinder Eggs because they are too dangerous, and where you risk being taken to court for selling coffee that is hot enough to cause skin burns. So I don't see why it would be such an extreme idea to restrict access to air guns.

[kenberg]

There were a number of things from my childhood that in retrospect seem like errors.. I had a bb gun very early and we used to fire it in the basement. One of the bbs bounced off the wall and hit a frien in the foot. No harm done, but we were lucky or at least not unlucky. I also had an airgun, maybe when I was 12,but I think maybe a little younger. I had it for a while and then I didn't have it, I don't remember why. My guess is the neighbors came over and had a word ort two with my parents. I stayed with a cousin on a farm when I was 8 or maybe 9. I suspect we werre not supposed to do this, but he knew where the deer hunting rifle was and we took it and tried it out. I had my own shotgun, a 16 guage single shot, at fairly early age, about 12 or so, and I hunted pheasants with my father.

The hunting strikes me as reasonable. I was a sensible 12 year old, I was taught and supervised. I in fact gave up hunting when in my 20s, I decided I was really a city boy pretending to be something I wasn't and I should stop. But unless you think hunting is simply wrong from the get go, I think hunting under supervision with a non-automatic weapon at the age of 12 is not crazy.

The air rifle was a bit crazy. It was used in my backyard without supervision. As mentioned, I suspect it disappeared from my life after neighbors objected. I'm on their side.

After I caught the kid in the foot with the bb gun, I didn't have to be told to stop. I put it away.


It's a fact that childhood, as I experienced it, had its dangers. But not severe. The attitude, the expectation of what a child's responsibilities were, was different. Example: In the winter we went sledding on hills in a tree nursery. Technically, we were not supposed to be there. The best hill was quite good and ended right before railroad tracks.You had to make a point of stopping, or you ended on the tracks. I was not forbidden to go there, but my mother explained about the dangers of standing too close to a train as it passed by. The rest was my responsibility. I see this approach as lessons in practical living. One of my favorite memories: A friend and I went through the ice of a pond in the same tree nursery, me just a little, my friend about to his waist. (I moved faster when i heard cracking.) We went back to my house. My friend's mother was far more excitable about such events than my mother was. So she called my friend's mother and asked if my friend could stay for dinner. Permission granted, and he went home dry. No doubt my mother was in some sense wrong in concealing this from the other mother, but she already saw me as a questionable playmate for her son and this would have brought our times together to an end. Most mothers were fine with me.

This tree nursery was also a great source of plums in the summer. We all regarded ourselves as enormously clever for stealing them. Actually, as long as we didn't harm the trees, I don't think anyone much minded. I have often wondered just how much DDT I consumed. We ate a lot of plums. Made me what I am today!

Judgment was not always perfect, neither my judgment nor my parent's. But no one gave me an automatic weapon to fire that I could not control. As the saying goes, we may be dumb but we aren't stupid.

[kenberg]

I can understand if everyone feels that they have read all about Ferguson that they wanted to, but I really liked this article in the Washington Post this morning.

http://www.washingto...?wpisrc=nl_most

This is the first article about Michael Brown that I have read where I didn't feel like I was being given a snow job. He comes across, to me at least, as a real person in this. So does his friend Dorian Johnson.
For example, when Johnson and Brown first met:

Quote

Sometime in March, a buddy stopped by with a stranger.

"Wow," Johnson said, "that's a big dude."

The dude, Michael Brown, was 6-foot-4, and he had brushed past Johnson with barely a hello as he headed to the video-game console and began to play.

"I asked, 'Why he don't speak?' " Johnson recalled in a 90-minute interview with The Washington Post last week — his first interview since federal authorities questioned him shortly after the shooting, his attorneys


"He don't like to talk to people," the buddy said.

"He's in my house, he's going to talk to me," Johnson replied — then he engaged Brown. Johnson soon had the answer to his own question.

"His voice didn't fit his body. He might as well have been my size," said Johnson, who is a lean 5-foot-7. said

This just seems real to me. The whole story seems real to me. I like it.

[billw55]

kenberg, on 2014-September-01, 16:09, said:

This just seems real to me. The whole story seems real to me. I like it.

Unfortunately his account of the shooting does not appear to be consistent with the facts reported from the autopsies. No shots in the back.

[kenberg]

billw55, on 2014-September-02, 06:39, said:

Unfortunately his account of the shooting does not appear to be consistent with the facts reported from the autopsies. No shots in the back.

I was thinking about such things after I posted the link. The article focuses on Brown and Johnson, their lives, and their relationship. This is the part that I found so real. Somewhere in there is says that in the interview, Johnson was advised by his attorneys not to discuss the details of the shooting. Of course he had made previous statements.

So I tossed out of consideration the rehash of those details. Of course they are critical, but that will be examined at length by trained investigators, and I will leave it to them. What I liked so much was the discussion of life there. It rang true in so many ways. For example, Johnson had had some trouble with the police, but not beyond repair, and he was, as best he could, attempting to get ihs life moving. It shows. At the convenience store, Brown took the cigarillos and gave some to Johnson. Johnson put them back on the counter and left the store. The guy is learning. There was just a great amount of stuff like that.

As I have said in my earlier posts, I am not that much of an advocate of the everyone must go to college idea. Brown was going to go to trade school. His English teacher described it as his plan B, he really wanted to make it as a rapper. He had a little difficulty making it through high school. By the time I finished, the guy seemed ral and in fact I felt empathy for him. The sort of guy I hope for the best for. Not the college bound gentle giant first described, but a young guy making choices, some of them bad 9punching a cop is a very very bad choice) but maybe looking for guidance from the more mature Johnson and giving life a try.

If we are ever going to better the lives of young people such as Brown and Johnson, we first have to have a realistic view of where they are. The original stories were total bull, and that rarely helps anyone.

[barmar]

helene_t, on 2014-September-01, 02:28, said:

In Denmark, when I was young, you could get an air gun when you were 12. A friend of mine got one for his 12th birthday. On his first day with the gun I was standing next to him, he fired it, the projectile hit some metal bar close to the target and repelled back towards me hitting my face about two cms from my right eye.

This is a weapon that is harmless unless you specifically shoot someone in his/her eye. Still I don't think it is safe to let inexperienced people, regardless of age, use it without qualifed supervision, in an environment free of hard surfaces from which the projectile could repell.

So you're the reason why Ralphie's parents didn't want him to get a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle for Christmas.

http://en.wikipedia....Christmas_Story

[Winstonm]

A witness hereto unknown to the press has come forward to tell his story to the St. Louis Dispatch here

Quote

His account largely matches those who reported that Wilson chased Brown on foot away from the car after the initial gunshot and fired at least one more shot in the direction of Brown as he was fleeing; that Brown stopped, turned around and put his hands up; and that the officer killed Brown in a barrage of gunfire.

[billw55]

Winstonm, on 2014-September-06, 15:28, said:

A witness hereto unknown to the press has come forward to tell his story to the St. Louis Dispatch here

As usual, more information comes out as time passes.

Quote

At least one witness has said Brown was not moving. Others didn't mention him moving, while still others have said he was heading toward Wilson.

There is no way to determine how many witnesses have spoken to law enforcement without making public statements.

Only when a trial comes around, will we finally hear from all the witnesses. Maybe not even then.

I rather think the prosecution has an uphill battle in a criminal trial because of the robbery video. As I understand, the officer claims that Brown was violent. The video shows him committing a pseudoviolent crime less than an hour before the shooting, making it very plausible that he was in a violent state of mind at the time. This goes a long way toward reasonable doubt.

So there may well be some rioting yet to come. Either when they don't indict, or when they acquit.

A civil trial may be different. The burden of proof is much lighter. It remains to be seen who they actually sue - the city has deeper pockets than the officer - and whether or not there is a settlement.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2014-September-06, 15:28, said:

A witness hereto unknown to the press has come forward to tell his story to the St. Louis Dispatch here

A fuller quote from the story:

Quote

His account largely matches those who reported that Wilson chased Brown on foot away from the car after the initial gunshot and fired at least one more shot in the direction of Brown as he was fleeing; that Brown stopped, turned around and put his hands up; and that the officer killed Brown in a barrage of gunfire.

But his account does little to clarify perhaps the most critical moment of the confrontation, on which members of the grand jury in St. Louis County may focus to determine whether the officer was justified in using lethal force: whether Brown moved toward Wilson just before the fatal shots, and if he did, how aggressively.

At least one witness has said Brown was not moving. Others didn’t mention him moving, while still others have said he was heading toward Wilson.

The truth matters, and getting at it is, as it usually is, tough. In this age when a robin can't chirp without someone posting the event on Youtube, it's amazing that no pictures have surfaced. I gather that they don't exist, since I imagine a person could make more than a few bucks by selling them to the media. So we will need to depend on eyewitnesses, and that is always iffy.

If we think in the large, about many confrontations of the public with the police, surelly most would conced that at times it will be police misconduct, at time it will be ont misconduct but bad judgment, at times it will be simply that things got out of hand with no one really to blame, at times it will be that the police officer was fully justified, meaning that almost everyone can understand why the use of a weapon was reasonable. Sorting out which is which is not going to be easy. No one thinks a cop gets to shoot someone simply because the somebody pissed the cop off. Aggravating someone who has a gun is stupid, really stupid, but it doesn't justify the use of the gun.

Overall, my experience with the police is fine. Not always smooth, but still fine. If I don't act like an idiot, all goes well. But yes, I'm white. And now I am now no longer a youngster. And I am not all that excitable. So my experience is of limited value in discussing a place such as Ferguson. in the stories about the cop, Wilson, some see a guy who comes from a troubled background and perhaps lacks the restraint to be a good cop. I see a guy who overcame a bad background and was trying his best. One way or the other, he is the sort of guy that a town such as Ferguson is likely to have as a cop. Who are they going to hire? They want a college educated highly trained person with great social skills, social commitment and empathy to work for 45 K a year keeping the peace in a dying town with racial problems and poverty? Good luck.

I hope that they can determine the truth, and I hope that they can do it in such a way that most people who look fairly at the evidence will see that it is the truth. Until they are done with the investigation and with the presentation to the grand jury, and then perhaps to a jury, I will resist drawing a conclusion one way or the other as to what happened there.

[Winstonm]

None of us can know what happened to this young man or to this policeman, so we all rely on our own experience to fill in the holes in the story. I know I have been around people who had at least temporary authority over me and who seemed to enjoy and relish that position for the wrong reasons. Because of this, I have trouble discounting the stories of race bias by police throughout the country.

I know they have a tough job - but it often transforms into a Them verses US job. When you place an almost all white police force into a mostly black neighborhood this Them verses US mentality gains an added wrinkle.

Hopefully, there is a solution - but I am unsure as to what that might be.

[PassedOut]

A few days after the Ferguson shooting, I was discussing the situation with an urban police detective who is a close relative. He said that, regardless of the initial reports, he was pretty sure the reason Brown stopped running was that the officer had fired a shot toward him. In his experience, suspects had never stopped running upon command. He also believes strongly that whenever a citizen is shot by an officer, that absolute and immediate transparency by the police department is mandatory professionally.

[billw55]

PassedOut, on 2014-September-08, 12:00, said:

A few days after the Ferguson shooting, I was discussing the situation with an urban police detective who is a close relative. He said that, regardless of the initial reports, he was pretty sure the reason Brown stopped running was that the officer had fired a shot toward him. In his experience, suspects had never stopped running upon command.

This certainly sounds true. Is it established whether Brown was ever running away?

Quote

He also believes strongly that whenever a citizen is shot by an officer, that absolute and immediate transparency by the police department is mandatory professionally.

I assume this to mean including the name of the officer(s) involved, and prompt public release of the officer's statement. I agree with this.

Also, something else. On the information I have seen so far, it seems likely that not every round fired hit Mr. Brown. Some missed. Where did those rounds go? This was an apartment complex. Bystanders could easily be hit. I am interested in an explanation of the FPD policy and training for use of weapons in such a circumstance.

[barmar]

billw55, on 2014-September-08, 06:25, said:

Only when a trial comes around, will we finally hear from all the witnesses. Maybe not even then.

And even so, it's not clear how useful such testimony will be. Modern psychology and neuroscience has shown that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. And if the witnesses are biased, as they almost certainly are in such an emotional situation, that just makes things worse.