Gunmen Open Fire On Mother's Day Parade

[Gravekeeper]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/12/us/lou...html?hpt=hp_t2

Seriously, what the Hell? Note the plural: Gunmen. What the fsck is the motive behind this one? Luckily they were terrible shots so no one was killed. But still, what the fsck?

[Grendus]

Probably "inspired" by the bombing in Boston. Just a bunch of assholes.

[smileyeagle1021]

Probably "inspired" by the bombing in Boston. Just a bunch of assholes.

Hopefully the police will be likewise inspired by Boston and kill at least one of the gunmen on site and not make the mistake of letting the other one live to go through our broken legal system that values the rights of criminals more than the rights of their victims.

[draco664]

Hopefully the police will be likewise inspired by Boston and kill at least one of the gunmen on site and not make the mistake of letting the other one live to go through our broken legal system that values the rights of criminals more than the rights of their victims.

Yeah, and the cops just should have shot the three brothers who kidnapped those girls and held them for ten years instead of arresting them. We'd all be so much better off without all those expensive court cases.

Oh wait, two of them were released without charge, weren't they... Perhaps courts have a place in a free society after all...

[smileyeagle1021]

Oh wait, two of them were released without charge, weren't they... Perhaps courts have a place in a free society after all...

They have a place, and that is to determine facts, did the person commit the act they are accused of, yes or no, and that is IT. The courts have forgotten that though and now allow for the person's entire life to be reviewed for any excuse on why they would do it. The Jodi Arias trial was the perfect example, oh, she shouldn't be found guilty because she had an abusive past... great, was she being abused at the moment she killed Scott, was she defending her life? Oh, we can't prove that, and in fact it looks like she wasn't, but look at how horrible her life has been. All I can say is thank God the jury remembered their place even if the court didn't.
Or my other favorite courts forgetting their place is when the family of the perpetrator, after guilt has been confirmed, gets a say in the punishment, and oh woe is us, we will be losing a family member to prison... oh boo fucking who, the courts shouldn't care about the criminal's family, only the victim's family and the safety of any potential future victims if the criminal is not dealt with.
And this flaw of giving criminals more rights than their victims stretches to both ends of the criminal spectrum. I've personally witnessed a case where a man who was proven guilty of raping and torturing a 16 year old girl was appealing his sentence of solitary confinement because it was such a cruel punishment... bullshit, a cruel, yet just, punishment would be cutting off his dick to make sure he never does it again, compared to his actions solitary confinement is a mercy... the courts agreed with him and moved him to general population. At the other end of the spectrum, even petty criminals are given more rights than their victims. One of my grandma's friends owned property, squatters moved into it, when my grandma's friend tried to have them arrested for trespassing, they were informed that the squatters were in fact not trespassing, they did have rights, they would have to go through an eviction process, and by the way, her friend was fined for not maintaining the property to state standards for rental housing. That's right, the courts punished her friend, the VICTIM of the crime and rewarded the criminals. Ask me again how much respect I have for our legal system.

[Panacea]

They have a place, and that is to determine facts, did the person commit the act they are accused of, yes or no, and that is IT. The courts have forgotten that though and now allow for the person's entire life to be reviewed for any excuse on why they would do it.

OK, now you've moved on to the strawman of mitigating circumstances to avoid dealing with the refutation of what you said, that basically the suspects should just be shot dead on the street and avoid all the messiness of a trial. I mean, we all know they did it, right?

Except in the case of the Castro brothers, the police believe now that they had no knowledge of what Ariel Castro was up to. They're innocent.

People die on death row who are innocent, like that fellow in Texas whose kids died in a house fire, and he was convicted of arson . . . only it wasn't arson . . . and he was executed.

Or men who spend 20-30 years in prison for rapes they didn't commit: DNA proves it years later when the technology improves.

I'll agree our criminal justice system is broken. But I'll never go for the idea that it's better for a suspect to be killed by police rather than face a trial.

Or my other favorite courts forgetting their place is when the family of the perpetrator, after guilt has been confirmed, gets a say in the punishment, and oh woe is us, we will be losing a family member to prison... oh boo fucking who, the courts shouldn't care about the criminal's family, only the victim's family and the safety of any potential future victims if the criminal is not dealt with.

Those kinds of pleas don't usually get much traction with judges, who have to put public safety first.

And victims have for a long time now been able to make impact statements of their own, which judges take a lot more seriously.

I've personally witnessed a case where a man who was proven guilty of raping and torturing a 16 year old girl was appealing his sentence of solitary confinement because it was such a cruel punishment... bullshit, a cruel, yet just, punishment would be cutting off his dick to make sure he never does it again, compared to his actions solitary confinement is a mercy...

We send people to prison AS punishment, not FOR punishment. As one who has worked in corrections, I will tell you solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment, which is a violation of the 8th Amendment. What that man did is terrible; prison is the place for him. But torture is not the American way, and I do not condone it.

Solitary just hardens criminals and makes them both psychotic and more dangerous than ever before. There is over 100 years of study on this issue, from the earliest inceptions of the penitentiary system (which was a solitary confinement system) created by (of all people) Quakers to allow criminals to reflect on their crimes and seek repentance (hence penitentiary ie penitent). Those early inmates went crazy, and the system was abandoned as a failure.

At the other end of the spectrum, even petty criminals are given more rights than their victims. One of my grandma's friends owned property, squatters moved into it, when my grandma's friend tried to have them arrested for trespassing, they were informed that the squatters were in fact not trespassing, they did have rights, they would have to go through an eviction process, and by the way, her friend was fined for not maintaining the property to state standards for rental housing. That's right, the courts punished her friend, the VICTIM of the crime and rewarded the criminals. Ask me again how much respect I have for our legal system.

Then fix the law, instead of bitching about the system. Become an advocate. DO something.

[Nekojin]

You don't want justice, SmileyEagle, you want vengeance, and you really need to learn the difference. Vengeance isn't completely a bad thing, in and of itself, but it leads to horrible, horrible policy. You're forgetting some of the founding principles of our justice system - it is better that a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished, as the saying goes. Are innocent men still punished sometimes? Yes, because our system is flawed, because people are flawed. It's impossible to make an absolutely foolproof system that can sort the legitimate criminals apart from the innocent. It's just not possible. The tighter you make the rules, the more people are going to be able to game the system. But as a general rule, the courts do make an effort to do that sorting, anyway.

You complained about the Jodi Arias case, and how her entire history was brought up. I'm not familiar with the case, but I have to point out that's the fucking job of a defense attorney. He's supposed to go to every length to get his client off, not say, "Yep, she did it, put a bullet in her and end it now." He's supposed to bring up every detail that might be relevant, because justice requires an adversarial process. Do you really think it would be wise to set up kangaroo courts, where a listing of the charges is immediately followed by a reading of punishment, with no say from the defendant?

You don't want costly trials with uncertain verdicts? You want swift, summary judgement? I don't want to live in this paradise that you envision, because it sure sounds like hell to me.

And by the way... please start using paragraph breaks. Wall'o'text makes your posts hard to read. Just sayin'.

[Andara Bledin]

I hope they find the people involved and they get taken down hard.

That said, I wonder if it wasn't a matter of people firing into a crowd and perhaps an incidents of people firing at each other.

There were multiple weapons involved and it seems as though the shooters were not together.

Unfortunately, I doubt we'll hear much of the resolution to this one.

[Gravekeeper]

That said, I wonder if it wasn't a matter of people firing into a crowd and perhaps an incidents of people firing at each other.
.

Good question. Though the footage they just released shows 1 of the alleged 3. He's just hanging out about 10-15 feet from the crowd. He talks to another guy for a minute, then that guy walks out of frame. Then he walks right up to the crowd and just starts shooting.

If its a cross fire situation, this guy is huge fucking idiot on several levels. As it means he really thought trying to peg his target by firing wildly into a crowd was a good plan.

[Andara Bledin]

His stance looks like he's firing at someone, as opposed to just firing randomly. The entire time he's shown, he's staring in the same direction, and the other person with him looks that way several times and is still in view, looking in that direction, when the shooting starts.

And he's not firing wildly. He's firing in a single direction multiple times. His callous disregard for any collateral damage is psychopathic, but based on the number of people not moving in the upper part of the frame, he apparently managed to hit at least one of his targets. That none of them were killed means that he's either getting ID'd by at least one of them, or he'll turn up dead later on, should this prove to be gang or drug related.

[Panacea]

That said, I wonder if it wasn't a matter of people firing into a crowd and perhaps an incidents of people firing at each other.

My very thought. This sounds to me like rival gang members taking pops at one another over perceived slights.

NOLA's police aren't considered the most competent in the world. They have a long history of corruption. I'm not sanguine they'll find the guys who did this. The city is gang infested, and if it weren't for the Mississippi River traffic it would have died like Detroit is dying now a long, long time ago.

[Anthony K. S.]

it is better that a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished, as the saying goes

It's "ten guilty men," actually.

You know, I once saw somebody respond to that adage by sarcastically saying, "So, you wouldn't mind having those ten guilty men move in next door to you?"

I remember thinking, "I'll tell you what. I'll volunteer to have those ten guilty men move in next door to me, just as soon as you volunteer to be the one innocent man spending the rest of your life in prison for something you didn't do."

[Gravekeeper]

His stance looks like he's firing at someone, as opposed to just firing randomly. The entire time he's shown, he's staring in the same direction, and the other person with him looks that way several times and is still in view, looking in that direction, when the shooting starts.

Yes, I was reserving a bit of judgement due to the low FPS and no other shooter being in the frame that I could spot. CNN has a second video on a cell phone now that while you can't really see anything, you can hear the shots and they're too rapid and numerous to just be one shooter.

Though rest assured the Patriot News Organization has already declared this a government false flag operation to support gun control. >.>

[Andara Bledin]

Though rest assured the Patriot News Organization has already declared this a government false flag operation to support gun control. >.>

Yeah, no shock there.

I'm pretty sure that the only reason this even made the news was because of the holiday.

[Panacea]

You know, I once saw somebody respond to that adage by sarcastically saying, "So, you wouldn't mind having those ten guilty men move in next door to you?"

I remember thinking, "I'll tell you what. I'll volunteer to have those ten guilty men move in next door to me, just as soon as you volunteer to be the one innocent man spending the rest of your life in prison for something you didn't do."

I wished you'd said it; I'd love to know what his reaction would have been.

But if you don't mind, I'll file this away for future use. I'm sure I'll run into some asshat who says something like that in the future.