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seckle wrote:

Mr Hyde wrote:

seckle wrote:You'd never see riots like yours here in america. Remember that many of our states allow for defence of property with deadly force. Georgia for example....you are legally allowed to arm your household. If someone breaks into your house in atlanta, or kicks down your door, you can shoot them dead, and its not murder, its self defense.

Imagine if UK shopowners were allowed to defend their property with deadly force?

Yeah, it'd stop the looting. But I'm not really keen on having society putting more value on property than lives.

In the state of the world today, your property becomes your life. Look at the fruit seller in egypt, and where that went.....

It might seem the way it is, and I know that is quite an ingrained american attitude- but it isn't really like that everywhere, or doesn't need to be. The UK damage cost is covered by the Police if you don't have insurance, no need to become a murderer over it- not the way civilized societies should be. Life shouldn't be considered that cheap.

Mr Hyde wrote:

seckle wrote:

Mr Hyde wrote:

seckle wrote:You'd never see riots like yours here in america. Remember that many of our states allow for defence of property with deadly force. Georgia for example....you are legally allowed to arm your household. If someone breaks into your house in atlanta, or kicks down your door, you can shoot them dead, and its not murder, its self defense.

Imagine if UK shopowners were allowed to defend their property with deadly force?

Yeah, it'd stop the looting. But I'm not really keen on having society putting more value on property than lives.

In the state of the world today, your property becomes your life. Look at the fruit seller in egypt, and where that went.....

It might seem the way it is, and I know that is quite an ingrained american attitude- but it isn't really like that everywhere, or doesn't need to be. The UK damage cost is covered by the Police if you don't have insurance, no need to become a murderer over it- not the way civilized societies should be. Life shouldn't be considered that cheap.

this.

everyone i know lives by the motto "material things can be replaced, lives cant"

seckle wrote:You'd never see riots like yours here in america. Remember that many of our states allow for defence of property with deadly force. Georgia for example....you are legally allowed to arm your household. If someone breaks into your house in atlanta, or kicks down your door, you can shoot them dead, and its not murder, its self defense.

Imagine if UK shopowners were allowed to defend their property with deadly force?

yea cos the threat of potential violence has done so much for decreasing crime in major american cities

get real

like Deadly Habit said, LA Riots mate...

Mr Hyde wrote:Life shouldn't be considered that cheap.

Of course I agree with you. i'm usually against most of the handgun thirst that fills america, but the " right to bear arms" comes from the response to being oppressed by force to begin with. Its the framework of our country. This will never change.

The issue really is, when is deadly force appropriate? When is self-defense a justified response?

You're kinda forgetting that the LA riots actually taught our country a lesson. It's why every single american posting in that thread mentioned "they're destroying their own neighbrohoods" that was the big takeaway from the LA riots from our country, and a prime reason why riots in the US (even sports ones) really are lackluster since.


If we do anything you're more likely to see marches on government buildings that turn violent, not neighborhood rioting. We're more likely to go fuck up political destinations these days.

Plus our country is in general more sparsely populated and easier to control than the UK. Our densely populated areas (new york for example) have absurd number of cops. Think NYC has upwards of 40,000 police officers. That's the size of your active duty Royal Navy in one city.


I'm sure we have the ability to do great harm... but as long as our police forces are functioning chances of rioting are going to remain an every few decades thing nationwide for anything worth mentioning

that and there is kind of a change in the way people protest as well with the whole internet revolution
people who used to actually go out and physically protest, collect signatures etc are now content signing e-petitions etc and have gotten complacent when it comes to actually going out and affecting change

but i def agree that the LA riots taught people here

deadly habit wrote:that and there is kind of a change in the way people protest as well with the whole internet revolution
people who used to actually go out and physically protest, collect signatures etc are now content signing e-petitions etc and have gotten complacent when it comes to actually going out and affecting change

but i def agree that the LA riots taught people here

ironic thing being that part of LA is like middle class now... fuck most of LA is posh now.

what did yall make of the Wisconsin state fair thing?

seckle wrote:You'd never see riots like yours here in america. Remember that many of our states allow for defence of property with deadly force. Georgia for example....you are legally allowed to arm your household. If someone breaks into your house in atlanta, or kicks down your door, you can shoot them dead, and its not murder, its self defense.

Imagine if UK shopowners were allowed to defend their property with deadly force?

From the Crown Prosecution Service:

If you have acted in reasonable self-defence, as described above, and the intruder dies you will still have acted lawfully. Indeed, there are several such cases where the householder has not been prosecuted.

http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/pros ... lders.html

We're not a deeply ingrained violent society like yours. So we'd probably be less inclined to kill someone.

pkay has gotten the closest to why I think riots are a whole different ball of wax here. It's geography. The US is huge. I mean, you could even say that states are their own countries in a way. You might see riots within a state brood to a higher level, but for this whole country to begin rioting across with synchrony will need something insane to spark it, and most likely I fear it will be something not aimed at anything good if it happens.

Isn't there an overpopulation problem?

clifford_- wrote:everyone i know lives by the motto "material things can be replaced, lives cant"

Unfortunately it seems you are incorrect about that.

What about detroit riot? That was close to armed rebellion from what little I know. A lot of rifle barrels poking out of windows, army/tanks in the streets.

In the US, the police seem to be way less pussy than UK police. The US police will not hesitate to use deadly force/high tech sound/microwave weapons. I remember being in a very minor riot in LA (not the LA riot, like a year or two after) and as soon as there was a sufficient group of people assembled they just started with the tear gas and rubber bullets. I had a shell casing as a souvenir (my homie had a traffic light as a reminder, lolzer)

I just don't even see London level rioting happening here in the US, unless shit comes seriously unglued. Like profoundly unglued. And in that case, yes, this will be a hell hole. Millions could die very quickly.

nowaysj wrote:

clifford_- wrote:everyone i know lives by the motto "material things can be replaced, lives cant"

Unfortunately it seems you are incorrect about that.

What about detroit riot? That was close to armed rebellion from what little I know. A lot of rifle barrels poking out of windows, army/tanks in the streets.

The point was being made as a comparison between the UK and US... we value life over our small-business holdings here. The owner of the furniture store, that Seckle thinks should've been out with his shotgun said he feels:

Sad. I'm just disappointed. It could have happened to anyone but we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And a family member:

It's not my job to be angry. It's up to the Governments of the land and the people that did this to look at themselves.

They need to take a hard look at themselves.

He praised the response of the emergency services, saying they could have done no more to have saved the business.

Mr Reeves went on: "When you get down here you think 'If only the police had been quicker, if only the fire service had been quicker...'

"But they did the best they could. All you can hope for now is for the community to make it a better place.

"Everyone is so cross and angry right now. Let's just be friends and let's work together."

Now that is the attitude.

At the end of the day, your government makes a big deal out of protecting and caring for the citizens of the UK, and that didn't happen.

Helix [Delay] wrote:At the end of the day, your government makes a big deal out of protecting and caring for the citizens of the UK, and that didn't happen.

Depends how you look at things I guess, if the police went out guns blazing- there might be less property damage and looting (then again it might have caused more rioting and looting- this was all triggered by a police shooting after all). But there also might be a much higher death count of looters (UK citizens) getting shot and killed by the Police.

Surely its not the pussy thing to do to be a policeman and show restraint and just use manpower rather than rocking up with tear gas and bullets?

I don't think UK citizens have much appetite for state sanctioned murder in order to protect property, and generally value civil liberties and not allowing too much police force unless really needed.

It seems that most of the worst offenders are getting rounded up and punished in a civilised way quite quickly and property damage is either covered by insurance or Police will cover it, isn't that a better outcome than more deaths and violence?

Helix [Delay] wrote:At the end of the day, your government makes a big deal out of protecting and caring for the citizens of the UK, and that didn't happen.

Well, that fuck someone's sorted it all out. It's not like the last time the police had to deal with riots they ended up killing someone and being pilloried by the public for months leading to this very atmosphere... it's not like they might be a little bit inclined to show restraint rather than start shooting teenagers or anything.

One sentence platitudes are exactly what our country doesn't need at the moment. We need serious thought about what caused it, not whether it could've been stopped within 5 minutes by the deployment of a tactical nuke to Hackney.

That's what caused it is what I'm saying.
I don't pretend have a first hand view of the situation, but the poor and huddled masses have clearly been neglected and marginalized by the very governing body that's meant to protect and help them.
Obviously that's going to piss a few people off, and when poor people get mad, they get violent.

I know I do.

Fair... I figured your comment was regarding the police response like Mr Hyde did. Apologies!

The thing is that active suppression never gets to the point of why the problem starts in the first place, it's an excuse to ignore it as it's 'solving the problem' but like most modern 'medicine' it never actually fixes the problem or makes it go away it just makes it invisible. There's not going to be a decent analysis in the mainstream media about why the the UK riots started as so many people want to write it off as 'criminality' though there must be a particular reason (or, more likely, culmination of reasons) or everyone would just do this all the time if they wanted to? Cameron's having a field day because he's picked up that lots of people want the rioters punished so now he can pose and make out he's all 'tough on crime' - even though after several centuries of such tactics it's fucking obvious that it doesn't work very well and doesn't fix the problem (e.g. look at the USA's crime rate, it's got a f*cking harsh justice system that does fuck all in the long run) since crime's more often a symptom of bigger problems.

Also, a lot of more 'right-wing' (I think 'authoritarian' or 'fascist' is more appropriate) media says it's 'liberal attitudes' that have caused the problem even though London's policing is overly heavy-handed on certain demographic groups due to the Terrorism Act (which, as far as I'm aware, has never actually stopped any terrorism but has inflicted a lot of serious pain on innocent people)? I saw one video of the BBC where an elderly West Indian gentleman talking about his son and grandson being picked on by the police before the riots but the reporter just wasn't interested and kept trying to make him talk about what he thought of the riot itself - in the end he just got pissed off and told her to 'have some respect for an' old West Indian negro and stop trying to make out he was a rioter' Unfortunately, it seems even the BBC don't dare possibly looking like they support anyone that doesn't think the rioters is just about 'criminality'...

The article looks good as it is a reflection on how things are holding themselves together, somewhat tenuously it seems, though I'll have to have a more in-depth read later...

magma wrote:Fair... I figured your comment was regarding the police response like Mr Hyde did. Apologies!

tbf there should have been more police presence to stop looting, because I have absolutely no respect for looters