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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

> You tell me, he quite literally says the military is with him and ready to shoot when people start looting.

He didn't literally say that. The National Guard would be acting in a role very similar to the police when there is rioting.

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> Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!

And that's bad because...? We can't succumb to lawlessness if people don't respect the law and expect no penalties. If they did the same thing at Area51 and were shot, would you say it's the fault of the guard who swore to protect their post just as the National Guard does? Is the value of civility not greater than a single life?

Should people be shot for looting?

Is looting a capital crime?

Wouldn't even matter if looting was a capital crime. We're talking summary execution without a trial. Judge dread territory here.

The 2nd amendment was intended to keep people with a healthy fear of one another. The equation is clear - to take another's property means one must risk something even more valuable; one must risk their life. It's that inequality that preserves order and to try and rebalance the equation by cancelling out the ever-present constants and insist life is above both liberty and prosperity, then you are fundamentally altering the social construct in untenable ways.

So then why don't we just have the police shoot on sight for any suspected crime? Police get called to store theft, just shoot the suspect. Police get called to vandalism, shoot first.

The obvious reasons not to do that is because it is stupid, disproportionate punishment, prone to abuse and irreversible if there is a mistake.

All that is a risk accepted by the perpetrator. The expectation of being safe from danger while committing a crime is absurd.

And this is why trump does what he does. There are actually people that thinks looters should just be shot.

He quite literally said this, this is why Twitter is flagging this tweet...

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