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Comment by anshumankmr | Hacker News Reader

Might be downvoted but there was a fact checker website that denied at the time President Trump’s claim that Kyle had acted in self defense. This was a year ago and I saw it for myself as still being up a few weeks ago. I am not an American and I really see both sides here. The jury system worked as per the law defined in the US (and I am not a pro 2A person ) but I also agree that most likely increase vigilantism which will be good for no one.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/sep/01/donald-tru...

It is still up.

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> I also agree that most likely increase vigilantism which will be good for no one.

If the alternative to vigilantism is mob rule I'll choose vigilantism. The real issue here is that this should not be an issue for those living in a western-style representational republic or democracy to deal with, this being the task of the police.

If the monopoly on violence - i.e. the police - is not used to keep the violent at bay others will have to take up that task or the violent will rule - there are plenty of examples in the world where this has been and /or still is the case. That those "others" can end up resembling those they were formed to keep in check is an unfortunate aspect of that type of society and one of the reasons why the monopoly on violence was created. The solution to this conundrum is therefore to refrain from unilateral pacification when confronted with violent opponents. It also means that those politicians who acted upon and/or instigated the "de-fund the police" sloganeering have a lot to answer for, this being as stupid as de-funding the fire brigade when the city just caught fire (which it, incidentally, did in a number of cases).

I agree "defunding the police" is such a vague term and is pure political poison.And that is why almost no one apart from a small vocal minority consider it as a policy worth pursuing.

Vigilantism is not good. Sure, if you are under threat or the ones you care about are under threat, you have every right to protect yourself.But you can read about Ahmaud Arbery's shooting to consider where vigilantism was at play and he was shot to death.

I fear if more people are emboldened by the court's decision to acquit Kyle to take the law into their own hands especially in cases where the self defense angle is not justified, it is a slippery slope to be on. Ahmaud Arbery's case is one such example also.

The increased vigilantism is directly related to the media demonizing the police and misrepresenting facts. If the police are demonized and told to stand down by mayors during times of riots then someone will fill that vacuum. If you don't want vigilantism then you need police and politicians to do their jobs.

In my opinion, this and many other issues in the past few years are due, almost exclusively, to reporters viewing themselves as activists instead of reporters of fact. This specific case has too many examples of this to be coincidence, from the way the Jacob Blake story was reported initially( failing to report on the knife), to the intentional misrepresentation of the facts in the Rittenhouse case.

Add the tendency of the press to fail to report on anything which doesn't fit the required narrative, e.g. the recent example of multiple vehicular homicide in Waukesha where a casual reader would conclude that a self-driving SUV went rampant, the way the school shooting in Timberview and the subsequent release of the shooter (including a festive reception by his family) was buried [1] and far too many other examples of what is clearly an agenda. What those media seem to fail to realise is that they have lost nearly all trust among the general population - i.e. they are preaching to their own activist choir.

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/did-media-bury-mass-shooting-becaus...

It is still up as of now.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/sep/01/donald-tru...

Wow. This is one of the most chilling things I've seen in a long time. So divorced from reality (suffering from TDS) that they're on the "war is peace, ignorance is strength"-level of delusion. They're the ones who have elected themselves as the arbiters of what is "fact", what is "truthful". Orwellian is underselling how insane this is.

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