16 year old girl gets 51 years for killing the man who tried to rape her

[Admiral X]

Never fire a warning shot. You are responsible for every bullet you fire, so if it ends up hitting something or someone else. Plus, if it's serious enough/you feel threatened enough to fire a warning shot, you just as well shoot your would-be assailant. If you even pull it, you better damn well mean it.

[Yukaphile]

It's pathetic. She showed compassion, tried not to murder someone... even her abusive ex, and got 20 years over it.

[Madner Kami]

It's pathetic. She showed compassion, tried not to murder someone... even her abusive ex, and got 20 years over it.

If she feels threatened enough to warrent the use of a firearm, then the shot needs to go into the assailant. If she ain't threatened enough to necessitate a potential lethal reaction, than she should not shoot. It ain't rocket science, it's the 101 of self-defence. If your self-defence is (potentially) lethal, then it better be necessary to save your own life.

[Yukaphile]

That's absolutely wretched. It's penalizing a human being for trying to warn someone threatening away without killing them. You condone giving someone 20 fucking years over that? That's going to follow her everywhere she goes like rape cases do to those accused who actually are innocent. The stigma will destroy her.

[Madner Kami]

That's absolutely wretched. It's penalizing a human being for trying to warn someone threatening away without killing them. You condone giving someone 20 fucking years over that? That's going to follow her everywhere she goes like rape cases do to those accused who actually are innocent. The stigma will destroy her.

For someone who considers himself a nihilist, you do care and judge an awful lot about the strangest things. That woman fired a weapon, not in self-defence, but at random. This isn't some movie or police series where a fleeing suspect needs to be stopped somehow without injurying him or her for some strange reason. This is reallife, where a 9mm bullet shot into the air, can travel a distance of 2.2km and is able to do serious harm at ranges of well beyond 100m. Even if she shot straight up into the air, this piece of metal is going to come down again, somewhere and it's terminal velocity is enough to make it a lethal projectile at that point.

People who are capable of killing or seriously harming others, be that by virtue of arms or even unarmed martial arts, have a special responsibility and they are judged different to someone who just flails around in self-defence and accidently harmed their assailant by their actions. This isn't news and it's the right thing to do. Hell, it applies to people who drive a car. If you handle a potentially lethal device, you have a special responsibility and if you act reckless, you will be punished.

And if you are still righteously indignated, which you quite likely are despite your lip-service to nihilism, then please name the case and we can have a look at it.

[Yukaphile]

You are victim-blaming! 20 years to the victim, not the man threatening her, because she was in a desperate situation and didn't wanna take a life, but also felt threatened enough to wanna warn him first before resorting to death, which is permanent and can't be undone! Police fire off warning shots sometimes. Should we give them 20 years in jail too? I'm nihilistic because I CARE, but there's so many rotten, inhuman people who judge others unfairly, who don't try to make the world a happier, more just place, who have views completely at odds with critical thinking and common sense and logic that it disgusts me, and I pull back. I don't wanna associate with them even by race or gender or ethnic and national background. That's why.

[Admiral X]

I actually found a bit more about that case - the reason she got screwed over was because she was in the ex's house instead of in her own, or even just somewhere in public.

[Steve]

That sounds more like an excuse to dismiss the self-defense claim. "Oh, she was at his house, that doesn't count as self-defense, because if she legitimately feared him she wouldn't have been at his house" stops making sense when you consider the alternative explanations, and how they don't undermine the self-defense claim.

Shooting a weapon as a warning shot might in some cases be bad judgement... but that should be leavened with any information on the warning shot being a legitimate attempt to prevent a lethal shooting.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Either way it's pretty messed up that they tried her as an adult.

[Admiral X]

It was more that "Stand Your Ground" only applies to places one has a legal right to be in, and that was the defense she was going for. So it came off as less that she was defending herself and more that she went there to try to kill him or try to scare him.