mistermack wrote:Seth wrote:Tero wrote:rEvolutionist wrote:They're coming to get you, Seth! Boo!
He can just shoot anyone who looks African or Arab on stand your ground basis. "He was coming towards me with intent to exchange bodily fluids."
That defense has actually been successfully used in a justified self-defense killing before, with respect to HIV. No reason to think the same logic wouldn't apply to Ebola.
It''s not the same situation at all.
People who know that they've got the HIV virus live fairly normal lives now. You can be out there in the community for years with the full knowledge that you are infectious with HIV.
The same isn't going to apply to ebola. It comes and goes in a few weeks.
If you get a confirmed diagnosis, you are likely to be confined and isolated in intensive care.
And when they release you from hospital, you're no longer infectious.
An infectious person, loose in the community, is very unlikely to know that he has ebola.
Unless he's a suicide-Typhoid Mary who has been deliberately inoculated with Ebola who has the specific intent of spreading the disease to as many Americans as possible by leaving sputum and other bodily fluids on public objects touched by others or by infecting them by spitting at them, throwing feces or urine at them, or even just touching them with virus-laden sweat.
And you can hardly go shooting everybody who has the flu, just in case. I doubt if that could be viewed as justified self-defence.
If someone exhibiting ebola-like symptoms attempts to exchange bodily fluids with me having been warned to stay away or by sudden attack, my assumption is that they are attempting to transmit a deadly disease to me in exactly the same way as poking a police officer with a dirty needle or spitting in their face by an HIV-infected person is attempting to transmit a deadly disease, which is a criminal offense and which justifies the use of deadly force to prevent it. The self-defense law requires only that a person reasonably fear that his or her life is in imminent danger of death
or serious bodily harm and that a lesser degree of force would be inadequate to prevent the injury.
What possible reason could a person exhibiting symptoms of Ebola, even if it's just the ordinary flu, have to try to forcibly exchange bodily fluids with anyone? The only motivation I can see as between strangers is a criminal attempt to infect the victim. That shows intent on the part of the attacker, and that's enough to justify the use of deadly force.
In this particular time, if you have the flu,
stay the fuck away from everybody else and isolate yourself to prevent the spread of disease.
And for fuck's sake don't take this outbreak lightly and brush it off as you cough and dribble on other people, even if it's just the plain old flu virus. That could and should at the very least result in your being either arrested for "biological assault" or having the crap beaten out of you by the people you're infecting.
This is not a game or a joke, quit treating it that way. This is deadly serious business.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth
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