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Comment by function_seven | Hacker News Reader

We have lots of threats. We don’t arbitrarily stop every single person to ferret them out. A free society demands some level of risk at the hands of other citizens.

Freedom of movement without harassment is important to me. More important than catching every drunk driver.

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> We don’t arbitrarily stop every single person to ferret them out.

This is NYC we're talking about. Stop-and-Frisk was a fun game the cops played for years.

It's interesting how effectively propaganda has convinced people that searching known felons for illegal weapons isn't a "common sense gun law."

Edit: Case in point.

Stop-and-frisk had little to do with felony status. It was your black-and-young-and-male status that would trigger a search.

Oh for sure. Terry stops were (are?) massively abused in that city.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_C...

I reject your reasoning of pushing things into absolutes - drunk driving needs to be minimized, and people need to get where they are going. There's a balance between those needs that is optimal. Nobody is preventing you from reaching your destination, "how fast" is the only question.

As a wise man once said, "Drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it's impossible to say if it's bad or not."

I never mentioned speed or fear of delay.

DUI checkpoints are not that. They’re generalized fishing expeditions. If you’re sober, but have contraband, they can arrest you for that. Or for having and expired license. Maybe you’re late on your registration.

And I’m not pushing absolutes here. I’m just prioritizing freedom over the moral panic of the day. (Yes, drunk driving is bad. But checkpoints are still an overreaction and there’s little political will to go against MADD. It’s the same dynamic of “won’t somebody think of the children!”)

You are free to move around. You are not entitled to use public space, especially public transportation infrastructure built by the government, in a way you see fit.

Feel free to build a road in your private land, get drunk and speed all the way you want, nobody's going to impinge on your freedom.

> You are not entitled to use public space, especially public transportation infrastructure built by the government, in a way you see fit.

You are, though. The police can stop you if they've got reasonable suspicion you're committing a crime. They can search and arrest you if they've got probable cause. Outside of that, though, we are entitled to use public spaces.

Westboro Baptist gets to protest outside of funerals. Nazis get to have parades. Street preachers get to shout at passers-by.

Fine, you are entitled to use (most) public space. You are just not entitled to use it in the way you want, depending on what you want.

Thanks to the love of Jesus, the US of A was founded before the invention of automobiles, and there's no equivalent of Second Amendment that grants, I mean, "recognizes" its citizens' inalienable right to drive motor vehicles. Driving is a privilege.

And it relies on people following the social contract around it, including not drinking and driving, and some way to actually enforce it before some drunkard runs over my kids.

If the specific strategies and actions by police are bad-faithed or ineffectual, by all means, argue about these specific points, but I'm tired of these armchair guardians of freedom who think paved roads grow on trees.

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