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Comment by awnird | Hacker News Reader

16 pointsawnird5 comments

How transparent can they be? In my country, you can in fact drive someone over if they are threatening your life and it's the only way to escape the situation. It would be self-defense. I had the understanding that it was the same in America -- anything you can take to hand can be used to defend yourself assuming you are actually in danger. So the very rare situation where it might well be justifiable was already legally excepted.

So what's even the point? Stand your ground in traffic? Some sort of signalling to change social norms and get people used to this sort of political violence by vehicle? Signalling to their base? Just work to make themselves look busy while effectively legalizing murder by car?

This article starts out strong by pointing out that using a vehicle to harm or kill really should be illegal, but then it drives off into the weeds comparing vehicle attacks to urban planning and highway construction. That was to me at least a significant distraction that diluted the impact of the piece.

The James Fields case isn't nearly as cut-and-dry as they pretend. There's video of his car being attacked immediately before the accident, a confession by a Redneck Revolt (antifa) leader that he chased Fields' car with a gun, and then Fields' tearful breakdown when he heard that someone had died. Not long ago liberals laughed at the absurdity of not running over violent rioters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08Khc2wqtCQ

And.... it was flagged. Good job to whoever flagged a decent article. People can try clicking the "vouch" button to get it back.

The article is called "The right to crash cars into people".

Fourth sentence: "The bill doesn’t exactly make it legal to run someone over"

It contains phrases and sentences like "right-wing propaganda apparatus", "idea as plainly depraved", "efficacy and ethics don’t really seem to be guiding the decisions of Republican-run state legislatures lately" and "To understand what’s really behind the bill, recall that it comes less than four years after a 20-year-old neo-Nazi named James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately drove a Dodge Challenger into a crowd of people".

Sorry, I'm not American enough to be able to read this with a straight face.

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