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Feminist: We are under no obligation to talk about issues that disproportionately affect men.

Someone: So you don’t care about the fact that including prison rape puts the rape victim numbers for both genders in the US at roughly equal?

Feminists: Stop trying to derail and make it all about the menz!

News: Turns out Jerry Sandusky raped a bunch of boys and Penn State officials concealed it for years.

Feminists: This is horrible!

Someone: Wait, you won’t discuss prison rape, but you will discuss this? You are aware that blogs about prejudice and discrimination against men have been talking about this sort of thing and this in particular for a long time?

Feminists: Uh…

Someone: Which would mean that you somehow think that discussing men’s rights issues only becomes “feminism” when you feel like it -

Feminists: It’s relevant to us because Patriarchy. And Rape Culture.

Someone: -or it means that you’re trying to make a case about men and boys “all about the girlz”.

Feminists: PatriarchyRapeCulturePatriarchyRapeCulturePatriarchyRapeCult

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I've also discovered a story series-with spinoffs-on the same Very Specific website as my previous post. Basically, there's a virus that changes people based on their whims, depending on what they are thinking when they come into contact with it, or their desire for an ideal body, or both. Strangely, all of their desires seem to fall into the same general area. Since it's the main subject of this Very Specific website, the most common, by far, is breast enlargement. Apparently a lot of people want breasts the size of a city block. Also, a woman gets a vagina for a mouth because she likes oral.

I'll give you a moment.

It's all so bleh. Yes, big dicks, extra breasts, a vajayjay where your face would be, the occasional hermaphrodite, but where's the variety? Sure, their was that one guy who basically became a pheremone-spewing Adonis, but he was the exception. Someone who apparently got an expansion fetish from watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and others were mentioned in the background.

Where are the furries? Where are the latex-clad kinksters? The size queens and leather daddies? Where's /d/? Why does everyone seem to have the same general set of fetishes? Why don't we hear about a grown man who turns into a little girl? Or a rapist who turns into an invisible nigh stalker with a dozen tentacles, each tipped with a blade? What about someone with a scat or watersports fetish?

And given that this virus is incredibly dangerous, why aren't people who have it quarantined? I mean, wouldn't there be a high risk of the people giving themselves block-sized boobs or turning themselves into giants accidentally killing someone?

Personally, the only real alterations I'd want is to get rid of the cyst on my wrist, immunity to wrist strain injury-I spend far too much time on the computer-and the ability to control the length of my body hair, including the ability to make it all fall out. I'd save a bundle on shaving crap. Of course, given that these wishes are invariably granted in the most sexual way possible, I'd probably end up with tentacles instead of hands, and my skin would turn to plastic or latex or something, like a doll. Which would make frying anything much riskier.

Come to think, what happens if a child is somehow infected?

Yes, I know I'm taking it far too seriously, thank you. IT'S KINDA MY THING
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Your Generic Male Protagonist's house is being fumigated. He decides this means he has to take the cat to work with him.

His work at the highly restricted chemical lab which doesn't allow pets.

He must've known that his house was going to be fumigated for an extended period, yet there are no nearby kennels, and he has no real friends. Except, of course, for his friend and co-worker, who has two cats of her own.

Why doesn't he ask her? He's shy.

So he puts the cat in the utility closet, and she's accidentally released when GMP's boss comes looking for him with a pink slip. That's reasonable. What is somewhat let reasonable is that the cat is able to see multiple people, none of which notice the orange cat hanging around, and then the cat manages to knock over several dangerous chemicals and start a major fire.

GMP rushes to see to it, and not only does the lab not have any sort of fire procedure or tools or exit, the nearest fire extinguisher outside the room is in a sealed glass box that has no way to open it. Our zero has to punch the glass case open. It's not even safety glass, and he cuts himself. And what does he need it for? To crack the glass door to the lab, of course, because if there's some kind of button for exiting in the event of an emergency, it's not working. At all.

Right, that's my suspension of disbelief utterly wrecked, and at about three pages in. Good job.
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Y'know, X-arielle? I saw her tumblr. Turns out she's gay.

I am now mildly uncomfortable with my criticism of her--no, wait, actually, I'm not. I'm sorry, shipping a 14-year old girl (Violet from the Incredibles) with a grown woman (Mirage) is creepy, end of story, regardless of the artist's preferences. It would be entirely hypocritical of me to claim otherwise. It would be a double standard, and I can't help but wonder how many of her fans rationalize her more questionable art with "she likes girls, so it's okay!" Even leaving aside the whole ephebophilia thing, she seems to have a bit of a fetish for what's euphemistically called "dub-con" by fanfic writers, "RAEP FACE" by 4chan, and "NOT OKAY" by scans_daily.

Well, when it's het.
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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WallBangers/Literature
Ginny's behavior towards Gabrielle during Bill and Fleur's wedding. Veela charms be damned, Gabrielle is only eleven years old! It's not like Harry's a pedophile. Moreover, Gabrielle only seemed to have an innocent crush on Harry... Yes, Ginny is a teenager, but she is also supposed to be Harry's soulmate. If she doesn't trust him around someone who hasn't hit puberty yet, then how is this relationship supposed to work?

Gosh, you'd think Ginny was a teenage girl who had a crush on Harry at Gabrielle's age or something, except Gabrielle has a genetic tendency to be found more attractive by men and boys when she's older, just like her big sister, and Ginny knows she has a crush on Harry.

OH WAIT.

Incidentally, here's what Gabrielle looked like at that point. That's certainly older-looking than eleven. The actress apparently had a growth spurt in the intervening three years.

Read more... )
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Gender[blam];
Question: I'm what you would call a cis man, and the thought that I'm complicit in any kind of comprehensive, systematic oppression doesn't sit well. I can't take responsibility for the actions of everyone who shares this place in the universe, but I can take full responsibility for my own actions. As a human, what specifically can I do in my daily life that will tangibly mitigate injustice against non-cis people?
Answer
The [gently caress] is this [poo poo]?

Systems. How the [gently caress] do they work? Your individual actions boost a system cuz they’re coupled with individual actions of other people like you. You perpetuate it. You ARE responsible for the system because you work for it for free, to keep it running.

And expecting us to be your vending machine of knowledge is yet another fucked up thing that perpetrates cissupremacy. Rediscover the fucking internet and do some research.
I've mentioned this transwoman transsexual activist before, specifically on the matter of Shakesville's inability to recognize its own flaws. And yet, she seems perfectly content to fall into the same rage-based rhetorical nonsense many social justice advocates like; raging at people who ask you for information for not knowing said information. It's a high-level passive-aggressive technique, and if it was used in a film about a domineering spouse, then the audience would declare that character a villain. Even her profile says

She swears a lot, isn’t an activist or here to [gently caressing] educate you, has no interest in justifying her continued existence to bigoted piles of excrement and really just doesn’t give any [gently caresses] about your precious privileged feelings.
"I am activist, hear me roar."

In fact, judging by the latest post on her tumblr, Ms. Hope is not merely an activist--despite her claims--but a transsupremacist. In fact, she thinks all "privileged people" are "bigoted piles of excrement", and when someone points out she assumed they were privileged just because they disagreed with her, her response, not in so many words, was that they must be cisgendered because they disagreed with her and aren't explicitly saying they're trans. Apparently, only trans people--and cis people who agree with them--can hold valid opinions on what is, to say the least, a really complicated set of issues.

Speaking of which, Ms. Hope seems to have quite a lot of those. I mean, Melissa "Shakesville" McEwan-level, which is ironic considering how much she hates McEwan and her website.

Still, at least she hasn't reached Ginmar levels of crazy. Not quite.

The funny thing is that if you take the idea that cissexual people are responsible for the negative actions of other cissexuals, and change it to apply to, say, Black people, or Muslims, or women, it looks exactly like bigotry and prejudice.
mcity: (Default)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pornographic_actresses_by_decade

Most of the actresses on that list have more comprehensive and sourced pages than some articles about actual science and math.
mcity: (nope.avi)

“Brooding about Her Majesty’s stubbornness again, are we?” Harper inquired genially, and Judson scowled at him.

“It’s a sorry turn of events when a man’s own ‘cat rats him out to such an unworthy superior as yourself,” he observed.

“Genghis never signed a word,” Harper pointed out mildly, and Judson snorted.

“He didn’t have to,” he growled. “The two of you have been so mutually corrupting that I think you’re developing your own ‘mind voice’!”

[a few paragraphs later]

“Well,” Harper said after several seconds, still smiling with the echoes of his mental vision of a squalling, kicking [spoiler] tossed across Lara’s shoulder and hauled off to safety somewhere, “I’m afraid that rather than giving our lives in the defense of our beloved—if stubborn—queen, our day is going to be one of those less scintillating moments of our life experience.”

“I always get worried when you start trotting out extra vocabulary,” Judson observed.

“That’s because you’re a naturally suspicious and un-trusting soul, without one scintilla of philosophical discernment or sensitivity to guide you through the perceptual and ontological shallows of your day to day existence.”

“No, it’s because when you get full of yourself this way it usually means we’re going to be doing something incredibly boring, like counting noses on a new transport or something.”

-Torch of Freedom, David Weber and Eric Flint

I love that the “extra vocabulary” is basically indistinguishable from the way he talks the rest of the time, just with “scintillating” used instead of a coy “…interesting” or suchlike. Whatever would’ve been there, it would not have been less than three syllables.

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Alexis: So when were the students allegedly threatening the police officers? Is it when they said they would block the police? Oh, sure, real threatening.
Me: No, that would be the point seconds later when they threaten to stop "protesting peacefully" if their demands aren't met and outnumber the cops by dozens, as you have been told at least a dozen times throughout the thread.
Alexis: Gosh, SOMEBODY keeps responding to my posts even though I have them on ignore and can't see them. How rude. The important question is...
Me: So not only are you going out of your way to look at my posts when you can just ignore them, you think that because you don't want to read my posts, I shouldn't respond to yours? I have no problem continuing to show people how wrong you are.
Alexis: It's only courteous to respond to people addressing you.
Me: So why have you not responded to several of my posts, such as #217, where I unarguably proved you wrong?
Alexis: SarcasmSarcasmSarcasm, bye!
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Alexis: And they were obstructing the police, but it was still a lawful protest.
Me: Nice of you to to admit they were breaking the law.
Alexis: N-no I didn't! They were peaceful, unarmed protestors! I didn't mean "obstruction" in the legal sense!
Me: You already said that they went there deliberately to protest. You said they were obstructing the police. The definition of obstruction in that state is willing and knowing obstruction of the police's duties. Unless you want to argue they were accidentally blocking the police's transport of prisoners.
Alexis: The police didn't give a lawful order!
Me: Doesn't matter whether the cops ordered them or not. The protestors specifically stated their intent to obstruct the officers unless their demands were met, and took actions, by your own admission, to keep the cops from doing their job. That is probable cause for an arrest.
Alexis: But it was police brutality!
Me: No, they used standard force for an arrest with a resisting perpetrator.
Alexis: But they were innocent, unarmed, legal protestors!
Me: If they broke the law, their protest was by definition, illegal. Not to mention threatening the cops, which is legally a riot.
Alexis: [DEAFENING SILENCE]
mcity: (Default)
[Brit is cast as an American]
British People: Wow, Actor is really good at that.
[American cast as a Brit]
British People: Why can't they just use British actors to play Brits?
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Someone on my deviantWatch just made a post saying that Olivia from SVU is a stronger female character than Beckett from Castle, who is apparently a Mary Sue.

Okay, it is kind of interesting to look at Beckett in isolation, compared to the way she was "designed"; as Castle's counterpart and Love Interest, and he for her. Both characters are intended to complement each other. Beckett doling out little tidbits actually reinforces her emotional isolation, especially in comparison to how Castle will cheerfully talk about details of his personal life, or accidentally let personal details slip. Beckett is a lot more strategic in her small talk (and yes, I speak from experience). As for her heels, she's a fashion-conscious detective, and we all have our vices. Detectives don't actually do that much running.

She has been used as a distraction, but she's an attractive women and knows it. The team has no problem using Castle in exactly the same fashion. "Hey, famous playboy good-looking writer, go over there and distract people!" Most of the time, IIRC, Kate is the one who decides to be a distraction, and on one occasion her sexy act saved Castle's life. And most importantly, she's the head of a three-man detective team, and had a deeper backstory than the title character of the show. The show plays fast and loose with "realism" in the first place; just ask someone with relevant knowledge about the steampunk episode.

The funny thing is that they really like every other female character on the show, but somehow missed the point of the female lead. If they're doing such a good job on everyone else, maybe you're just misreading the character. I mean, TVTropes can't find anything really objectionable about the show. TVTropes.

Speaking of which; yes, the female characters on Everybody Hates Chris tend to be irritating jerks. Just like the male characters.
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Previously: Dear Albanian Pudding Wrestling story writer,

Turns out it ends with the monsters invading the rest of the galaxy.

After one of them made a point about them simply wanting to be left alone.

I need a "Scumbag Space Werewolves" macro.

And the how is entirely stupid, too. There was a SPAH among the crew of Intrepid Marines sent to investigate. He carries one of his partners, now a monster, back to the mother ship in an escape pod. For some reason, the security/HAZMAT measures consist of pointing guns at the agent, even after he marches off the pod and admits he's infected. He admits this, BTW, after he hands off a biological sample directly to the Evil General, who is not wearing a hazmat suit. The General wants to destroy the space station not because of the threat it poses to all sentient life, but because he wants to cover up the fact that the blight on the galaxy was caused by a civilian mistake.

I would not have let the spy back onto my ship like that. I would've had robots talk to him and take the sample. I would've had a big red button I could hit to eject the pod and expose the bay to vacuum. I would've had turrets and laser beams. If I did have men, they would be wearing max level Hazmat suits. I would have a big green button that quadruples the artificial gravity. I would've had a yellow button that, last resort, detaches the entire bay. But this story would have us believe that a four-star general was a complete idiot, taking not even the most rudimentary security precautions besides "POINT GUNS AT IT".

Yeah, no.

At least a sop was thrown to the whole All-Male Crew thing; apparently women serve in separate units, and the military is almost all male. Even Gears of Manly Hypertrophy has female characters serving as frontline troops. Congratulations, terrible story, you've set gender relations in science fiction back a few dozen years.
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I can pretend, for the sake of the story, that a certain confluence of random events could end up becoming a virulent, sentient virus, turning the crew of the space station into monsters.

However, I can't buy that the scientists had the animals on board to study their reproduction, yet the resulting abomination of a species was exclusively--and, ahem, prominently--male, even if the station was crewed entirely by men.

Much better to simply have the animals be pets of the personnel, present at the accident, and all male.

Also, don't try to sell us on the species being the good guys because they just want to be left alone. I admit, it was rather clever to have them seem like mindless monsters, then it turns out they're sentient, but it doesn't change the fact that they are a blight upon the galaxy who could easily infect the next ship that comes along, unless you'd have the government spending a lot of effort guarding the station. In fact, precisely that happens during the course of the story, when pirates come straight in when they get our initial group's distress beacon. And what happens if some lunatic or nation decides to just point the station at an enemy planet? The species is nearly invincible. Even nukes don't work; they'd just kill the sentience of the members who still have it.

Basically, you're arguing that the government should just let the lab full of experimental tech that the virulent adaptive species can integrate with just sit there, based on the minority claim that they just want to be left alone. That and 60p will get you some crisps.

Srsly
-J
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There was a post on Engadget the other day about piracy.

Amidst the usual nonsense, there was one particular nutjob. Let me see if I can sum up his argument.

  1. Free speech is a natural right.
  2. Free speech means the government can't say you can't have someone's speech.
  3. Free speech, which is a natural right, is interfered with by copyright, which limits the natural right to free speech.
  4. The copyright system is based on the idea that speech can't be reproduced quickly and broadly, which hasn't been true since 1995.
  5. The system should change so artists give their work out freely and people can pay for it if they feel like it.
  6. FREE SPEECH NATURAL RIGHT FREE SPEECH NATURAL RIGHT FREE SP


The funny thing is that his most plausible-sounding points are incorrect. It's been easy to reproduce speech since the invention of the printing press, which is why copyright exists in the first place. Artists are already capable of giving away their work on an honor system, if they so choose, but that rarely works. Free speech is a legal right, not a natural one. And so is copyright. They're complementary, not conflicting. Free speech is about the government's right to limit the speech of the people, copyright is about the right of people or persons or organizations to control the distribution and reproduction of their speech. Copyright protects free speech, not violates it.

Of course, many piracy apologists seem to be completely unaware that copyright is, in fact, a right. You'd think the name would tip them off. Then again, I've heard people argue they should get to pirate something if it's not on iTunes yet when they want it.
mcity: (Default)


There's a popular blog that has recently taken umbrage with trends in the cover of a certain magazine. Every year for a while now, this magazine has featured a "gatefold" cover. The type with one main cover, and two additional panels that fold out, with the "power cover" being the one on the left. This blog shows about half of them, and points out that most of these have only had white people on the cover, with the implication that this is racist.

Let me summarize;

  1. Take a feature that has been going on for nearly twenty years.
  2. Find only the covers that support your thesis.
  3. Show several of these covers.
  4. Mention in an aside, but do not actually show, the covers that contradict you.
  5. Use a title that implies active racism, in a field historically known to be racist, but in a deniable fashion that nonetheless biases the casual reader.
  6. Do not mention a single alternative explanation, such as sheer statistical happenstance.
  7. Make broad generalizations about race in said field to close out the post, using a recent race-related controversy.
  8. Never actually directly accuse anyone of racism.
  9. Watch commenters trip all over themselves to talk about how you've clearly exposed racism, and swarm over anyone who points out the holes in your argument.
  10. ???
  11. Profit!


One of the commenters even went so far as to point out that covers with POCs on the cover were "obviously tokenism". So even when they do exactly the thing the post complains they don't do enough, it doesn't count. I have a habitual distrust of any claim something is "obvious", because I find it's often used by people who are are too biased to consider any alternatives. When they say "obvious", they mean "impossible that it could be anything else".

The funny thing was, the blog didn't limit itself to the front cover, in what's basically the textbook definition of No True Scotsman. If no people of color were selected for the cover at all, it pointed it out, but if POCs were on the cover, it still doesn't count because they weren't on the front cover. And when they are on the front cover, they don't matter in the light of the obvious racism of them predominantly not being on the front cover.

This is like saying the NBA has biased hiring because most of its players are black, without considering other factors like the fact that a disproportionate of the men who try to get into the NBA are black. Actually, that was one of the most unrealistic things about "Hang Time". That, and the basketball court being only slightly larger than your average parking space.

(If you want to see the original version of this post, look at the HTML.)
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MegaUpload is a website for file-sharing. Most of the files on it are pirated. The FBI recently shut it down while they investigated. Not only were most of the files pirated, staff members actively encouraged it, removing specific links to files when asked to do so by content producers, but leaving the files themselves up. It's the equivalent of closing down a store's front entrance and selling things out through the back alley. Staff even posted links to pirated files themselves; the FBI has email exchanges.

A Harvard law professor argued that taking the site down discouraged innovation, and TorrentFreak, always ready to seize on the flimsiest justification, made a post about it. Then Reddit picked it up. The idea, basically, is that it prevents people from "exchangni ideas", therefore it's bad for innovation, and they could use the same rationale to shut down any file hosting site.

I'm sorry, if someone is accused of embezzling, with what basically amounts to objective, slam-dunk proof, you don't refrain from arresting them because their workplace will have to hire a temp. If a local business is accused of money-laundering, you don't let it stay open after you start arresting people. It's chain-the-doors time. One idiot was even arguing that allowing the site to stay up actually encouraged productivity. Because that's what piracy does; encourage productivity. By decreasing the chances someone will be compensated.

MU was accused of breaking the law, and doing so in a flagrant manner. Ignoring that to make broad generalizations about what it might mean is a slippery slope argument. Saying they should've left the site up for the sake of the few legit users is also wrong, just like legit customers might be inconvenienced by the money-laundering place going down. And freezing only the pirated files, or even determining which files those are, is basically impossible without manually downloading and checking them. The millions of files.

But all you have to do is wave the "freedoms oppressed" flag in front of Reddit and they charge, regardless of the fact that this is an excellent example of a corrupt company, and that Megaupload is legally so screwed they couldn't get out of this with a defense team consisting of Johnny Cochrane, Perry Mason, Ben Matlock, and Phoenix Wright.
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http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7434492/1/Overdue_Protection

After the dueling club incident in Year Two where he is discovered to be a Parselmouth, Harry Potter is subject to abuse from the students, culminating in him running away. The Ministry needs to track down Harry, and for that they need the permission of his legal guardian. Since Sirius is still his legal guardian instead of Petunia, because he never had a trial, they hustle him out of Azkaban and convene a kangaroo trial--in a matter of hours--then pour truth serum down his throat. Upon discovering his innocence, they proclaim him innocent, give him a ton of money and some new clothes, and politely request he come to the Minister for Magic's office, where they basically ask him not to sue them and help them find Harry. He calls them out on it, and leaves to find Harry on his own.

Alright. Take it as it comes. )
mcity: (Default)
http://mcity.livejournal.com/342606.html

Idiot: The UK police would've been able to handle this situation without shooting someone. They would've called for backup. Their way is better.
Me: Aren't the UK police usually not armed? In fact, didn't you personally mention that they weren't armed?
Idiot: The US cops could've taken down the man without shooting him, according to their training.
Me: Leaving aside the fact that they were acting exactly like their training tells them to, you think the course of action that puts the US officers and the suspect at more risk than calling for backup is better?
Idiot: The dog could've made it.
Me: Prove it.
Idiot: The cops provoked the suspect into "making an aggressive move".
Me: Any judge would laugh at you.
Idiot: The suspect was not actually going to attack the officers, he was actually in a defensive position.
Me: A defensive position which required advancing on a policeman with weapon raised? Also, you just contradicted yourself.
Idiot: They should've tried to subdue him non-lethally.
Me: They did, it failed, and the suspect escalated the situation to deadly force.
Idiot: Those weren't non-lethal, those were gadgets. Gadgets which failed. So they shot him.
Me: They shot him because he tried to take a swing at one of them, employing deadly force.

And so on.

Currently, they're arguing that the suspect's attack on the cop was actually warranted, because there were five of them, and that the suspect was actually in "counter-stance", not aggressive stance. They are also trying to say that deadly force is irrelevant.
mcity: (Default)
A guy smashes some windows in a restaurant with what's basically a long crowbar. Police show up, one with a dog, and ask him to stop. He ignores them. One pepper-sprays him, and he shrugs it off, likely from drugs. As the nearer officer tries to back away and draw his weapon, the suspect advances, and is shot dead by the other officer, holding the dog, who has had his gun drawn and pointed at the suspect the entire time.



I was having a somewhat intense discussion with someone who thinks the shooting was unjustified.

Among their ridiculous claims;

-Suspect was just "intimidating" the police.
-The dog could've stopped him.
-He had the crowbar behind his head, and could not have swung. (I pointed out, several times, that it takes a fraction of a second to swing a crowbar from that poisition, once in range.)
-The nearer cop could've dodged. (Note how the cop is actively trying to get away from the perp.)
-The officers could've stopped and disarmed the suspect in hand-to-hand. (Yes, at substantial risk to themselves.)
-UK cops never kill anyone. (Such a shooting was what kicked off the London Riots last year.)
-Using "Bobbies" to refer to cops is patronizing.

Most prominently, they keep insisting there are "other options" when it's been shown there were no other options that did not present a risk to the nearer officer. Release the dog? Suspect has time to swing. Farther cop tackles the perp? Suspect has time to swing. "Martial arts"? Unnecessary risk to the officers. Pepper spray? Tried, didn't work. Taser? Couldn't be drawn in time to be effective, even if the suspect couldn't resist it with the drugs he was probably on.

The funny thing is that they are constantly saying UK cops would've been able to resolve the situation without guns. They receiving different training and equipment and face different challenges. No matter how many times I pointed this out, they kept insisting that they could've done it, along with a few dozen other Straw Men. As evidence, they cited a case where a guy assaulted three cops and struck them with a crowbar, leading to the hospitalization of two. Yep, the UK cops are doing so much better.

The biggest fly in their ointment, of course, is that UK cops don't usually carry guns in the first place.

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