looters taking bread, water, food essentials for survival, are not looters.
imagine this. your city or town you live in is hit by a fairly large meteor. one big enough to take out most of the command and control in your town killing thousands. you have limited supply of food and water. what are you going to do? there is a riteaid down the street, no one is obviously going to run a buisness out of it for a long time, clearly. food/milk etc is gonna go to waste. You are getting hungry and your family is too. You kick down the door and take bread, chips, sandwhich meat, jerky, pop, wate etc. Are you a looter? Technically yes. Are you a thief. Probably not.
Now if you go down to the diamond shop and steal you some jewely, that is a different story. Or if you go down to electronics store and steal you a plasma tv, nope. Batteries and a radio, sure that is fine too.
Get the picture? Most of the pictures I saw were of people taking food and juice. That to me is not looting. Some people were indeed being opportunistic and taking luxury items. Those are thieves and should be dealt with as such.
Looting of food should end when proper food aid is setup and distributed.
I got the picture....of the looters stealing everything that wasn't bolted down. I guess they were going to eat those shoes and electronics. Silly me.
***ou kick down the door and take bread, chips, sandwhich meat, jerky, pop, wate etc. Are you a looter? Technically yes. Are you a thief. Probably not.
Now if you go down to the diamond shop and steal you some jewely, that is a different story***
The problem is that once you allow one kind, it gets out of hand to the other... Basic human nature.
Once the store is broken wide open so anyone can take anything, the likelihood of anyone who needs emergency goods from the store actually receiving them drops to practically nil. Much better would be for an armed person in uniform to take control of the store and have someone hand out goods to people in need who seek them in orderly fashion. Otherwise free-for-alls will lead to chaos.
"Looting of food should end when proper food aid is setup and distributed."
this is not historically replicable on any large scale. Looting is a constant in the human experience.
"Now if you go down to the diamond shop and steal you some jewely, that is a different story."
You might want to see this post. If you still don't get it then I give up:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1474387/posts?page=1952#1952