I mentioned her.
No, billions of francs of property damage is NOT "ok".
What is going on is terrible, a national disaster.
But we must be realistic about what is happening and see it for what it is, and not generate fantasms of the mind and turn it into what it is not.
People are destroying property. They are not willy-nilly destroying lives. That is not a minor distinction. Both the Common Law and the Civil Law make a fundamental distinction between the two, and should. If someone is destroying your car (assuming you are not in it) and you are not personally in danger, if you walk out of your house and put three bullets in his back you have committed a homicide in Lyons and in Louisiana. Most people are jealously protective of their property, and yet law recognizes a sharp distinction between destruction of a car, which will get you a year or two of prison, and killing a person, which will get you life in prison or, in some parts of the United States, a death sentence.
The distinction between destruction of lives and of property is quite sharp. How many people have heaved a sigh of relief when they escaped their burning home. They lose all of their possessions, but "At least we are all safe and sound."
There is a frenetic desire on this site to bootstrap property damage into murder, and thereby justify cutting loose with carronades to kill thousands or ten thousands of rioting people (and deport the rest). Some people are more honest about it: they believe that the destruction of an automobile warrants the death penalty, and they look forward, in their posts, to meting out that death penalty.
Even American law is far, far from that. Put three bullets into the back of a man burning your car, and you will go to prison for years and years, even in Texas. The Anglo-Saxon Common Law does not prescribe the death penalty for destruction of property, and it does not let people kill other people in defense of property, only in defense of life. I do not speak of the law in France (although it is the same). I speak of the law in El Paso, Texas, and Montgomery, Alabama.
It is not OK that youths are destroying cars. But it does not rise to the level allowing one to fire at will and kill them for committing property damage. Damaging property does not carry the death penalty in either America or France, and the rioters have been very careful to distinguish the two, for the most part.
There was the man killed and the woman burnt. There were cops shot with birdshot. Considering that riots are rampaging across France entire now, the lack of deaths that one would expect tells us that the overwhelming majority of these rioters do not (yet) have murder on their minds.
Some do.
There are Islamist elements who desperately want to radicalize these riots and turn them into a jihad. They have not thus far succeeded.
I am not CONDONING the riots and violence. They are asinine. These people are burning out their own sustenance, and hardening the minds of all of France against them. (This is why I predict that Philippe de Villiers will take up the mantle of Jean Marie Le Pen, and will become prominent in the aftermath.)
But I nevertheless do make the clear and sharp distinction between a riot that is restrained to property damage by rioters looking for trouble, and a riot whose participants feel so free of all restraint that they can go hunting down and killing other people, or gang-raping women. Note, please, that gang rapes have not been the norm either.
Riots are a breakdown of order.
What is happening in France is not a TOTAL breakdown of order. The rioters are not killing people, and not bursting into houses and raping women in their beds. They did in Louisiana.
Seeing realistically what is happening and describing it accurately so that a proper response can be fashioned to it is not saying that property damage is ok. It is saying that the application of force must be proportional.
Stop.
You are incorrect. I am a Texan. Try it.
Also, if I'm on the street and someone is armed with a "lethal" Molotov cocktail, I may use lethal force.
Rioting that began in Paris has spread throughout France, leading police to say the violence is "without precedent since the Second World War"
They used to hang horse thieves so it seems to me that destroying someone's car is identical to stealing or killing someone's horse. This is basicly depriving people of their means to support themselves, unless in France, it is not quite necessary to support oneself as the government might be doing the supporting. I can only project my own imagined hardship were my vehicles to be destroyed in such a random, senseless manner on the victims in France and I would advocate using any means necessary to prevent this autocide from happening. Shoot to wound, but shoot, shoot, shoot. These people are sick.
Wrong. I suggest you review Texas law - it not only permits you to shoot people for simple vandalism at night, it also allows you to shoot *to kill* at any time to prevent any felony (say, arson of a motor vehicle). We are also permitted to shoot in defense of another's property, not just our own. The state will even compensate us for ammunition expended through the Crime Victims' Fund.
In addition, Texas law governing riots and states of emergency suspend most of those restrictions. If the governor declares a state of emergency, it is *automatically* open season on looters and rioters, no questions asked. You loot, we get to shoot.
This perhaps explains why 1) we just don't have many riots in Texas, 2) there was almost no looting after Hurricane Rita came in and trashed Beaumont and other Texas Gulf Coast cities [looter season was tragically short this year], and 3) we don't have much crime in the night. Heck, we don't have many crimes in Texas, period.