Yes, USC Art.III Sec.3 defines treason: giving aid and comfort to those waging war on the US. Confederates, Nazis, Boogaloos, and Russia wage war on the US. I said “life imprisonment” because I oppose death penalties.
Yes, USC Art.III Sec.3 defines treason: giving aid and comfort to those waging war on the US.
Well, “then being at war” generally requires an actual war concurrent. However, I will of my own free will plead guilty to pedantry.
Putin’s defence minister and Tramp’s UN ambassador, both cabinet-level posts, declared that Russia is waging war on the US. Nazis and confederates waged war on the US. Boogaloo is openly waging war on the US right now. Adhering to any of those and giving aid and comfort meets the constitutional definition.
Seems like these are happening when people are in the street blocking traffic.
If only the drivers had the choice to NOT drive over the protesters who are demanding that the police STOP shooting Black people in America… But no. Clearly their only choice here is to kill people fighting for their basic human dignity… it’s only logical… /s
17 Likes
It seems the vast majority of these incidents happened after DeBlasio said that being in a vehicle with people blocking your way was an untenable situation. Despite the vehicle having plenty of room to back up and get out of the situation. I put a lot of the blame on people like him who bless this as a proportional, necessary, reasonable or even defensible response.
3 Likes
Be better at pedantry. Now you’re reading something else into the clause that isn’t there. Here’s the whole thing.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
“Enemies” are not necessarily enemies “levying war.” And–again–there’s no death penalty.
Caltrops are dangerous if someone steps or falls on them, and a SUV with a broken tire could likely run anyway until it reaches a safe place. I would throw black paint on the driver windshield, which of course is way dangerous as well, but we’re taking extreme measures against terrorists already running on pedestrians.
An old trick to smash glasses without using much force is to throw at them some broken ceramics pieces taken from an old spark plug. If thrown to the right angle they literally smash the glass in a thousand pieces. I tried this some 40 years ago (abandoned cars lot, I wasnt a car thief:^), so I’m not sure if it can work on modern reinforced glasses, but even a few cracks here and there will scare the drivers anyway, hopefully discouraging them, making the car recognizable and cost them some good money.
Also, IR LED throwies can be used to make a car blink in the dark without anyone noticing among the occupants, so it can be chased from distance. GPS bugs of course are even more
effective, but they do cost a little more and can’t be thrown.
1 Like
Trump is hoping for normalization of these hit and runs and so use of firearms could slide in more easily. I’m actually surprised there hasn’t been a spate of protester crowd shootings.
An interesting reaction to drivers:
This did not get a lot of coverage when it happened.
2 Likes
There are glass hammers designed for this purpose. They only work on side windows because the front is laminated. Some newer cars are starting to laminate side windows as well, for noise reduction purposes.
If watching TV helicopter coverage of car chases has taught me one thing, it’s that stopping a car is very difficult. Even if you blow out all the tires they can still drive on the rims.
From watching scenes of cars driving into crowds, I’m generally impressed at peoples ability to jump out of the way of vehicles if they have some warning. Focusing on situational awareness may be the best defense. And making a decision beforehand that you will not try to impede a car that is heading toward you.
If you really want to have some portable defense, perhaps a can of paint to throw on the windshield. At least would make it easier to identify the car later.
3 Likes
Even more appalling was the Bloomington mayors response when asked if he had picked up or even questioned the attackers (clearly) shown in the video. I believe one of his responses to Katy Turr on MSNBC was: Well we gotta also take it as… what if it was a bunch of black guys surrounding a white guy.
1 Like
I can imagine metal walking sticks that interlock together ad hoc that can use sewers and other street infrastructure as anchor points. It would require lots of design and lots of training though.
And? Assault with a deadly weapon is not a reasonable response to either traffic or jaywalking. If you somehow want to claim they were all accidents, a crowd of people is a reasonably visible obstacle. If you can’t see a closed block of people, you are operating your vehicle in an unsafe manner and should be in jail. But we know some of the acts were performed with explicit intent to kill. The post you just made is a lazy attempt to justify murders and attempted murder and you should be ashamed of yourself.
It suffers the same problem as all of the other barricade methods. Cars are heavy and fast. Protests are generally mobile. Any gating system you can throw up in under 30 seconds, but is light enough to move with the crowd won’t matter at all to a car.
8 Likes
This is a terrible idea. Manhole frames will pop out of the pavement; fire hydrants, light poles and street sign will all snap at their bases. Surface mounted things you see on the street are designed to break under the stress of a car hitting them. Using these things as anchors will result in the same breakage.
6 Likes
I agree. I just sat for a few moments and tried to think through those limitations of being run by the powerhouse of the cell rather than internal combustion.
Hows about a way to rig CO2 carts to blowout tires ?
or is it time to start fighting back ?
Blowing out tires has most of the same drawbacks as caltrops, the biggest being that it doesn’t stop the car. Molotov cocktails have all of the same drawbacks as caltrops, but the legal and safety risks are larger than those. Now instead of a 1+ton block of metal slamming into squishy human bodies you have a 1+ ton block of flaming metal hitting squishy human bodies.
The effective strategies aren’t makeshift street level physical things, they are organizational and social. You need good, highly mobile, marshals for the march who can keep the group together and provide early warning of suspicious actions. In a situation where your amount of warning time is 10 seconds or less getting an extra 2 or 3 seconds is huge. We need cops to actually do their jobs with traffic control and prosecutors to actually pursue the charges for people who commit the crimes. Additionally the larger social platforms should ban people for advocating running people over, as their violent threat policies already claim they do.
5 Likes
I’m not sure I believe that. But I am very ignorant about protesting. When I protested in SF for the Iraq War … things just seem so different. It seems like now things are so much more so much more if that makes sense.
1 Like
Things are definitely more, but we’re stuck with social and organizational fixes, because physical fixes don’t work. Any puncture tech needs to also lock the wheels up or the vehicle can continue moving just fine for a while. If you’re planning to hit people you aren’t terribly worried about rim damage. The best anti ramming tech that is repositionable is probably the talon net right now. It takes a two man team about a minute to deploy and several minutes to take back in. A march moves about 2 miles an hour (highly variable) and the average block size for US cities is about an 1/8 of a mile. In other words ever 4 minutes or so the back of the march will advance a block. You would need a full team of people redeploying them at every direction traffic could come from, so one at the front and back and at least one per cross street from each direction plus an additional pair for a cross street ahead or behind your march for it to have time to stop, plus some extras to make the street rotation feasible. That means it isn’t feasible for a march. Anything that is a physical barrier trades time of placement for the difficulty of moving enough mass to stop a high speed vehicle. Moving something like a jersey barrier requires a crane. We have one mobile high mass object that can be rotated to block a crowd from vehicle attacks, other vehicles. Using cars for this has some problems, difficulty distinguishing the car racing down the side street to protect your march and the one racing down the street to mow you down. Secondly cops won’t allow it. All of the marking and attack ideas only work as a reaction once the damage is done. That leaves changing how we move people and systems.
4 Likes
That sounds like cops being decent and not being on the side of the attackers. If that was the case, there would be much less need for the protests in the first place.
4 Likes
