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During a discussion of the Plaxico Burress "gun firing" case with a young lady the other day, she stated that Mr. Burress could legitimately be charged with assault if others at the nightclub where his gun accidentally fired felt threatened by the situation. She reasoned that their perception of a threat would be all that would be necessary to bring assault charges against him, even if no one (other than Burress) was actually hurt during the incident. Indeed, her assertion is based on actual laws.
However, laws based solely on perception make no sense. The lawmakers who contrived them must have had their heads so far up their butts that they've never seen the light of day. I say this because such a concept opens a Pandora's Box of weirdness in the law that can be taken to any ridiculous length.
Let's say a man is charged with assault because someone else perceives him as a threat, perhaps because he has a gun or knife in his pocket. Okay, but what about some women who perceive all men as a threat? Should all the men they come in contact with be charged with assault? What about people who perceive all foreigners as a threat? Should all the foreigners they come in contact with be charged with assault? And what about people who perceive all gays and lesbians as a threat? Should all the gays and lesbians they come in contact with be charged with assault?
The bottom line is that people can perceive any darn thing they want. That's what makes these "paranoia" laws so silly. If any lawmaker were to argue in favor of them in my presence, I would tell him to his face that he is advocating idiotic legislation. Laws should never be based on perception; they should be based on reality – and common sense.
But some may argue that these kinds of laws are based upon what a "reasonable person" might assume. But who determines what is "reasonable"? Something that's reasonable to one person could be irrational to another. And who makes the determination about who is a "reasonable person" and who is not? Again, that's a subjective issue. That's all the more reason why laws should be based on reality and not perception.
Here's an illustration. Let's say two guys (we'll them Larry and Doug) get into an argument. As it progresses, Larry suddenly tells Doug that he's got something in the glove compartment of his car that says "you [Doug] had better run as fast as you can" and then Larry heads toward his car. Doug then calls the police and says Larry threatened him with a weapon. But did he really? That just was just his perception.
It turns out that when the police arrive, all they find in the glove compartment of Larry's car is a piece of paper with "you had better run as fast as you can" scrawled on it. So, he wasn't lying when he told Doug that he had something in his glove compartment that met that description. He had exactly that and probably hoped that his announcing it to Doug would frighten him.
However, Larry never said, "I have a weapon in my glove compartment that I'm going to use on you." Again, that's probably what he wanted Doug to think, but he never said that. I think he had a right to say what he did, without getting into trouble for it. If you don't have that right, what rights do you have? But the logic of these silly perception-based laws would probably result in Larry being hauled off to jail.
This is also the reason I oppose certain "pre-emptive" laws that punish people for things they "intend" do, even though they never threaten or attempt to do them. In my opinion, a person should never be punished for intending to do something unless or until they threaten to do it (in no uncertain terms) or actually attempt to do it. Veiled threats shouldn't count, as they can often be misunderstood (see the Larry and Doug example above). We don't need the thought police in this country.
Sure, someone may be collecting lots of fertilizer that could be used to take down a building, but that alone is not reason enough to arrest them. We don't know for sure that this is what they plan to do. If we think that's what they intend to do, then we can keep an eye on them and make sure they don't do it.
Then we had those silly laws against fake child pornography that were, thankfully, shot down by the courts. They would have – get this – punished people for producing or possessing "child pornography" that involved no real children, just fantasy images or drawings. Although this stuff does not actually hurt or exploit any child, the plan was to punish people just as if it was the real thing. Part of the rationale for these laws was the notion that the production or use of this faux child porn could cause someone to actually harm children in the future. Again, this was another attempt to write perception into the law – the perception about what a given activity might cause someone to do later.
Along those same lines, there was an item in the news several years ago about a high school boy whose girlfriend had recently broken up with him. He was angry about the breakup and, to vent his anger, wrote a fantasy story about his former girlfriend being brutally raped and killed. However, the story was meant for his own, um, "personal edification" and was never intended to be shared with anyone else or used as a way to threaten the girl.
However, to make a long story short, a friend came over to his house one day, found a copy of the story, and took it to school with him. He then shared it with the boy's former girlfriend, who then alerted school officials. Bottom line, the boy was suspended for several days for "making threats" against his former girlfriend. She perceived that she was being threatened by this young man, so he was treated accordingly. Of course, if those school officials had dealt in reality instead of perception, the friend who took the copy of the story to school would have been the one who was punished – for stealing and deliberately inciting discord.
One can only hope that logic and rational thinking will one day be the driving force behind the creation of laws and that hysteria, paranoia, and knee-jerk reactions will finally be deposited in the trash heap of history.
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