Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site topaz.ARPA
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!columbia!topaz!josh
From: josh@topaz.ARPA (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Handgun control--one more time.
Message-ID: <2945@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 26-Jul-85 18:23:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.2945
Posted: Fri Jul 26 18:23:30 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Jul-85 03:27:36 EDT
References: <3207@decwrl.UUCP> <239@SCIRTP.UUCP>
Reply-To: josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall)
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 28

In article <239@SCIRTP.UUCP> jimi@SCIRTP.UUCP (Jim Ingram) writes:
(quoting Don Black I believe)
>>   By the way, Charles....Do you recall the incident in Boston a week or so
>>ago, where a person called 911 to report a rape in progress?  The person was
>>put on hold twice, and hung up on. ...

>
>Unfortunately, another crime would have occurred, the shooting of the
>alleged rapist. Depending on the locale, the charge could range from 
>manslaughter to murder.
>
>It really seems like the vigilantes of America are on this net. Does 
>anyone know about due process, etc.? 
>...
>Jim Ingram	

You don"t seem to understand due process yourself.  One of the major
points of due process is to make sure that the person to be punished
is in fact the guilty one, and that a crime has actually been committed,
when in a courtroom situation weeks or months after the event.  Usually
the accused was arrested far in time and space from the actual event,
on the basis of descriptions and other second-hand evidence.
None of these considerations apply in the case of a victim defending herself
*during the progress of the assault*, now do they?  There is a considerable
difference between self-defense and vigilantism, and your labelling
of one as the other is an ingenuous distortion.

--JoSH