Subject:
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Re: Arkham Asylum - A cool set, but a bit disturbing.
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:08:38 GMT
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Viewed:
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9628 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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You’re correct, but that’s kind of a dumb law. There’s a ton of things that
you can do to yourself that you can’t do to others without consent, among
which tattooing and masturbation are perhaps two of the most obvious
examples. Why suicide should be afforded this mystical “thou shalt not”
status makes no sense to me, assuming that the individual is of sound mental
capacity, of course.
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The Judeo-Christian heritage of the United States government says that it’s
wrong to kill anyone, therefore it should be illegal. That does, of course,
lead to the obvious question of why they thought it should be a capital crime.
I mean, as I understand it, murder in every US State is charged on behalf of the
People, whereas attempted murder is charged on behalf of the intended victim.
If you were the intended victim, this, as I understand it, gives you the right
to decline to press charges (once you chose to go ahead with them, you may or
may not be able to drop the charges). As an attempted suicide, you apparently
did not get the right to decline on behalf of the intended victim (yourself), or
pretty much the only people who would go ahead with trial would be the few who
really did still want to commit suicide, but realized that they wouldn’t be able
to bring themselves to go through with it (in which case, the capital punishment
gives them an easy out).
It’s certainly one of the more insane stupid laws that have been on the books in
the US, but there are a lot of other more mundane ones that simply baffle the
mind. I recall there being one city in the southwestern states where there’s a
$100 fine for detonating a nuclear device within the city limits. There are
other places where you are still required to fire a shotgun in the air once
every mile if you’re driving a car (so as to warn horse-owners that you’re
coming in one of those infernal contraptions that will scare the bejeezus out of
their horses)...but you’re far more likely to get prosecuted for public
endangerment and creating a public nuisance if you do than for disobeying a
valid law on the books.
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