On Fri, October 2, 2009 11:40, Trevor Cunningham wrote: > Tim Mulholland - Conflicted: I dislike the border treatment, but the > picture + story is powerful. Even without the story, there's a tragic > nature to the image I find striking. Someone loved this person. Given > limited background, I can only imagine how the person on the other side > of the gun feels. If justified, I hope s/he had something worth > protecting. Generally, you're legally justified in using deadly force in self-defense *only* if you're reasonably in fear of death or great bodily harm (it's a matter of state law in the US, so there are 50 answers just here). Every person has something "worth protecting"; that's the same sort of axiom as your statement that somebody loved the person pictured. All people are of value. When people are improperly present in other people's houses, things have already gone fairly severely astray. For the record, I have twice suppressed the urge to comment on non-photographic opinions about firearms matters that people have posted in commenting on this photo, and I feel that I'm being very very restrained this time. I really do not think that a discussion (never mind a debate) on actual firearms and self-defense law issues is appropriate or likely to be beneficial for this list. But to achieve that (lack of discussion), it's necessary for the exercise of restraint to be broad-based; I probably don't have enough restraint to do it all by myself. Please help me! (Also for the record, I think it's a strong photo, and the caption information adds to it. And it and the caption are not the parts I'm worried about / complaining about.) -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
