Quote Originally Posted by Syme View Post
You seriously think physical assault is only slightly more reprehensible than insulting remarks? If you see so little difference between words and blows, that's your business I guess, but the law disagrees for a quite good reason (as do most reasonable people, I think). Offending someone verbally is not "nearly" as bad as attacking them physically.
I think it depends on the things that were said. If he said something blatantly offensive that could start a physical confrontation then it is at least partially his fault. I do appreciate the snide "as do most reasonable people, I think" remark being tossed in. Clearly the difference verbal and physical confrontation is entirely cut and dry and one would never inevitably lead to the other.
Quote Originally Posted by Syme View Post
No, I don't think that would have been a good idea. When someone assaults you, it's probably not wise to punch them back once and then stand back and be like "there, now we're even!" and expect the other guy to drop it. This isn't a couple of pre-adolescent siblings trading kiddie punches iin their backyard; this is a guy being assaulted by a violent stranger. When someone assaults you and you have to defend yourself, you should end the fight conclusively. This is not only common sense, it's legally defensible. Maybe his last few punches weren't strictly necessary since the guy was already on his way to the floor, but it's not like he got him on the ground and then started kicking/stomping him, and certainly he was justified in throwing more than one or two punches. The exchange of blows only lasted a couple seconds and the old guy didn't cross the line of justifiable defense against a physical assault.
Yea I suppose his little beating was justified, putting myself in his position I would have wanted to do the same thing. Watching the video just made it seem a bit over the top.


Quote Originally Posted by Syme View Post
I dunno, it guess it depends on what you mean by "defend". I'm not saying he's a civic hero, or a good person in general, nor am I trying to defend his verbal sparring with the other guy (that was irresponsible) or the way he rants and raves after he gets of the bus (though I can understand why he's worked up into an emotional state). So please don't try to suggest that I'm a fan of his behavior. But yes, I would defend him from charges that he is responsible for initiating the fight (the only one responsible for that is the guy who threw the first punch), and I would say that the way he finished the fight is perfectly defensible in every way. Unless a person can throw a pretty ridiculous punch, or gets really lucky and knocks out some teeth or something, hitting someone only once or twice is unlikely to take the fight out of them.
Listen, I'm going to make something perfectly clear right now. I am not saying that the white guy should face any kind of legal charges. I was thinking about this whole thing in terms of morality and not strictly what is or isn't legal. I never said anything involving criminal charges.

Quote Originally Posted by Syme View Post
this is a pretty baseless assumption, it seems perfectly reasonable that someone would yell this when they're in a keyed-up, adrenalin-filled state after being physically assaulted by someone who they warned to leave them alone and tried to walk away from. That's no good grounds to assume that he was trying to bait the dude into a fight. If anyone besides the black guy himself bears responsibility for that, it was the idiots on the bus encouraging him to "beat his ass".
I agree that the people on the bus were irresponsible as well and only helped instigate the situation. Have you watched any of this guys videos though? He wasn't a regular guy in an adrenaline filled state, he looks to me like he is mentally unstable and I think every one of his videos support that.