Let art (games) be better than life

Extracted 31MAR2012 from ttp://tinyurl.com/6tljnx8

At a time when the overall U.S. homicide rate is declining, more civilians are killing each other and claiming self-defense—a trend that is most pronounced in states with new "stand your ground" laws.

• In about 60% of justifiable-homicide cases in which the relationship between victim and killer was known, the pair were strangers. This differs sharply from nonjustifiable cases, where more than three-fourths of victims knew their killers.

• Firearms were used in more than 80% of justifiable cases. (In seven cases, the victims were asphyxiated or strangled.) In nonjustifiable cases, guns were used about 65% of the time.

• The average age of victims in justifiable cases was 30; in nonjustifiable cases, the average was 32. By either yardstick, the February killing of 17-year-old Mr. Martin was an outlier.

...Among all homicides, when races differed, the victim was more often white. By contrast, in justifiable-homicide cases, when the races differed, the opposite was true: The victim was more often black.

John Hagler... did say the new law has given criminal-defense attorneys such as himself a new tool where few existed before. "If you've got two guys shooting it out, how many defenses are there?" he said. "I've had cases where my guy shot a guy in the back with an automatic rifle 11 times and claimed self-defense,"

[As a shoot-em-up genre becomes more prominent in the real world, let tactical patience find its way into first-person shooter games, and let us find wisdom in such gameplay]