> I'll ask if you would see no difference between someone
> threatening to punch you in the face and someone actually
> punching you in the face.
... which he thinks makes his point, but he's wrong. Somehow he's shifted from distinguishing between violent and not-violent (sic) Robbery to the difference between Assault and Battery.
(For the record, yes I see a difference, but not one that supports your point)
> Most reasonable people will not equate the two but for some
> reason Jordan does ...
We keep coming back to this, and you keep getting it wrong.
They are not "equal" in any way except that they are both violent crimes.
Yes! They are different! Congrats! But that's not what you're saying; you're saying that without physical assault, it's not violent. That's what I disagree with. You were originally saying this about Robbery, but now you're also saying it about simple assault?
> Intent is important.
Important in some ways. Not so important in others. How's that for responding to your vague claim with my own? Ok, so here's your example:
> They had no intention of harming and when faced with the
> prospect of harming someone or failing in their robbery chose
> failing in their robbery.
Good luck making this case. The problem with your idea is that it fails the 'reasonableness' test: would a reasonable person believe that they are actually being threatened in a case where no such intentionality exists? How would they know?
If the would-be-unintentional-robber has the reasonably-perceived-threat countered with equivalent force (i.e., if the robber presents a firearm and the would-be-victim shoots the robber), is the unaware-of-non-intentionality person going to be charged in your no-longer-crappy legal code? Afterall, the robber wasn't intending to harm the person, they were just desperate for food. And look! They got shot!
Also: how would you go about calculating what portion of the total Robberies were of this form? You seemed to say that you thought the police could determine this by whether or not the would-be-robber shit his pants?
> I'm not saying robbery isn't a crime ...
... but you are saying that robbery isn't a violent crime sometimes, right?
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that's how I read this:
>> Robbery is the #1 violent offense (~30% of total violent
>> crime) in spite of the fact that the majority of robberies
>> involve no physical assault to anyone.
"John Thornton believes that Robbery, in the majority,
is miscategorized as violent crime."
Yes? This is what you say? Well: balderdash.
> I'm saying that a legal system that sometimes equates a threat
> to an assault but at other times doesn't is flawed.
That's quite a bit less of a claim than you've been making so far. It's so much less of a claim, it hardly even needs to be publically announced. Recipe: one part claim to 10M parts water.
/jordan