Pony!Snips as a police officer??
 
“Ronk, Papes, and Snips now do guard duty on Bunnera. The streets are safe!”  
~Post-game excerpt upon viewing Bunston’s completed ship

@mathprofbrony  
What on earth gave you the impression I “took his side”? I side with the law, which he broke. The fact that he was punished for his crimes undermines your entire argument.
 
But go ahead: every time your side starts ranting about “inbred redneck ammosexual retards”, the law gets another boost in popular opinion, which is fine by me. :D
 
Twilight is making a good decision in this case. As the (criminal) attacker, getting into a fight with all your assets in play loses you the initiative. Like a bank you’re casing, the town isn’t going anywhere (except down the drain), so breaking contact and observing is her best option.  
“They’ve spotted us, CHARGE!” is how reckless commanders get their names in the “most lopsided battle” record book.
 
“You already were allowed to use force to respond to force. That’s what self-defense is about.”  
The sheer number of people subjected to ridiculous and malicious prosecutions for defending themselves in the 80s was the reason self-defense law had to be clarified. Even the English are starting to realize their “arrest the elderly victim” strategy isn’t a vote-winner.

@Background Pony #061D
 
No, it allows people to respond with force in response to violence, not “provocation”
 
This is what SYG proponents don’t seem to grasp.
 
You already were allowed to use force to respond to force. That’s what self-defense is about.
 
But force should be a last resort, because of the many, many ways that using force can go wrong.
 
You could have underestimated your opponent, and now you’re in bigger trouble. You could have overestimated your opponent, and now you’ve killed someone who wasn’t a lethal threat. You can harm a bystander. You might have misunderstood the situation and responded with force to something that was not a threat. Your supposed threat might have been legitimate authority. The list is endless.
 
Here is the important sentence of my reply; all else is support: having a social norm to retreat instead of respond with force even when threatened with force, on the whole, makes everyone safer, including potential victims – the ‘Castle Doctrine’ and ‘Stand Your Ground’ movements are founded on attitudes that degrade this norm and make everyone, including potential victims, less safe.
 
The only reason anyone would come up with the idea in the first place is an eagerness to use violence when plausibly permissible, whereas the default stance should be an eagerness to avoid violence unless compelled.
 
(…which, I’m pretty sure, is the default attitude of a pretty pastel pony in a world run on the magic of friendship.)
 
And as for your other statement:
 
“you should not want to use chemotherapy drugs. Yet some sick monsters want chemotherapy to be a more available option.”
 
Force isn’t medicine. (Gun proponents, in particular, often seem to think of them as the cure rather than the disease.) Chemotherapy isn’t meant to kill anyone, so the reason not to want it is completely different and irrelevant to this discussion. It isn’t sick to want chemotherapy drugs to be, say, less expensive. It is, actually, kind of sick to want force options – especially guns – to be widely, cheaply available, whether that’s financially cheap or morally unfreighted.
 
The violence option should always be morally suspect. SYG makes it not be. That’s wrong.

@Background Pony #061D
 
They didn’t “go after an old man hiding in the basement.” Smith literally left the house, then snuck back in order to make them think no one was there, because they did not want to confront anyone. He wasn’t threatened with violence. As soon as he knew someone was in the house, he could have called the cops and it would all have been over.
 
After he shot the girl the first time, she wasn’t dead. He dragged her across the floor and shot her again to make sure. This is not someone using force in response to force, or to eliminate a threat. This is a murderer, and the court agreed with me. You should be horrified that you have taken his side.

@mathprofbrony  
Also, “kids” don’t rob someone’s house half a dozen times, then go after an old man hiding from them in the basement.  
Daily-kos types having more sympathy for violent criminals than victims is why conservatives gain so much from hyping the crime issue…

@mathprofbrony  
“employ force in response to provocation”?  
No, it allows people to respond with force in response to violence, not “provocation”.
 
“you should not want to use force. Stand Your Ground proponents want force to be a more available option.”  
I’m sure, or at least I hope that you can see the distinction between these statements. If not: “you should not want to use chemotherapy drugs. Yet some sick monsters want chemotherapy to be a more available option.”
 
 
The law is there to stop “civilized people” second guessing how fast a black women can sprint away from the people shoving her and calling her ‘nigger’ (Gibbs v. State).  
It’s there to stop 74 year-old florists like Cecil Coley from being arrested for defending themselves against armed robbers holding them at gun-point.
 
Fundamentally, the laws are there because the voters can easily imagine themselves in a situation where they may find themselves facing down a meth addict with a sharpened screwdriver at 4AM. What they can’t imagine is why they’d be the ones doing the mugging, or why anyone should get special protection for doing it.  
Remember the old quote from the Goetz trial? “There are no more liberals on the crime and law-and-order issue in New York, because they’ve all been mugged.” Even someone as opposed to self-defense as Justice Breyer can have their worldview shaken by that, and I’m sure he did some reflection while his arm healed.

@AlsoSprachOdin
 
Sure, I’ll be glad to elaborate.
 
The most relevant observation for Twilight’s case is the simple fact that force is risky. As other commenters have pointed out, using force, especially magical force, in a situation of unknown magic is quite possibly unwise.
 
A second point, relevant to both Twilight’s current situation and our world in general, is that force should always be a last resort. Just because you’re accosted doesn’t make it automatically a wise decision to employ force.
 
Responding to every provocation with proportional force never permits de-escalation. The Hatfields and McCoys both had ample justification for their force if you permit tit-for-tat arguments. The only way that kind of thing ever stops is if someone is provoked and refuses to respond with equal levels of violence. That is, they retreat, either physically or at least metaphorically. It is beneficial to society if this is the normal thing for people to do, otherwise you get constant cycles of violence and response.
 
Finally, and most relevant to our world, one of the fundamental elements of organized society is a principle known as the “monopoly of force.” Broadly, it says that when you are accosted, instead of responding equally it is better for you to back away and let authorities handle it. This prevents street brawls; allows misunderstandings time to cool off; and, most importantly, reinforces the norm that force is a morally suspect response to provocation, which should as much as possible be restricted to an accountable subset of persons. Stand Your Ground proponents degrade this norm by being eager to employ force in response to provocation – this endangers us all.
 
The “monopoly of force” argument is not so applicable in this case, since the authorities are the provokers. That’s a challenging ethical situation. But then you fall back on the practical considerations (risk), and the moral considerations (if there is little risk, I am manhandling a child, and force should be a last resort, etc), and come to the same conclusion.
 
Upshot: you should not want to use force. Stand Your Ground proponents want force to be a more available option.
 
Have you ever heard of Joe Horn? Texas man, shot two burglars. Open and shut case, right? Court thought so; he got off scot free.
 
Except the burglars he shot weren’t threatening him, and cops were on the way. He went over there, called them out, shot them fleeing.
 
I listened to that 911 call. Joe Horn was in no danger. What I heard throughout that call was a man working himself up to the chance to legally murder two human beings in cold blood. Isn’t that exciting? Wouldn’t you do it if you could? You wouldn’t if you had an aversion to using force in the first place.
 
Marcus Kaarma. Michael Dunn. Byron Smith. They all thought they were defending themselves. They thought that Stand Your Ground, or Castle Doctrine, or other variations of the same principle, justified their actions. They didn’t care about preserving a “monopoly of force.” In fact they hated it. None of them had to use lethal force in their situations. And a fistful of kids are dead because of them, who didn’t have to be.
 
You may say that those guys took it too far. But when you raise an idea like Stand Your Ground, you err toward the side of danger.
 
The duty to retreat is part of what makes a society civilized. Stand Your Ground proponents are degrading that principle. That is the meaning of my statement.
 
@Eggonaught
 
I did apologize for the retard comment. And if I spent less time studying one thing and more time studying anything I might see things differently, so your statement is vacuous.

@mathprofbrony  
If you spent less time studying math and more time studying case law, you might see things differently.  
And perhaps you might not call people who disagree with you ‘retards’ so readily.

@platypusmac  
Well, Gandalf never actually was that impressive a wizard anyway.
 
@mathprofbrony  
Someone else is already using force against Twilight. And simply saying that duty to retreat is what makes society civilized is only an assertion. I would like more of an argument there, if I’m to agree.  
[Beats right back with a bigger stick for hitting me in the first place.] That was rude.

@Pea  
It’s literally impossible not to offend this kind of person.

@Pea  
Yeah, you got a point there: the characters are quite overpowered. To make a decent antagonist, they had to create S4 Tirek. It has been really over 9000.
 
I’m enjoying this comic quite much, but I was just surprised by this turn of events. Twilight is (or was, at least) the kind of panicky pony, so it’s not the running away that seemed odd to me… but rather the fact that she fled in front of Snips.  
I can’t really understand what’s happening in the background, but I guess an angry pony mob would justify this all.
 
And don’t worry about “cheap ways”, that one was hilarious XD

@Pea  
My comment wasn’t a stab at your works or writing ability, so much as it seems like the CMC seem to be more than a little out of control against ponies who flat out refuse to harm them in any way. The “kids being in control” storyline tends to run into trouble when a situation they can’t handle (such as real, imminent danger, or something that their parents/siblings often handle) finally comes along, and a well-needed lesson winds up being learned. But, you’ve already stated that that’s not the direction you’re going. I watch this comic because I want to see how it plays out.

@Pea
 
If that at all includes my characterization of some people earlier I do apologize. I very much like your comic and look forward to its continuing production.

@requiem-dirge  
All other princesses are at a princess symposium, Twilight’s ticket to which was eaten by Spike. I freely acknowledge that this is entirely a cheap way to keep the Princesses out of the way of the story.
 
Part of the problem with writing for the pony universe is that the main characters are ridiculously powerful. Twilight can teleport and make force fields, Fluttershy basically owns the animal kingdom, Spike has the power of instant long-distance communication, and Princess Celestia often appears to just have “make things better” powers.
 
The world is full to the brim of magical objects and characters that could be used for innumerable solutions to a problem like this. Rather than spending half the comic time hurriedly explaining away why they don’t do X or Y, I opted to simply leave out elements of the world that I didn’t want to be bothered with. My hope is that the audience understands that if I don’t show a card first, I generally won’t be playing it later.
 
Unrelated, but I’d much prefer you didn’t make comments on Three Apples pages making fun of mentally handicapped people. I’m aware that I’m in no position to moderate these comments sections, but I allow Three Apples to be uploaded to Derpibooru because the comments on pages are generally respectful and often contain legitimately helpful criticism. If that stopped being true, I would ask that they please not be reposted because that’s not the kind of talk I like being associated with.

Actually, in a situation like this, retreat is the better option. Twilight’s already seen very powerful magic at work in Ponyville; who knows what other things it may have done to the town? Throwing around magic, even purely defensive magic, could make the situation much worse in the long run.

I watch this to see what happens when a REAL threat shows up. Or, the Princesses. You gonna encase Celestia and Luna in cement, too?

@SFaccountant  
Forcefield him, like in Twilight Time. Her bubbles may not be as powerful as her brother’s, but they’re nothing to scoff at.

@mathprofbrony  
Meh, the society the CMC built in this story isn’t very civil, actually.  
Twilight can stand her ground without hurting anyone.

I’m sure she wants to get out of the situation with minimal force, and that includes manhandling a child, or worse, the town (who will almost certainly side with the police) with telekinesis, mind control spells, or anything else. You start trying that sort of stuff and they’re not going to just roll over.
 
Even if you really are a bad mofo, you’re (a) using force against your friends and fellow citizen, and (b) not entirely free of risk of injury yourself. Mounted knights in plate armor still went down to pikemen; guerrillas can harrass modern armed forces.
 
beats Stand Your Ground proponents with a heavy stick “The duty to retreat is part of what makes a society civilized you retards”

@SFaccountant  
She has several ways to stop ponies.  
She stopped Rainbow Dash in mid air a couple of times already.

@Background Pony #E8BC  
They were too slow! Only the strong survive in dystopian comic Ponyville!
 
 
@platypusmac  
What were you expecting her to do, fireball him? Obviously, if she was willing to use force against a bunch of children, Twilight would have had this wrapped up a long time ago.

They got Fluttershy and Rarity. Oh no, Pinkie Pie fell behind!

>Princess  
>Has the third highest level of magic power in Equestria  
>Is confronted with a young colt known to be almost retarded  
>Runs.
 
Dafuq? It’s like Gandalf beating feet at the sight of a bunch of angry hamsters…

“…I CAN’T GO BACK TO JAIL!”

I got to say, it being sips and/or snails was pretty much what I expected.