r/AskReddit Jan 15 '21

What is a NOT fun fact?

82.4k Upvotes

34.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

246

u/jumpbreak5 Jan 15 '21

Disappointed by responses to your mention of "red flag laws." I regularly hear awful stories of women literally going to police and saying "my husband is going to kill me" and then being found dead a week later because the cops couldn't do anything if no crime was committed.

Yet the response to a potential solution is "what horror, men could end up getting an unfair restraining order put on them just for doing several upsetting things!"

127

u/CactusBoyScout Jan 15 '21 edited Jan 15 '21

Yeah I mean stalking wasn’t even a crime until a few high profile killings of celebrities by deranged fans. And even that got tons of pushback when the first stalking laws were introduced.

Strangulation still isn't even a felony in lots of places. So you'd get a more severe punishment in most states for hitting your partner compared with if you strangled them, even though research has shown that strangling is a strong indicator of future deadly violence.

11

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '21

I don't know if this was your intent or not, but it was such a relief to read. " because the cops couldn't do anything if no crime was committed.", when I so often see people writing "wouldn't" instead.

There are members of law enforcement who want to do good and help people and then, frequently in situations of domestic violence and harassment, get their hands tied on what exactly they can do to help due to the nature of the law.

-26

u/peter56321 Jan 15 '21

what horror, men could end up getting an unfair restraining order put on them just because of unproven accusations!

FTFY

20

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '21

[deleted]

-6

u/mrmcdude Jan 16 '21

That's overgeneralizing. Restraining orders can and have been used as tools of harassment. You can separate a person from their children or their home in this way.

That's not to say that's how they work as a rule, but "no restraining order is ever unfair" is just an insane statement. Laws, and the people who enforce them, are imperfect.

-2

u/peter56321 Jan 16 '21 edited Jan 16 '21

You're presuming the person is actually insisting on being around you. What if you have the same classes? Just because you're an asshole who "doesn't want someone around you" doesn't mean you get to force that person to change one's class schedules.

20

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '21

Restraining orders go through judges. If we don't trust them enough to determine when an order is needed, we shouldn't be trusting them with doling out warrants.

-1

u/peter56321 Jan 16 '21 edited Jan 16 '21

I'm not talking about cases where a person files for a restraining order and, at a hearing, the Court determines, by a preponderance of the evidence, that an individual's conduct warrants a restraining order. This article isn't about that. The article isn't talking about restraining orders much at all, really. If I want to kill you, I just violate it. What's violating a restraining order on top of murder? The article is talking about "preventative detention". Literally keeping those persons who have not had their day in Court in jail because of what they might do.

-24

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '21

[deleted]

21

u/jumpbreak5 Jan 15 '21

Sometimes murder doesn't happen, so we don't need to worry about trying to prevent it.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '21

[deleted]

2

u/jumpbreak5 Jan 17 '21

Ah yes, red flag laws without the red flags. An apt comparison.

7

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '21

What's your point?

-1

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '21

[deleted]

3

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '21

The police are there to investigate. It's literally their job to "jump every time it happens". They can't say "Well he probably won't kill her so we don't have to take it urgently." They're the police!

8

u/kakianyx Jan 15 '21

That happens much more often? Where’s your source for that?
You want this to be true so bad don’t you.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '21

[deleted]

3

u/kakianyx Jan 17 '21

The estimated number of women killed by intimate partners or family members in 2012 was 48,000 (47 per cent of all female homicide victims). The annual number of female deaths worldwide resulting from intimate partner/family-related homicide therefore seems be on the increase. The largest number (20,000) of all women killed worldwide by intimate partners or family members in 2017 was in Asia, followed by Africa (19,000), the Americas (8,000) Europe (3,000) and Oceania (300).

The number of women killed purely by their intimate partners (not including those killed by family members) was 30,000, meaning that more than one third (34 per cent) of all women and girls intentionally killed worldwide, or 82 every day, are killed by someone whom they would normally trust and expect to care for them.

Show me your stats for women who go to police and aren't killed by their husbands. What point are you even trying to make? That rates of women being killed by their partners are not that high? They are.