Comments on: Quote of the Day: Following Orders Edition http://www.thelibertypapers.org/2012/07/27/quote-of-the-day-following-orders-edition/ Life. Liberty. Property. Defending individual freedom and liberty, one post at a time. Wed, 22 May 2013 18:26:11 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Nevery http://www.thelibertypapers.org/2012/07/27/quote-of-the-day-following-orders-edition/#comment-86608 Nevery Sat, 04 Aug 2012 20:57:43 +0000 http://www.thelibertypapers.org/?p=10763#comment-86608 Slightly off topic, but related: there is an legal exception to breaking the law, in which you are allowed to break the law in the rare circumstance where following the law would cause more human injury than breaking it. It’s called “Doctrine of Competing Harms.” The best example, from Massad Ayoob, says that suppose you and your family are traveling down a two lane highway. A very large tractor trailer coming the opposite direction crosses the median into your lane and is headed straight for you. In order to prevent harm to yourself, your family, and possibly the driver, you swerve over the double-yellow line into the opposing lane, narrowly avoiding an accident. A police officer could not, under those circumstances, couldn’t write you a ticket for crossing the median and have it hold up in court.

Same thing is if you were at the range shooting and stopped at a Starbucks on the way home and witnessed a woman being raped at knife-point. You, then, could retrieve your firearm from the trunk and “brandish” said firearm to protect the woman, and you would have legally broken no laws.

Ayoob also stated that there was a store owner that was illegally carrying a firearm that shot a kid trying to rob him, however because he was robbed at gunpoint a few months prior, no charges were brought for illegal carry of a concealed firearm. The store owner believed his life was realistically In danger everyday and he decided to carry even though they denied him a CCW. He also believed he was in immediate danger at the moment he shot the kid. Both are legally justifiable under those circumstances.

So I guess the point if “following orders” was, in fact, to save someone’s life and was honorable, laws don’t apply; however, if “following orders” was inhumaine and considered, by large, to be dishonorable, then consequences should be imposed whether or not there are laws to support them.

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