Thread by @michaelharriot

Imagine if the Constitution included a secret lottery that marks 10% of all birth certificates with a red stamp allowing them to get away with 1 murder during their lifetime.

Here’s the catch:

The lottery winners would NEVER know if they had received the “murder stamp at birth

Now, most people don’t plan to murderer anyone, so you’d think the public would change this law

But you must also consider the fact that every American would know that they have a 10% chance to get away with murder.

So here are the arguments for & against changing the law:

1. IT’S A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT

The Founders included it to protect against tyranny. The government is less likely to violate your rights if there’s a 10% chance you have the murder stamp. Thus, the Murder Stamp Amendment also protects people who DON’T have a murder stamp.

2. MURDER STAMPS ARE EQUALLY APPLIED:

If everyone has an equal opportunity to get a murder stamp, why worry about it?

3. WHAT ABOUT UNSTAMPED-ON-UNSTAMPED MURDER?

Why are we so focused on murder stampers when 90% of all homicides are committed by the unstamped?

4. NOT ALL STAMPERS

Sure, murder exists, but having a stamp doesn’t mean a person will use it

Only a tiny percentage of stampers ever kill someone, which means most stampers are good ppl

We should judge people by the content of their character, not the status of their stamp

5. THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS MURDER STAMP PRIVILEGE

It’s not their fault that everyone doesn’t have a stamp.

Most people grew up not knowing if they had a murder stamp, followed the law, & worked as hard as every other American to maximize the opportunity to kill one person

Now here are the arguments AGAINST:

1. Murder is bad

2. We shouldn’t allow murder

3. How do we know murder stamps work if they’ve always existed?

4. Anyone who actually cared about others, this country, or God would want to eliminate systemic, institutional murder

5. How could a rational, objective human being argue that murder stamps are not a problem work if they’ve never lived in a country without murder stamps or even worked to eliminate murder stamps?

Again, in this made-up system that’s TOTALLY not a metaphor for anything, there’s no way anyone would know if they had a murder stamp until AFTER they committed murder

So if a boy took a gun to a protest & killed 2 people, it would be unfair to blame murder stamps.

It would also be unfair for anyone to blame murder stamps for the death of a 17-year-old unarmed boy in a hoodie who was being stalked by grown man with a gun

It would be wrong to say murder stamps are why cops shot a 12-year-old playing in a park 2 seconds after they arrived

It wouldn’t be right to say murder stamps are the reason police used false information to obtain a warrant and kill a girl who was sleeping in her apartment after she committed no crime

You can’t say murder stamps are why a man who wasn’t driving was killed for reaching…

For his wallet after a cop asked him for his ID.

Murder stamps don’t cause cops to kneel on people’s necks or shoot them in the back or through car windows

Because in this scenario that is not an analogy for anything, the killers wouldn’t have known they’d get away with murder

And in this completely hypothetical non-metaphor, if three men were convicted of murder after chasing a man down and lynching him for running through their neighborhood after NOT committing a crime…

This one conviction would NOT serve as proof that the murder stamp system works

The Murder Stamp Amendment is not an analogy for the right to bear arms.

Murder stamps are not a metaphor for racism

This is not an allegory about privilege…

Or whiteness

But…

What if there was a foolproof way to know if someone DIDN’T have a murder stamp?

What if you could identify—and I’m gonna pull a random number out of the air—13% of people who DEFINITELY don’t have a murder stamp?

What if their status was was literally stamped on their skin?

What if history, media & every part of society confirmed the status of the 13%

Now here’s the thing:

Perhaps the pro-stampers are right. Maybe murder stamps don’t cause people murder

Maybe most people are good.

It’s possible that most people would never think about killing another human being

But…

IF murderers DO EXIST (hypothetically, of course)

And IF they were going to murder someone…

AND they already owned a murder tool

AND they lived in a country that created an entire system that gave them the opportunity (no matter how small) to get away with murder.

Who do you the murderer are gonna target?

This fictional, imaginary, completely absurd system might explain how the 13% aren’t SURPRISED when someone uses a murder stamp…

YET they’re still upset by it

It explains feeling relieved by a murder conviction

But still wanting someone to fix the murder stamp system

Give thanks that you don’t live in a place like that