CitiBank Refusing Card Services for Weapons Purchases

[Spekkio]

That, in itself, is pretty dumb. "Caution: beverage hot" does nothing to tell you about how hot the beverage is, considering "hot" is subjective. Most people do know that coffee comes "hot." The point is that it usually doesn't come so "hot" that it'd give you 2nd and 3rd degree burns if you spilled it on yourself.

 

[QuagmireMcGuire]

QM....ahem, it is 'knowledges'

That just doesn't roll off my fingers.

what are you suggesting wrt the inclusion of firearms..premiums...sports cars analogy?

Does "wrt" stand for "with regards to"?

The usual suggestion that people who possess firearms are of a premium intellect who deserve sports cars.

Seriously, my only point is that every entity, whether they are in it for profit or not, has to take preemptive precautions.

 

[feddoc]

I agree about the pre-emptive cautions...but, citbank does not appear to react this way to other items which are more dangerous.

 

[Schnugg]

Sir,

Please correct me if I am wrong because I am convinced you possess more knowledge about this than I do but aren't there more stringent laws pertaining to the purchase of firearms than there are for vehicle purchases. In many ways, you are prejudged by the type of car you purchase, if not by the credit card company but by your insurance company. Aren't people with sports cars paying higher insurance premiums than a person who purchased a coupe because the perception is that a person in a sports car is more likely to speed and drive recklessly than a person in a coupe?

Additionally, from reading that article and the statement from the company, they are only denying firearms purchases that take place from merchant to merchant on the internet. I have the impression that any other legal firearms purchase is permissible.

QM

Please shut up. You are ruining all of our fun bitchy opinionated posts with your "legalspeak."

 

[QuagmireMcGuire]

Please shut up. You are ruining all of our fun bitchy opinionated posts with your "legalspeak."

Actually, it is "legalese"; I can't help it, I can semanticise all day.

 

[eddie]

Why is this a legal question / discussion?

"We reserve the right to refuse service... blah blah blah."

This is for PR and potential liability issues, not some inherent corporate hatred of guns. YOU may not like it, but they wouldn't do it if they thought the benefits would not outweigh the consequences. It's business.

 

[Steve Wilkins]

Ah, guilt before being proved innocent. You have a very perverted sense of justice. How about if 'they' take your car away from you because you might drive drunk?

Nah, this isn't about justice and I think you may be confusing guilt/innocence with a criminal procedure vice civil. And you don't prove someone to be innocent. Sorry, just a pet peeve. As for taking the car away, are you referring to the government doing this, a private individual, or corporate entity. For the sake of this discussion and your argument, it does matter. The government taking your vehicle away because you might drive drunk is an apples and oranges comparison to a corporate entity refusing to provide a particular service.

I wonder how folks would feel if citibank decided not to fund a car purchase because you might drive drunk?...I also think it, that business decision, is a piss poor way to treat customers who are completing a legal transaction. It's as if they, citibank, are putting their dislike of guns above the needs/desires of customers.

If they don't want to fund car purchases anymore, then so be it. That should be their right as a business entity. Whether it or anything else they decide is a poor business decision is irrelevant. That discussion should be left to Citibank and its shareholders.

In many ways, you are prejudged by the type of car you purchase, if not by the credit card company but by your insurance company. Aren't people with sports cars paying higher insurance premiums than a person who purchased a coupe because the perception is that a person in a sports car is more likely to speed and drive recklessly than a person in a coupe?

And let's not forget gender, age, marital status...etc. all playing huge roles in how much your auto insurance premiums are. :icon_rage

That, in itself, is pretty dumb. "Caution: beverage hot" does nothing to tell you about how hot the beverage is, considering "hot" is subjective. Most people do know that coffee comes "hot." The point is that it usually doesn't come so "hot" that it'd give you 2nd and 3rd degree burns if you spilled it on yourself.

Umm, that's kind of the point I think he was making. Unless you're ordering an ice-coffee from Dunkin Donuts, I think a person should assume that the coffee they are ordering is hot. It doesn't matter what the temperature is. Hot means that it's going to hurt if you spill it on yourself. As such, you're an idiot if you put it between your legs and it spills on you. It sucks that you can hurt yourself really bad by putting hot coffee between your legs. But if you know it would hurt even a little if coffee spilled, then why put it between your legs in the first place?

Does "wrt" stand for "with regards to"?

That is correct.

 

[Spekkio]

But if you know it would hurt even a little if coffee spilled, then why put it between your legs in the first place?

Hey, I could stub my toe by walking from my computer to the front door of my house. That doesn't mean I should abstain from it altogether.

In other words, not only is the potential for injury weighed in a risk assessment, but also the possible severity of those injuries are weighed as well.

All I was saying is that yes, most people would know that it will hurt if you spill hot coffee on yourself. However, most people do not expect to receive serious burns and permanent nerve damage from it. Therefore, in her head, she could be thinking that the chances of her spilling coffe on herself are low, and even if she does she'll just have to pay a dry cleaning bill and deal with some discomfort for a couple minutes. Thus, she put it between her legs. It's not the decision I would make, but I don't think it's as idiotic as you guys are making it sound.

 

[Steve Wilkins]

Hey, I could stub my toe by walking from my computer to the front door of my house. That doesn't mean I should abstain from it altogether.

Nor does it mean you should sue the company who manufactured the lumber to build the house, the builder who built the house, or the Realtor who sold you the house.

Come on now. Let's not start with the stupid comparisons.

All I was saying is that yes, most people would know that it will hurt if you spill hot coffee on yourself...It's not the decision I would make, but I don't think it's as idiotic as you guys are making it sound.

You're making our point for us. If a reasonable person would expect it to hurt if you spilled hot coffee (which said coffee should be expected to be hot when purchasing it), then a reasonable person puts it between their legs at their own risk.

Nobody expects or wants bad stuff to happen. But it does all the time...a lot of which is preventable. But just because bad stuff happens to us doesn't mean we need to go after someone else and make them pay....especially when we could have reasonably prevented whatever the hell it was that happened.

 

[Cate]

If a reasonable person would expect it to hurt if you spilled hot coffee (which said coffee should be expected to be hot when purchasing it), then a reasonable person puts it between their legs at their own risk.

That's exactly right, but the question is, risk of what? If I'm risking a little bit of discomfort and a dry-cleaning bill, which is what you generally expect from spilled coffee, I'm probably going to accept that risk and put the coffee in my lap if I have nowhere else to put it. If I'm risking second-degree burns and the physical fusing of parts of my tender anatomy to other parts of my tender anatomy, I'm going to be a lot more cautious about where I put my coffee -- but that risk is certainly not one that's generally associated with coffee consumption.

It's like getting nicked with the scissors when you go for a haircut. It happens sometimes, you slap some Neosporin and a Band-Aid on it, and you go on your way. But if you end up bleeding to death on the floor of the salon from a scissors-stick to the jugular, no one's going to say to your family, "Well, he knew they were using pointy scissors when he sat down in the chair."

 

[Random8145]

Everyone says they have rights, no one wants responsibilities.

 

[Steve Wilkins]

That's exactly right, but the question is, risk of what?

That's why they call it risk. You can never be certain of any risk or completely eliminate it; you can only mitigate against it. Whether you are expecting something to happen or not is completely irrelevant. The question is what did you do or what could you have done to prevent it? By putting coffee between your legs, you are increasing the risk to, rather than mitigating against, any number of possible outcomes....again, regardless of whether you expect any of those outcomes to actually happen.

 

[Spekkio]

That's why they call it risk. You can never be certain of any risk or completely eliminate it; you can only mitigate against it. Whether you are expecting something to happen or not is completely irrelevant. The question is what did you do or what could you have done to prevent it? By putting coffee between your legs, you are increasing the risk to, rather than mitigating against, any number of possible outcomes....again, regardless of whether you expect any of those outcomes to actually happen.

Unfortunately, the law is results-oriented.

Let's say someone takes a knife and lunge at you. At this point, he know that a knife is capable of killing you, so you can safely assume that that's his intent. You dodge and punch him in the face, knocking him out. A witness saw the event. He goes to jail and gets charged with assault with a deadly weapon. Probably pleas it down and gets probation.

Now let's take the same situation, except this time he actually stabs you. You go to the hospital and survive. Now it's attempted murder. Now he's going to prison for a few years.

Now let's take the same situation and you die. Now it's murder 2nd, and he's going to prison for 25-life.

Now let's take the same situation and you die. He then cuts up your remains and pisses on your face. Now it's depraved indifference murder and he's eligible for the death penalty.

Each crime has increasingly more penalty based solely on the outcome, even though the intent and actions were exactly the same. The person with the knife is a murderer, regardless of whether or not he succeeded in killing someone.

Should the law work like that? That's open to debate. But the outcome most certainly matters when it comes to criminal and tort law. Like Cate and I said: If someone doesn't expect 2nd degree burns from spilled coffee, then he is going to be more inclined to take the "risk" of putting it between his legs. The expected outcome is typically weighed in a person's mind when making a risk assessment. By expected outcome, I don't mean that the person said "I'm swift enough never to spill this coffee," but that the person probably never thought that coffee would ever be so hot that she could get 2nd degree burns and permanent nerve damage from spilled coffee.

 

[QuagmireMcGuire]

Unfortunately, the law is results-oriented.

Let's say someone takes a knife and lunge at you. At this point, he know that a knife is capable of killing you, so you can safely assume that that's his intent. You dodge and punch him in the face, knocking him out. A witness saw the event. He goes to jail and gets charged with assault with a deadly weapon. Probably pleas it down and gets probation.

Now let's take the same situation, except this time he actually stabs you. You go to the hospital and survive. Now it's attempted murder. Now he's going to prison for a few years.

Now let's take the same situation and you die. Now it's murder 2nd, and he's going to prison for 25-life.

Now let's take the same situation and you die. He then cuts up your remains and pisses on your face. Now it's depraved indifference murder and he's eligible for the death penalty.

Each crime has increasingly more penalty based solely on the outcome, even though the intent and actions were exactly the same. The person with the knife is a murderer, regardless of whether or not he succeeded in killing someone.

Should the law work like that? That's open to debate. But the outcome most certainly matters when it comes to criminal and tort law. Like Cate and I said: If someone doesn't expect 2nd degree burns from spilled coffee, then he is going to be more inclined to take the "risk" of putting it between his legs. The expected outcome is typically weighed in a person's mind when making a risk assessment. By expected outcome, I don't mean that the person said "I'm swift enough never to spill this coffee," but that the person probably never thought that coffee would ever be so hot that she could get 2nd degree burns and permanent nerve damage from spilled coffee.

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa!

I may be reading you wrong but are you implying that the intent means nothing? Because if you are, I wholeheartedly disagree with you. The intent of the crime is very much important.

Taking from your hypo, I wait in an alley for two hours for my boyfriend to stumble out of a bar. I have memorized his schedule. I have a knife and a gun in my possession. I also have three escape routes planned not to mention my cousin Ray-Ray acting as my alibi. He comes out and I stab him. He dies. That's murder.

Now, changing steam a bit, I'm in the alley waiting for my boyfriend. This time, I'm on the cell-phone and Ray-Ray tells me that my boyfriend has been sleeping with him for the past two months. I begin to cry. I see a knife and my boyfriend comes out of the bar. I stab him. He dies. That's manslaughter.

Same outcome but different mindsets (Mens Rea) in committing the crime. Culpability varies depending on the mindset.

Back to the McDonald's case, when it comes down to it, it has less to do with her actions and more to do with just how damn hot that coffee was. If I remember correctly, she had been asked to pull up to wait for her order. She knew it was just a few feet so she put the coffee in her lap. She wasn't driving thirty miles at 60 miles an hour. I'm sure we're all familiar with McDonald's or any other fast food establishment which has asked us to pull over so they can get through the line. I'd bet that nine out of ten of you have placed your coffee in your lap or juggled change in your hand because a) they make you feel rushed and in the way of their commerce and b) you know its a short distance. Back in the day, McD's coffee was luke-warm at best; no reasonable and prudent individual would have expected the coffee to be hot enough to melt your womanly or manly parts.

 

[Spekkio]

I may be reading you wrong but are you implying that the intent means nothing?

Bear in mind that you just described two completely different actions taken by the criminal in two different situations. I clearly described 3 situations where the person does the EXACT same thing, and they are all different crimes based solely upon the outcome. You can make up any cause for the person trying to stab someone that you like, so long as you keep it the same. Which is why my 4th example doesn't really fit, either, because he's committing a different action (post-mortem stabbing and pissing) than the other 3 scenarios.

I'm not saying that intent never matters, but it is secondary to the outcome. While that's practical to have since you need to prove someone guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, it's ass-backwards.