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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
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What is the point of the statute though? I can get behind spitting as assault, because human saliva can spread diseases, but who could possibly be harmed by this?
As far as I know, it's basically "throwing anything at anyone in an unwanted / offensive manner" in pretty much every jurisdiction. It's normally not a big deal that it's so broad, because it's a misdemeanor, and the cops / prosecutor / jury will exercise a certain amount of common sense about whether or not it's a big deal that you threw a balled up business card at someone or something. But, as soon as you're throwing something at a cop, it becomes a very different situation...
I agree that that’s the law, but why? Why should we make throwing things that can’t harm someone assault? If you throw a pb & j at someone who’s allergic to peanuts, or throw a dense sandwich really hard at someone standing on a high precipice, that’s a different story (and those are each covered by other crimes), but no harm was intended or caused by this. Why should it be illegal?
Edit: I can get behind littering as a charge here, but that looks very different on a background report…
I don't actually really know the full answer to that. If I had to guess, I would say that there generally need to be pretty distinct objective lines for when something becomes a crime (you can't have like a weight limit or something to where "throwing a sandwich" isn't a crime but then transitions to a crime as the object gets more and more hazardous up to where throwing a rock is a crime.) I think it is generally that it winds up being a sensible system just because simple battery just really isn't all that serious a charge. You can get convicted, in theory, just because you swatted someone's arm away, or threw a cup of water at them, or whatever, and it really just won't impact you all that much. (But then, if it's a rock or if you injure the person, or something like that, then it's a different and more serious charge than simple battery.)
Again, the trouble comes in when you're dealing with the cops and do one of those "simple battery" things and all of a sudden it comes with life-changing consequences.
A person who should be working as a door greeter at Walmart.