bubba smith Posted February 1, 2009 Report Share Posted February 1, 2009 Re: Champs-What if you had to draft a superpower registration act? well, i have always thought the superhero registration to be a stupid idea and virtually unenforceable. You'd have to get a decent % of the supers in the world to become a police force to keep it under control. Generally subjugation only works when the subjugators are the stronger. and i just see a some of supers fighting back if only to just be left alone. And most supervillains? Heck, well this could be a good plot for the legion of doom. Brainiac replaces sen. Byrd with an android and uses him to pass superhero registration act. So, lod will no longer have justice league to stand in there way. Oh, yeah. Bah. amen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SKJAM! Posted February 1, 2009 Report Share Posted February 1, 2009 Re: Champs-What if you had to draft a superpower registration act? "Make the use of superpowers illegal"--None of my characters would go for that for an instant, threat of "even worse law" notwithstanding. Even if you restricted it to "offensive" powers, there's still the old "any power is offensive if you know how to use it" problem. (Plus the poor saps with Damage Shield Always On--admittedly most of them are villains, but still.) Registration, on the other hand, is a bit more workable. The first step is to make the committee's work public. The process should be transparent so that the public will know exactly what the problem is that the law is trying to fix, how the law is intended to work, and the details of how it is to be applied. All of my characters would insist on this. The two characters most likely to be actually useful in drafting a registration act are Calculus, who is a super-genius and has social skills; and Kira Midori, a law enforcement officer from an alternate future where psychic powers are as common as left-handedness in the modern day. The former because he's really smart and can spot obvious pitfalls, the latter because she can share how her society deals with these issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vorsch Posted February 1, 2009 Report Share Posted February 1, 2009 Re: Champs-What if you had to draft a superpower registration act? How exactly does it deal with Mind police? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SKJAM! Posted February 1, 2009 Report Share Posted February 1, 2009 Re: Champs-What if you had to draft a superpower registration act? By teaching them strong ethical standards. And by that point in the future, there are ways to stop people from using telepathy or mind control on you available to the public, if you're paranoid. (Telekinesis is not so easily defended against, but if someone is whipping that out, things are already out of hand.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Weapon Posted February 1, 2009 Report Share Posted February 1, 2009 Re: Champs-What if you had to draft a superpower registration act? [knitpick] Actually, the "Fighter's Hands Law" you speak of is a braggart's conceit and a myth, though authorities do sometimes keep closer tabs on someone with a sufficently long history of making trouble. [/knitpick] What does happen is people with martial arts training (even ludicrously small amounts of it) can be charged with using a lethal weapon if the attack someone. When defending themselves they are expected to be able to use a lesser amount of force (so when a bruiser attacks an Akido master it's assumed he can throw him without needing to seriously hurt him, whereas you and I would be excused breaking some bones). Hand, feet etc. do not have to be registered as "lethal weapons" though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Weapon Posted February 1, 2009 Report Share Posted February 1, 2009 Re: Champs-What if you had to draft a superpower registration act? You have been called to work with a congressional committee to draft a Federal Law to make using superpowers illegal. How would you set up a law to do this? If you fail to help them' date=' you risk a more extreme version of the law being enacted.[/quote'] My role is limited to organizing the most formidable civil disobedience action in the history of the United States. I will make it completely clear that I and any superhero I can convince to join me will be disobeying the law in front of the Capitol building as soon as it's passed. We will continue to do this until the cops take us to jail, assuming we let them. Which I suggest we do not. If they intend to prosecute me for something that neither violates rights nor harms anybody then I'll see them in court. All the protesters make it clear to both politicians and public that if convicted they will serve their time without interruption, regardless of whether the government wants to offer us time off in return for stopping an alien invasion, demonic plague etc. If they want to jail us that must mean they don't need our help*. And needless to say I shut down my chain of earth food restaurants that earn us most of the planets off-world currency and allow us to buy alien tech. I figure a few weeks of not being able to buy hypercomputers should damage the economy sufficently that the government would have to give up. * Of course if the act is repealed that's fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger Posted February 2, 2009 Report Share Posted February 2, 2009 Re: Champs-What if you had to draft a superpower registration act? Hand' date=' feet etc. do not have to be registered as "lethal weapons" though.[/quote'] Well, except for Chuck Norris, and his are registered as WMDs. What? I wanted to get a head start on my Chuck Norris plug quota for the month. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karmakaze Posted February 2, 2009 Report Share Posted February 2, 2009 Re: Champs-What if you had to draft a superpower registration act? In Marvel' date=' young mutant's powers emerge spontaneously - even [i']dangerously[/i] - in their teenage years. And because the young mutant has no experience with this new capability, he has very little to no control over it. This very thing is what brands Marvel's mutants as being so 'dangerous' - because one day the kid down the block explodes into flames and burns half his class. Now everyone things he's a villian, because a 'good person' would have controlled himself... IF the technology exists to detect these 'prepowered' mutants, then isn't it the responsibility of the government to find these kids and arrange training for them before their powers emerge, not just or the sake of public safety, but for the sake of the kids themselves? I've pretty much decided that if I'm going to have governmental oversight of superpowers, it'll belong to the CDC, rather than to law enforcement. They're going to have a better infrastructure to handle the nonstandard biology that tends to go along with superpowers. If I recall correctly, they also have the ability to declare quarantines, require individuals to submit to screening, and that sort of thing, which law enforcement has a harder time doing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grimble Posted February 3, 2009 Report Share Posted February 3, 2009 Re: Champs-What if you had to draft a superpower registration act? A "more extreme version" of this law suggests to me the possibility of people being hauled away for doing ANYTHING out of the norm. Forget civil rights. In fact, forget being civil at all - any government group trying to go this way has abrogated any right to govern. REVOLUTION TIME! If you watched HEROES tonight, you saw how this "More Extreme Version" might be carried out... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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