from here:
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Since any harmful act that does not fit into the “athletic” or “medical” exception is, by definition, criminal, unless the inflicted injury is not serious, assessment of the seriousness of the victim’s injury determines the outcome of many cases involving consensual harm. A typical penal statute classifies bodily injury as serious if it “creates a substantial risk of death or causes serious, permanent disfigurement, or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ.” Pursuant to this definition, any short-term, non-life-threatening injury should not be deemed “serious.” Yet, as the MPC acknowledges, the assessment of the seriousness of harm is often affected by judges’ “moral judgments about the iniquity of the conduct.” Courts tend to inflate the risk and harmfulness of an activity they want to denounce.
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I'm just saying that if "sports violence" becomes a dirty term and we decide we need to protect people from their baser instincts, the athletics exception could be removed or modified to disallow the serious injury exception clause in sports violence. And then football, boxing, hockey (as we know it) and MMA die on the vine.
And pitchers could be sued for beanballs, soccer players for intentional spikes, etc. We'll see. Just because a thing is legal now doesn't mean it will stay that way, and there's nothing that says the way we play sports will continue to be acceptable - especially as more data comes back on the long-term effects of contact sports.
~G