Thursday, February 26, 2015

Immunity from reality and facts

So, Vice News (what the hell is that - I do not know but it was linked from Huffington Post) decided it was time once more to open the vault of errors and inept reporting on the Martin/Zimmerman affair.

"Under Florida's broad self-defense statute — commonly known as the "Stand Your Ground law" — the killing was perfectly legal. Zimmerman was eventually arrested and charged with murder, but a jury acquitted him of all charges in July 2013."

1. As has been said many times - stand your ground had nothing to do with this case; Zimmerman was pinned to the ground with Martin on top of him.  No escape or retreat was available.  This was a clear case of justifiable self-defense and Zimmerman would have been acquitted in any state.

"Essentially, Stand Your Ground laws say that people are not required to retreat from conflict, even when they are safely able to do so. In many states, the rule only applies to a person's car or house — an extension of the so-called "Castle Doctrine," which allows citizens to protect their private property with deadly force. But in Florida — where a particularly extreme version was signed into law by then Governor Jeb Bush in 2005 — that concept also extends to public spaces."

2.  Let's skip the essential paraphrase and just put down what the law says - it is no longer than your misrepresentation.  Herein:

776.012 (2).  A person is justified in using or threatening to use deadly force if he or she reasonably believes that using or threatening to use such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony. A person who uses or threatens to use deadly force in accordance with this subsection does not have a duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground if the person using or threatening to use the deadly force is not engaged in a criminal activity and is in a place where he or she has a right to be.

It does not say "conflict" and it is clear you are using this ambiguous word to suggest that it allows a person to use deadly force to resolve even minor disagreements.  It uses the words "imminent death or great bodily harm" for a reason.  The reason is that those define the legal requirements for lawful use of lethal self-defense.  The implication that a shouting match from 10 feet away would qualify is ludicrous and intended only to inflame. What this law does do is make it clear that a person who is in such danger need not stop to calculate whether they can safely retreat.

"Even in public areas like parking lots and playgrounds, where there are a lot of other people around and you have the ability to safely retreat instead of engaging in violence, you are given a free pass to commit a lethal act," Milikowsky said.

3.  Where does this "free pass" idea come from.  How do you know when you have the ability to safely retreat?  How does this relate to or reflect the facts of the Martin case that you began the discussion with?  You have created a contrived hypothetical and suggest it applies to all possibilities.  But your example lacks specifics.  Suppose, as with Martin/Zimmerman, Zimmerman was on his back with Martin pummeling him to death in that playground?

AFTER THE OBLIGATORY "BLACK LIVES MATTER" DISCUSSION THAT IS OFF-TASK.

"In July 2010, Alexander fired a single shot during a dispute with her estranged husband. No one was injured or killed. Alexander always maintained she had fired a "warning shot" after her husband had attacked and threatened to kill her. In other words, she claimed that she had "stood her ground."

4.  What is left out of this description is that Alexander was threatened by her estranged husband.  She left (retreated, if you will), went to retrieve her firearm, then returned and fired the warning shot.  She had, as these authors have been telling us we all should, "retreated" successfully and avoided a violent encounter.  The problem is she then returned and initiated a new confrontation as the assailant.  This is exactly how this law should work; it protects those who defend themselves without retreating, but does not shield those who subsequently initiate conflict and become assailants.  It is likely this abused women should have been treated better by the courts, but she did not deserve immunity under stand your ground.

"Certainly there is an uneven application of this law, and arguably the application of a lot of laws," Milikowsky said. "But because Stand Your Ground laws are so subjective, they remove the core tenets of self-defense law, and that has left more room for confusion about when and where self-defense principles apply."

5.  As noted above, this was a precise and accurate application of this law.  It is clear that these advocates are only arguing this because they want to repeal the law.  If not, they would see that a SYG defense of Alexander would be their very own nightmare scenario; a person who retreated and returned to commit assault.

6.  It does not remove the tenets of self-defense law - all of the required conditions still apply.  When Alexander left to retrieve her firearm, she was no longer under imminent threat of death.  Please, this is not that complicated if you were just motivated and able to think beyond blind support of your own agenda.

Please people - don't let your ideology cloud your intellect.  Don't make up shit.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Ah, sweet ignorance

So - a week ago, the St. Augustine Record offered its point of view on allowing concealed carry on Florida college campuses:

"The three Republicans on the committee voted along partisan lines for it. The two Democrats voted no. The party line is not likely to change in a full vote before either the House or Senate."

1.  All well and good and not a gun issue, but let's note that they consider Republicans as voting along "partisan lines" - well, so did the democrats. Subtle bias there.

"Proponents argue that permitting armed students on campus would be a deterrent to crime, assault and the random killings we’ve all grown to dread. But doesn’t allowing guns on campus work for both the victim and the predator, the assaulter and the assaulted?"

2.  How many times does it need to be said?  The predator/assaulter is clearly not deterred by rules that the law-abiding student/faculty obey.  If they were, there would be no assaulter.  This does not allow what some prefer to call "illegal guns" on campus; it is not saying just anyone can carry a gun on campus.  It allows those who already legally carry a firearm off-campus to carry it on campus.  Perhaps if you read some research you'd see that those who possess concealed carry permits are less likely to commit crime than the general population and even law enforcement officers (e.g., here).

"Does anyone believe that the generally-twisted minds of gunmen who’ve opened fire on college campuses would have been deterred by the thought of shooting it out with fellow students rather than shooting them down?"

3.  Does anyone think that a policy/regulation against carrying a firearm on campus has had deterrent any effect on the generally-twisted minds of gunmen, that their plans for mass murder were thwarted by "campus policy"?  And the issue here is not simply deterrence - although, again, research shows that criminals' uncertainty, inability to know which targets are soft/unarmed IS a deterrent - but to give the assaulted" an opportunity to defend themselves against such "twisted" people.  We would all prefer avoidance and deterrence, but if necessary, will take defense.

"It’s a troubling sign of political times when lawmakers speak of areas such as college campuses, churches and bars as “gun-free” zones, as if each is a geographic infringement upon some universal right to carry a gun at all times and in all circumstances.

We’re proponents of gun rights, but nothing is without limits."

4.  You take far-too-limited a view of what is at stake here.  The inherent right that is being infringed is the right to self-defense. You assume that campus rules and campus police can serve this function.  Rules, just as with laws, only deter those who care about their consequences; one who is committed to mayhem cares little about what its consequences will be for them.  Police, rather than preventing crime in some global sense (in fact, courts have held that it is not their role to protect individuals), far more often investigate crime and arrest criminals (those who do not die in their act). Nice obligatory reference to gun rights, but clearly you miss the point - and are really jumping through hoops to try to make your own.

"Give it a year or two: See how safe pistol-packing politicians make the capitol — and then consider giving guns to frightened 18-year-old coeds and liquored-up frat boys, all simmering in the hormonal stew of adolescence that feeds often-bewildering lapses of judgment in the best of circumstances."

5.  I think it is a fine idea to allow legally carried firearms in the capitol, but not as a pilot for campus carry.  In that regard this idea is nonsensical.  But you once again fail to understand what you are talking about.  "Giving guns"?  Are we talking about issuing them now.  We are talking about legally carried and licensed carry.  In accordance with existing law, an 18-year-old (coed or not) cannot legally carry a concealed firearm.  So, to your concern, no campus policy needed.  As to those who are 21 and over, who carry legally subsequent to taking appropriate training and receiving a license to do so, they are already carrying in your community.  It probably frightens you so you prefer to to acknowledge it, but it is likely you have been within arms' length of a concealed firearm this very day - at Publix, Walmart, McDonald's and as you stroll the mall or your local sidewalk.  What makes the college campus unique?

This is just another example of people who do not know what they are talking about, making arguments based on misinformation and ignorance.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Mall of America? I know - you just don't get it!

As with most of the liberal news sites out there, The Raw Story is somehow surprised that anyone (well, really Fox News) would suggest that being armed might be a good idea.

You know, I get it - you don't get it!  You clearly still think that the sign at the door of MoA that says no guns are allowed will deter terrorists or even common criminals from entering with bad intent.  I know, it is liberal mythology that such rules will stop crime.  Of course, since such behavior is crime because it is against existing law, law that has sufficient force of punishment, the idea that a mall policy will deter it is foolish on its face.  But there is no end to the magical thinking.

Now, as with most news sites - be they liberal or conservative - the basic approach here is to take an opposing idea and make it sounds as absurd or controversial as possible. So, as the headline suggests, the real insanity is saying that the should "arm shoppers." Let's use a little sleight of hand to direct attention away from the ridiculous notion that all shoppers should be disarmed by highlighting the notion that they should all be armed. Let's make this look like paranoia.  The interesting conundrum is that the gun control advocates will scream loud now that the idea of arming people against such threats is foolish and paranoid, but will scream even louder after an attack happens that we must ban all firearms. So, their foolish policies increase the likelihood of events that they will then use to promulgate those foolish policies.

Look folks - you can call this paranoia all you want and consider the idea that should take responsibility for their own protection foolish and archaic.  But I am sure the folks in Westgate Mall in Kenya felt the same way until it happened.  You may feel more comfortable believing that it can't happen here, but there is really no rational basis for believing so. You may prefer to take it on faith. But in that case a small number of armed assailants (the type who would ignore mall policy) killed over 60 people, wounding over 170.  How might this scenario been changed if only ten percent of shoppers had been armed that day.  Kenya has some pretty restrictive gun laws, too.

Be safe, be vigilant, be cautious, but be prepared and be capable.

Friday, February 20, 2015

Don't go looking for trouble, part 2

More from Huffington Post:

"We know this boy," Robert Meyers said. "I couldn't tell you this before. He knew where I lived. We knew how bad he was but we didn't know he was this bad."

The case has received significant attention since police initially said Meyers was killed by an angry driver who followed her home after she gave her teenage daughter a driving lesson."

1. Point still is, when she made it home safely, she should have stayed home, should not have gone hunting.  If there is a real threat to her safety, once she was safe, she should have called police.

"The sympathy morphed into skepticism after police revealed that Meyers was not followed home, and instead dropped her daughter off and picked up her 22-year-old son, armed with his 9 mm handgun, to try to confront the driver who had frightened her earlier.

They went looking for the driver, followed the vehicle and eventually went home. The silver car then showed up outside the Meyers' home and a shootout occurred. The mother was shot in the head outside the home."

2.  Sympathy is certainly still in order, but as noted above, there came a point in this tragedy where this poor woman went from prey to a hunter. If the car from which the shots were fired is the same car they followed, then they should not have been there.

""I did what I had to do to protect my family," Brandon Meyers, 22, said earlier this week. "Everyone can think what they have to think. I did it for a reason. And I'd do it for anyone I love."

3.  Can this young man actually think that what he did protected someone he loved.  It got her killed.  If he wanted to protect her, he would have advised her to stay home, call 911 and let LE handle it.  It is not what we "have to" think, it is the truth.  There was no reason in taking up arms and following someone.  I am glad I am not someone he loves.

Her husband:  "Are you all happy? You made my wife look like an animal," he told reporters. "There's the animal, a block away!"

4. Yes, the animal who shot his wife was a block away.  he was also probably a block away when she and his armed son went looking for him.  No, she was not an animal, but she was foolish and that foolishness put her in the path of a criminal's bullet.  Understandable that he would not be thinking rationally, but we need to if we are not learn from this unfortunate situation.

For all the grief, the answer remains the same.  This tragic slaying did nor have to happen.  It started with the foolish use of the horn in traffic and the erroneous belief that it is one driver's right to teach another a lesson.  It continued when this woman, whether scared and angry or both, decided to take her son and go hunting this other vehicle, then followed it for a while before heading home.

Do not rely on other people to act accordingly.  Be sure you are taking care of yourself, keeping your ego in check and yourself safe.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Don't honk the horn; don't go looking for trouble

Via Huffington Post:

"A Las Vegas mother of four killed in a road rage shooting last week got in her car with her adult son and his gun and drove around their neighborhood looking for the assailant who ended up shooting her in a residential cul-de-sac, police said Tuesday.

In a change from earlier accounts, police Lt. Ray Steiber said 44-year-old Tammy Meyers had her teenage daughter run in the house to fetch her armed son, who then went with her as she drove to find the driver who had earlier stopped his car in front of hers, got out and approached her with angry words."

1.  If you can get home, then stay at home.  Do not go looking for the person who just cut you off or flipped you off.  If all the person did was drive by you, yell at you, make gestures at you, stop in font of you and use harsh language, then they are not really an "assailant" yet.  Find a safe place and stay there.  If need be, call the police.  Do not take the law into your own hands.

"Mrs. Meyers is scared, but she's upset," Steiber said, adding that the intent appeared to be "so they can find who frightened them on the roadway."

2.  If you are scared, stay at home.  Do not allow yourself to start talking to yourself - convincing yourself that "He can't do that to me!  I'll show him!" Don't go looking for trouble - call the police.

"I would never say that anybody went looking for trouble," Steiber said when asked to characterize Tammy Meyers' five-to-10 minute drive through the neighborhood. He said she found, and for a time followed, the vehicle she had apparently been looking for."

3.  Sadly, she did go looking for trouble.  First, it found her when she was driving.  She then got home safety.  Then she went looking for it.  Then she followed it.  Then, apparently, it followed her.

"Unfortunately I cannot say what was in Tammy's mind," the police lieutenant said. "Tammy is the victim."

4.  Yes, she is the victim, but she did not need to be; she foolishly chose this, made herself vulnerable.

"Steiber said the initial road rage incident happened while Tammy Myers drove slowly home from a school parking lot, where she had been teaching her teenage daughter to drive. The girl didn't have a learner's permit.

Steiber said the daughter told police a car sped up to them from behind and then pulled alongside. The daughter reached over from the passenger seat and honked the car horn at the car as it passed."

"She figured this person was speeding, and right or wrong, they needed to be corrected," Steiber said of the girl, who he said is 15. "She honked the horn."

5.  There's your problem.  The car horn is not a communication device, it is an emergency device.  You do not use to to symbolically call people "assholes" for doing things you do not like. You are not the police, not in a position to offer social commentary, it is not your place to be correcting others. This foolish adolescent behavior started a chain of events that got her mother killed.

"Despite earlier police accounts, Steiber said homicide detectives don't believe the suspect's car and Meyers' green Buick Park Avenue sedan ever collided, or that the suspects initially followed Meyers and her daughter home."

6.  So there it is; First, it started with someone honking their horn at a speeder.  There was no collision, no accident, no damage, she had driven away and gotten home to safety without being followed.  Apparently, the only damage was to her ego and then she decided to recruit her son and seek retribution, go find danger.

Should she have been killed for this? Of course not!  That is not what I am saying.  But there are assholes in the world, some of them are violent assholes, who do not follow the law, do not care for rules, for whom life does not matter, who are always on the lookout for people who will foolishly offer themselves up for killing.  If would be great if it were not so, but insisting on that does nothing.  They will misbehave, they will challenge you, they will piss you off.  You want to be prepared to defend yourself if they find you, but you do not want to seek them out.

It behooves all of us to remember this as we go through our daily lives. One small misguided decision, one lapse of reason, can start us on a path that ends with our demise.

Friday, February 13, 2015

Actually Chris Hayes is full of shit

Yea, its not nice to say someone is full of it, but sometimes you just have to call it as it is.  Chris Hayes thinks that if makes sense to equate a Hispanic male defending himself against assault with a moron killing three students in Chapel Hill NC.  That is, that justifiable homicide in the defense of self is the same as murder, that if attacked unless you just let yourself get killed you are a murderer.

Besides the pure intellectual dishonesty it has to take to consider these equivalent events is the clear manipulation involved in using one to malign the other. I know, I know, people like Chris Hayes live in a bubble with a number of myths that impair their judgement:  Those myths range from the grand belief that no one should own a firearm, much less carry one for self-defense, to the notion that no black teen could ever commit mayhem, to no white (or whitish) man could ever be justified in killing a black (or Muslim) assailant  I know people like Hayes cannot conceive of a possibility that involves a person having to defend themselves against another person.  I know they are so riddled with white guilt that they think it would be appropriate reparations that any white person who is attacked by a black person should simply allow themselves to be victimized so as to make up for the sins of their ancestors, such as they might be. I am sure that, if Hayes was ever to be in a situation where a black male assaulted him, he would probably just shoot himself to make up for the perceived wrongs of his own race.

I know, that makes me sound racist - but it is not so.  I am suggesting that race has nothing to do with it.  I am suggesting the essence of equality; that each of us has a right to defend ourselves against assault, regardless of race, creed or color.  Zimmerman could have been any color or race, so could Trayvon and, in the end, the result being the same was the appropriate end.

So how about getting the fuck off of this crazy train.  Trayvon was killed because he chose to assault Zimmerman. Zimmerman may be an asshole, but even an asshole has the right to defend himself against attack. I have no idea what was behind the killing of these Muslim students in NC.  But I do know that Zimmerman's self-defense is not the same as allegedly killing people for either their religion or over a parking space.

And straining as hard as Hayes has to to try to make this case is absurd - and shows why his ratings are in the tank.