Best Comment Ever
The most insightful, balanced, and indeed best comment I have heard on this topic comes from Larry Correia:
http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/11/25/the-legalities-of-shooting-people/
I’m writing this blog post because I’ve seen a lot of really ignorant comments from a lot of otherwise intelligent folks about some recent shootings. It is really easy to be swayed by knee jerk emotion, but luckily we live in America, where we have a justice system based on evidence and the rule of law. I’m not going to get into the Brown shooting too much because I wasn’t on the grand jury and haven’t read the evidence presented in that particular case, but I’m going to explain how use of force laws work so I don’t have to keep repeating myself.
This will vary state by state, but these are the fundamentals for most places in the US. There are some legal differences between police and regular folks shooting people, but basically the rules are similar. I’m not an attorney in your state, and this is not meant as legal advice for your state. Again, this isn’t meant as legal advice, rather as a primer to get people to not be so damned ignorant about the fundamentals of how the law works.
And the law usually does work.
I’m going to keep this simple. Before I became a novelist, I was a Utah Concealed Weapons instructor for many years. I’m condensing a few hours of lecture and discussion into one article. Again, this will vary state by state.
He gives a basic run down on the use of lethal force in self defense, and you can take my word for it that this is the same thing we lawyers learn in law school. Mr. Correia correctly identifies the elements of the reasonable man standard of the use of lethal force in self defense.
Let me repeat that: Mr Correia is correctly and accurately telling you the state of the law in the United States. Given an hour or three on Lexus, I could produce the law cases and statutes to confirm his every sentence. He is canny enough even to mention that the ‘Castle Doctrine’ applies in some jurisdictions and not in others.
He is repeating what the law is, and it is based on reason rather than based on the hysterical false-to-facts emotions of leftist, liberals, progressives, fascists, newswhores, anti-white bigots, and various rage-fueled or fear-drunk neurotics and lunatics. But I repeat myself.
Mr Correia also adds this word:
So my request is this, at least learn how stuff works before forming a super strong opinion on it.
Meanwhile, the President, now the Imperator, Barackus the First, our Race-baiter in Chief, who does indeed have a super strong opinion on it, has used this shooting as an example, no doubt as part of his effort fundamentally to transform America, to condemn not just every police force in the United States, but all Whites, and the whole system of government, our laws and traditions and way of life.
The President stirred up the mob and cheered on, nay, caused two days and counting of looting, robbing, riot, arson, and tumult, and then ordered the Justice Department to investigate not the mob agitator, but the police.
The woman weeping over her little store, her life’s work, which was burned to the ground, that gets no news coverage.
The boys who worked at the pizza joint are out of job, and there is no place to shop in that neighborhood now, and the professional rioters who were bussed in from out of state have homes to go back to. But not the folk who live in that neighborhood, who happen to be black, whose houses and shops were burned. Their lives were ruined in order as part of a confused and irrational plan on behalf of the White House to service Barack Obama’s political ambitions, and the self-esteem and ratings of various news and media agencies.
Such is the compassion of the Progressives.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
