PudgyIndian blogs:
The good news is, “Americans get to keep their guns.” The bad news is, Americans point their guns at their fellow poor instead of the wealthy who are truly the ones “stealing their jobs” and creating suffering world wide so they can have more wealth.
When capitalized, "Sie" is the formal way to address adults of either gender in polite German. I majored in the…
If one assumes that a person is making their money, including enough money to have no incentive to "work", by…
Ob sie wirklich Deutsch spricht. Normalweise, kommt die US Soldaten nicht ins Stadt und spricht nicht so oft mit denn…
As for being a Nazi, ich spreche fliessend deutsch und wohnte in Deutschland fuer drei Jahre mit der americanishe Luftwaffe…
And of course this "incentive" only applies to poor people: Rich people who already have enough to live off of…
He says he’s against disarmament. For my part, I’m glad to be living in a country where guns are illegal. You may not be able to shoot back at the “rednecks,” but they don’t usually shoot at you in the first place.
i’m glad to be living in a country that supports my right to defend myself against criminals. in countries where guns are illegal, only the criminals have guns, leaving the law abiding citizen defenseless.
Wow. Blame crime victims much?
Gun ownership isn’t about keeping the poor from inappropriately borrowing the lawn mower and not bringing it back. Or, keeping the person down the street from beating you the discount table at the local store.
The bad news is, Americans point their guns at their fellow poor instead of the wealthy…
Yeah, because the history of class-based armed revolution has such cheerful outcomes for poor people.
i’m glad to be living in a country that supports my right to defend myself against criminals. in countries where guns are illegal, only the criminals have guns, leaving the law abiding citizen defenseless.
Did it even occur to you that the reason property crime is as high as it is because of the inequalities in the system. They will continue to rise as people become more and more impoverished. Arming yourself will never solve the problem but economic equality will
Except that education and intelligence are better predictors of criminality than “poverty” or “economic injustice”. Wealth is just the opportunity to commit a property crime — why rob people poorer than you (though a lot of property crimes are horizontal within a social class) then robbing the rich is so much more lucrative? And why rob poor people if your rich (and here I mean “property crimes” where a gun would be useful) and would face jail time?
Pretty much. ‘Cept the way I like to word it is, wealth is the opportunity to have an adjective sunny up your crimes. Much like using a drug instead of brute force is date rape and hence not real rape, stealing from a retirement account instead of a handbag is white collar crime and hence not real crime.
As someone who has been mugged on three occasions, once at gun point and the last time suffering a fractured cheek, I can state unequivocally that owning two hand guns did me no good whatever.
No, wealth is the opportunity to make sure that what you do isn’t a crime at all.
why rob people poorer than you (though a lot of property crimes are horizontal within a social class) then robbing the rich is so much more lucrative?
Because it’s safer and more convenient. Robbing a person with resources is likely to attract the unwanted attention of the law and/or the person who was robbed, whereas a person poorer than you is unlikely to be able to fight back effectively, whether they have a gun or not. Why do you think that the IRS goes after people who cheat the government out of $10 in taxes but not those who cheat it out of $10,000 in taxes?
Urph.
That got read badly.
No, what I meant was that differences in wealth, between perp and victim, are what makes property crime happen. Rich people aren’t out robbing poor people at knife point, nor are crooked stock brokers stealing the retirement accounts of someone whose entire account consists of a bunch of coupons and a paper clip.
(And before anyone else responds, unless “… and I could have stopped them if only I’d had a gun (and was willing / able to use it)” applies, you’re also not reading me the way I intended.)
W.B. Reeves:
As someone who has been mugged on three occasions, once at gun point and the last time suffering a fractured cheek, I can state unequivocally that owning two hand guns did me no good whatever.
The premise of the D.C. gun case was that the law forbade you from owning a gun and keeping it in your home. Having a gun in your home won’t protect you from being mugged on the street. Now, if D.C. was a “shall issue” municipality for concealed carry and you had been able and willing to carry a gun with you, having a gun on your person might well have enabled you to prevent yourself from being mugged.
Dianne:
Why do you think that the IRS goes after people who cheat the government out of $10 in taxes but not those who cheat it out of $10,000 in taxes?
You think the IRS concentrates on penny-ante stuff and lets people who owe $10,000’s and $100,000’s go? Care to back that up with some actual facts?
having a gun on your person might well have enabled you to prevent yourself from being mugged.
Perhaps. There are many such defensive gun uses.
However, the real benefit from a shall-issue policy is not so much that you will have a gun. It is that the mugger will not know whether you (legally) have a gun or not, and will be disincented from his or her course of action by the lack of predictability. “I’m almost certain that guy doesn’t have a gun” vs. “That guy could have a gun or not; I really don’t know.”
Why do you think that the IRS goes after people who cheat the government out of $10 in taxes but not those who cheat it out of $10,000 in taxes?
Exactly the opposite of what happens.
Yeah. That’d be nice. Unfortunately, it just gives the mugger a greater incentive to use his/her gun first, makes him/her jumpier and more nervous, and is liable to lead to a shoot-out and involve innocent bystanders, if you’re not just shot in the back.
As we’ve said, criminals aren’t exactly prone to scruples; why does that idea suddenly go out of the window when you’re armed? We’re talking about criminals, after all.
Criminals aren’t prone to scruples, but they (like every other human on the planet) are inclined to at least an approximation of rational thought. Amount of time the cops devote to a mugging: roughly 0. Amount of time the cops devote to a murder: significantly more than that. You can tell, by the way, by the fact that in the many, many states that do issue concealed-carry permits, there are not waves of street murders-cum-robberies. This isn’t hypotheticals, there is data. And the picture is murky, but it does seem as though places with concealed-carry have somewhat less criminal-on-person violent robbery, and somewhat more contactless property crime. Which by me is a pretty good tradeoff.
If you own a gun, you are better off wearing it openly, where you will gain the full benefit of the deterrent effect. But open gun ownership reduces (or eliminates) the deterrence for NON-gun owners, since it can then be presumed that, if no weapon is visible, they are not armed.
Concealed carry acts as some minimal deterrent, AFAIK, but the issue of odds is problematic: The number of people who actually carry a handgun is by and large insufficient to provide enough “herd deterrence” (my own made-up term) to have a large benefit to the non gun owning population. After all, the claimed deterrent benefit boils down to “don’t rob people who can shoot back.”
It would probably take a non-trivial percentage of concealed carriers to have a big effect on criminals. We know from other examples such as the penal code that the deterrent effect of “very bad but very rare” policies is less than the deterrent effect of “not as bad and more common” policies.
in Colorado, for example, in 2007, statewide about 10,000 people sought permits in 2007, in a population of close to 5 million. http://www.denverpost.com/ci_8538818?source=rss
This leads to the prediction that concealed carry laws will decrease violent crime.
This leads to the prediction that shall-issue policies increase violent crime.
As far as I know, neither of these predictions are borne out by the evidence. Except for a few very specific sub-groups, and ignoring research by a few researchers who are about as respectable as creationists, it really does seem to be the case that concealed carry laws — like local gun bans — have no effect on violent crime one way or the other.
At least, not on a global scale; the story may be different for subgroups. I know that one reasonably well-conducted study found that for women, having a gun in the home increases the odds of being murdered by a husband or boyfriend. (This is true regardless of who the owner of the gun is.)
However, presumably that effect is the case whether the gun in the home is legal or illegal, so I don’t think this decision will matter much from that perspective.
To tell you the truth, I don’t care about this decision much. I think it was probably the right decision to make constitutionally (and for that reason I favor it); and I don’t think it’ll make much difference, either practically or politically, to the world.
that certainly seems to have been the case here in Michigan. we went to shall-issue concealed carry in 2001, and crime didn’t budge in either direction.
which begs the question — if more liberal firearms laws do not increase crime, but do allow a bit more liberty for the percent or two of the population who wish to exercise it, why not err on the side of liberty?
Following up on Amp’s last paragraph, to me there were two key issues here. One was whether or not the 2nd Amendment is properly interpreted as protecting the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms. The second key issue was whether or not the Supreme Court was going to decide to make the law what they thought it should be (basing their decision, for example, on whether or not having arms is a deterrent or an encouragement to crime) rather than what it was (basing their decision on what the wording of the amendment said and on the history of law and statements by the authors and in debate prior to it’s adoption).
I was glad to see that the majority (although appallingly slim) decided to go with what the actual intent of the amendment was, confining themselves to their proper judicial function and leaving amending the Constitution to the agencies so empowered by Article V.
It’s entirely legitimate to argue that the RKBA should be changed in this day and age. I disagree, but there’s room to discuss this either way and in any case I certainly agree that it’s legitimate to keep arms from unsupervised minors, the mentally ill, felons, etc. It’s also legitimate to base one’s opinions and actions on what the effects that different gun laws have had in different juristictions, studies on the subject, etc. But I think it’s flat un-American to hold that it’s the function of the Supreme Court to weigh such information and decide whether or not the RKBA should be changed or eliminated on that basis. That’s the function of the people using the mechanisms of Article V, not the Supreme Court.
Nomen, is that one or two percent a guess, or do you have figures on how many people in Michigan currently hold CCW permits?
So, then, Dianne: why have you advanced the proposition that the IRS goes after penny-ante tax cheaters and leaves the bigger players alone? Do you have any actual facts, or is it simply a baseless statement that fits your worldview better?
Ron, both the majority and the minority in this decision agreed that the right to own and carry guns is not absolute, and that the government can legitimately infringe on that right in order to pursue other interests.
There was disagreement on exactly where the line should be drawn, but both sides agree that it’s constitutional to draw the line.
So, have you been channeling the Founding Fathers much lately? Because absent that, I don’t see how you know for a fact what the actual intent was.
I’m sort of stumped as to how they got from, “a well-regulated militia” to “in-home self-defense”. Unless someone is in the habit of keeping a well-regulated militia under the bed, that is. But generally, a militia is used for defending against threats to the nation (King George and the like), not threats to one’s individual person, whereas individual guns in the home aren’t much use against foreign tyrants.
Although the logic behind the decision seems Constitutionally unsound (the right-wing calls this sort of thing, “activist judges”), I can’t say I think it matters much. No matter what their ruling, we’ll still live in a violent culture which, imo, is more of a cause of violent death than the guns are.
[Double post deleted.]
Bjartmarr, did you read the decision? There’s a fair bit in it about how the intent of the drafters was deduced (though surely with some level of inaccuracy.) Many of the framers were prolific writers and speakers who made their views (and the bases therefore) quite well known.*
Personally, I am not a gun fan. But in a legal sense, i think it was probably a good decision.
*relying on that is something which I hate: i’m a textualist, myself. i think that the courts should consider only what goes on paper or the outcome of a vote, not what was purportedly said or believed or wished prior to the law or vote. Doing otherwise prejudices against quiet (but equally important) participants. Still, if you Do reply on it, I think they did a decent job.
The whole gun argument is an interesting one. Just to refresh my own memory, here is the Second Amendment, in its entirety:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Over the years the courts have interpreted arms to mean handguns, but not assault rifles, or handguns and assault rifles that have been modified so as to limit their firepower (but, since an unrestricted free market is always a Good Thing, you can buy a kit for $29.99 to upgrade your poor emasculated AK-47 to the real thing again), or handguns and shotguns as long as they’re not sawed off, or… you get the idea.
It’s really hard to know what the Founders had in mind, because in their day you had your trusty rifle (which had one shot in it and took even an expert a minute or two to reload) and you used it to pick off deer or squirrels or British regulars, as the case might be, and at least in peacetime you didn’t carry it around town with you. The only other major type of ordnance afaik was cannon; did those cannons most New England towns have on their common/village green ever actually work, I wonder, and were they entrusted to the local citizenry for upkeep between wars?
In any case, I don’t see how either side can say for sure if the Founders would have let an ordinary citizen keep a handgun in the closet or deploy an ICBM in his back yard. NRA types get very testy with me when I mention the latter possibility, but if the Founders really were providing for a citizen militia, these days it would need a lot more firepower than handguns.
Seriously, does anyone know the answer to the cannon question? That might give us a hint as to what the Founders were thinking.
RonF, the “one or two percent” was a guesstimate from memory. the Michigan State Police compiles and publishes statistics on concealed weapons permits and -holders in the state:
http://www.michigan.gov/msp/0,1607,7-123-1591_3503_4654—,00.html
if i’m reading the reports right, and assuming the state population figures i’m using isn’t too badly wrong, currently about 1.7% of all Michiganders hold CCW permits (168,039 of 10,095,643). however, anecdotal clues (and some common sense) tell us that not every CCW permit holder actually exercises their right to carry regularly or at all. i’d be surprised if even one in a hundred randomly picked Michigan residents carried regularly; the gun culture here is alive and healthy, but tends to focus more around hunting than self-defense.
(the MSP annual reports are confusing to read; they do not appear to be cumulative. look for the monthly accumulative reports and scroll down to the grand total.)
not unless you want to spend the next decade in federal prison, you can’t. such conversion kits are defined as machineguns in and of themselves, and any firearm which can be “easily converted” to a machinegun is likewise so classified. the BATF gets to decide what counts as “easily converted”; they have, in the past, argued that eight hours of work in a machine shop is “easy”. (but there’s little point citing a court case, because the BATF is notorious for contradicting itself and changing its standards on the fly. that’s probably the most common complaint gun nuts have about the agency, in fact.)
you might be able to find advertisements such as you’ve described. but in the off chance that the seller isn’t a BATF sting operation, the goods are almost certainly fraudulent and won’t work. (what are you going to do, sue them for not selling you illegal contraband?) if such a kit can be found that does work, don’t get your fingerprints on it, is all i can say…
Lu – yes, those cannons once upon a time did work, and would again if you re-bored the barrels. Oh, and BTW, some of those cannons were privately owned. Check out the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8. Here’s the appropriate sentence:
“To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;”
A Letter of Marque and Reprisal (now illegal under a treaty the U.S. signed quite some time ago) is a permit issued to a private person to wage war on behalf of a government against it’s enemies. Kind of hard to wage war in that day and age if you didn’t have cannons. Most ships did have cannons of some sort to ward off pirates in an age when pirates were common. Now, you could think that they only bought the cannons after they got the letter; trust me, no, they already had them, this just gave them the legal justification to use them in war instead of simply in self-defense. And plenty of private citizens had them on land as well. I’m looking for a web link for you, I’ll post it when I find it.
BTW, there are plenty of privately owned cannons these days as well. You’ll find them at any Revolutionary War or Civil War re-enactment. Hell, if you live in one of the more enlightened states you can have your own. Check out this link/ That U.S. Field 1 piece looks like a steal at $8,900. I think Mayor Daley would have a problem with it, though, so I doubt you can have it shipped to a Chicago address.
Bjartmarr, here’s a couple of references for you.
First, the meaning of “well-regulated” meant trained or effective, not controlled (as in the more modern sense). In order for a citizen militia to be effective they needed to be already familiar with how to use guns. If they had to be called out on short notice there would be no time to teach them how to shoot. So people needed to be able to own guns and know how to shoot them before they were called out as militia. From Federalist Paper #29:
The fact that we now have a standing army and an organized militia in the National Guard does not mean that the citizenry would never be called out to help defend the country. Indeed, it will surprise many on this list to know that under Title 311, Subtitle A, Part 1, Chapter 13 of U.S. law they are members of the militia, albeit the unorganized one.
The idea that we all may be called to defend our country, State or municipality regardless of any current or previous military service is not obsolete.
But the clause referring to the militia is a prefatory clause, and the usage at the time it was written (and thereafter) was not to limit the operative clause to specific circumstances. Rather than re-argue that here, I commend to you pages 2 – 5 of the recent opinion. Suffice it to say that while that’s one reason why people should have the freedom to keep and bear arms, it’s not and was not intended to be the only one.
As far as what those reasons are, I don’t need to channel the founders of this country. They left adequate written records themselves. Here’s a collection of quotes on the subject. This is a famous letter written by Thomas Jefferson to Major John Cartwright wherein he addresses the matter in explaining to the Major (a British subject) the difference between the British Constitution and the American one. Remember at the time the Constitutions of the several states had been almost all written back when the States had been independent of each other.
My emphasis. Note that the right to keep and bear arms is shown to be an individual right equal to that (and preceding!) freedom of religion, press, property and person. The general viewpoint was that the RKBA enabled the people to ensure their other freedoms from interference from the state. This is an important concept. One purpose of the RKBA was to ensure that the general populace had the power to resist usurpation of their power by the state through force of arms. This, too, is not an obsolete idea. And the Supreme Court has no right to declare it obsolete. That in and of itself would be a usurpation of power that it was never intended to be able to do.
Research the matter yourself and you will see that the founders of America were pretty unanimous that the people – not the States – had the right to keep and bear arms. The 2nd Amendment names the people, not the States, as having the right, and the authors certainly understood the distinction. For that you need go no further than the 10th Amendment, written by the same people at the same time:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The power of governance and the guarantor of liberty in the U.S. ultimately resides in the people, not the State or Federal governments, and the RKBA was intended to make sure it stayed that way.
That link is fascinating in how it reflects modern production.
In olden days, the barrels were the expensive part and difficult to obtain. But I suspect a variety of people back then could have cobbled together a functional carriage. These days, it’s the carriage which costs a lot, while CNC machining and casting have allowed production of barrels at comparatively minimal cost.
Now, if D.C. was a “shall issue” municipality for concealed carry and you had been able and willing to carry a gun with you, having a gun on your person might well have enabled you to prevent yourself from being mugged.
Actually you’re wrong about that. I carried a gun on my person for a number of years when I was engaged in work that made it advisable. Carrying gun only provides a degree of defensive utility if you have an opportunity to use it. Contrary to what some may think, muggers do not halt at a distance and cry “your money or your life.” They operate on the principle of ambush and surprise. This was the case in all three of my experiences.
The first time I was jumped from behind by three teenage boys. The second time it was two twenty somethings who came at me from an oblique angle and got the drop on me with a nine millimeter. The third time two kids clouted me with a brick before I realized what was happening. Had I had one of my weapons with me, I would have had no opportunity to use it. Most likely it would have been stolen by the muggers. If by some chance they missed it, all I would have been able to do is shoot them while they ran. In which case I would likely be typing this from prison since that would have been murder rather than self-defense.
you got snuck up on three times? how did that happen? i hope you’re not among those who spend their whole lives in “condition white” — generally oblivious to what’s going on around them, not taking notice even of what persons are within the nearest couple dozen feet and whether those people are moving closer or heading away. if you are, then no, you probably shouldn’t carry any weapons.
paying attention to who’s around you doesn’t take more than consciously looking up and looking around you every ten, fifteen seconds or so, a bit more often if you notice something or someone odd nearby you. avoiding dangerous areas, if it’s possible at all, is no harder than recognizing what areas are dangerous. it’s simply about being aware, both consciously and emotionally, that something bad might happen to you before the end of the day and you should be watching out just in case.
getting jumped by surprise once could be down to inexperience. twice is starting to sound like carelessness, or else some pressing need to travel alone through areas it’s unwise to be alone in. three times, frankly, i’m beginning to wonder if you might not have been making some kind of mistake, because that’s an awful lot of times to be taken by surprise; without meaning disrespect, are you really sure you couldn’t have been paying better attention?
i posted a link to Marc McYoung’s website here once before, and got mildly reprimanded for it, but i still think most of his advice is generally good. you might perhaps want to spend some time reading it. please believe me that i’m really not trying to blame the victim here — it’s just hard for me to understand how you could fall to such complete surprise attacks so many times over. maybe i’ve just spent too much time in condition yellow…
[Double post deleted]
Ron and Robert, the IRS has always aggressively pursued false claims to the EITC, whose recipients are poor enough that their transgressions fall under the $10 mark Dianne was talking about:
Source: http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/issuebriefs_ib183
The following testimony before Congress is a deeply boring technical grind on tax law, but it highlights that as much as 72% of EITC “fraud” may be unintentional, and that the EITC is not prone to any more cheating than the income tax in general – and yet the IRS devotes special attention to EITC fraud. From its conclusion,
Source: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=900641
According to this NYT headline from 1999, the IRS has reduced audits of the wealthy to focus on the working poor (probably due to the EITC). According to this NYT headline from 2002, the IRS has refocused on the wealthy. So there could be a periodicity to this.
What I think happened was that during the 90’s and early 00’s, the IRS aggressively pursued low-income earners embellishing some of their EITC claims. Those were more conservative times. Over the past five years, the IRS has received withering flak for this, and companies such as Enron and WorldCom have heightened public scrutiny on paper crime and corporate fraud. So it has shifted its focus.
Regardless, I think going after tax cheats of all stripes is a great idea. About $300 billion of tax money is owed but not collected each year. Not all of that is “fraud”, some of it is honest error and others represent late returns. But if even $100 billion of that could be recovered, we could close the deficit and give juice to many programs without collecting a cent more from law abiding taxpayers. If even more could be recovered, we could probably lower tax rates on the law abiding somewhat.
Double post. I made a bolding error on #35 that was corrected on #36. Mr. Moderator, please delete #35. [Done. But remember, not all the mods here are “Mr.” :-P ]
I don’t really have strong opinions on guns, but my general idea is this: the Second Amendment, first and foremost, protects the right to armed insurrection against tyrannical government and illegitimate authority. This is what I think “being necessary to the security of a free State” refers to. The most important right sanctified in the Amendment is the citizens’ right to raise an army independent of the existing governments, including state governments (i.e. National Guard).
I do think the right to own guns to shoot criminals exists, but it is on a lesser plane to the more important militia rights. Analogizing this to the right to free speech, the right to form an independent Peoples’ Militia is the right to political dissent. The right to bear arms to scare ruffians from your yard is the right to advertise commercial wares. The latter is more limited than the former.
This is mostly philosophical, so as to how current gun control laws could or should differentiate between the two, I don’t know. As I said, I don’t really think much of gun issues.
Nomen, for someone who’s, um, “not blaming” WB, you seem to be doing a lot of blaming.
yeah, on second reading, it does come off that way. i truly meant to communicate surprise and a bit of incomprehension, as well as a few hints and tips that really were intended as constructive criticism, but i clearly didn’t get the tone at all right.
my further apologies to WB; if i thought i could reword that comment to better represent what i wanted to say, i would, but i suspect attempting it now would only jam my foot even further down my throat.
Nomen,
Thanks for your second thought. I would, however, suggest that you consider why it is that your first reflex was to find some reason for why it was my own fault that I was attacked. Is this a line of reasoning that you would normally indulge in? Or does the fact that I’m unimpressed by arguments about fending off muggers at gun point have something to do with it? Further , have you yourself ever had the experience of being mugged? It’s easy enough to forsee contingencies and imagine successful strategies when dealing in hypotheticals. Not so much when confronting the reality.
Just for clarification, I have lived in this city for the last 25 years. Consequently, I’ve used public transportation and walked a great deal. All three attacks, though separated in time and by geography, occured when I was doing nothing that I had not done previously on numerous occaisions without incident or even the hint of danger. The third instance, for example, occured at three o’clock in the afternoon on a weekday as I was entering a metro station. I did, in fact, catch my assailant out of the corner of my eye an instant before being struck, which is probably all that saved me from a fractured skull. In two instances I managed to fight off my attackers.
In any event, don’t feel too badly about your initial post. I fully expected that someone would raise the issue.
D’oh! Sorry about that, Ms. :)
It’s not “blaming the victim” to suggest that people be more aware of their surroundings. It is blaming the victim to suggest that doing so would have made a difference in any specific instance.
One of the male privileges that bugs me whenever I see it is the “I can walk around after dark, etc.” privilege. While men are socialized to believe it’s safe to walk around after dark, in strange neighborhoods, in dangerous environments, believing that doesn’t make it so.
Unlike a spider I only have the two eyes in front of my face, so I don’t see behind me any better than anyone else, but walking into a building like a Metro station should be a signal to be hyper-vigilant. Dittos for public restrooms and other “public” but perhaps not so heavily traveled places.
Unlike a spider I only have the two eyes in front of my face, so I don’t see behind me any better than anyone else, but walking into a building like a Metro station should be a signal to be hyper-vigilant. Dittos for public restrooms and other “public” but perhaps not so heavily traveled places.
Really? Walking into a Metro station with security cameras and on duty metro police in broad daylight requires “hyper vigilence”? As compared to what? Walking down a deserted street after dark? Do you actually have any evidentiary basis for this claim, or do you simply assume that metro stations are “hyper” dangerous? Do you use public transit?
You were mugged in one, no?
You were mugged in one, no?
I see you like circular arguments.
“If by some chance they missed it, all I would have been able to do is shoot them while they ran. In which case I would likely be typing this from prison since that would have been murder rather than self-defense.”
In your scenario, yeah, probably. Not in all scenarios though. In Maryland, we have some of the most restrictive gun laws imaginable. However, shooting someone who means to do you harm in your own home, even in the back, will rarely yield little more than a plea bargain. Most prosecutors don’t even waste time pursuing these cases because most juries are sympathetic to the homeowner in such cases. Theoretically, it is still illegal to shoot someone in the back, even in your own home. In practice, no sane jury is going to convict you, even in Maryland, for shooting a burglar, no matter what the circumstances.
The same can be true in a scenario (remotely) similar to what you described. For instance, small business owners who are victims of a robbery are unlikely to be convicted if they shoot an assailant in the back to recover stolen goods. Again, this is theoretically illegal to do in many states, but in practice is rarely prosecuted due to the fact that A)juries rarely convict in such cases, B)the police are unlikely to assist the prosecution in such a case, and C)most district attorneys are likely to be ideologically aligned with the shooter.
Actually, neither of these scenerios is similar to my experience other than the fact that they involve robbery. The most outstanding difference being that the police would have had nothing but my word as evidence that the people I shot were attempting to rob me. In the cases you cite the presence of the individuals in the shooter’s home or store would have provided prima facia evudence of criminal intent. Shooting someone down in the street as they are running away from you is a much dicier propositition. Most juries aren’t going to assume that street shootings are justified if a prosecutor presents them with a plausible alternate theory.
It’s not clear to me what it is that bugs you about this. It bugs me that this issue is framed as a male privilege when it’s clearly a double edged sword. Women are more fearful, but men suffer much more actual street violence. Personally, I’d rather be scared than actually victimised, but that’s just me.
I don’t want to dismiss the fear women feel. It’s a serious issue, but feminist movement loses credibility on this subject when it terrifying women with such hyperbolic references as “epidemic”, and “tide of violence against women in all arenas”.
1. You were mugged at time T in place P.
2. It is a certain fact that you were mugged at time T in place P.
3. Given that your mugging at time T in place P is a certainty, you should at the very least have been alert at the time, and very probably shouldn’t have gone there at that time in the first place.
3. Given that your mugging at time T in place P is a certainty, you should at the very least have been alert at the time, and very probably shouldn’t have gone there at that time in the first place.
Do actually think that is an intelligent argument? All you’ve actually said is that I was mugged because I was in a dangerous place and I wasn’t vigilant and you know I was in a dangerous place and wasn’t vigilant because I was mugged.
Do yourself a favor and take a refresher course in logical fallacies.
Do yourself a favour and look up the word “irony”.
Do yourself a favour and look up the word “irony”.
Point taken. My appologies. That’s what I get for insomnia driven blogging.