Archive for the 'Politics' Category

Reason.

[1.] In all states, you can use deadly force to defend yourself against death, serious bodily injury (which can include broken bones and perhaps even lost teeth), rape, or kidnapping, so long as (a) your fear is reasonable and (b) the danger is imminent (requirements that also apply to the doctrines I discuss below).

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But in nearly all states, you can’t generally use deadly force merely to defend your property. (Texas appears to be an exception, allowing use of deadly force when there’s no other way to protect or recapture property even in situations involving simple theft or criminal mischief, though only at night,  Tex. Penal Code § 9.42; see, e.g., McFadden v. State (Tex. Ct. App. 2018).) That’s where we get the conventional formulation that you can’t use deadly force just to defend property.

[2.] This conventional formulation, though, omits an important limitation: In basically all states, you can use nondeadly force to defend your property—and if the thief or vandal responds by threatening you with death or great bodily harm, you can then protect yourself with deadly force. So in practice, you can use deadly force to protect property after all, if you’re willing to use nondeadly force first and expose yourself to increased risk.

[A.] In about half the states you can use deadly force against robbery, which generally includes any theft from the person that uses modest force or a threat: “Even a purse snatching can constitute a robbery if the victim simply resists the effort to wrest the purse away.” Some robbery of course does also create a reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury, but in these states such a fear is not required.

[B.] In some states, there is a rebuttable presumption that you reasonably fear death or great bodily harm—and may thus use deadly force—if the target is (to quote the Iowa statute),

Unlawfully entering by force or stealth the dwelling, place of business or employment, or occupied vehicle of the person using force, or has unlawfully entered by force or stealth and remains within the dwelling, place of business or employment, or occupied vehicle of the person using force.

I think Missouri is like Texas in this regard even though he didn’t mention it.

In the Colonial era, horse theft brought harsh punishment, including branding, torture, exile and even death.  This is so because theft of the means of plowing the ground on the frontier meant relegating your family to death for lack of food.

It’s complicated.  Be sure to know the laws of your state.  For me, it comes down to this: If the person is entering the premises of your home or business with a weapon or intent to commit theft, you simply cannot trust that he will stop there.

There are thousands of instances where a thief took what he wanted and then killed the people who saw him do it.

There is also his article on The Duty To Retreat In The Founding Era.  Read this as well, and as always, none of this constitutes legal advice.  You have to pay for that.

NY Times Op Ed.

The Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, says the following: “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.”

Follow the Lord and live.  Follow the NY Times and perish, in time and eternity.  It’s your choice, boys and girls.  But don’t say you weren’t warned.  I’ve done my job.

Many are familiar with this video.

Fewer have seen his explanation of the event.

Link. [I cannot make WordPress accept the embed code, so go to the link]

But that’s not the way the international media reported it.  Consider this headline: “Vigilante residents wield their rifles as they block their street in Florida to guard against looters.”  Here is the URL.

The video of the guarding residents was filmed by a family in a passing car.

They are seen driving past them before using a roundabout to drive back the other way.

The group, who number at least 12, are standing next to their cars and some are holding rifles.

One man is wearing a military-style helmet, combat boots and pants and is holding a rifle.

As the family pass the residents, an older woman in the car says, ‘he has a gun in the black shirt’ as she refers to the man in the helmet.

A girl in the car then adds: ‘This is in Belleview.’

As she turns the car back around, the older woman then says: ‘Look at all these white people. Look at them with their guns.’

Although it isn’t clear from the video, she claims a teenage boy is also standing with a gun.

‘Look at that little boy, he’s a young man with a gun. He’s like 16,’ she says.

Vigilantes, they are.  Bad people, according to the media.  She’s too ignorant of American history to know that the vast majority of the fighters at King’s Mountain were under the age of 18.  The “Over Mountain” men were primarily boys.  Their families had to bring in the crops and do chores.  So to families singing hymns through the streets as the left on horseback, they left for an arduous journey over many days and nights to meet up with the loyalists at King’s Mountain and win what might be the most decisive battle of the war of independence, because it demonstrated to Cornwallis that his reliance on loyalists to win his war was mistaken.   But there’s more.

In Indiana, peaceful protesters demonstrating against police brutality and racism following the death of George Floyd were met with vigilante locals who were armed with weapons.

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Video taken on Saturday in Valparaiso and posted to Twitter shows a line of protesters marching — as homeowners stand guard along a white picket fence nearby.

The tweet said the protesters were walking back to their cars along a bike trail, as advised by police “because of the amount of people standing by the street with their bats and guns.”

Vigilantes.  They used that word again.

So the thugs who throw bricks, break windows, block streets, liter the roadways, beat people over the head with boards and shoot people, are “peaceful protesters.”  The peaceful citizens who want to protect family, home and hearth, are “vigilantes.”  The vigilantes should wait on protection from the cops and National Guard troops who are taking a knee all around the country.

Light is darkness and darkness is light.  So claims the evil one.

Actually, seeing these pictures of patriot citizens holding rifles and ready to defend home and hearth makes me more confident in the trajectory of America at the moment.

America has been stomped out of its slumber and some of it, at least, seems ready for self defense against the communists.  They meet the definition of militia in the truest sense of the word and concept expressed by the founders, who opposed a standing army.

“Practice Things Like an Eye Gouge, it Takes Very Little Pressure to Injure Someone’s Eyes.”  Swell folks, they are.

I’ll tell you what though.  That boy had better not go back around those people.  His life will be in danger if he does.

No, not for the riots, the broken windows, the shootings, the beatings, the theft of property, the bricks that were thrown, the clogging of streets, the litter in the roadways, the unnecessary fires, the overtime we will all have to pay for government workers, and on the list goes.  I’ll send you the itemized bill.  It will be long and large.

But I do have to say that I’ve noticed what others have.  Gun sales are at record levels.

More than 1.7 million firearms were sold in the U.S. last month, up 80 percent compared to last May. That follows a 71 percent surge in April to just under 1.8 million sold, and just under two million guns were sold in March.

Some perspective: The all-time record, following the Sandy Hook massacre and President Obama’s address vowing to make a major push for more gun control, was two million guns sold in January 2013. This chart shows a general trend upward for years. In September 2001, gun sales were only about 750,000, and that was a month when sales surged.

So we’re looking at just a hair under record gun sales for each of the last three months, totaling about 5.5 million firearms sold in 90 days. Presumably June gun sales will also be robust.

Oh, I assure you they will be.  Sales are big somewhere near enough to me, and when I go down to my local Academy Sports somewhere in Gaston County, while there are the various shoppers buying odds and ends – coolers, chairs, and so forth – the main clientele are folks like me headed to the guns and ammo section because we know when the trucks come in.  We know.  Online sales are only so good.  We must supplement.

Whites and blacks are there together, and no one is fighting.  I’ve had many a discussion with black folk wanting protection from the thugs.  The thugs.  You know who they are.  The brown shirts.  Or in this case, the black shirts.  They are white, they are black.  But they are all communists.

Sure enough, it may not come to that and it may only involve fists and such.  But if it does, suburban and rural America is more than ready.

My own chairman of the board of county commissioners recently wrote an article in a local paper and said “You can take my guns out of my cold, dead hands.”  That was right before we became a 2A sanctuary county.

I’ve tried, my colleague gun bloggers have tried, and Lord knows, we’ve tried so hard.  But we haven’t really been as successful as we’d like.

Enter, Antifa.  You created memes.  You made a hero out of folks who disarm you.  You outed your sponsors, you showed what it takes to stop you, and you showed just how bad you are.

I’ve known it all along, me and my readers, the fact that the police aren’t there to protect us.  We knew it from Warren v. D.C. and Castle Rock v. Gonzalez.

But now America knows it viscerally, existentially.  They know it for real, in terms of home, hearth and family.

Congratulations!  You did what I could never have achieved.

For that, I thank you.

Link.

I don’t want to hear another word about social distancing.

Lot’s of stuff, David Petraeus, “continuity of government,” MANVI, immigrant recruit program, and so on.

First, there is this news from Military.com.

Guard members are carrying rifles, sidearms and ammunition in response to a “credible threat” aimed directly against them as reported by the FBI, Army Maj. Gen. Jon Jensen, adjutant general of the Minnesota National Guard, said in a phone briefing with reporters.

So regular readers know I’m a wonk for such things.  This means that there were arming orders.  There had to be, or else they would have had no ammunition or weapons.

Next up, via David Codrea, this interesting news.

Townhall’s Julio Rosas is on the ground in Minneapolis this week, reporting on the protests and riots. Tonight he’s reporting that the riot police and the National Guard have abandoned a perimeter they had set up earlier in the day, chased away by the rioters.

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Minutes ago Rosas, who’s a tough Marine, by the way, tweeted video of the protesters/rioters cheering as police and the National Guard abandoned their post near the third precinct, which rioters torched on Thursday night.

So much for arming orders.  So much for weapons and ammunition.  So much for ROE.  I guess it’s better to let looters destroy businesses, throw bricks, smash windows and hit people over the head with boards.