As we grind on through the ongoing morass of the Martin case in Florida, it occurs to me that there’s an article I should have written a month ago, when the “Stand Your Ground” bill was wending its way toward Governor “I’ve Got Two .357 Magnums” Dayton’s dim-witted veto.

It turns out a lot of liberals – in Minnesota and nationwide – are really unclear on basic logic, to say nothing of how the law works.

So as mu public service to the left, to try to educate them to a point where they might be able to participate literately in discussing the issue, I’m here out of pure unvarnished compassion to help them out.

Well, Freaking Duh! – I’ve brought this one up before – but as long as liberals say it, I’m going to have to repeat it. Lefties like to refer to “Stand Your Ground” bills as “Shoot First” bills. And I have to ask – have any of you hamsters ever thought about what happens in a legitimate self-defense situation when you shoot second?

No, I guess not. I’ll give you a subtle hint; you get kidnapped, raped, strangled, stabbed and shot.

“Shooting Second” is a really lousy idea.

(I know, I know – they’re trying to “frame” the term. And I’m just doing my best to have the frame blow up in their faces).

More Of That There Fancy Law Talk – When trying to explain what’s wrong with “Stand Your Ground” laws, liberals will get hushed, snd solemnly intone that “they mean people can shoot in self-defense if they feel they’re being threatened”. They usually follow up with one of those Jon Stewart smirks.

And I’m forced to slow waaaaay down – not so much “theatrically” as out of hope that exaggeraged emphasis will help me cut through the sludgy wall of intellectually-entitled smugness – and ask “what do you think people claim when it comes to “self-defense” in any state, regardless of whether it’s a “Stand Your Ground” state like Florida, or a place that actively persecutes the law-abiding gun owner, like the District of Columbia?”

“It is ALWAYS based on someone’s “Feeling” that they are in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm.. Always, always, always.”

“I mean, what do you think – that in Minnesota, there’s a Predator drone up aloft carrying out surveillance over dark alleys and trailer parks, so that there’s a photographic, objective trail of empmrrical third-party evidence as to which shootings are or are not self-defense?\  Flying up there with the unicorns that have all the money for your governlment spending plans?”

“No – in all 50 states and the D of C, self-defense is always, always, always, no exceptions about a party claiming to have felt in imminent danger of death or great harm. The difference is in how state law treats it; in Minnesota, the shooter has to prove the shooting was justified; in about half the states, the county attorney has to prove they weren’t”.

They usually run crying to their TV to see what Bill Maher tells them around this point.

Let me make a coupile of things crystal clear, lest the idiocracy that is the Twin Cities Sorosphere try to make hay by gang-raping the context of what I’m about to write:

• In a self-defense shooting, nobody wins. As you are repeatedly told in carry permit training, having to kill someone in justified self-defense is the second-worst possiible outcome.  While most defensive gun uses involve no shots being fired – like, about 98% of them – there are usually around 1,000 homicides in the US every year that are ruled justifiable.  Most of them leave behind a family mourning someone whose life took a tragic turn – and one shooter who has to live with one of the most terrible moral conundra known to man for the rest of their life.   And even when it’s as justifiable as can be – a 100 poiund woman killing a 250 pound stalker with a sexual predator record longer than the woman’s legs – it’s almost always a tragedy for someone, and almost always a psychologically, to say nothing of financially, scarring event for the person who did the shooting, no matter how justified it was.
• I’m a parent.  In particular, I’m a parent who’s had all sorts of trouble raising teenagers (although not nearly as much trouble as one particularly loathsome, depraved, morally retarded and, I think, disturbed leftyblogger would have people believe).  Whenever I hear of some teenager and their family coming to grief in some awful tragedy – a car crash, suicide, overdose, a prank, stunt or impulsive criminal act gone wrong, or whatever – think “there but for the grace of God went I and mine”.  Defusing IEDs is nothing compared to the impulses of a hormone-addled teenager under the best of circumstances.  If the circumstances aren’t “the best?”  Ugh.

With that said; did you hear that hissing sound?  That was the sound of a media/liberal narrative starting to go flat (with emphasis added on occasion):

With a single punch, Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who eventually shot and killed the unarmed 17-year-old, then Trayvon climbed on top of George Zimmerman and slammed his head into the sidewalk, leaving him bloody and battered, law enforcement authorities have revealed to the Orlando Sentinel.

That is the account Zimmerman gave police, and much of it has been corroborated by witnesses, authorities say. There have been no reports that a witness saw that initial punch Zimmerman told police about.

Bear in mind, this is Zimmerman’s account – as, apparently, corroborated by witnesses.  This is far from a final report from the investigators, much less any indication of what the county attorney, much less the Feds, will end up doing.

This is what the newspaper has learned about Zimmerman’s account to investigators:

He said he was on his way to the grocery store when he spotted Trayvon walking through his gated community.

Trayvon was visiting his father’s fiancée, who lived there. He had been suspended from school in Miami after being found with an empty marijuana baggie. Miami schools have a zero-tolerance policy for drug possession.

And so on, and so on.

This is no more final and definitive than the left’s hooting and hollering about “murder” and “stalking” and “profiling” were last week…

…except that this time it’s the police, rather than Media Matters (and you can expect a campaign to discredit the police department and prosecutors from the left’s chanting points bots next).

Two facts here:

First: under Florida law, Zimmerman is considered innocent until proven guilty:  since it’s a plausible (!) self-defense claim, it’s the police and prosecutors’ job to prove he wasn’t in legitimate fear of death or great bodily harm, that he used excessive force, and that he was a willing participant.  As a result, expect Media Matters and, eventually, the media to start second-guessing the whole Fifth Amendment thing when they really really really want to find someone guilty of something.

Second? The Administration has to be getting nervous.  As we discussed yesterday, the Administration needs this incident to keep their constituents – Afro-Americans and lily-white urban liberals – whipped up. But lynch mobs have short attention spans, especially if they can’t actually lynch anyone.

As I said when the shoe was on the other foot and the media was telling us in lock-step that Zimmerman was a cold-blooded murderer – we don’t know everything yet.

And by “we”, I mean “and that means you too, liberal know-it-all who believes anything the media has to say about anything”.

Sandra Fluke got laid off from her position as “Obama Administration Stage Prop”.

Trayvon Martin has the gig now.

I’ve been pondering why the Administration has been going so long on the Martin case.

Certainly the Obama administration has hated guns all along; the President tried use the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to pin responsibility for Mexico’s ‘drug wars on the law-abiding American gun owner.  The fact that the media has been so utterly hands-off with “Fast and Furious” should show you just what an explosive scandal it should be; the Government trying to set up the majority of its own population?

Can you imagine what they’d have said if George W. Bush had used the FBI to set up a sting to try to blame 9/11 on Democrats, purely for political gain on a wedge issue?

So of course, Obama would like to find some way to take a chunk out of firearm rights, a movement that has spit in the eye of the left and (are you listening, MNGOP Legislative caucus) won, and won consistently for the past thirty years, by setting its bar high and not compromising on core principle

But gun control is only part of the story.

Here’s the real story: Afro-Americans are losing their enthusiasm for Obama.   Oh, not in a way that’ll lose him the black vote – but Obama’s initial election depended entirely on a whipped up base.  Obama is going to face an uphill fight getting his based whipped up, though; whatever “recovery” we’re in has largely skipped the black community; the black unemployment rate of 14% (actually up in the past month) only tells part of the story; while 59.6% of the general population is actually working, only 53% of the black working-age population has a job.

That’s catastrophic.  Not only has the black community not gotten any of the hopey-changey yet, it’s inescapable that if you’re black in America, you are worse off than you were four years ago.

Of course, a black kid getting killed is hardly news.  It’s sad but true; it happens all the time.  And the white liberal media could hardly care less; confronting the horrendous death and incarceration rate among black youth – to say nothing of black unemployment – would force them to confront liberalism’s failures, which means confronting its institutional racism.   So while the possibly unjust death of a young black man may be good for enthusiasm points, if it doesn’t get media coverage, it’s the proverbial tree falling alone in a forest.

But when you combine a dead black kid with an issue that does get the white liberal media exercised – their fear of citizens with guns?  You’ve got political gold.  Suddenly, you’ve got media coverage!

And that’s why Trayvon Martin is in the news, and Sandra Fluke is out.  Every dim-bulb that can be fooled into thinking “Republicans will ban contraception” has already been fooled.  Now it’s time to hoodwink the ones that think Republicans want to arm white people to kill black people.

And the media – wittingly or not – is totally on board with that.

To: News Department, KMSP-TV (“Fox Nine”)
From: Mitch Berg, very occasional viewer
Re:  A Warning

To whom it may concern,

I don’t watch a lot of TV news – but for whatever reason, I do wind up watching your morning news; it does carry a fair amount of local news, and yeah, I like Marler’s weather.  So sue me.

But I had your 9PM news on last  night.  I noticed that you had jumped on the national “Trayvon Martin” bandwagon with both feet.  That’s understandable – it bled, so it led.

I could go over some of the points of your coverage that were, er, squishy – but that’s really not why I’m writing.

I noticed that you were very prominently using Heather Martens as a source for your coverage.  Martens, you note, is the “Executive Director” of “Protect Minnesota”.  If you check a little bit, you might also find she may very well be the sole member of “Protect Minnesota”; if there are half a dozen members, you might want to try to vet them, because I’ll lay odds that most of them are ringers from the Second Amendment movement.   The late Joel Rosenberg used to tell stories of going to Heather Martens’ meetings and finding that every single person at the gathering other than Martens was a Second Amendment activist.    At any rate – it’s not a “group”; it’s a checkbook advocacy front.  It’s also the third name Martens has been through in the past ten years.  For most of the past decade, “they” were “Citizens For A “Safer” Minnesota”; before that, they were something like “Gun-Free Minnesota” or “Minnesota Without Guns” or something like that; I’ve forgotten, but let’s be honest, so have you.  They keep getting shredded in the marketplace of ideas;  they keep having to change their name.

Anyway, my point is this – if Heather Martens says it, it’s most likely wrong.  I was going to say “it’s most likely a lie”, and that is the truth, but I’m trying to be all calm and measured here.

No, seriously; have me on one of your debate segments – if she’ll agree to come on against me.  I’ve shredded everything she’s said and written for a decade now.  There is not even a faded patina of fact in a single utterance she makes.

Just saying – while there are lots of things to be written about the Trayvon Martin case, and even some about Minnesota’s proposed Stand Your Ground Bill (although most of your other sources on that subject are also lying hacks), Heather Martens is not the one you should be going to to find them.

Presuming, of course, “covering the news” is your goal, rather than “fluffing the narrative”.

I just thought you should know.

Have your people call my people – or the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance, of course – if you ever want the whole story, complete with real facts.

That is all.

…will all be Dodge City or something.

By the way, these county attorneys will get the same training each and every one of us 94,000-odd civilian, un-blessed carry-permittees get.

Exactly the same.

(Via Joe Doakes)

Via Breitbart, video of Eric Holder in 1995 claiming we need to “Brainwash” the citizenry when it comes to guns:

Holder was addressing the Woman’s National Democratic Club. In his remarks, broadcast by CSPAN 2, he explained that he intended to use anti-smoking campaigns as his model to “change the hearts and minds of people in Washington, DC” about guns.

“What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that’s not cool, that it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes.”

Holder went on, of course, to run one of the most egregiously, disastrously corrupt programs in the history of American government, “Fast and Furious”, a program hatched entirely to trade Mexican (and American) lives for points against the dreaded “gun lobby”.

Local political leaders and celebrities, Holder said, including Mayor Marion Barry and Jesse Jackson, had been asked to help. In addition, he reported, he had asked the local school board to make the anti-gun message a part of “every day, every school, and every level.”

Despite strict gun control efforts, Washington, DC was and remains one of the nation’s most dangerous cities for gun violence, though crime has abated somewhat since the 1990s.

Note to Attorney General Holder:

I shot about 300 rounds over the weekend.

It was cool.

Spread the word!

To: Certain leftybloggers who’ve appointed themselves as “FACT CHECKERS”
From: Mitch Berg, the most factual blogger there is
Re: Cough it up.

To…well, you know who  you are.

You’ve posited yourself as a “FACT CHECK”-er.  Fair enough, we all have our niche.

So let’s see if you can fill “your” niche, here.

During the debate over the “Stand Your Ground” bill, you repeatedly called the Cornish bill “crap” legislation.  You said that it’d lead to all sorts of problems.   You said it not once, but several times.

I asked, every time, for you to elaborate.  You didn’t.  I’m sure it’s an oversight.

So in your capacity as “FACT CHECK”-er, please tell us:

1. How, exactly, “Stand Your Ground” is “crap” legislation.  And by this, I mean, in which of the 30 states that have “Castle” laws, “Stand Your Ground” laws, or both, has the crime rate risen as a result of the passage of the law?
2. What, in legal terms, does “Stand  Your Ground” mean?  I mean, in your own words.  This one shouldn’t be difficult; I’ve explained it numerous times in this blog.
3. In your own words, what are the real, real-world and legal consequences of these laws?  Please cite examples – don’t just quote from chanting-point blogs that you agree with.
4. You ascribed the bill to the American Legislative Exchange Commission”, aka “ALEC”, AKA “the boogeyman”.  Please substantiate that this bill – which has been in the works in Minnesota in one form or another since 2006 – has any connection to ALEC.   (Thanks to Learned Foot for the reminder).
5. You also claimed that this bill was there to serve some un-named profit motive.  Please describe who “profits” from a change in the presumption of innocence int eh elements of a self-defense claim?  (The only financial impact would seem to be lowering the demand for defense attorneys).  (Thanks, again, to Learned Foot for the reminder).

Joe Doeakes from Como Park writes:

Legalized murder

Governor Dayton vetoed the Stand Your Ground legislation that would have made it less risky for honest citizens to defend themselves from criminal attack. He was persuaded by lobbyists who said the law would “legalize murder.”

Wow, legalize murder; that sounds bad. I wonder what “legalize murder” means?

Murder – now, are we talking about plotting and lying in wait to kill someone in cold blood, as Chief Kolb suggested? Mob hits? Gang banging? Because I don’t see the proposed law legalizing those sorts of murders at all.

Or are we using “murder” in the broader sense of “to end a human life?” Because if that’s the case, we already have legalized murder and we’re glad we do.

The Navy SEALS who got Osama Bin Laden ended a human life. The Golden Valley police officer who shot the crazy woman on 394 last Fall, ended a human life. The Good Samaritan who shot the purse snatcher in Minneapolis, ended a human life. The United States has capital punishment for treason, which ends a human life. And don’t even get me started on abortion. Is Mark Dayton suggesting the people who end those lives are murderers? Of course not. Ending those human lives is just fine with him.

“Legalizing murder” doesn’t mean what you think it does. It’s just a scary phrase to trick you into believing the proposed law is a bad thing. Trickery. Deceit. That’s the DFL playbook.

And, this year more than most, it’s all they have.

And I’m still waiting for the mainstream media to FACT CHECK the idiot politicians and lobbyists – Heather Martens, Dave Kolb, Jim Backstrom, Mark Dayton – who trafficked in the phrase.,

Catherine Richert?  You smelling what I’m cooking?

The First Amendment protects free speech (as well as the press, assembly, and worship provided that the subject isn’t contraception).

But it has limits.

Fraud is not free speech.  You need to speak to commit fraud – “Hey, you have money in Nigeria, and we need $1,000 in legal fees to get it for you!”, right?  But it’s illegal.

It’s not illegal, in most cases, to lie.  There is the odd exception – the Stolen Valor Act which, by the way, makes me uncomfortable; I’d rather have a group of Green Berets set an impersonator straight than some federal prosecutor.    In most other cases, it’s not illegal.

Indeed, in some cases it’s encouraged, even among public servants.  The Supreme Court has said it’s OK for cops and prosecutors to lie to suspects to get information out of them.  That’s acceptable, generally, although it’s led to the odd miscarriage of justice.

But I think there should be a great, shining exception to “freedom of speech”.  Officers of the court should not be able to lie about the law, to their constituents.

There are only two explanations for Dakota County Attorney Jim Backstrom so grossly misstated the potential effects of the “Stand Your Ground” bill, vetoed yesterday by Governor Dayton.

He Doesn’t Know Any Better And, Like The Strib “Editorial Board”, Just Wrote What He Was Told.  If he’s that ignorant of the laws he’s supposed to enforce, he should not be a County Attorney.

Or…

He Actively Misrepresented The Law To An Audience Including His Constituents. With the goal of influencing public policy (the bill was then in committee), Backstrom wrote an op-ed (not for the first time, mind you) that actively and knowingly tried to mislead the public by lying about the consequences of a law.

I don’t know the legal definition of fraud – and I don’t have to, to still be able to say “this sort of behavior on the part of a court official defrauds and actively disinforms the public, toward a political end”.

And while there never will be, there oughtta be a law.

Commenter “Nate” yesterday, in a comment I thought was worthy of being posted:

It is strangely appropriate that the man who shut down his Senate office for fear of talcum powder now insists all Minnesotans should have a legal duty of cowardice. You may NOT stand up for yourself. If threatened, you MUST RUN AWAY.

Brave, brave Sir Robin

Perhaps James Backstrom warned him about the talc.

It’s not been announced as this is written (3:14PM), but sources tell me that Governor Dayton has vetoed Stand Your Ground.

UPDATE:  Every outstate DFLer had best be looking over their political backs.

And Governor Dayton?  You can retire that “I have twin .357s” bullshit in your next campaign.  Your “I am a Second Amendment supporter” privileges have been revoked.

Rep. Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill – which must be either signed or vetoed by midnight tonight (as this is written, neither has happened, although that may change; I write these posts between 5:30 and 7AM, because, well, I work during the day and can’t always follow the news in real time like some puling Sorosblogger), has come in for the most amazing avalanche of slander over its four years of consideration at various levels.

I’ve pointed out that most of the bill’s detractors – whether politicians, cops or the  DFL-promoting media – are lying when they say (and say, and say) that the bill would “legalize murder”, and that the bill merely changes the presumption of guilt to a  presumption of innocence when one is attempting self-defense on ones own property – in the home, yard, garage, or in the car or at a business one owns.

That’s it.

But some people learn better from seeing examples.

So let’s go through some compare and contrast exercises to look at the differences between current law and the Cornish bill.

A really stupid 10 year old boy enters a homeowner’s property to steal apples.  The boy is unarmed, by the way, and that’s above and beyond the fact that he’s a ten year old boy.  The homeowner comes out of his house with a handgun and shoots the boy, who dies on the scene.  The homeowner claims self-defense.

• Current Law: The homeowner can not prove that the boy was a reasonable threat of death or great bodily harm.  She’s convicted of manslaughter or 2nd degree murder.
• With “Stand Your Ground”:  The police investigation shows no evidence the boy was a threat to anyone.  The county attorney charges the homeowner with manslaughter or 2nd degree murder, and proves it to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.  The jury convicts her.

• Current Law: The homeowner’s claim that “stink-eye” was a threat of death or great bodily harm, his failure to even attempt to retreat from said “stink-eye”, and the unreasonableness of the use of lethal force against an unarmed man (“stink-eye” notwithstanding) is rejected by the jury, who convict him of second-degree murder.
• With “Stand Your Ground”: The police investigation shows that the homeowner was not under threat of death or great bodily harm from the alleged perception of “stink-eye”.  The County Attorney, noting that there is no reasonable doubt that a jury will find “stink eye” not to be a lethal threat, and that using lethal force is not a reasonable response to “stink-eye”, takes the case to trial.  Based on the lack of lethal threat and the unreasonableness of lethal force, the jury finds him guilty of second degree murder; “duty to retreat” is no longer an issue, obviously. The homeowner, breaking into a curious German accent as his lawyer buries his face in his hands during the verdict, yells “But ze law zayz I don’t have to retreat to ze house, and zat I can kill for ze ztink-eye!” as the judge pounds the bench, and then the defendant, with his gavel.

The Strib finally did it.

The Strib’s editorial board, in serving in its unstated capacity as stenographers for the DFL and its agenda, have written some howlers over the years; countering them has provided a constant source of material for Minnesota’s large, thriving center-right alternative media for a solid decade now.

But over the weekend, they pulled off the unthinkable – the triple three-peat, the three-minute mile, winning 164 games in a regular season of editorial writing.

They wrote an editorial that was absolutely devoid of truth, or of objective fact.  Literally, not one assertion in the entire column about Representative Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill is true, or not presented in a context that isn’t 180 degrees misleading.

An editorial that is, to a moral and ethical “T”, perfectly untrue beyond simple things like “the legislature passed…” or “Jim Backstrom is…”, obviously).

The thought of cataloging all the individual lies in this editorial is almost too daunting.  But if not me, who?

Now that the Legislature has passed a bill that would allow gun owners to use deadly force anywhere they feel threatened, only Gov. Mark Dayton can prevent it from becoming law.

This statement starts out with a bang (as it were), proving the stenographer writer’s absolute ignorance on the subject.  Minnesota law currently says you can use lethal force when you feel threatened.  The bill doesn’t change the justifications for lethal force.  Not at all.   It has nothing to do with how the law-abiding shooter “Feels”.

It has to do with the burden of proof in judging their motives, and only under certain circumstnces.

More later.

Known as an expanded version of the “castle doctrine,” the bill would allow Minnesotans to shoot to kill even if they aren’t at home. The state’s current castle law already allows citizens to use deadly force in their homes to protect themselves.

This statement is proof that the writer is just re-writing a press release from Heather Martens.

Minnesotans – and residents of any state, for that matter – can already use lethal force to defend themselves, in or out of their homes.   Self-defense has been an accepted part of the law since before there was a United States.

The problem in MInnesota is that self defense is called an “affirmative defense”; you plead guilty to shooting someone, with an explanation.  You are then guilty until you prove yourself innocent, and show to the court’s and jury’s satisfaction that you were…:

• An unwilling participant
• in reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm
• that lethal force was justified
• that you made a reasonable effort to disengage.

The “Stand  Your Ground” law would make one change; if you shoot someone on your property – your house, your yard, your garage, in your car or a business you own – the burden of proof switches to the county attorney.   The law-abiding shooter on their own property will be innocent until proven guilty.

And that is all.

But the proposed law, more appropriately called the “shoot first” bill by opponents,

And there’s more proof that the editorial is just a rewrite of a Heather Martens press release.

“Shoot First” bill?

Has anyone on the Strib editorial board’s band of logicians ever pondered what happens if you shoot second?

would let gun owners fire at people they perceive as threats — without the expectation that they should first attempt to avoid trouble if possible.

Another lie, another direct crib from Heather Martens’ chanting points.  Self-defense shooting is always shooting at “perceived threats”.  The bill merely means that, while you’re on your property, the county attorney has the burden of proving that your perception was wrong.

In particular, ‘Shooting people without first trying to avoid trouble” is legal suicide now, and it would be if the law passes.

Minnesota doesn’t need this change. The state already has a conceal-and-carry law, and citizens who choose to arm themselves can already use firearms for protection anywhere within reasonable limits.

Which is true – and irrelevant to the subject of the editorial.

The bill is not about the right to keep and bear arms; that’s in the Constitution.  It’s about the right to use them in legitimate self-defense without an undue legal burden.

And as we saw in last month’s story from Iowa, the burden – being considered guilty until proven innocent – can truly be an undue one.

For years, shoot-first expansion has been among the top legislative priorities for the National Rifle Association. The organization believes that gun owners should have unfettered rights to defend themselves whenever and wherever they feel threatened.

That paragraph is more Heather Martens, from the callow, demonizing reference to the NRA, to the weasel-word that barely camouflages a lie (nobody, neither Cornish nor the NRA, supports an “unfettered” right to kill in self-defense; merely reasonable legal protections for everyone, including the shooter) and the face-palming illogic (again – self-defense is always about whether one “feels threatened”; the devil is in the details; they help determine whether that “feeling” reasonable?)

That’s part of the problem: Defining a threat can be very personal — and mistakes can be deadly. Some gun owners may feel nervous because of the way a group of youths is dressed. Others might find members of a different race or culture to pose a threat.

Heather Martens has been my rhetorical kick-toy for most of the past decade – but to the best of my knowledge, she’s never tried to play the race card.  I suspect this is the Strib’s editorial board taking some editorial license with Martens’ press release.

You can shoot someone today because you don’t like their clothes, or their race, or their “culture”.  You merely have to prove to a jury that you feared being killed or maimed, that lethal force was justified, that you made a reasonable effort to escape the threat of imminent death or mutilation, and that you didn’t seek out the fight.

And the only thing that’ll change – the only thing – under the proposal is that if you are on your property, the county attorney will have to prove that it was wrong.

And the editorial board apparently has no confidence whatsoever in Minnesota’s police or prosecutors’ ability to tell if a shooting is illegitimate – that a shooting was because of fear of the victim’s “race” or “clothes” or “culture” rather than legitimate fear of death.

Whichever is the case, the conclusion – the editorial board is lying – is the same.

And what about those occasions when a person hears a noise and worries that it could be someone who would do them harm? Then there’s the issue of defending one’s life vs. protecting property.

Absolutely none of which changes from current law.  If the police and county attorney investigate and believe that there was no legitimate threat to the property owner, the property owner still has a problem.  The editorial board – like Heather Martens – is lying about this.

The proposed law allows deadly force to be used against anyone who enters a garage, for example, “by stealth or force.” That means a homeowner could injure someone or take a life over the theft of a car, bicycle or lawn mower.

Let’s take this statement at face value – more than it deserves – and compare and contrast.

An unarmed black Somali youth sneaks into a garage to steal a bike.  Homeowner runs to garage and shoots him.  The homeowner claims self-defense – that he “felt threatened”.

Current Law: Since the youth was unarmed and there was no evidence that he was a lethal threat to the homeowner, the homeowner’s affirmative defense fails and he’s convicted of murder or manslaughter.

Proposed Law: Since the police investigation shows the youth was unarmed and there was no evidence that he was a lethal threat to the homeowner, the county charges him with murder or manslaughter, and easily proves him guilty.

That’s it.

As Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom pointed out in a Feb. 15 commentary on these pages (“A bill for the trigger-happy? Bull’s-eye”), the modified law would allow people to shoot first and ask questions later whenever they believed they were threatened, regardless of how a reasonable person would have responded under the same circumstances.

And as I showed, then and above, Backstrom was lying and misrepresenting the law.

It speaks volumes that Backstrom and most other state and national prosecutors, as well as law enforcement groups, oppose the proposal.

Yes; it shows, yet again, that they are in the bag for the DFL.  Which is a fact – urban “law enforcement groups” like the MN Police Chiefs’ association are primarily political organizations; the chiefs, especially those in the bigger cities, are mainly political offices, appointed by and serving at the pleasure of the (always DFL) governments.

More importantly?  These same groups all come out against all Second Amendment expansions.  All of them.  They all predict dire consequences.

And they are always wrong.

They’re on the front lines and understand that deadly force should be the last resort.

And the bill will not change that one iota.  It’ll merely mean prosecutors will have the same burden of proof they have against real criminals.

Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Good Thunder, has supported expanded castle legislation for years, arguing that the change would codify that law-abiding people “have the brains” [love those scare quotes, huh?  – Ed] to understand the seriousness of deadly force.

And the record, nationwide, has shown Cornish’s argument to be resoundingly correct.

Cornish, a former police chief, believes the bill is a logical extension of current law and that the change is needed because citizens need to know that they won’t be prosecuted for defending themselves.

But Cornish can’t point to a single case in Minnesota in which someone acting in self-defense was convicted of anything or sent to jail.

It’s deceptive rhetoric – and it’s untrue.  I sure can.

Thomas McCuiston – a 125-pound black man – fatally shot a 6’1, drunk, racist attacker with a 50-pound weight advantage who was breaking into his home; he was defending his five year old son.  At trial the judge refused to include the part of the statute that referred to “defending ones’ dwelling” into his instructions; they sentenced McCuiston to 15 years.  The appellate judge found that the jury instruction was a reversible error; McCuiston was granted a new trial, where the jury got the right instruction and acquitted McCuiston.

There’s one.  Want another?

Martin Treptow, who shot at a man who’d been road-raging at him and had him blocked in at a stoplight on Highway 10.  The man pointed a gun at Treptow’s pregnant wife as she sat in the passenger seat; Treptow shot the man, who turned out to be an “undercover cop” and member of the now-disgraced Gang Strike Force.  Although Treptow was released without even having his carry permit revoked by the Anoka cops, the Anoka County Attorney leaned on Treptow, promising endless prosecution unless he accepted a deal.  An unemployed security guard, he didn’t have the resources to fight the case; he pled guilty to lesser charges.  It was as complete a miscarriage of justice as I’ve ever seen – and as clear a justification of the Cornish Bill as exists.

Those two cases (and I’ll bank on there being more) distract from the real point, which isn’t necessarily that anyone “goes to jail” because they had to prove their innocence (unlike virtually any real criminal); it’s that they had to spend an average of $50,000 in legal bills against the  unlimited resources of the county attorney to  defeat a presumption of guilt until proven innocent – a financial hit the county attorney’s office can absorb without a second thought, but which breaks many poorer defendants…

…who plead guilty to lesser charges, and thus don’t count as people “sitting in jail because they were wrongly convicted”, because, hey, they confessed to the lesser crime – and the lesser included charge of being too poor to fight the County Attorney!  Indeed, those are the victims of the current system of law; smug upper-middle-class liberals can afford lawyers to fight their way through the system and prove themselves innocent; working class and poor people, like Treptow and McCuiston and Ray Lewis, people who live in lousyh neighborhoods (gutted by DFL policy) who need to defend themselves (against criminals against which the DFL-run city is powerless), but don’t have the resources to fight the county attorney.

So while the editorial is utterly devoid of fact, it is racist, in the way that Strib editorials always are; the racism of “good intentions”, of trying to do the little peoples’ thinking for them.  Even if it means you have to doctor the facts to do it.

So why is the Strib editorial board lying?  Why is it doing a glossy rewrite of an (I’ll guess, with authority) Heather Martens press release and calling it the institutional voice of the newspaper?

The Strib is lying to the people. Where is the accountability?

Other than the slow dripping of market forces pushing it into irrelevance?  There is none.

EXTRA CREDIT QUESTION:  How long until Catherine Richert at MPR’s “Poligraph” “fact-checks” this editorial?

The governor has until midnight tonight – Monday – to sign or veto the Cornish “Stand Your Ground” bill.

I suspect he’ll veto it.  He’ll probably claim the people don’t support it.

Let’s make sure he and his staff know better.

Invest fifteen seconds in furthering freedom.

This will remain at the top of this blog until this issue is resolved.

I rarely post on Sundays.

But I had to break the silence to point out that yesterday, the Strib ran an editorial about Rep. Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill that was distinguished by having not one solitary true assertion in it.

Not one.

As egregious as the Strib editors’ assaults against fact (on behalf of the DFL) have always been, I can not recall one in the past that not only so grossly buggers fact in pursuit of supporting the DFL’s agenda, to say nothing of being so morally, ethically and factually void to a physical absolute.

Tomorrow morning at 6AM here on Shot In The Dark.

Please call.  Fifteen seconds is all it takes.

This will remain at the top of this blog until the issue is resolved.

The Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance sends us this reminder:
“You’ve sure been posting a lot of calls for people to call people, Mitch”.

Yep.  That’s grassroots politics.  You get your people to show up – on the phone lines and in the mail bags while the sausage is being made, and then again at the polls when it’s time to give your politicians their thumbs up or thumbs down.

So let’s do this.

Remind the Governor that he ran as a “pro-Second Amendment” guy two years ago.  And not just as some chucklehead hunter; no, he sold himself as a self-defense shooter.

And tactfully remind him that his ‘law enforcement” sources are uniformly filled to capacity with sh*t are in error about the whole “legalizing murder” bit, and that we all know it.

We’re here.  We’re shooters.  We’ve swung elections before; we’re why Rod Grams went to DC, and why the GOP took the House ten years ago.

And we’re not going away.

And we prove that by, well, not going away.  By being his worst f*****g nightmare, on the phones today, and at the polls this fall.

To: Catharine Richert, “Poligraph” writer at MPR
From: Mitch Berg, mere peasant
Re: Here’s a dandy story idea!

Ms. Richert,

You’ve been doing “Poligraph” at Mnnesota Public Radio for quite some time now.   The ongoing feature purports to fact-check Minnesota politicians’ statements.

Now, a quick glance through the Poligraph page seems to show that most of your “fact-checking” involves going over statements…by Republicans.  The statements, and the facts in question, can frequently be more than a little bit picayune, but the point isn’t so much that you fact-check a lot of things that are, to most people, pretty ephemeral stuff as it is that your efforts seem so very, very one-sided.

Now, on the one hand I’m one of those rare conservatives who credits MPR’s News operation for at least trying for some sort of balance.  Tom Scheck did an excellent piece on Alliance For A Better Minnesota, for example.  Two years after I did it, naturally, and long-lagging my own extensive coverage of ABM’s efforts, but then he’s gotta cover a lot of stuff, and it’s fine.  Better late than never (although I do wonder why MPR’s coverage of things that don’t carefully buff the DFL’s sheen always happen in the dead of winter, long before anyone actually cares about politics, but again, just a quibble).  As a rule, I appreciate the job MPR News does, while believing it could do better.

On the other hand, I do realize you work for MPR, you’re a graduate of the impeccably-“progressive” Humprey Institude, and beyond all that that you have to serve your Volvo-driving, Carlton-degree-holding, Wellstone-worshiping, Crocus-Hill-dwelling, latte-drinking master.  And that DFL-voting master just loooooves to have her ego stroked, whether during the pledge drives (I noticed a lot more of the “we MPR listeners are a smart, discerning bunch!” promos during your pledge drive) and in between.  Which means tackling those nasty, talk-radio-listening Republicans.

So it’d be interesting to see if you ever manage to get around to “Poligraphing” the most egriegious, pants-soaked-in-napalm lies in Minnesota politics today – those being told by the likes of Dakota County Attorney Jim Backstrom and the various metro police chiefs about the “Stand Your Ground” bill.  Quite simply, nothing they say – nothing, nada, bupkes – has even the faintest grain of truth to it.

(I’ll bring you up to speed:  Stand Your Ground would treat people who shoot in self-defense on their property a presumption of innocence.  Currently, to claim self-defense, you have to essentially say “I’m guilty, but here’s my explanation…”, and hope the explanation suits the prosecutor, judge and jury.  Sometimes it works.  Sometimes it really really doesn’t.

Now, Backstrom, Darth Lillehaug, and some of the Metro police chiefs (and headline writers) claim that the bill would “legalize murder”, which is a slander both to the law-abiding owner and the cops and prosecutors who investigate the shootings – as if they can’t tell the difference between a legitimate self-defense shooting and a criminal act.

But more importantly for your beat, Ms. Richert, it’s right in your wheelhouse.  You have Minnesota politicans – and, even worse, officers of the court – lying about the law.  To Minnesotans..

That’s your beat, right?

Now, I realize that the Volvo-driving, free-range-alpaca-wearing, Saint-Olaf-diploma-sporting, latte-drinking, Merriam-Park-dwelling crowd that is your audience base might find guns and Second Amendment supporters unfashionable.  I get that.

But, again – politicians lying to the people.  In the news.

While this might take time away from poring over Michele Bachmann’s grocery list, I”m just saying.  You smelling what I’m cooking?

That is all.

Stand Your Ground – Tony Cornish’s bill that would give the law-abiding citizen a presumption of innocence when shooting in self-defense on their own property and in their own cars – passed the Senate this week.  Today, according to the schedule, it’s the House’s turn.

You need to call your Representatives.

And this time, I have a special mission for those of you who, like me, are “represented” by DFL hamsters.

There’s little question this bill will pass the Republican House.  It passed the Senate with four extra outstate DFLers for good measure.  The outstate DFLers, working outside the Metro DFL’s “Cone Of Stupid”, know what Real Minnesota thinks about this issue.  They know that voting against this bill will be poison for them and the rest of the outstate DFL this fall when they’re all up for re-election.

Naturally, call your Representative.  If they’re Republican, chances are they’re right on the issue; encourage them to vote for the bill, and thank them for their support.

But if your rep is a DFLer, it’s even more important that you call.  They do  keep track of who calls.  And if the DFL looks at the numbers and sees where the callers really stand on this issue, they’ll do the math.  Their outstate representatives – the few that are left – have enough problems, and the DFL can’t govern with just the metro area.  They know this – at least in theory.

So if your Rep is a DFLer, especially a DFLer from outside the 494-694 ring, make a special appointment to call, ASAP.  Encourage them to listen to Real Minnesotans (*) as opposed to Alita Messinger, and vote for the bill.

Because if Mark Dayton vetoes the bill, we’ve got a shot at an override.  It’ll be tough, but it’s doable – especially if the entire legislature, including the GOP’s leadership, knows that Real Minnesota is, figuratively, up in arms.

And of course, the real overturn comes this fall.  Even the DFL knows that.  And they – the ones outside the metro, anyway – know their history.

So let’s light up those phone lines one more time for this one.

(*) And yes, “Real Minnesotans” are, by definition, pro-Second Amendment.  Just like Real Americans.  And yes, that does mean if you’re anti-Second Amendment you are not a real American.  Sorry to break the news.  There’s time to change.

To: Rachel Stassen-Berger, Tom Scheck, Pat Kessler, Bill Salisbury, Tim Pugmire, John Cronan, Tom Leyden, David Brauer, Erik Black, and all of the various other Deans Of The Capitol Press Corps their respective news directors and editors:

From: Mitch Berg, noisome peasant

Re: Huh?

All,

When covering the “Stand Your Ground” bill at the legislature, you all continue to quote the likes of Heather Martens, David Kolb and Jim Backstrom.

And yet everything any of them has ever said on the subject of gun control, the Second Amendment, and above all the consequences of “liberalizing” gun laws for the law abiding has been, always and with no exceptions, not only wrong, but completely the opposite of the truth.  As in, devoid of not just fact, but truth.  Nothing.  Zip.  Bupkes.  Never one iota of fact.

They are “sources” that have burned you, as reporters, every single time you’ve cited them on Second Amendment issues.  No exceptions.

Now, I was a reporter.  Not a great one – serviceable is the word – but even I knew that if you had a source that  never, ever, not once, did anything but discredit your reporting on an issue, you stopped using the source, or at least corroborated everything they said with a reliable one.   Even if I didn’t know better, my editors would usually insist on it.   I mean, if there were three sources that consistently either botched the story or just plain lied to you about, say, the budget or a Senator’s affair, you’d drop ’em off your Rolodex – right?

So is there some exception to this for Second Amendment issues, or are you all that genuinely incurious about the facts on this issue?

I’m genuinely curious.  Have your people call my people.

That is all.

I got this from the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance:

If you do only one thing for gun rights this year, this is it!

The Stand Your Ground bill passed the Minnesota House last year. It overwhelmingly passed the Senate last week. Now the bill is headed to Governor Dayton.

TODAY!

Call Governor Dayton’s office and ask him to sign HR1467, the Stand Your Ground bill.

Metro: 651-201-3400

Toll Free: 800-657-3717

Please take a few minutes to write a real letter, on paper. These are incredibly effective in convincing a politician of how seriously we take an issue.

Governor Mark Dayton

130 State Capitol

75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

St. Paul, MN 55155

Suggested language: “Please sign HF1467, the Stand Your Ground bill, today.”

Send an email: Go to the governor’s web site  and send the same message.

Got a fax machine? Send a fax with the same message to 651-797-1850.

Forward this to a dozen friends and ask them to do the same.

TOMORROW, AND EVERY DAY UNTIL HE SIGNS THE BILL!

Do it again (see above)

You know as well as I do that he’s likely to veto the bill; his strings are being pulled by the likes of “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” and the Metrocrat left. But even Dayton knows he has to defer to the fervor, passion and power of the Second Amendment movement at some point; he ran as a pro-gun, pro-self-defense candidate.

So this has got to have him conflicted.

Good!

And if there’s a bone in his body that resolves conflicts in favor of what the people actually want, then let’s make sure he hears real people, and not the  DFL.

Please write/call today and every day.

More later.

Alleged robber in custody after trying to rob men, dropping gun…

Police said [Cedrick Mitchell, age 39] entered a motel room and asked for pills from the two men inside. When they responded that they didn’t have any, Mitchell took out his gun and told the men “everything you got,” according to the Bradenton Herald.

Mitchell dropped his gun when the men began to fight with him, police say. One of the victims sprayed him with pepper spray and Mitchell ran away, authorities said.

…and then…:

He returned to the motel room minutes later and offered the men $40 in exchange for the gun he dropped, the Herald reported . He was pepper-sprayed in the face again.

Reports that Dakota County Attorney Jim Backstrom has said that this is an example of what will happen if the “Stand Your Ground” law passes are at this time unconfirmed.

It’s also unknown whether Champlin police chief David Kolb has recounted any stories of breaking into hotel rooms when he was a 10 year old boy, and wondering if a kid might get shot for that today.

To:  Chief Barney Fife, Dwight Schrute, Frank Burns, David Kolb, Champlin Police Department
From: Mitch Berg, Mere Peasant.
Re:  Do They Only GIve You One Bullet?

Chief Kolb – one of the Metro area DFL’s pet cops – had to say in testifying before the Senate’s bipartisan vote in favor of Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill yesterday:

“This bill provides a loophole for a defense of what I would call cold-blooded murder,” said Champlin Police Chief David Kolb of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association.

Kolb recounted being 10 years old and sneaking onto a neighbor’s south Minneapolis property to steal apples from a tree.

Based on the proposal, “now the property owner can use force, and even deadly force, against that 10-year-old apple thief,” Kolb said. “You can see the disconnect here with reality.”

Indeed, Chief Kolb, we can.  The disconnect with reality is like a rhetorical taser to the groin..

Would that 10 year old Davie Kolb have been a “Reasonable Threat of Death or Substantial Bodily Harm” to that property owner – where “Reasonable” means “a jury would buy it?”  If someone in Champlin shot a ten year old kid who was stealing apples, would the prosecution today hinge on the failure to retreat?  Or perhaps the fact that the property owner was under no lethal threat whatsoever, and that lethal force was utterly unjustified?  How, precisely, would that change with the passage of Cornish’s law?

Would that 10 year old Kolb lad’s actions have justified, to that reasonable cop, prosecutor and juror, the use of lethal force, notwithstanding the exact location of the incident?

If so, then why are you alive, not to mention a cop, today?

If not, then I think the citizens of Champlin might wanna do a quick review of their chief of police’s investigative skills, knowledge of the law, and – given his apparent willingness to misrepresent the law when the metro DFL asks him to – his priorities..

That is all.

MBerg

(Via regular commenterTerry)

To: Governor Dayton
From: Mitch Berg
Re: Stand Your Ground Bill

Governor Dayton,

Do you remember saying this, two years ago?

“I have two loaded .357 Magnum pistols in my home right now in a lock box,” DFL candidate Mark Dayton told a crowd gathered Saturday at Game Fair, a hunting and fishing expo in Anoka. “I have a 9mm pistol at home. I have a twelve-gauge shotgun at home.”

You’re not a great politician, but you’re not stupid.  You were campaigning for governor, outstate, at the Game Fair.  You remember Ann Wynia; it was the gun vote the sank her and gave us six years of Senator Rod Grams. You know that gun control issues are a graveyard for DFL pols outstate – and not just “sportsman’s” issues, either; you remember the outstate DFL legislators that got sent packing in 2000 and 2002 for opposing Concealed Carry reform.  And you needed to bounce back from your lifetime “D” rating from the National Rifle Association.

So you went all tactical on us.

So your next steps after yesterdays’ resounding passage of the “Stand Your Ground Bill in the Senate seems pretty clear:

The Senate passed the bill Thursday with bipartisan support in a 40-23 [almost veto-proof…] vote after heated debate.

The bill gives gun owners significantly more latitude to use deadly force for self defense. The bill creates a presumption that anyone who uses deadly force while in a home or dwelling does so believing themselves in danger of harm or death. It expands the definition of dwelling to also mean a hotel room, tent, car or boat.

It also strengthens Minnesota’s “Castle Doctrine” law – which supposedly exempts one from having to retreat in their own home, but which has been overridden a number of times in Minnesota  courts.

The usual suspects – Lefty astroturf anti-gun groups and “law enforcement groups”, inevitably groups inextricably tied with metro government – are making the usual bleating sounds:

Supporters of the bill say it will increase personal protection. But opponents say it would actually threaten public safety and increase the risks faced by law enforcement officers.

There are 17 states with “Stand Your Ground” Laws, including such conservative bastions as New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Wisconsin.  There has been no “threat” to anyone’s safety that didn’t have it coming.

No, as the MPR article notes, there is one reason that “law enforcement” – at the institutional level – doesn’t like the bill:

The bill also shifts the burden of proof in self-defense cases from the defense to the prosecution, and would no longer require a person to retreat to avoid a perceived threat.

Law enforcement – especially county attorneys like Jim Backstrom – love it when the law does their work for them.  

And so they claim – as I noted – that shooting where the shooter was not in fear of death or great bodily harm, where lethal force was not justified, and/or was a willing participant, will be harder to prove wrongful because there’s…no duty to retreat before committing a crime?

Huh?

These cops and lawyers think all of us are stupid.

Still, they flak away:

Several Senate Democrats echoed that concern. DFL Sen. John Harrington, who previously served as the police chief in St. Paul, said state law already provides Minnesotans the right to protect themselves.

“This bill makes it sound like home invasions are an everyday occurrence, when in fact they are extremely rare,” Harrington said. “And on those rare occasions when they do happen, our current law allows the homeowner to take appropriate and reasonable action to defend themselves.”

Right, Chief Harrington.  With the occasional diversion into Sartreian hell.  Gotta break some eggs to make an omelet, right?

And there are signs, Mr. Governor, that their illogic has gotten to you:

Dayton told the House author he would wait the full three days before acting on the bill, once it lands on his desk.

“I went to the funeral of a courageous police officer in Lake City just a couple of weeks ago, Shawn Schneider — and his widow and three children,” Schneider [sic] said. “I don’t want to do that again, and I don’t want to do anything that they believe based on their considerable experience is going to put their lives at greater risk.”

Schneider died after he was shot responding to a domestic dispute call.

It’s a sad story – which helps to cover up, no doubt, the fact that Schneider’s killer was not acting in self-defense; had he not killed himself, there’d have been no question that he was a murderer.  Any claim that the killer was acting in self-defense would have gotten laughed out of court.

Even the dumbest prosecutor and most thick-necked burned-out cop gets this.  Until it’s time to turn up at the capitol and pimp for gun control, anyway.

Anyway, Governor Dayton – veto it.  I dare you.  Start the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance mailing list humming to outstate shooters on both sides of the aisle – among the most passionate, dedicated activists you’ve ever seen.  Sign the political death warrants of every DFL politician outside the Metro and Duluth.   Get all of Minnesota’s shooters – who mobilized across party lines ten years ago to defeat you and the people who pull your strings, and can do it again – riled up.

Or do the right thing and sign it.

Your call.

That is all.

There are a lot of stupid reasons to oppose Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill; most of them are outright lies, as with pretty much anything Dakota County Attorney Jim Backstrom has written on the subject.

You rarely get the one slightly less-dumb question: “is there any real need for this bill?”  I’ve had a few earnest and not-unintelligent lefties ask over the years.  “Can you name a single case of an otherwise law-abiding shooter that’s in jail strictly because they didn’t retreat enough to satisfy a county attorney?”

There’ve been a few examples in Minnesota over the years – but none quite as dramatic as  this perversion of “justice” in Iowa that’s just gotten “resolved”< after a fashion.  Jay Lewis – an Afro-American man from West Des Moines – shot a man who attacked him

A former security guard and law enforcement officer, Lewis also is a hunter and gun collector and came to Iowa with a permit to carry a concealed weapon…Ludwick, a former soldier and convicted felon, was driving four people home from a Halloween party. Documents say Ludwick slowed; Lewis passed him. Ludwick sped up, and the cars raced down 11th Street until they came to Regency Woods. They collided when Lewis, in front and on the right, started to turn left.

Lewis said Ludwick and a passenger, Justin Lossner, got out of the Taurus and began punching the Mustang’s windows.

They backed off when Lewis pulled out his .380-caliber pistol. But they came back.

Lewis said he was outside his car, evaluating its damage, when he caught Ludwick and Lossner trying to sneak up on him from two different directions.

There’s one mistake, of course; it behooves one to maintain a zen-like calm when you’re carrying. If the story went as the article says it did, and had it occurred in Minnesota, Lewis might be lucky he didn’t get dinged for being a willing participant.

But that’s irrelevant – as we’ll see in a bit:

The recording of a 911 call made by Lewis begins with Lewis yelling at the two to “just stay where you are. Get back! Get back! I’m going to start shooting!”

There are exchanges of profanities while Lewis explains the situation to a police dispatcher. Then, “Get away from me. Get away from me!” And a bang.

Ludwick was shot, Lewis said, when Ludwick turned away as if to retreat, then spun back and charged. Records say the bullet hit Ludwick in his chest above the right pectoral muscle, then tore through his right bicep.

Now, here’s the important part; a jury backed him up:

Jurors found Lewis’ actions entirely appropriate.

“He gave them fair warning,” jury forewoman Nancy Alberts said. “Normally, anybody that would pull a gun on someone, you would think that they would stop. … That wasn’t the case here. You could clearly hear on the 911 call where he warned Mr. Ludwick.”

Ludwick, who had a blood-alcohol level of 0.189 when tested at the hospital that night, did not return phone calls requesting comment. Court records show his history includes multiple convictions for felony theft.

So here’s the situation so far:  after an altercation on the road, two drunk men attacked Lewis. damaging his car (the article didn’t note if the car was driveable).  Lewis drew, and when the two perps kept attacking him, fired, wounding the guy.

No, it’s even more ludicrous than that (emphasis added):

West Des Moines police arrested Lewis for failing to back off and avoid the gunplay. He was charged with two counts of intimidation with a dangerous weapon and one of going armed with intent.

And if he’d left, would they have booked him for “leaving the scene?”  And how on earth did they show “intent?”

The initial bail asked Lewis to post $225,000 cash.

Lewis, who made $32,359 a year at the IRS, didn’t have the money. So he sat in jail.

In other words, for a shooting that was in every way completely justified except for failing to run away (the article doesn’t tell us if he could have driven – away from the scene of an accident with significant damage, mind you), but in which a pencil-necked county attorney, working in a warm, well-lit office surrounded by deputies and metal detectors, decided that he should have found some way to run away from two attackers.

He lost his apartment (not for failure to pay, but because the case, and the attendant publicity, defamed him with his landlord to the point where he got evicted essentially on a morals clause) and his job.  His landlord filed for eviction while he was in jail; the court system, in all its passive-aggressive glory, didn’t notify him of the action until all of his property was sitting out on his curb, where the deputies confiscated his small weapons collection, and his neighbors confiscated the rest of his property.

Which disqualified him from being released early, as a first-time offender with a job and therefore a low flight risk, because – wait for it – he had no place to go!

So for 112 days, he languished in jail – due to a bitchy decision by a bitchy county attorney, the passive-aggression of the county court system and his landlord, and being too poor to post $20,000+ in bail.  His life was ruined.

And what happened?

Prosecutors eventually dropped most of the charges. Trial on the sole remaining count, reckless use of a firearm causing injury, began on Feb. 6. and ended late on Feb. 8.

It was over early the following morning.

Let’s reiterate that; prosecutors – working in safe, warm, comfy environments with nobody attacking them – took their sweet time to decide maaaaayabe they didn’t have a case; they lost the one charge they ended up bringing to trial.

Not for shooting, or even injuring, the attacker; that was never in legal question.  Merely for failing to run away from the accident scene and his car, being chased by 2-4 angry men.

A man’s freedom, and entire life, have been destroyed over a couple of lawyers’ bobbleheaded passive-aggressive canoodling over an abstruse legalistic quibble over whether he ran away fast enough.

Polk County Attorney John Sarcone said that he accepted the jury’s verdict but that the case deserved to go to trial because Lewis’ actions raised a sufficient number of questions.

“We just don’t allow people to go shoot people,” he said. “Using deadly force is a last resort. It shouldn’t be the first resort.”

Which is not just a strawman, but a stupid one; at no point did anyone suggest it was Lewis’ first action.

What Lewis’ case shows is that current law works, [Polk County Attorney] Sarcone said: “I don’t know why people are afraid of jury trials. I’m not.”

I had to sit back and let my brain try to wrap itself around the arrogance, presumption and stupidity of that question.

Not just in the “of course you’re not afraid, it’s your job” sense of the term.  More like “I’ll just bet you’re not, asshole!  You have all the taxpayer money in the world to fight your cases; I, citizen, might be lucky to make bail, much less fight against your entire department and all its resources…

…over a case that wasn’t about the rightfulness of the shooting at all – merely about whether I should have run away, and run away fast enough to satisfy you”.

I’m less worried about Mr. Lewis’ gun than I am about prosecutors like Jim Backstrom’s lying demigoguery or Sarcone’s legal onanism.

That’s why we need Rep. Cornish’s bill.

Have you called your Senator yet?  Maybe a few of ’em?  If not, why not?

(And I know it makes me a bad person, but whenever I hear prosecutors look at cases like this and say “the system worked”, I really really do want to see them go through a perverse miscarriage of justice themselves, just to see how the rest of us live).