The law of self-defense does not cover property. So what law does? If the cops won’t do anything, if the prosecutors won’t do anything, if the courts won’t do anything, then the social compact has been breached by the government, and the right to defend property reverts to the citizenry. They shoot looters, don’t they? These people were looters. They deserve to be shot. Pour encourager Les autres. Joe Doakes
On the one hand, test cases are for other people.
On the other hand? If the system doesn’t start delivering the justice we pay our taxes for, people start going out and getting it for themselves, without bothering with the niceties of criminal procedure.
Workers told police that Davis (the “victim”) was protective of the [liquor store where the incident took place]. Davis accused Edwards [the shoplifter who ended up charged with shooting Davis] of concealing a bottle of vodka and took the bottle from him and demanded Edwards leave the store.
According to the charges, Edwards said he had a gun and started digging through his backpack. But, as it turned out, Davis was carrying a weapon himself, telling the victim that he had a “license” and “displayed” the weapon.
Police say surveillance video showed the two men move out to the parking lot where they started fighting. The charges state:
“Edwards and [Davis] eventually went to the sidewalk outside the store. Edwards appeared to threaten [Davis] with pepper spray, and the two men got into a heated exchange. Edwards grabbed [Davis’] shoulders. KD tried to remove his handgun from his jacket while wrestling with Edwards. [Davis’] handgun fell to the ground. When KD reached to retrieve the gun, Edwards pushed [Davis] away from the gun into the parking lot.”
Mr.. Davis did literally everything wrong, legally and tactically.
He was a willing participant.
Not sure how you would claim a threat to your life and health from someone stealing vodka.
He got into scuffle and allowed himself to lose his weapon.
Don’t do any of this.
GIven his behavior, I doubt Davis had a carry permit; if he did, I’ve got questions for his instructor.
Prosecuting “straw buyers“ – people with clean criminal records who buy firearms and knowingly sell or give them to criminals – isn’t especially “sexy“. No County prosecutor ever got elected to the US Congress, governor, or the state legislature by prosecuting criminals girlfriends, grandmothers, or people running side hustles moving metal to thugs.
It’s gone so far as the US attorney covering Chicago saying, basically, he just doesn’t care.
And we see how that’s worked in Chicago, right?
Hennepin county attorney Mike Freeman has also made it very clear he doesn’t care about straw buyers enough to make it a priority. He clearly doesn’t think it’s much of a problem.
And the next Hennepin county attorney is going to be Ryan Winkler, who played a disproportionate role in making sure that state legislation about straw buyers never got heard in the house, and got ruled as non-germane when brought up as amendments by Republicans.
If only there were some way society could assume responsibility for protecting the public from violent criminals, some group of armed public servants sworn to uphold the law so that private citizens don’t have to.
Joe Doakes
Of course, the “good guy with a gun“ angle got buried so deeply, it’s a good thing the fact didn’t need oxygen.
You’ll never get our opinion class to admit it, but it was the good guy with the gun that saved the situation.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is having a cocktail at a downtown Saint Paul bar when MyLyssa SILBERMAN, Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, happens in.
SILBERMAN: Merg…
BERG: Er, hey, MyLyssa…
SILBERMAN: Last week, Kyle Rittenhouse was aquitted of domestic terrorism for shooting up a Black Lives Matter rally.
BERG: You got one fact correct in that sentence, so I guess that’s a start.
SILBERMAN: What if that would have been a black man? Leaving aside the fact that he’d be dead right now, for a moment, what would all of you white male gun owners be saying about it? Would your reaction be any different?
BERG: Funny you mentioned that. Last week – the same day of the RIttenhouse verdict, in fact – Andrew Coffee IV was acquitted of murder, and attempted murder of police, when he shot at a no-knock raid on his house. No cops were killed, but Coffee was up for homicide in the death of his girlfriend was shot 10 times by a SWAT team. He was acquitted, for exactly the same reasons Rittenhouse was. He was a felon with a gun, so he might get some time for that, but he had nearly exactly the same self-defense case as Rittenhouse.
And we started finally getting some details about the acquittal of Jaleel Stallings, who returned fire at cops who were firing rubber bullets from a van without announcing their presence; Stallings fired back until the cops identified themselves (and beat the crap out of him), and got acquitted – again, for exactly the same reasons that Rittenhouse was.
Both were in reasonable fear of immediate death. Both used appropriate force. Both met their states self-defense rules. Both were acquitted.
And gun owners – presumably including many of us “white males” – supported them, as the facts got out, in their self-defense claims – albeit not necessarily Coffee’s having his illegal gun…
SILBERMAN: Mitch, Mitch, you’re missing my point.
BERG: Which is…?
SILBRERMAN: I asked if you white male gun owners would support a black man with a gun defending himself.
BERG: And I gave you two where the answer was “yes”,and that major media seemed to avoid covering. Including NPR.
SILBERMAN: You gave me concrete examples. I asked an abstract question. Please give me an astract answer…
And here’s hoping Rittenhouse follows Nick Sandman into civil court.
UPDATE: Judge Schroeder after the Jury left the room: “Motion of the defense is granted, the charges are dismissed with prejudice. Mr. Rittenhouse is released from the obligation of his bond”.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking through the Cub Foods on Larpenteur, gauging the level of shortage going on, when Avery LIBRELLE almost literally bumps into him.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: Aw, ssshhhhhure enough, it’s Avery. How are you…
LIBRELLE: People going places where people don’t know who they are, and might be angered by their presence, should stay home. It’s just provocation!”
BERG: Are you talking about the Rittenhouse Trial, or the Ahmad Arberry trial?
LIBRELLE: Clearly, the…
(Stops)
LIBRELLE: Um…the…er…
BERG: (Slowly steps away as the wheels grind slowly to a halt.
The Kyle Rittenhouse case – involved in jury instrucitons today, and going to final attorney summations today – is plenty complicated, but about some fairly simple questions:
Did Rittenhouse instigate or participate in instigating two different deadly-force incidents in which he used lethal force on four people, with two dead, one seriously injured, and one missed (who has disappeared from public view)?
Was his fear of death or great bodily harm reasonable?
Was the threat to his life immediate?
Was his response reasonable – enough to end the attack on him?
DId he make a reasonable effort under the circumstances to disengage?
Proving or disproving those five points for two incidents and four shootings has taken eight days of testimony and over a year of pre-trial wrangling – all very complicated – but the questions themselves are fairly simple.
But as far as the media and the large culture are concerned, this trial isn’t really about the facts of the case.
“Smart” America, the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton crowd, see in Rittenhouse the bitter gun-clinging Jeezuz freak they picture that other tribe of Americans being; they earnestly exclaim “Nobody needs a gun like that” (ignoring the fact that four people tried to kill him). They think Rittenhoue is an intellectual symbol of all they detest about that other America. This includes most, but not all, media coverage; Big Media has cast its lot with “Just America”, and it shows in much of the coverage.
“Real” America seems. him as a lone sentinel of freedom, fighting back against the (politically favored, socially immunized) mob that is ravaging our centers of thought and commerce (and Kenosha). A kid from bedrock America, good and true, a bone to be chewed by a “blue” culture and media (ptr) who are siding with the rioters
“Free” America sees this as another show trial, like Bernard Goetz, a symbol of a state run amok that is actively crushing liberty.
“Just” America, naturally, sees Rittenhouse, the person and the case, as a symptom of “white supremacy” and the base, violent nature of the army of straw cis-men they face.
Indeed, with few exceptions, the higher the social status of the person commenting on Rittenhouse, the less their commentary actually has to do with the shootings in Kenosha or the facts at trial.
Everyone and everything in our society today is a metaphor, it seems.
During testimony yesterday in the Kyle Rittenhoue trial, Gaige Grosskreuz – the “medic” with the illegally-concealed who was shot while chasing Rittenhouse with an illegally-concealed Glock – this happened:
In this, Grosskreutz admits – after a half-hour of cross-examination by defense attorney Chirifisi – that his actions justified Rittenhouse’s claim of self-defense against him, and likely Huber as well. The admission above takes place at 3:23 of the video below; the preceding several minutes of the defense cross-examination is fascinating….
…as Chirifisi slowly backs Grosskreutz into telling the truth, is fascinating to watch.
As I stepped through the cross-examination of Grosskreutz today, I identified no fewer than 19 substantive portions, nearly 50% of the total time spent on cross by Attorney Chirafisi, that were substantively destructive to the State’s narrative of guilt, and helpful to the defense narrative of self-defense. It was harder to identify the parts to leave out of today’s end-of-day post than it was to select the parts to keep in.
“Directed verdict” – a judge telling a jury that the facts leave only one possible choice – is what the lawyers in the windows on the left of the screen start yelling. I suspect that’s unlikely, although less so than the belief in some quarters that the judge should toss the whole trial, which just isn’t going to happen; someone would gin that into grounds for an appeal, and then you’re one judge away from having to go through the whole thing again.
In the course of this trial, I’ve learned one important thing; the big lesson I took away from carry permit class 16 years ago has changed. The defense no longer has to prove the major elements of their case; they have the burden of providing evidence of self-defense; the prosecution then has to prove that any one of the following five standards for self-defense wasn’t met:
1. Innocence – the defendant didn’t start the altercation
2. Proportionality – they used only the force necessary to stop the threat
3. Imminence – the lethal force was used in response to something going on at that moment; not the day before, not some future threat.
4. Reasonableness – the defendant reasonably believed they were going to die.
5. Avoidance – the defendant tried to avoid the episode. Note – even in a Stand your Ground or Castle situation, judges will often advise juries it’s best to try to avoid the use of lethal force.
It seems obvious that the prosecution’s case in the Huber and Grosskreutz shootings fell apart yesterday. The Rosenbaum shooting may be a little closer fought, but I think there’s at least reasonable doubt so far…
…and the defense still hasn’t presented its case.
Just to be clear – killing is a tragedy, and it’s best not to be where one expects violence to happen. The law – and, in places like Minneapolis and Kenosha, politics – aren’t fond of citizens defending their property. Be aware of this.
But hopefully this past two years, and a good mid-term at the state and federal level, start changing that.
The Illinois Supreme Court struck down a tax on guns and ammunition. Hooray for the Second Amendment? No. Because the reason they struck it down was the Illinois Constitution’s ‘uniformity’ clause. The justices said, “Under the plain language of the ordinances, the revenue generated from the firearm tax is not directed to any fund or program specifically related to curbing the cost of gun violence. Additionally, nothing in the ordinance indicates that the proceeds generated from the ammunition tax must be specifically directed to initiatives aimed at reducing gun violence. Thus, we hold the tax ordinances are unconstitutional under the uniformity clause.”
Any ninny can see the work-around. Money is fungible. The taxing authorities simply dedicate all gun/ammo tax revenue to gun violence prevention programs, shifting existing funding elsewhere.
If our rights depend on how the bookkeeping is done, gun owners lose.
The number one story in the world this past three days: Alec Baldwin accidentally shot a cinematographer on a movie set in New Mexico.
It’s easy to feel Schadenfreud for someone who’s wallowed in so much of it himself:
I try to remain above that…
…but I’m only human.
Still.
Back in college, I worked as a stage hand (as well as acting in a few shows). The lady who ran the theater department had a long history working in show business of all kinds; she had been the first female theatrical producer in Los Angeles, had worked as a make up person on the original “Planet of the Apes“ (and had one of the masks in her office to show for it) and on and on.
We had two productions back then that involved some sort of weapons work; in one, one of the actors (and a classmate) “shot“ someone. The “prop gun“ in this case was a starter pistol, borrowed from the track and field team. The chamber was only big enough to hold starter gun caps. The barrel was not a barrel; there was no hole down the middle for a bullet. The only way to kill someone with that pistol would’ve been to beat them over the head with it – and even then, it would have been a long, slow process. Professor Lavin drilled us – the whole crew, not just the actor doing the shooting, since anyone onsince anyone on the crew might have to handle the starter pistol – on the safety rules like everybody’s life depended on it.
The absolute ironclad rule was “don’t point the gun at a person, even during the scene when you are “shooting” someone. The scene was “blocked out” (actors arranged about the stage) so that it would look like the gun was being aimed at the victim – but was in fact, pointing to a spot offstage with no cast, crew or audience. [1]
That was a piker, by the way, compared with all the things I had to learn to do a sword fight, when I played Henry II in “Lion in Winter“.
This was all emphatically nonunion. Professor Lavin relayed all sorts of stories about how universal this knowledge was among Hollywood crews.
So while I am minding Berg’s 18th Law on waiting for the facts, I find it less than completely convincing that *someone* on that set – the armorers, the prop people, the day labor on a set in rural New Mexico, and even Baldwin himself, who has engaged in gunplay in at least one movie in his career (chasing the spy through the “Sherwood Forest” of missile tubes in Hunt for Red October, a Union shoot if there ever was one) hadn’t been through the four basic rules of gun handling at the very least.
I can imagine why someone would put a live around into a “prop gun“; it looks more realistic when it fires.
Why someone would do it when they were apparently checking the blocking on the scene (I have to imagine the fact that the director and the cinematographer were standing directly in the line of fire meant they were setting up a camera shot) when the prop master/armor was yelling “cold gun“ (which tells me someone knew something about proper procedure on that said) is completely beyond me.
So I’ll keep following Berg’s 18th Law.
[1] That’s one of my dirty little secrets among conservatives; growing up in a anti-gun household, I learned all of my gun safety from a Democrat theater professor :-). I literally learned three of the four essential rules of gun safety – they are always loaded, never point them at something you’re not willing to destroy, and never put your finger on the trigger until you’re ready to shoot – doing theater.
Ilhan Omar, Jeremiah Ellison and Phillipe Cunningham – the three biggest champions of the “Defund the Police” madness – had a campaign rally in North Minneapolis yesterday.
The MPD apparently doesn’t respond to shootings that don’t hit anyone anymore (although I have a hunch that’d change around Omar, Ellison, Cunningham or Lisa Bender’s houses), so the media will feel no obligation to cover it. Although that might also have something to do with the fact that the “machine guns” involved are utterly illegal, have been for eight decades, and are still everywhere.
It’s enough to make you wish there were a viable politifal opposition in Minneapolis. Because this’d be a great opportunity.
During the 2015 protests around the Fourth precinct in North Minneapolis, there was a shooting incident. A group of four young white men got into a verbal tilt with a group of the protesters, which led to a chase through the streets of North Minneapolis. Then one of the quite guys, Alan Scarsella, drew his legally permitted handgun and fired, wounding one of the men and ending the chase.
We wrote about this back when it happened. On the one hand, one could argue the fear of death or great bodily harm was reasonable; Scarsella used exactly the effort needed to end the attack, and I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of anyone making a more reasonable effort to retreat.
On the other hand, he handled the post shooting process, and the optics that are so important to jurors, about as badly as possible, going into hiding from the police until they came and found him. and there was one other thing, which we will come back to below.
In the weeks following the shooting, the press lionized the shooting victim, Cameron Clark.
Cameron Clark was shot during a 2015 protest by a man named Allen Scarsella, who was being chased by protesters who were demonstrating after Clark’s cousin, Jamar Clark, was killed by police. Although Scarsella claimed self-defense, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison after a trial that largely hinged on his history of making racially insensitive remarks.
And there’s a note in there for Potential self-defense shooters; while a good lawyer could’ve potentially gotten the completely unrelated remarks suppressed from evidence, it would’ve been much easier had they not existed. As I tell people on social media I’ll start stressing about how they intend to treat burglars, “the first rule of armed self-defense as you never talk about armed self-defense”.
But we digress:
Following the shooting, Clark was uplifted by Minnesota media as a voice for racial justice. Now, he’s received a lengthy sentence of his own after he tried to murder his unborn child.
While the lionization was far from the most ridiculous I’ve seen coming from Twin Cities media – Clark was not an unsympathetic victim, profiler you left the whole “chasing people through the streets“ thing out of the story, and implausible as it seems, perhaps they learned some thing from the ridicule they suffered over this – perhaps the media should learn the real lesson; taking sides in these sorts of episodes never works well
“If you ban guns,” we said, “criminals will just use another tool, maybe a bow and arrow. It’s a basic principle of economics of scarcity,” we said. “People find substitutes for items they can’t buy.”
“No,” we were told by all The Smart People. “It’s guns. Guns are the problem. Ban guns, problem solved.”
And now this. I’ll bet you a brand-new nickel The Smart People will call for bow bans and one-per-month purchase limits on arrows. Really, how many arrows does one person need?
Joe Doakes
Just another thing to add to the list of things Democrats will blame for crime before they get around to themselves.
The United States still faces a shortage of affordable ammunition. The Garden Administration is going to make it worse.
Ammunition made in Russia is imported into the US and sold under brands like Tula, Wolf, Bear and others. It’s generally made from cheaper components (steel case, bi-metal jacket, low-grade-primer) so ammo snobs like me won’t buy it. But cheaper components means cheaper prices, even after shipping it half-way around the world. Today on Ammoseek, 9mm 115 grain by Tula is $0.33 per round while Winchester White Box is $0.40 (limited quantities). Unless you’re shooting a lot of rounds, that probably won’t make a difference in your pocketbook.
But remember our discussion about Second Order Effects? Take away the cheapest ammo and what do low-budget shooters do: quit shooting altogether or buy more expansive ammo? And if they buy more expensive ammo, that depletes the available inventory of more expensive ammo which . . . pushes up the price to make it even more expensive.
When ammunition becomes a luxury good, only rich people and government can afford it. Disarming the masses on the cheap – welcome to The New United States, where Constitutional rights are a historical anachronism that you can’t afford to exercise.
Joe Doakes
It is implementing, in effect, Moynahan’s famous, and most stupid, policy suggestion; the thousand percent tax on ammunition.
Sure is a good thing the State Fair banned the law abiding citizen from carrying on the Fairgrounds.
Law enforcement officers used a chemical agent to break up a group that attempted to storm gate at Minnesota State Fair on Monday night, officials said. https://t.co/NEe9VVNtjw
The government just gave fully-automatic machine guns to the Taliban. They’re paying criminals not to shoot each other. I’d like a full-auto machine gun and I won’t shoot anybody with it, pinkie-swear.
How do I get in on this action?
Joe Doakes
I’m just wondering how I would put in for back pay.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is riding his bike down a suburban street when Edmund DUCHEY, riding a recumbent bike, pulls out onto the street to cut BERG off. Duchey is proprietor at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com”, and was badly scarred by a childhood in which he was routinely bullied – by much younger children
DUCHEY: Merg!
BERG: Jeez, you little feeb, you’re driving like a crazy f***.
BERG: It’s got little to do with carrying anything, anywhere. It’s about a government body being able to arbitrarily restrict law-abiding citizens civil rights in violation of state law.
DUCHEY: Hah! Stupid ammosexual! The State Fair is a private corporation!
BERG: A private corporation that had its own police force, with arrest power? Which has called itself a part of state government in its own court filings for over 100 years? Seems like a bit of a stretch. And Minnesota statute is fairly clear that state governments, outside the judiciary, aren’t allowed to bar law-abiding citizens from practicing their civil rights.
DUCHEY: Stupid wingnuts. So you want to carry your guns, so you can intimidate people at the fair?
DUCHEY: People walking around with guns on their hips, or an AR47 slung over their shoulder, are by definition intimidating.
BERG: I could meet you halfway, if you were smart enough to realize it; open carrying in a crowd is a little tactless. I’d never do it. But the ones who have permits are not the people you need to worry about, and the only time criminals carry openly is when they’re pushing it in your face to rob or carjack you. But again, this isn’t about your feelings. This is about the law, and whether we make the state follow it.
DUCHEY: So you want to carry your little gun concealed? You wingnuts will probably shoot your p****rs off.
BERG: And further down the Berg’s 16th Law rathole we go. But I’ll tell you what – there are over 300,000 carry permittees in MInnesota. If we were having accidental shootings in any significant numbers, you’d be hearing about it.
And when I did carry, it was like a .380. I’d need more like a 10 gauge with slugs. No way to conceal that. Now, for you, a .25 ACP should do the trick.
I haven’t honestly watched so much as a second of the Olympics – any Olympics – since watching the biking events in 2012 while I was stuck sick in a hotel room.
The current Tokyo games have been marred by Covid hysteria and parts of the US Team mistaking their celebrity for a social mandate.
But there are still some reasons to cheer. The US shooting team is not only taking home the jewelry…
…marksmanship aficionados were treated to the slightly less refined spectacle of Piers Morgan sniping on Twitter as an American won the first gold medal of the Rio Games and USA Shooting, the governing body, firing back by accusing the gun-control advocate of trolling.
Morgan’s facile argument: it is no wonder that a country of 330 million people with an estimated 400 million guns in circulation and a serious homicide problem is good at shooting. “What we do out here on the skeet fields and on the rifle range has nothing to do with crime and violence,” Matt Suggs, the chief executive of USA Shooting, said.
The US is indeed the all-time medal leader, with roughly as many gold medals as the next three countries (China, Russia and Italy) combined. But Ginny Thrasher’s first-day success in the 10-metre air rifle was the US’s only shooting gold of the 2016 Games, while top-ranked Italy won four. Though the US has a large number of competitive shooters, they are not necessarily taking aim in the international disciplines featured in the Olympics.
Because street criminals are the ones moving up to the Olympic team. And to think we accuse leftists of being bovine intellectual herd animals.
Having just shot skeet for the first time earlier this month, I’m a little in awe of my nephews’ facility at blasting clays – and a lot in awe of the kind of shooting the serious competitors do.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit hears cases from Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina and from federal administrative agencies. It recently decided Hirschfeld v. Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco & Explosives (what us old timers called ‘ATF’ before the name changed. Text of opinion here and also here.
2-1 decision says it’s unconstitutional to deny 18-year-olds their full rights under the Second Amendment.
The dissent argues that we’ve been doing it wrong for a long time so we shouldn’t restore their rights now; that it’s not the federal courts’ job to protect civil rights that Congress took away; Second Amendment rights shouldn’t be protected as strongly as other fundamental rights (intermediate scrutiny instead of strict scrutiny) because guns are dangerous; and the challenged law only applies to purchases from federally licensed firearms dealers (18-year-olds can still obtain guns from unlicensed sellers, back alleys, gun show loopholes, friends and relatives so their rights aren’t infringed by being denied purchases from licensed dealers.)
The dissent points out the prohibition on felons and mentally ill owning guns as evidence Congress can deny 18-year olds the right to buy guns because felons – crazies – teens – pretty much the same. Senator Frank Dodd studied the issue and announced ‘a causal relationship between the easy availability of firearms other than a rifle or shotgun and juvenile and youthful criminal behavior,’ so it’s scientifically proven guns cause kids to kill. Besides, it’s only a temporary denial of their rights – those crazy kids can buy guns as soon as they turn 21 so even though justice is delayed a few years, it’s still justice.
The dissent goes on a great length how people over 18 but under 21 are responsible for a vast proportion of crime so it’s sensible and proper to deny them their Constitutional rights. Seems to me that analysis could be applied to “Blacks” just as easily. Would we be so eager to deny gun rights in that case?
What’s never mentioned is the reason the nation adopted the 26th Amendment lowering the voting age from 21 to 18. I wonder why not?
The extraordinarily well-funded group that put on the hoax claims no edits were made – but they refuse to release the original video. Further proof, were any needed, that the typical Democrat voters is terminally gullible and incapable of critical thought.
Also proof that, when you are a conservative, you always record your own media and public appearances, so that when, not if, leftists try to yank you out of context, you can stuff it down their yappy little throats sideways.
(And if they balk at letting you record the session yourself – as “legitimate” media most often will? Walk away).
