You and your kids are out for a day of fun at Valleyfair.<\/p>\n
Some dirtball cops a feel of your daughter.<\/p>\n
You go to try to set him straight.<\/p>\n
He calls for a bunch of his friends.<\/p>\n
They mean to do\u00a0 you harm.\u00a0 Lots and lots of it.\u00a0 Eight teenagers and twentysomethings, jacked up on misplaced testosterone.<\/p>\n
What do you do?<\/p>\n
If you’re a concealed carry permit holder in the state of Minnesota, and <\/em>didn’t seek out the confrontation, and <\/em>think you can convince a jury that you reasonably fear death or great bodily harm, and <\/em>that you’ve made reasonable efforts to de-escalate, and that the use of lethal force is reasonable (again with the jury), and <\/em>there’s not a big crowd with possibilities for collateral damage, the decision is both easy and awful.\u00a0 You draw.\u00a0 You point.\u00a0 If the scumbags are like most scumbags, they get a sudden case of mortal fear, and they run like hell.\u00a0 If they don’t back down – say, they draw a knife or a gun of their own,\u00a0or come at you with tire irons –\u00a0you shoot.\u00a0 Given that you are probably overwhelmed with adrenaline,\u00a0 you don’t – can’t – try to get cutesy with your aim; you shoot for center mass, and keep shooting until your target drops.\u00a0 And pray that that’s enough to stop things.\u00a0 As, indeed, it usually is.<\/p>\n What if it’s not you?\u00a0 What if you see<\/em> the event going down – the father defending his daughter, the gang of wanna-be thugs gathering, the “men” stomping on the man’s head.\u00a0 You have a permit.\u00a0 There is no sign of a security guard, to say nothing of cops.\u00a0 Nobody else is stepping forward.\u00a0 You reasonably believe that the guy, the father, is about to get his brains stomped out.<\/p>\n What do you do?<\/p>\n While Minnesota’s self-defense law states that one can use lethal force in self-defense if one reasonably believes oneself or another person are in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm, things get very cloudy when you are not the potential victim, but just a good samaritan.<\/p>\n \u00a0There’s nothing hypothetical about the story,\u00a0of course.\u00a0 As John Hinderaker notes, the local media is finally talking about \u00a0this two-week-old\u00a0beating<\/a>\u00a0at Valleyfair…:<\/p>\n Shakopee police say as the crowd was leaving Valleyfair Amusement Park around midnight on the 4th of July, the victim’s daughter was confronted by two men.<\/p>\n “The 12-year-old daughter was either touched or slapped in the buttocks area,” Scott County Attorney Patrick Ciliberto said. “The father confronted (the men) by yelling at them for what they had done to his daughter,” he added.<\/p>\n Police say the two men called their friends, who were also in the park. The group of seven men and a juvenile then confronted the father.<\/p>\n “They beat him to the ground and then, the evidence that we have, when he was on the ground, they used their feet on him. They were kicking him in the face when he was down,” Ciliberto said.<\/p>\n According to the criminal complaints, the men were stomping on the 41-year-old father as he lay on the ground, unconscious.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He suffered severe head injuries, including a fractured right orbital bone and possible subdural bleeding on the brain. “We don’t know if there are permanent injuries yet,” the County Attorney said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Of course, nobody was armed –\u00a0or\u00a0if they were, they opted not to use their gun to break up the beating.\u00a0 Nothing unusual there; it’s a\u00a0difficult decision,\u00a0made\u00a0all the harder by the disdain in which the local officialdom holds citizens who defend themselves or other citizens from the depraved.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 1994, after a\u00a0crazed loner killed a Saint Paul police officer, a citizen – and expert marksman – \u00a0had a clear shot at the murderer.\u00a0 He hesitated – because he feared that he’d be prosecuted by then-Ramsey-County Attorney Mark Foley, known (as is his successor, current occupant Susan Gaertner) for his hatred of law-abiding citizens with guns.\u00a0 So he shot instead to mark the car – and did it with such accuracy that he was able to tell the police forensics lab exactly where to find the bullet, later on.\u00a0 If only he’d felt empowered to do the same with the murderer’s head; the madman went on to murder another policeman later that day.\u00a0 The citizen was right to be worried; Foley did <\/em>try find some reason to prosecute.\u00a0 The Saint Paul police made it known to Foley that, since the citizen had tried to save a cop, they would not cooperate with any attempt to prosecution.<\/p>\n Would he have gotten the same treatment had he decided to help a typical citizen?<\/p>\n Like someone who had tried to draw on this lot…:<\/p>\n The six adults charged and held in jail are Devondre Evans-Lewis, Andrew Shannon<\/a>, Darris Evans, Terry Arnold<\/a>, Derry Evans<\/a>, and Anthony Gildersleeve<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n …and their two “juvenile” accomplices?<\/p>\n Eight “men” who put an innocent man in the hospital, possibly with permanent brain damage?\u00a0 “Men” who could have killed the victim?<\/p>\n We don’t know.\u00a0 It’s all gray area.\u00a0<\/p>\n The DFL wants to keep it that way.\u00a0 They want<\/em> you, the law-abiding citizen, to feel out of your depth when trying to keep the forces of barbarity at bay when they are tearing civilization apart in your face.\u00a0 They call it “vigilante justice”.\u00a0 When we try to change the laws to put the average citizen on firmer ground, they lie through their teeth<\/a>\u00a0to scare the uninformed (who are uninformed precisely because that’s the way they want it<\/a>).\u00a0<\/p>\n Feel helpless?<\/p>\n Feel angry?<\/p>\n Good.\u00a0 You should.<\/p>\n You should turn your anger on everyone who voted against<\/a> Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill.\u00a0 At the polls only, of course.<\/p>\n You should turn your anger on Citizens for a “Safer<\/strike>” Supine Minnesota, the lying racist orcs who want to keep the laws just as they are – because they value criminal lives more than they value yours.\u00a0 But only rhetorically.<\/p>\n