To: \u00a0Parents of teenagers
\nFrom: \u00a0Mitch Berg, veteran
\nRe: \u00a0Crazy kids.<\/p>\n
All,<\/p>\n
In the wake of last weeks’ shooting of a Saint Paul-area teenager by a carry permittee, we heard the usual response from the kid’s parents; “he was a good kid”, “he’d have never hurt anyone”, and “if he’d known someone had a gun, he’d have dropped his”.<\/p>\n
Look – teenagers are difficult. \u00a0I had two – and my kids’\u00a0teenage years damn near killed me. \u00a0And you can be Parent of the Year and still have kids go off the path on you, just like kids raised in crack dens with no parents can go to Harvard and become doctors. \u00a0Most of us are somewhere in between; imperfect people doing an imperfect job of raising imperfect people.<\/p>\n
Now, the kid killed in mid-robbery last week was allegedly linked to gang activity – but let’s leave all of that out for the moment. \u00a0Let’s address the mom’s statement, “He’d have dropped the gun if he’d have known someone else had one”.<\/p>\n
Forget the obvious question – what,\u00a0as long as he’s dealing with defenseless people, he’ll wave a gun around?<\/p>\n
What would you think if someone said “If I knew I was going to cause an accident, I wouldn’t have driven drunk.” \u00a0 How about “If I’d have known I was going to catch AIDS, I’d have worn a condom,” or “if I’d have known I was going to break three vertebrae and end up in traction for six weeks I’d have never jumped off the cliff?” \u00a0 Or “If I’d known that was a cop, I wouldn’t have asked him to bid on those Malaysian girls I had in the van”.<\/p>\n
Not much, right? \u00a0Because actions have consequences, and some of them are unintended.<\/p>\n
Pointing a gun is one of them. \u00a0 \u00a0It is, in and of itself, a lethal threat.<\/p>\n
Here’s the deal; A gun – or any weapon that a jury would look at and go “yep, that looks like an immediate threat to my life” – can\u00a0<\/em>kill a person in less time than you’ve spent reading this paragraph.<\/p>\n When a person is faced with what they reasonably believe\u00a0<\/em>to be an immediate lethal threat (and isn’t a willing participant, and makes a\u00a0reasonable\u00a0<\/em>effort to retreat), the law says they can use lethal force in self-defense. \u00a0The law doesn’t require the person to be a clairvoyant mind-reader; they they don’t have to try to divine whether your son\u00a0really means it,\u00a0<\/em>or whether the gun is loaded, or whether he’s really a nice kid who’ll deflate in the face of a threat.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>The time to make that clear came\u00a0before he drew the gun<\/em>, or, God willing, after.<\/p>\n For the love of God, tell your idiot teenagers that waving weapons in peoples’ faces is, in fact, justification for shooting back. \u00a0Cops will do it. \u00a0200,000 Minnesota carry permittee can do it. \u00a0 I did.<\/p>\n If they absorb that, if nothing else, maybe we can avoid more of these episodes.<\/p>\n (Side question: \u00a0I’m gonna guess he knew better not to point a gun at a big, nasty gang-banger – right?)<\/p>\n That is all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To: \u00a0Parents of teenagers From: \u00a0Mitch Berg, veteran Re: \u00a0Crazy kids. All, In the wake of last weeks’ shooting of a Saint Paul-area teenager by a carry permittee, we heard the usual response from the kid’s parents; “he was a good kid”, “he’d have never hurt anyone”, and “if he’d known someone had a gun, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54683,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54682\/revisions\/54683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}