{"id":568,"date":"2007-03-12T12:20:57","date_gmt":"2007-03-12T18:20:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/03\/12\/where-justice-is-due\/"},"modified":"2007-03-12T12:35:38","modified_gmt":"2007-03-12T18:35:38","slug":"where-justice-is-due","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=568","title":{"rendered":"Where Justice Is Due"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Minnesota, if you’re a law-abiding citizen, you have a right to use lethal force in self-defense, provided\u00a0 you meet four criteria:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You can’t be a willing participant in the fight.\u00a0 If you’re in a fistfight and it escalates to knives, you’re not eligible to claim self-defense.<\/li>\n
  2. There must be a reasonable threat of death or great bodily harm – and by “reasonable”, they mean (as Joel Rosenberg drilled into our heads in concealed carry training) “reasonable enough to convince a jury”.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  3. The force used must be reasonable; you can’t keep shooting when they’re on the ground.<\/li>\n
  4. You must make every “reasonable” effort to avoid using lethal force.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The klinker – that last one applies even when you’re in your home; you must make a “reasonable” attempt to disengage from the fight.\u00a0 There are some extenuating circumstances that affect how “reasonable” will be defined by prosecutors, judges and juries – if you’re old, injured, ill, it’s -30 outside, you have children sleeping upstairs, you’re a woman being attacked by an ex-husband with a long history of violence and stalking – but the upshot is that, all other things being equal, your house is not your castle.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Changing this farcical situation was one of the big hopes of Minnesota’s Second Amendment movement for this session – until last November.\u00a0 The sweeping in of DFL control beat the crap out of most rational hopes for a change in the law.<\/p>\n

    Not that we can’t try.\u00a0 Joel Rosenberg notes an opportunity for the Second Amendment crowd in Minnesota to show that it’s still out there<\/a>, and still taking names.<\/p>\n

    He quotes an NRA release:<\/p>\n

    House File 498, championed by State Representative Tony Cornish (R-24B), has been pocketed by State Representative Joe Mullery (D-58A), Chairman of the House Public Safety Committee, and could be defeated without being debated.\u201cCastle Doctrine\u201d self-defense legislation would allow a person to use deadly force in and outside of their home and vehicle and removes duty to retreat when outside of the home. The bill also provides that a person who uses reasonable force against an intruder shall be immune from civil and criminal liability for injuries or death of the intruder.Please contact Representative Mullery by phone at (651) 296-4262 or email <\/em>rep.joe.mullery@house.mn<\/em><\/a> and Speaker Margaret Kelliher (D-60A) at (651) 296-0171 or <\/em>rep.margaret.kelliher@house.mn<\/em><\/a> and respectfully urge them to support your right to self-defense by allowing HF498 to be heard.Please do.\u00a0 Be polite, please; but please be insistent that they do the right thing. <\/em><\/p>\n

    Ring. Ring. Ring.<\/p>\n

    Very tired voice: “Representative Mullery’s office.”<\/p>\n

    “I’m calling to ask that Representative Mullery do the right thing and schedule a hearing on HF 498, a bill I suspect he’s more than vaguely familiar with.”<\/p>\n

    Laughter. “Yes, he is. I’ll pass that along.””Thanks. Have a nice day.”Took me a while to get through the Keliher’s voice mail; her line was rather busy today, for some reason.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    This notion – that your home should be one place that you don’t have to yield unconditionally to some armed scumbag off the street (provided one meets the other three criteria for justified self-defense) should be bipartisan; criminal scum don’t generally care if you’re a Republican or\u00a0a Democrat.<\/p>\n

    That it’s not is something that we need to talk with our DFL friends and neighbors about..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In Minnesota, if you’re a law-abiding citizen, you have a right to use lethal force in self-defense, provided\u00a0 you meet four criteria: You can’t be a willing participant in the fight.\u00a0 If you’re in a fistfight and it escalates to knives, you’re not eligible to claim self-defense. There must be a reasonable threat of death […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","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=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}