{"id":82791,"date":"2022-07-13T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-14T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=82791"},"modified":"2022-07-12T17:35:53","modified_gmt":"2022-07-12T22:35:53","slug":"the-war-on-the-good-guys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=82791","title":{"rendered":"The War On The Good Guys"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The news last weekend was enough to make your teeth vibrate with rage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>New York bodega owner Jose Alba &#8211; a Dominican immigrant, a citizen, and by all rational accounts the good guy &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiWv_7irvT4AhVzEEQIHdhvCLIQvOMEKAB6BAgEEAE&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnewyork.com%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fnew-video-shows-girlfriend-stab-nyc-bodega-worker-after-confrontation-turned-deadly%2F3769959%2F&amp;usg=AOvVaw0iQzhan2Z80mBSos1o81gZ\">got stabbed by a woman<\/a> who was irate over her EBT card getting rejected. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then, her boyfriend &#8211; Austin Simon, an ex-con with a violent record &#8211; took over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It went downhill for both men after that.  Alba faces murder charges.  Simon, for his part, now knows what a pin cushion feels like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"NYC bodega worker charged in controversial stabbing freed on bail\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qiEyBmstJmM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This is yet another case of a Soros-funded district attorney &#8211; Alvin Bragg, Manhattan County&#8217;s DA, and a man who makes Keith Ellison look like Barry Goldwater &#8211; taking the side of the criminal. Bragg initially got $500,000 cash bail &#8211; eventually reduced to a $50K bond, even though Alba had a spotless record <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/us\/nyc-da-murder-charge-against-clerk-attacked-inexplicable-experts\">New Yorkers &#8211; well, the ones who go to bodegas &#8211; aren&#8217;t amused<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>The handling of the case has prompted local New York City Council members from both sides of the aisle to demand that the embattled Manhattan DA dismiss the charge. Prominent criminal defense lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman has offered to represent Alba for free.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, in carry permit you&#8217;re told that if you use lethal force in self-defense, even if the case is utterly justified, you should expect an arrest, and very likely charges; the bluer the district, the more likely you&#8217;re up against a prosecutor who wants in principle to make an example of the law-abiding schnook.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=27053\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"27053\">Examples to the contrary<\/a> are often astoundingly unpredictable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But if you look at the criteria for self-defense &#8211; in New York as well as Minnesota &#8211; to me the five criteria for self-defense break down like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Reasonable Fear of Death: <\/strong>Seeing what I saw?  Absolutely. <\/li><li><strong>Immediacy<\/strong>:  Simon didn&#8217;t look like he was waiting for anything. <\/li><li><strong>Appropriate Force<\/strong>:  He used lethal force until the threat ended.  <\/li><li><strong>Innocence<\/strong>:  He certainly wasn&#8217;t the aggressor.<\/li><li><strong>Duty to Retreat<\/strong>:  I suspect this may be the weasel Bragg&#8217;s theory; you have to make every reasonable effort to get away.  You see the video &#8211; there is no reasonable escape.  But using a knife requires one to <em>attack<\/em>; it&#8217;s a much more active act than shooting.  It&#8217;s an academic distinction when you&#8217;ve got someone behind the counter with you &#8211; but to a weasel like Bragg, it&#8217;s a hook.  <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t think should have been arrested, much less charged.  Hopefully a Manhattan jury agrees.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So &#8211; what to do about metastatic legal tumors like Bragg?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A National Review editorial <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2022\/07\/new-york-citys-assault-on-self-defense\/\">hopes for an electoral solution<\/a> to the problem of Alvin Bragg:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Bragg is a disgrace, the biggest threat to law and order in Manhattan in decades. The unjust prosecution of Alba is merely the latest example of how recentering the justice system around \u201cequity\u201d amounts to coddling career criminals at the expense of upstanding citizens such as Alba. In a one-party city, Bragg effectively won his office when he secured the Democratic Party\u2019s nomination last June with just 85,000 votes, a margin of only 9,000 over his nearest challenger. Unless Zeldin this fall upsets the liberal Democratic governor Kathy Hochul, who is unlikely to do anything about Bragg except make a few concerned noises, New Yorkers are going to suffer for at least three and a half more years from the disastrous consequences of not bothering to stop Bragg in that low-turnout primary election last summer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>If there isn&#8217;t &#8211; and the dumping of Chesa Boudin in San Francisco shows that people in progressive cities <em>can <\/em>be pushed too far &#8211; then the alternative is people will start handling self-defense off the books. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And thats going to get ugly. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The news last weekend was enough to make your teeth vibrate with rage. New York bodega owner Jose Alba &#8211; a Dominican immigrant, a citizen, and by all rational accounts the good guy &#8211; got stabbed by a woman who was irate over her EBT card getting rejected. Then, her boyfriend &#8211; Austin Simon, an [&hellip;]<\/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-82791","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\/82791","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=82791"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82794,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82791\/revisions\/82794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}