Details, Details

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Here’s the scenario making the rounds of Liberal blogs:
“Imagine your daughter is walking home from the store, and a man in a car starts following her.
She tries to take a route that his car can’t follow, and he gets out to chase her on foot.
She stops running and defends herself (knees him in the groin, pepper sprays him, whatever).
He doesn’t even try to defend himself with hand-to-hand, he just pulls out a gun and shoots her.
Suddenly, she is called the aggressor and he gets off on self-defense.
Would you still be celebrating? Would it make a difference if your daughter had ever smoked pot?”

Self-defense law is fact-specific. A tiny change in the facts makes all the difference to the outcome. Start from the basic premise that we want people to avoid physical violence, which is why self-defense law includes a duty to retreat if safe. Now tinker with the facts a bit . . .

Suppose Daughter is a 20-year-old Olympic-class runner and Stalker is fat, flabby and forty. She could easily outrun him but instead chooses to turn and knee him. Result: she’s the aggressor and he has the right to defend himself from her wrongful attack but only using proportionate force, not deadly force. If he shoots her, he goes to prison.

Suppose Daughter and Stalker are age, size and condition. She can’t outrun him. She can’t safely retreat. She turns to face him. He says “Hi, new around here? Where you running to?” so she smashes him across the nose with a bat. He staggers and falls on his back. She stands over him lying on the sidewalk, beating his head with the bat. Result: she is the aggressor and he has the right to defend himself from her wrongful attack using deadly force. If he shoots her, he goes free.

Really, is it that hard to understand?

Joe Doakes

If the left couldn’t oversimplify complex issues into meaninglessness, they’d be pretty mute…

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