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Notes -
In Newton, Massachusetts, a pro-Palestinian man got into a shouting match with a group of pro-Israeli demonstrators across a busy street. For some reason, though he was mostly exchanging words with a woman, he ran across the street and tackled a man named Scott Hayes, who was also part of the demonstration. While he had Hayes on the ground, Hayes -- who had a legal gun -- shot him in the stomach. Two other pro-Israeli demonstrators pulled the man off Hayes, and he was later brought to a hospital.
Hayes was arrested and charged with Assault and Battery with a Dangerous Weapon and Violation of a Constitutional Right Causing Injury. The only justification I can come up with for the latter is that it is the constitutional right of pro-Palestinian people to attack people supporting Israel.
Hayes will certainly plead self defense, but self-defense expert Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection says it won't work. Basically the government's view is if someone has tackled you and is beating on you, it's not sporting to fight back with a weapon (i.e. deadly force). Think of government as the two guys who hold you while their buddy punches you.
This was all captured on video (linked in the Legal Insurrection article); there's really no doubt as to the course of events.
To add insult to injury, the pro-Palestinian man has not been charged.
(Hayes, BTW, is reportedly not Jewish)
The defense has to be proportional to the threat; deadly force can only be used if the perpetrator has a reasonable threat of death or serious bodily injury (serious usually meaning permanent disability, not a black eye). Based on the information available, if he hadn't been shot and were arrested instead, the charge would have probably been something like misdemeanor battery, which wouldn't usually even merit jail time. If the facts come out that the guy were being wailed on, he may have a good defense, but if it's a mere scuffle as described in the article, it's a long shot that should get pled down. This may seem unfair, but for public policy reasons the state prefers that scuffles don't escalate to shootings.
There's video. The pro-Palestinian guy hit the shooter with a flying tackle and then while they were on the ground had his arm around his neck. I realize that Massachusetts law means that a person must take a beating from a criminal in order to uphold "civilization", but that doesn't make it reasonable.
If you read my recent post on the South Side, you'd remember that I mentioned a spare of shootings in 2021 and 2022. I didn't get into it then, but almost everyone they arrested pled self defense. These were all groups of black kids who got into altercations outside of nightclubs, and their claims of self defense were much stronger than this guy's. Sometimes they were the result of scuffles similar to the one described here. By your logic, these shooters weren't threats to public safety, but a legitimate response to dangerous situations.
You aren’t responding to anyone’s specific claims. Would an objective person reasonably fear serious bodily injury when a guy runs through traffic to tackle them? That’s such aggressive odd behavior to start with that I would say in the seconds afterwards (especially given there is a delay of a second or two to draw your gun and shoot) a reasonable person would fear serious bodily injury.
Bringing up unrelated cases with zero background (outside of telling us the shooters are black) just seems like an attempt to say “you wouldn’t support the black kids so you can’t support this guy without being a bigot.” Maybe I would support the black kids. Maybe I also don’t think you are reasonable about what reasonable.
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