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Turning to some good news:
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This is a WSJ article about the rise in justified homicides in the US in recent years. Much of it is about "Stand Your Ground Laws." I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of the more lawyer-brained Mottizens on those kind of laws and their proliferation over the past decade or so.
On the culture war angle, this article is maybe the starkest example of "erosion of trust in society" that I've come across. A few of the anecdotes are pretty hair raising. They're cherry picked, I know, but the idea that a kid loses his father over an argument about a a fence and a property line made me sad. The "road range" incident they cover in detail seems like it was unfortunate but when one guy levels a gun at another, there's only one reasonable reaction.
Violence must be tightly controlled for a society to function. This is something that's bone deep in humans. We've developed methods of conflict resolution that fall short of violence for our entire existence as a species. Even within the context of violence, there are various ways of controlling it. Duels and so forth. Even informal ones; basic Bro code dictates that when one guy falls down in a fight, the other one backs off.
But this article hints at the idea that people are zooming past any of that to full lethality. It's impossible to compile the stats to determine if that's actually the case or not, but the larger point remains; in a society with plunging basic trust, you're going to see levels of interpersonal violence spike. How should state laws governing violence respond to this? Stand Your Ground is something I generally still support, but my mind could be changed if simple Bad Neigbor fights end up with more orphans.
This topic is near to my heart for a few reasons, also I'm a lawyer-brained Mottizen who has some criminal defense background so I've got EXTENSIVE working knowledge of this topic. Also:
I was in high school in Florida when it passed the First modern "Stand Your Ground" Law in the country. Right around that time my class was doing a visit of the County Courthouse and we got to watch some court hearings and talk to the judge. The topic was broached and the Judge said, "Some people say it will turn Florida into the Wild West. I don't think that's going to happen. There will be some tough cases that will make a lot of people unhappy as we figure out the full implications of the law, but we'll get through it." Here's a great summary of how this law works in Florida if you're interested.
The Gun Control debate led to a real political 'awakening' to for me when I actually dug into the stats and data and realized the entirety of the gun control narrative is mostly fabricated, with misleading definitions, cherrypicked examples, and reliance on emotional rhetoric over reliable data. Once that realization hit home, I suddenly saw that EVERYWHERE. People in this very thread are digging in and pointing out how that article twists the truth and obsfuscates reality.
Since that day back in High School I've seen Florida become a gun rights haven, with constitutional carry being implemented, and, most recently fully legal open carry. (I have yet to see anyone actually open carrying, I suppose at some point I might avail myself of the right).
Oh, and that infamous Anti-Riot law that offers legal protection if you intentionally run someone over during a riot. (emphasis on during a riot). Ever notice how you almost never see protestors pulling the 'road blocking' stunt in Florida? Hell, Florida barely got any rioting at all over the entirety of the George Floyd era.
I fully attribute that to "deterrence works" and "most protestors/rioters are rather cowardly." They won't try those tactics in a state where they are more likely to be prosecuted and/or shot for getting too uppity when there are ample states or cities with friendly laws and friendlier judicial systems to do them in.
Safe to say that whatever the stats are, politically the self-defense/gun rights trajectory in Florida has been starkly in favor of more protections in general. I don't think we're going back anytime soon.
However its not without its costs. "The Optimal Number of Wrongful Self-Defense Shootings is not zero." Florida also has its share of school shootings and such. I'm not particularly happy that David Hogg is now inflicted on the world.
I think that Judge nailed it back in 2005. Edge Cases keep popping up. Florida had the law in place for a while when the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin incident happened.
THAT was also a political awakening for me, seeing how much truth got twisted to make Zimmerman out to be an evilish white supremacist. You wanna know why I deeply mistrust mainstream media sources? This is why.
Interestingly, SYG laws didn't save him, he just got a straight up not-guilty verdict.
This does illuminate the difficulty that having a defense that, if proven, completely immunizes the Defendant from prosecution (that's how it works in Florida, anyway), when the actual facts on the ground can be messy.
THIS was one of the most hard-to-call cases that happened here. If you get shoved to the ground by an unarmed man... who then steps towards you with some unknown intent, are you justified in shooting him? Complicated here by the fact that the guy immediately started backing off once the gun came out. And that the guy on the ground was outnumbered. But he also technically initiated the conflict.
We discussed this one on the old Subreddit. (He was found guilty and went to prison). Also the victim had the last name McGlockton... and he was in fact shot with one. Truly tragic case of nominative determinism.
Then, however, there are some pretty freakin' clear situations where the law protects a legitimate 'Good Samaritan:'
Cop is literally getting beaten down in the middle of a highway, bystander approaches with a gun, issues a verbal warning, and then ends the threat efficiently. Look at how calmly that guy walks up to the scene. Just textbook.
This is also why the previous example isn't 'clear cut.' If someone knocks you to the ground then climbs on top to start beating you further, that IS a deadly threat. So once you've been knocked down, you better make the decision on whether to shoot or not before they get to you.
Allow me to point out some of the racial dynamics in the three above examples.
White/Hispanic Guy shoots Black Teen: Acquitted.
White Guy shoots Black adult (in front of his kid): Convicted, 20 years in prison.
Aaaand Black Guy Shoots Black guy (in defense of a cop, no less): not even charged, gets a free gun.
Yeah welcome to Florida its an interesting state.
I think the one thing that people probably do get wrong about the law here is that it DOES NOT let you draw your weapon as a deterrent alone (that's "Brandishing"), or fire a 'warning shot.' So on the margins people are probably a little too quick to deploy the weapon before its legally justifiable.
But the stats in Florida still tend to come down in favor of the law:
Concealed Carry permit holders (the ones who are most likely to carry a weapon) tend to commit very few crimes overall (some contest John Lott's data on this, but I've seen NO data rebut this). Florida has a LOT of those, somewhere around 15% of the adult population.
Violent Crime has been on a decline, starting right around 2007... after the law was implemented. We can get all tangled up on whether SYG is causing certain crimes to not get charged, but its still an absolute decline in your individual odds of being victimized.
Property crime has also been on the decline. Even in absolute numbers, as the population grows. Like I said, "deterrence works."
Do I attribute all these declines to SYG? NO. The decline also happened on a national level. However I just find that as good evidence that no, the liberalization of gun laws and extension of self defense laws isn't a driver of violence... SO WHY NOT LIBERALIZE AND EXTEND?
The reason I will defend "Stand Your Ground" laws even without considering firearm presence is that the alternative is batshit insane in my opinion. "Duty to Retreat" means if someone comes at you swinging (or shooting) your legal obligation is to flee as far as you're able to and if and only if fleeing is impossible may you respond with proportionate force.
I despise any law that places the 'benefit of the doubt' on the alleged attacker. Note, fleeing is usually your best option in the vast majority of cases. But a legal obligation to flee removes even the option to attempt to defend your community or family if you feel that is the best, most sensible option. Or most pro-social option overall. Remember my dawg up there who went out of his way to defend a cop.
Yes, its burdensome to have to actually dig into the facts and make a determination rather than just charging and punishing everyone involved. But I strongly, STRONGLY believe that if your government doesn't not trust its Law-Abiding, otherwise peaceable citizens to keep weapons on their person and deploy force on certain occasions, you don't really get to call yourself a 'free' state.
And on the flip side, I believe that any law-abiding citizen should be legally protected if they choose to step up in good-faith defense of their community. I think the equilibrium that you arrive at when any given citizen can and might deploy deadly force against any threats is inherently superior to the one arrived at when attackers can generally expect potential victims are unarmed and legally obligated to escape rather than fight back.
Philosophically, it is utter incoherent to me that the law would put the onus on the 'victim' to escape lest they be punished. This is such an asymmetry where, if someone acts to attack you and you have to actually have a mental process that goes "Oh gosh, I wonder if I have sufficient grounds to fight back" you're that much more likely to lose the fight.
Once again, if running is your first instinct, GREAT. But why should the victim be the one who has to consider all their options before they can respond with violence of their own? This inherently advantages the side that has already shown that they don't care about either the law or the wellbeing of others.
Its to the point where I'm reluctant to visit any places that don't have such protections enshrined in law because if I do get attacked, I'm going to defend myself if appropriate and I really don't want to get embroiled in a legal battle just because some other asshole took a swing or shot at me. If the KNOWN rule is "if you attack someone, they are legally entitled to fight back" then just assume that the attacker, if they're not completely incompetent, is accepting and consenting to the consequences of their actions.
Anyhow:
You don't fix this by forcibly disarming everyone. Britain seemingly proving that, you fix it by helping move the equilibrium back towards high trust. Lowering the temperature. Trying to avoid divisive rhetoric and stoking paranoia, and for the love of God, reward and protect prosocial behavior!
I would argue that having robust weapons ownership protections and self-defense laws is a better foundation to build more trust on because its a selective pressure against those who would attack others and in favor of those who would defend their communities.
If every person who tries to fight back gets tried and some subset of them gets jailed, don't be surprised if on a genetic and cultural level, fewer and fewer people are willing to do that. Shoutout to Daniel Penny. And I don't think a population that is so helpless will survive any real crisis.
Dredged up one of my old Reddit comments where I say pretty much the same thing. I've held these positions for a while at this point.
Thanks for the effortful reply.
Not only the walking up, but he also has a Hollywood level of "badass walking away badass-edly" after the shooting.
Disagree, but in the direction, I think, you would agree with. Big dude comes over and the first thing he does is hard two hand shove. That's straight up an initiation of a fight with no pretense. If I'm on my ass after that and I have a pistol on me, I'm reaching, pulling, and firing.
If the big guy comes over, starts talking shit, and there's a kind of mutual combat tussle that ends up with the shooter on the ground then, I would agree, it's more of a grey area.
Completely agree. I'm as pro-gun as they come and believe in the adage of an armed populace is a polite populace.
Thank you for validating my travel paranoia. I had to visit San Francisco, of all places, for work earlier in the year. I spent the entire plane ride obsessing over this idea that I was going to have to punch out a fentanyl zombie trying to rob me, only to have a blue hair they-them'er sentence me to thirty years of critical re-education for not displaying enough learned-experience-empathy.
On the other hand, we want to discourage 6'6" MMA fighters from talking shit because everyone is afraid to talk back to them or from insisting it was a "mutual combat tussle" and "they only defended themselves".
"The jury might find the other party guilty of murder, but will not un-shoot you" is a deterrent that promotes gentlemanly behavior.
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Its an edge case. If the guy shoving was armed, I would probably be all-in on 'good shoot.'
I know from lots and lots of training that the person on the ground is at a massive disadvantage.
Problem is that a shove isn't really an escalation to deadly force. Just because you end up on the ground you're not really able to say "oh I thought he was going to kill me."
Else there'd be a "loophole" where one person could just lay down on the ground and shoot the other person b/c "what if he jumped on me."
Likewise, the guy who did the shove was seemingly coming to support his GF, where the shooter had actually started the conflict.
I do think that if I were in the shooter's shoes, I probably would not have drawn the gun on the spot, but I also could probably have gotten to my feet faster than that dude. I would not have instigated a conflict like that in the first place.
I don't know how the law sees it, but if I'm standing over a hard surface like a sidewalk or even asphalt, I would consider an unprompted shove as escalation to deadly force. A simple fall that results in your head smacking the ground can be fatal and often are, and someone shoving you with intent to disturb you is someone who is clearly fine with a very high probability of you falling over, with high likelihood of you lacking enough control to protect your head during the fall.
Not many people who shove someone to have them hit their head and die on a hard surface actually intend to kill the person, though; it's a result of a combination of ignorance and bad judgment, as opposed to trying to stab you or drawing a gun on you. The threat profile is different, a kind of action that we're adapted to think of as a low escalation part of conflict but in our modern built environments is often deadly. And by the time you're thinking of drawing your own deadly weapon, the threat is past if it was this kind of bad judgment (though, if you're about to be curb stomped...)
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Right, but if you ask the law to treat any intentional shove on concrete as possibly 'deadly force,' there's a can of worms to open right there.
Especially since its pretty unlikely that the dead guy intended to use deadly force when he shoved him. Yes, falling to the ground is a predictable outcome, but unless he was verbally shouting "I'm gonna kill you" or similar, its a bit harder to gauge whether he would have continued the attack after that point.
And more directly, if the guy shoved, then immediately turned and started walking away, surely you'd say its not justifiable to shoot him in the back, on the premise of "well, he could have turned around and came back!"
These are the things that make these fact situations messy.
Guy was pretty clearly starting to retreat once the gun was pulled IMO. I think it's fair to pull the gun but firing on an unarmed individual who's retreating is outside the bounds of self defense.
It's clear to the camera. It's not clear that the shooter, having just been blindsided, knocked flat, and then advanced on, had time and cognition to process the half-step back.
I opined at the time that I was willing to accept convictions like that one in an edge case for pragmatic reasons of keeping the peace. That willingness has pretty much gone away given subsequent events.
wasn't it an important point that the shooter had been yelling at the pushers GF over something minor? If you are going to shoot someone it better not be because of an escalated situation that you started.
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Welcome to the Grey Area.
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