Current Affairs The " another shooting in America " thread

[Amw79]

I mean can you really claim self defense when you walk in to the middle of a riot with an illegaly held semi automatic weapon.

Sadly, you can, and he did.

I followed the case at the time, but can’t remember why the firearms charges were dropped. There was some technicality or other.

Someone threatened the kid with a skateboard.

This is the problem though. Someone could have threatened him with a wet fish, and self defence could have still been claimed, cos there’s a firearm in play. If he gets knocked out by a skateboard, then he’s lost control of the firearm so can claim his life is threatened.

Any altercation where a firearm is in play can be argued in this way.

He was hopped up on adrenaline and had no idea how to use the gun he stole and smuggled across the state line
A real GOP patriot!

Agree. I think it’s possible to hold the position that he shouldn’t have been there, was in the wrong to go there, and is a prize bellend for his behaviour before, during and after that night. But, that the acquittal was correct.

 

[TN Toffee]

Agree. I think it’s possible to hold the position that he shouldn’t have been there, was in the wrong to go there, and is a prize bellend for his behaviour before, during and after that night. But, that the acquittal was correct.

This is pretty much it. The law is completely stupid, but for right now, it is in fact the way the law is written. In no way can Rittenhouse's outcome be described as "justice", and certainly can't blame the state for at least bringing some charges and trying to get a conviction, even if it was always a longshot. If I were one of the victim's family members, I would have wanted the same thing.

 

[Ruairi77]

Sadly, you can, and he did.

I followed the case at the time, but can’t remember why the firearms charges were dropped. There was some technicality or other.


This is the problem though. Someone could have threatened him with a wet fish, and self defence could have still been claimed, cos there’s a firearm in play. If he gets knocked out by a skateboard, then he’s lost control of the firearm so can claim his life is threatened.

Any altercation where a firearm is in play can be argued in this way.


Agree. I think it’s possible to hold the position that he shouldn’t have been there, was in the wrong to go there, and is a prize bellend for his behaviour before, during and after that night. But, that the acquittal was correct.

yeah thats all true.
The law was probably on his side in the self defense case.
But I fail to see how he wasn't charged for carrying the taking the gun, transporting the gun, open carrying the gun.
I guess it's because he's a suburban white male.

It's the ultimate "if he were black they'd have thrown the book at him" case.

 

[Amw79]

yeah thats all true.
The law was probably on his side in the self defense case.
But I fail to see how he wasn't charged for carrying the taking the gun, transporting the gun, open carrying the gun.

I seem to remember reading something about gun barrel length, and the charges were dropped due to some exemption or other.

I guess it's because he's a suburban white male.

It's the ultimate "if he were black they'd have thrown the book at him" case.

The guy’s still a prize tit. And anyone hero worshipping him or putting him on a pedestal is a weirdo.

 

[Huyton Layne]

yeah thats all true.
The law was probably on his side in the self defense case.
But I fail to see how he wasn't charged for carrying the taking the gun, transporting the gun, open carrying the gun.
I guess it's because he's a suburban white male.

It's the ultimate "if he were black they'd have thrown the book at him" case.

I think they(lawyer) changed the story so he picked the gun up from a friend's house on the way, inside Wisconsin, otherwise he'd have been done for crossing state lines with the weapon.
The story that an 18 year old buys a 17 year old an assault rifle but holds on to it until the guy is 18 is ludicrous at best. Why not just have king incel buy the gun himself when he's 18.
Judge was a clown and dismissed lesser charges so when he got cleared of the major stuff he got off scot-free

 

[Toffee_Loaf]

This is pretty much it. The law is completely stupid, but for right now, it is in fact the way the law is written. In no way can Rittenhouse's outcome be described as "justice", and certainly can't blame the state for at least bringing some charges and trying to get a conviction, even if it was always a longshot. If I were one of the victim's family members, I would have wanted the same thing.

This is a riddled explanation. The law is completely stupid? It isn't, all western societies recognise the right to self defense.

UK:
In assessing the reasonableness of the force used, prosecutors should ask two questions:

• was the use of force necessary in the circumstances, i.e. Was there a need for any force at all?; and
• was the force used reasonable in the circumstances?

US self defense seems to me rather more complicated than the UK defense and therefore harder to claim.

Five elements of self-defense​

As a professor of criminal law, I teach my students that the law of self-defense in America proceeds from an important concept: Human life is sacred, and the law will justify the taking of human life only in narrowly defined circumstances.

The law of self-defense holds that a person who is not the aggressor is justified in using deadly force against an adversary when he reasonably believes that he is in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury. This is the standard that every state uses to define self-defense.

To determine whether this standard is met, the law looks at five central concepts.

First, the use of force must be proportionate to the force employed by the aggressor. If the aggressor lightly punches the victim in the arm, for example, the victim cannot use deadly force in response. It’s not proportional.

Second, the use of self-defense is limited to imminent harm. The threat by the aggressor must be immediate. For instance, a person who is assaulted cannot leave the scene, plan revenge later and conduct vigilante justice by killing the initial aggressor.

Third, the person’s assessment of whether he is in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury must be reasonable, meaning that a supposed “reasonable person” would consider the threat to be sufficiently dangerous to put him in fear of death or serious bodily injury. A person’s own subjective view of this fear is not enough to satisfy the standard for self-defense.

Fourth, the law does not permit a first aggressor to benefit from a self-defense justification. Only those with “clean hands” can benefit from this justification and avoid criminal liability.

Finally, a person has a duty to retreat before using deadly force, as long as it can be done safely. This reaffirms the law’s belief in the sanctity of human life and ensures that deadly force is an option of last resort.

As for what you call the victim's families. The 'victims' clearly attacked Rittenhouse. They instigated the confrontation whereby a number of people tried to kill Rittenhouse when at all times he was clearly holding a gun. They are the fools in this case that had no regard for their own conduct. Not Rittenhouse.

To show how political the prosecution was though: The person who tried to kill Rittenhouse, that was shot in the arm, was never prosecuted for attempted murder despite appearing as a witness stating that he wanted to kill Rittenhouse and pointed a weapon at him. I wonder why?

The law was the victim in this case because it was completely ignored by the state's prosecution including its refusal to defend people's property from the mob of anarchists torching the city and refusing to prosecute them for criminal damage and their multitudes of criminal behaviour that night.

 

[TN Toffee]

This is a riddled explanation. The law is completely stupid? It isn't, all western societies recognise the right to self defense.
refusing to prosecute them for criminal damage and their multitudes of criminal behaviour that night.

Of course individuals have a right to defend themselves.

The law is stupid because it doesn’t allow for a jury to take into account how or why Rittenhouse found himself in a position to need to defend himself. Needing to defend yourself because you drove across state lines to a tense racial protest (and stopping to collect a weapon of war along the way, no less) is ENTIRELY different than needing to defend yourself while you’re sitting at home, minding your own business.

 

[RAFUH]

 

[verreauxi]

This is a riddled explanation. The law is completely stupid? It isn't, all western societies recognise the right to self defense.

UK:
In assessing the reasonableness of the force used, prosecutors should ask two questions:

• was the use of force necessary in the circumstances, i.e. Was there a need for any force at all?; and
• was the force used reasonable in the circumstances?

US self defense seems to me rather more complicated than the UK defense and therefore harder to claim.



As for what you call the victim's families. The 'victims' clearly attacked Rittenhouse. They instigated the confrontation whereby a number of people tried to kill Rittenhouse when at all times he was clearly holding a gun. They are the fools in this case that had no regard for their own conduct. Not Rittenhouse.

To show how political the prosecution was though: The person who tried to kill Rittenhouse, that was shot in the arm, was never prosecuted for attempted murder despite appearing as a witness stating that he wanted to kill Rittenhouse and pointed a weapon at him. I wonder why?

The law was the victim in this case because it was completely ignored by the state's prosecution including its refusal to defend people's property from the mob of anarchists torching the city and refusing to prosecute them for criminal damage and their multitudes of criminal behaviour that night.

To your last point (bolded above) you are simply uninformed:

Multiple Men Indicted for Arson and Other Offenses Committed During Unrest in Kenosha; Investigation Into Other Suspects Continues

www.justice.gov

Also,

As to the "right to self defense" the article you copied from above, you failed to copy the second half which is pasted below:

****​

‘Stand your ground’​

The proliferation of states that have adopted “stand your ground” laws in recent years has complicated the analysis of self-defense involving the duty to retreat. Dating back to early Anglo-American law, the duty to retreat has been subject to an important exception historically called the “castle doctrine”: A person has no duty to retreat in his home. This principle emerged from the 17th-century maxim that a “man’s home is his castle.”The “castle doctrine” permits the use of lethal force in self-defense without imposing a duty to retreat in the home. Over time, states began to expand the non-retreat rule to spaces outside of the home.

“Stand your ground” laws came under national scrutiny during the trial of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin. In that case, Martin, 17, was walking home after buying Skittles from a nearby convenience store. At the time, Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch volunteer who called police after spotting Martin. Despite being told by the 911 operator to remain in his car until officers arrived, Zimmerman instead confronted Martin. It remains unclear whether a fight ensued, who was the aggressor and whether Zimmerman had injuries consistent with his claims of being beaten up by Martin. Zimmerman was the sole survivor; Martin, who was unarmed, died from a gunshot wound. In the Zimmerman case, for example, under traditional self-defense law, the combination of first-aggressor limitation and duty to retreat would not have allowed Zimmerman to follow Martin around and kill him without being liable for murder. But, in a stand-your-ground state such as Florida, Zimmerman had a lawful right to patrol the neighborhood near Martin’s home. As a result, during his trial, all Zimmerman had to prove was that he was in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury.

In Wisconsin, Rittenhouse was also able to put in evidence that he was in reasonable fear of death. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Rittenhouse testified. “I defended myself.” The prosecution was unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rittenhouse was not reasonably in fear for his safety. This represents a high bar for the prosecution. They were unable to surmount it.
****

The law has expanded to the point where the possibility of getting a prosecution for a murder (when one could have easily been avoided had the assailant literally stood their ground, such as stay home, not leave their car, not cross state lines, not chase down a citizen through a neighborhood, etc.) is a very high bar. The "castle doctrine" has been legally stretched to the point where one can go looking for trouble, feel threatened, then kill someone, independent of whether the victim was actually encroaching on their home ("castle").

Regarding this doctrine, a study showed that:
Results presented indicate that expansions to castle doctrine do not deter crime. Furthermore, our estimates are sufficiently precise as to rule out moderate-sized deterrence effects. Thus, while our view is that it is a priori reasonable to expect that strengthening self-defense law would deter crime, we find this is not the case.

More significantly, results indicate that castle doctrine laws increase total homicides by around 8 percent. Put differently, the laws induce an additional 600 homicides per year across the 21 states in our sample that expanded castle doctrine over this time period. This finding is robust to a wide set of difference-in-differences specifications, including region-by-year fixed effects, state-specific linear time trends, and controls for time-varying factors such as economic conditions, state welfare spending, and policing and incarceration rates. These findings provide evidence that lowering the expected cost of lethal force causes there to be more of it.

 

[JimmyJeffers]

To your last point (bolded above) you are simply uninformed:

Multiple Men Indicted for Arson and Other Offenses Committed During Unrest in Kenosha; Investigation Into Other Suspects Continues

www.justice.gov

Also,

As to the "right to self defense" the article you copied from above, you failed to copy the second half which is pasted below:

****​

‘Stand your ground’​

The proliferation of states that have adopted “stand your ground” laws in recent years has complicated the analysis of self-defense involving the duty to retreat. Dating back to early Anglo-American law, the duty to retreat has been subject to an important exception historically called the “castle doctrine”: A person has no duty to retreat in his home. This principle emerged from the 17th-century maxim that a “man’s home is his castle.”The “castle doctrine” permits the use of lethal force in self-defense without imposing a duty to retreat in the home. Over time, states began to expand the non-retreat rule to spaces outside of the home.

“Stand your ground” laws came under national scrutiny during the trial of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin. In that case, Martin, 17, was walking home after buying Skittles from a nearby convenience store. At the time, Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch volunteer who called police after spotting Martin. Despite being told by the 911 operator to remain in his car until officers arrived, Zimmerman instead confronted Martin. It remains unclear whether a fight ensued, who was the aggressor and whether Zimmerman had injuries consistent with his claims of being beaten up by Martin. Zimmerman was the sole survivor; Martin, who was unarmed, died from a gunshot wound. In the Zimmerman case, for example, under traditional self-defense law, the combination of first-aggressor limitation and duty to retreat would not have allowed Zimmerman to follow Martin around and kill him without being liable for murder. But, in a stand-your-ground state such as Florida, Zimmerman had a lawful right to patrol the neighborhood near Martin’s home. As a result, during his trial, all Zimmerman had to prove was that he was in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury.

In Wisconsin, Rittenhouse was also able to put in evidence that he was in reasonable fear of death. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Rittenhouse testified. “I defended myself.” The prosecution was unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rittenhouse was not reasonably in fear for his safety. This represents a high bar for the prosecution. They were unable to surmount it.
****

The law has expanded to the point where the possibility of getting a prosecution for a murder (when one could have easily been avoided had the assailant literally stood their ground, such as stay home, not leave their car, not cross state lines, not chase down a citizen through a neighborhood, etc.) is a very high bar. The "castle doctrine" has been legally stretched to the point where one can go looking for trouble, feel threatened, then kill someone, independent of whether the victim was actually encroaching on their home ("castle").

Regarding this doctrine, a study showed that:
Results presented indicate that expansions to castle doctrine do not deter crime. Furthermore, our estimates are sufficiently precise as to rule out moderate-sized deterrence effects. Thus, while our view is that it is a priori reasonable to expect that strengthening self-defense law would deter crime, we find this is not the case.

More significantly, results indicate that castle doctrine laws increase total homicides by around 8 percent. Put differently, the laws induce an additional 600 homicides per year across the 21 states in our sample that expanded castle doctrine over this time period. This finding is robust to a wide set of difference-in-differences specifications, including region-by-year fixed effects, state-specific linear time trends, and controls for time-varying factors such as economic conditions, state welfare spending, and policing and incarceration rates. These findings provide evidence that lowering the expected cost of lethal force causes there to be more of it.

Police please. Yes @verreauxi has just murdered someone again

 

[Alan Whittle]

I haven’t really been following this tread, but my curiosity was pricked by seeing yet another “mass shooting in the USA” headline this morning.
Although definitions vary, a mass shooting seems to be 4 victims and the daily average over the past three years is two per day.
160 so far this year.
The reaction has seemed to be to loosen restrictions on gun use and ownership.
I’m sure that there is an awful lot going on in the background at State and Federal level but, can I just ask, as someone who hasn’t really been following;
WTF is going on?

 

[PhilM]

I haven’t really been following this tread, but my curiosity was pricked by seeing yet another “mass shooting in the USA” headline this morning.
Although definitions vary, a mass shooting seems to be 4 victims and the daily average over the past three years is two per day.
160 so far this year.
The reaction has seemed to be to loosen restrictions on gun use and ownership.
I’m sure that there is an awful lot going on in the background at State and Federal level but, can I just ask, as someone who hasn’t really been following;
WTF is going on?

Culturally and socially, America is up the creek without a paddle. A country where mass shootings are normal, worse accepted, is close to beyond repair.

They are desensitised to it.

 

[Nightman]

Unreal how this has become normalised in recent times.

Go back a decade and Obama would make a compassionate speech, visit the place of the tragedy and talk with friends and family. Now you'll mainly get a statement from the White House Director of Comms., such is the regularity of incidents.

America is also not asking the right questions. There are a number of countries that have near unfettered gun control, yet mass shootings are extremely abnormal. Why are people in the U.S. so disenfranchised that they want to murder complete strangers? (To be clear: I'm all for gun control and total ban if it was possible).

And the police chief's language referring to this latest incident in Texas: 'we neutralised the suspect', like it's some kind of game.

Society is breaking down in the UK and U.S. and I'm scared for my families future.

 

[Aberblue]

I haven’t really been following this tread, but my curiosity was pricked by seeing yet another “mass shooting in the USA” headline this morning.
Although definitions vary, a mass shooting seems to be 4 victims and the daily average over the past three years is two per day.
160 so far this year.
The reaction has seemed to be to loosen restrictions on gun use and ownership.
I’m sure that there is an awful lot going on in the background at State and Federal level but, can I just ask, as someone who hasn’t really been following;
WTF is going on?

Completely mad. There's been 160 mass shootings this year (and it's only early May, remember) and this doesn't include incidents where fewer than four people have been murdered. Does anybody really think that this is what America's Founding Fathers had in mind when framing the Constitution?

 

[TN Toffee]