The Bluff

Trayvon Martin’s Death and the Stand Your Ground Law vs. the Duty to Reatreat

Stephen — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:54:36 +0000

There are few things more sad than an avoidable death. And I guess few things more unavoidable than using that death to push for a political position, as we see in the death of Trayvon Martin. Young Mr. Martin was a 17 year old walking home from the store when he was confronted by neighborhood watch “captain” George Zimmerman, who apparently (hopefully) thought he was protecting the neighborhood. But when the situation ended the teenage Martin hadn’t just been confronted or even picked up by the police, he was dead. But did Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law have anything to do with it? And if so, for whom?

It was a death that didn’t have to happen, for sure, and should have all of us questioning ourselves and what we would do in a similar situation whichever side we are on. But the political focus of those using young Mr. Martin’s tragic death has been on a Florida law, commonly called the “Stand Your Ground” law, that removes the duty to retreat for someone under assault and allows them to use force to defend themselves if they feel threatened. But the ironic thing is the person who chose not to retreat was not the shooter, Mr. Zimmerman … it was the young Mr. Martin.

I don’t know what the real facts are, and to what extent Mr. Zimmerman was threatening when he got out of his truck in the vicinity of Mr. Martin. But Mr. Martin definitely did feel threatened, per his phone call to his girlfriend, and it would appear that he felt sufficiently threatened that he took defense of his life in his own hands and attacked Mr. Zimmerman. In other words … Zimmerman was confronting someone in his neighborhood, and so whether he was doing it legally (just talking/asking questions) or illegally and threatening (brandishing his weapon/trying to restrain Mr. Martin) stand your ground has nothing to do with it. In the former he had no need to stand his ground or retreat as there was no violence underway, and in the latter he wasn’t standing his ground against an attack, he was initiating a violent conflict; which is never legal.

But in any case … no matter how you look at it … Mr. Martin did NOT choose to retreat. Had this fight gone differently and Mr. Martin prevailed, as the shooter claims he was about to, it would only be the “Stand Your Ground” law the would keep young Mr. Martin out of jail. Because “Stand Your Ground” isn’t a gun law; it’s a self defense law. And it mirrors how most American’s think about self defense.

If someone is following me, harassing me, trying to intimidate me … I don’t want to be limited to curling up in a fetal position or running away like the High School nerd. I’d like to be able to take reasonable action to defend myself, and not go to jail for it (at least until the police have investigated enough to figure if I’d done something out of line). And that’s all Stand Your Ground allows.

I’m reminded of a late night walk I took a couple of years ago in my neighborhood. To set the scene, it was around midnight (I often work late, and enjoy a late night walk — and why not?) and I was about four blocks from my house. The subdivision I live in was designed in the 1970′s when designers thought a cluster of roads that resembled a plate of spaghetti made sense, so there are a number of very short elliptical blocks and roads that end and then start up again.

Anyway … while walking around one of these short blocks I noticed a car pass by and slow down, then continue. No problem. A few minutes later it again passed and slowed down before continuing on. As I continued around the block to my house — in a nice neighborhood but at a time that I might as well have been standing in an abandoned field because all the house lights were off and nobody was outside — the car repeated this about 3 times. Clearly checking me out.

I was slightly nervous, but my assumption was it was a Zimmerman type who was just looking out for the neighborhood and checking on the big guy out walking so late at night. The situation ended anticlimactically and after about 5 passes the car moved on and I went home.

So if the story of how we are hearing the assault ENDED is close to being true, and Mr. Zimmerman fired the shot while on the ground being beaten, Stand Your Ground doesn’t come in to it. But Mr. Martin’s very understandable, very American reaction to someone following him a threatening manner — going on offense and trying to protect himself — is exactly the situation the Stand Your Ground law was written for. And it’s why this one tragic occurrence doesn’t invalidate it as a good law.

I respect people who are willing to look after their neighborhoods. If I were walking through a predominately black neighborhood and someone began questioning me aggressively, I would either acknowledge that they’re just trying to look out for their neighborhood or ignore them completely and let them call the cops if they want. If I felt they were going to assault me (and it is just feelings — there’s no law against asking someone why they are where they are, though it sometimes feels threatening) and my best bet was to fight, I’d do that. With whatever I had available.

Mr. Zimmerman will have his day(s) in court. And I hope justice is done and enough facts are found out to actually do justice. In the meantime, the Stand Your Ground law is still a common sense self defense law, and we need it in more states, not less. And while we don’t need someone in any neighborhood that will walk up to a stranger brandishing a firearm or being threatening, I’d love to have more people in my neighborhood willing to ask strangers walking through what their up to. Just a pleasant … “Hi. You looking for somebody? Something I can help you with?” is all that’s required. And that shouldn’t be enough to warrant a violent response from anyone. But if a person does respond violently to that, they are now the assailant and the person who first asked them a question has every right to defend themselves. However they have to.

My prayers go out to the Martin Family. And the Zimmerman family. For discussion of the legal matter of the Stand Your Ground law, you can look here here here.

Off Road

The best book ever written!

By me, anyway.

Set against the background of the American civil war of “progressives” vs. patriotic American traditionalists and a family caught in the middle, Off Road is a journey into the uniquely American world of God, guns, big trucks … and family.

More information here. Buy it at amazon.com in paperback or Kindle (only .99 for Kindle, which can also be read on a PC with a free reader). Or at Barnes and Noble in paperback or Nook (only .99 in Nook format). Or from the iBooks book store for Apple products. Or in any Ebook format, even .html or .pdf, for .99 from smashwords.com.

CU students interviewed about concealed weapons on campus

Stephen — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 10:11:50 +0000

Frankly, I was shocked at how accepting the majority of these students interviewed were about the Colorado State Supreme Court ruling the prohibits CU from having its own rules about guns on campus (i.e. not allowing them0. The young lady isn’t crazy about the idea but accepts it as a right, and only one of those interviewed was actively against it.

This video is from a Boulder Daily newspaper which is definitely not known as being conservative, so it’s interesting these were the opinions they found. I’m guessing they would have preferred a lot more strictly negative responses, like the one at the end.

Off Road

The best book ever written!

By me, anyway.

Colorado Supreme Court overrules CU ban on guns on campus

Stephen — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:09:37 +0000

Which means that licensed CCW will be legal (possibly open carry as well — I’ve not reviewed the actual ruling) on all state college campuses in Colorado. I’m sure there are more details to come, but what a victory this is. And finally the Brady Campaign will have to give Colorado a better (lower) score for 2012 as they’ve been incorrectly claiming we ban campus carry and punishing us with 2 extra Brady points.

I always hate to see courts making these big decisions, as they can be so darn biased and come up with crazy rulings (like they did on open carry in Colorado), but given how the law was written this should always have been a gimme. Regardless of what current Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said as Colorado Attorney General – that CU was somehow exempt from laws passed for the entire state.

This is great news. Although I’ve never carried a firearm while walking on campus, I”ve always been worried that on a trip to Boulder I’d inadvertently turn onto one of the roads that crosses the CU and get pulled over by a campus cop. It’s not clear what criminal charges I would have faced for carrying, possibly nothing more than being banned from the university, but it wasn’t a situation I wanted to deal with.

Great news for Colorado! We’ve always been a state that allowed CCW on campus by law, and now it’s been confirmed by the court. It’s just too bad that there’s been a 9 year gap from when the law was enacted until it was deemed the law.

I may not have put anything on this blog for about 3 months now, but this was a story I had to say something about. Hopefully I’ve still got a few people on RSS feed/email to see this!

UPDATE: So I just finished an online debate about this issue.

The question posted by my debater (paraphrased): “With what’s happened at Virginia Tech and other schools how can you support this? What good can come of this?”

My Answer: “Look … state laws against arms carry didn’t stop the shooters at Virginia Tech or NIU, and even Federal Laws didn’t stop the shooter(s) at Columbine or Chardon. If you’ve decided to shoot a bunch of random people laws against carry don’t do much. Now … I don’t think this law will realistically affect mass shootings either way, though it’s possible someone will be empowered to stop a shooting, but what it does do is take away a law that only affects the law abiding. i.e. since the law provably won’t stop school shootings all it will accomplish is get someone like me arrested for turning on the wrong road or taking a short cut on the wrong sidewalk. Like it or not, the voters of Colorado via our elected representatives have said it’s legal for me to carry a firearm, and also made it clear it’s legal on universities”

To me the logic is simple … if you want to stop drunk driving you can argue that all alcohol should be banned — it didn’t work in the past, and I disagree with it, but it is a reasonable argument to make — but passing law after law that hurts people who drink but DON’T drive is worthless. All you accomplish is to get otherwise innocent people arrested and get a felony conviction against them that accomplishes nothing but to destroy their life.

Same with guns — although I believe in the empowerment of an armed citizenry, there are intelligent (though I believe failing) arguments to be made for disarmed society. But if you have an armed citizenry, and we do, then making sure that law abiding people can’t carry guns anywhere but criminals can (because they don’t care about the law) is a deadly mix. And makes no common sense. Commongunsense (aka Japete’s commongunNONsense) or otherwise.

If it really is just violence the anti-gun groups are fighting, and not legal gun ownership, they should stop fighting laws that only affect people who are NOT violent criminals and focus on the violent criminals. And more on how to make less violent criminals rather than focusing on the particular tools they choose, as it is still what is in the heart that makes a murderer — not what is in the hand. Murder exists back to the earlies days of mankind (Cain and Abel for most of us) and far predates firearms.

Off Road

The best book ever written!

By me, anyway.

So a person killed with a sword is better than a standoff with a gun?

Stephen — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 17:21:59 +0000

As gun control has ceased to be a mainstream issue, gun control proponents have gotten more extreme to the point of becoming silly — not surprising for a movement who’s leadership has become people victimized by gunfire and know nothing about guns/the gun culture and don’t want to. And the fact that they just plain hate guns, hate them so much they don’t care if people die so long as no one can buy or carry a gun, becomes more clear. Here is an exchange on the Wisconsin Anti-Violent Effort Facebook page about a confrontation between a sword wielder and a (possible) CCW holder that ended peacefully, i.e. with no one getting hurt. And yet to anti-gunners it’s proof that horrible and violent people are getting their CCW’s.

Now … there are obviously some bizarre sides to this — brother’s fighting over cigarettes, etc. — but I’ve got to say that brandishing a firearm at someone brandishing a 5 foot long sword is not unreasonable. Whether or not you should be able to use deadly force against someone about to kill your dog just to be mean is more arguable, but jeez … he was going to kill the guy’s pet AND he had a deadly weapon. No shots were fired and I don’t think that brandishing a firearm is out of line.

If someone were threatening to kill my dog just because they were angry at me I would damned sure get in their way and they would have to go through me to get to her. If they brandished a deadly weapon they would be brandishing it at me, not the dog.

Yeah — great intelligent discourse.

And I don’t want to copy the picture, but follow this link to a cartoon I still don’t understand, but which may be proof of the whole concept that an armed society is a polite society. Basically it shows the MSM stereotype of a TEA partier holding a sign and a scary black rifle of some kind (a rifle by someone who doesn’t know/care what rifles look like), while a fat bellied police officer sprays a hippy-chick OWS protester with mace. The cop is saying “Well, you can’t expect me to pepper spray the Tea Party protesters — those people carry guns!”

Of course … there was never a need to pepper spray TEA party rallies, because they didn’t camp out overnight, got proper permits for their rallies, didn’t block traffic or “occupy” private property, respected police, etc. But apparently WAVE just hates guns so much they think this is proof that guns are bad? If you were truly such an idiot you believed that the TEA party and OWS were completely comparable and equally legitimate and one was getting pepper sprayed and the other left alone … wouldn’t that make a strong argument that the 2nd amendment really is an important protection to the 1st amendment?

Off Road

The best book ever written!

By me, anyway.

A great gunnie giveaway for a great charity! Support Soldier’s Angels!

Stephen — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 12:57:52 +0000

Walls of the city has a pretty cool promotion going to raise money for the organization Soldier’s Angels. Read all the details at the link, but basically you either spend money on certain websites to send presents to soldiers or you donate money and you get tickets. When the promotion ends a whole lot of very cool prizes are given away, and most are gun related.

I’ll be getting a few tickets myself here in the next week or so. I hope you will as well.

The Denver Post promoting common sense gun laws? We must be winning!

Stephen — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:26:10 +0000

The law banning firearms in post office lobbies and even post office parking lots is ridiculous. I often carry a firearm in my vehicle, and if I forget and park in the Post Office parking lot to get my business mail I’m a criminal. If my wife borrows my car (the gun is secured in a car safe which she normally doesn’t even have a key to) and drives through the parking lot to mail a letter she’s likewise automatically a law breaker.

The law/regulation is a legacy from anti-gun days and now only exists as part of a web of laws to snare law abiding gun owners and make gun ownership just that much more legally dangerous.

But now a normally liberal and sometimes anti-gun paper, the Denver Post, has actually taken a common sense stand — against a law which does nothing but endanger the futures and livelihoods of law abiding gun owners:

We don’t think that a post office — let alone an adjoining parking lot — qualifies under the court’s standard as a “sensitive place” where guns may be comprehensively banned. So we’re glad a federal judge in Denver has allowed a lawsuit to go forward challenging the U.S. Postal Service’s ban on guns.

Read the whole thing if you’re interested. It’s not really pro-gun, it’s just common sense. Real common sense.

Off Road

The best book ever written!

By me, anyway.

AR-15s at Walmart! Is there any question that black rifles are now the norm?

Stephen — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 14:42:39 +0000

AR-15s at Wal Mart

I was doing some late night shopping at a nearby Walmart in Littleton, Colorado, and what did I find? Several sporting type “black” semi-automatic rifles in the rifle rack. Nicely priced, too. I’ve seen plenty of .22LR semi-auto rifles at Wal Mart, but here are some .223 AR-15′s in both carbine and hunting configuration. One even has a normal capacity (30 round) magazine and telescoping stock — both nice features.

I plan on buying another rifle this summer, my daughter’s first (probably a Ruger 10-22) and Walmart will now be on my A-list of possible stores to purchase it from.

I don’t know if Walmart went through with its plan from a while back to video tape all gun purchases and etc., but I’m not as concerned about that as I am about making sure that semi-automatic modern rifles stay in the mainstream. And “mainstream” and “common use” (the latter a phrase referenced by the Heller Supreme Court case) means Walmart to most of America.

Off Road

The best book ever written!

By me, anyway.

Thinking about the OWS movement …

Stephen — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:11:14 +0000

When I was a kid, youth took to the streets to protest war and civil rights issues. Now, they take to the street to protest that other people make more money than they do.

I understand their anger, because the ongoing recession is grating on us all, and it’s easy to give up and believe there will never be a recovery and that the whole system is irreparably failed. But the system has looked irreparably failed before and with a little time and faith we’ve not only recovered, but prospered. I’m just not sure why these kids are attacking the business people who have the capacity to bail us out rather than working to vote out the current administration that keeps us stuck in the mud.

An interesting fact … my family has long generations, and I’m basically the same age during the growing OWS protests as my own WWII Veteran father was during the Vietnam protests. And it’s helping me understand the outlook he had at the time — on the one hand he and his generation knew war and understood why the younger generation was against it and certainly the reasons for the war were questionable. But he didn’t understand what they thought they would accomplish by doing sit-ins and mob protests that turned violent on the fringes (just like we’re seeing now) and working outside the system rather than within it.

Off Road

The best book ever written!

By me, anyway.

Is there a conservative Presidential candidate to be excited about?

Stephen — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:00:35 +0000

I’d love just once to have a presidential candidate I can be proud of rather than a “lesser of two evils.” In my life I’ve voted in every Presidential election save one (traveled unexpectedly) but on few occasions was I voting for my candidate so much as against his opponent. I hope I don’t find myself in that situation again as I watch the Republican front runners stumble.

But … I have a few thoughts on the criticisms the top line Republican candidates are facing even IF they turn out to be true …

I’d rather vote for a Herman Cain that’s pinched a couple of fannies than an Obama who’s pinched off oxygen to the American economy with extreme regulations and Western European type socialist policies.
I’d rather vote for a Mitt Romney that flip flops to please the American public than an Obama who rolls over the American taxpayer for liberal causes (Solyndra, Cap and Trade, drilling embargo, etc.) that do nothing to make our lives better or our country stronger.
I’d rather vote for a Rick Perry acting a little tipsy during a speech (watch the whole thing, not just the 8 minutes that his opponents stitched together, he actually looked fine) than a sober Obama.
And I’d danged sure vote for a Rick Perry that gets results than an Obama who promises hope and change but drives our economy further into the ditch with Greek sized unsustainable debt.

In fact … while there are some headlining news stories that are less than favorable for just about all the Republican candidates … I’d vote for any of them over the incumbent. And while it would be another “lesser of two evils” votes it would be the one I felt strongest about.

Off Road

The best book ever written!

By me, anyway.

The pro-gun vs. anti-gun White House petition situation — meh!

Stephen — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:30:38 +0000

Earlier I was worried that we on the pro-gun side were going to lose a grassroots type online vote. Turns out to be a non-issue.

The first pro-HR822 (nationwide CCW) poll went down with less than the 5,000 votes in 30 days required for an administration response, but it did come fairly close.

The anti-HR822 poll, promoted by Mayor Ramsey of Philadelphia, skyrocketed quickly to 8,000 votes and seemed on track to hit the 25,000 votes currently required for an administration response, but died as quickly as it exploded. It has been stuck at less than 9,000 votes for some time with only 10 days left and little chance of making the grade.

There is a new pro-822 bill to vote on, and I hope you will, but unfortunately pro-gun/conservative types tend to be adverse to posting their contact information to a white house server (though I really don’t understand why).

So the whole poll thing is pretty much a joke. The administration will (supposedly) have to make some statements on some odd subjects that got enough votes, many having to do with legalizing pot, but with the new threshold for a response set to 25,000 votes in 30 days … it’s unlikely many polls will make the cut.

Meh.

Off Road

The best book ever written!

By me, anyway.