plthijnx and I live in a tough 'hood
 

It's a quiet Saturday afternoon, a couple of blocks away from plt and NBN.

Four armed men burst into your home. Do you:

A) Lock yourself in a closet

B) Dial 911

C) Disarm one of the intruders and shoot him to death with his own weapon

<a href="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/3733289.html">Story</a>

D) Have your SKS ready and demobilize the whole lot immediately. :rattat:

OK, what's "Envíos Catrachos."?:right:

It's nice to read that in some parts of the US, you are still allowed to fight and stand your ground as opposed to fleeing your own home until the intruders have left.

Bravo for the victim for taking out the bad guy. Of course, I'm sure that the dead invader was probably a victim of a difficult upbringing, and society is to blame, but nevertheless...

uMMMM... Switch the paper licence plate real fast and get one of those el cheapo paint jobs for the car? :eek:

The "envíos" part is easy, an envío is something being sent (from enviar= to send), and by extension it also means the cost of the freight. I get to use the word a lot while corresponding with Spanish-speaking buyers through my net store. But there is no meaning I could find for "Catrachos", and in most such cases it turns out to be somebody's name rather than a spoken word with a specific meaning. My guess is this was a pick-up and delivery van belonging to a local Hispanic family business. But I would not discount the possibility that catrachos is barrio slang from a place like El Salvador so the owner named his business that and the word really means something but only to a specific group.

This is why interpreting during a trial can be so dicey. Some ethnic groups use a completely different vocabulary for many common objects and have slang terms which are incomprehensible in neighboring countries. For the O.J. Simpson trial, they had to bring in an interpreter who had been born and raised in the same Central American country as the maid who was going to testify because there was no Court interpreter in Los Angeles who could understand her. The surviving morons who tried to rob and kill the man in the story will EACH be given an interpreter versed in his dialect at the expense of the taxpayers, and the defendants may hold up the trial if they are illegals from some uncommon area and do not feel that they are being provided adequate coverage. They have their civil rights, you see. These interpreters will cost the county many thousands of dollars, all to guarantee a fair trial to people who were caught in the act and are already known to be guilty. Oh well, it keeps some of us employed :neutral:

The plea bargain is a longstand American Tradition.

Of course I'd much rather brand these assholes "Illegal: shoot on sight on U.S. Territory" across their faces and dump them back into their home country.

I dug this statement, which closes out the article: A gun is a universal language.

Like love.

You can do that in Colorado which has a "make my day" law. Just be sure the intuder falls forward dead into your house and not backwards out the door. :right:

D) Shoot him with *your* gun, *then* take his.

Carefully. Criminals frequently have crappy or poorly maintained weapons they know little about operating.

When a news photog was taking pictures of Gwennie and me for a forthcoming "Philadelphia Weekly" article, we got into a conversation about the drug dealers down in Philly who frequently shoot bystanders while trying to eliminate of competition.

For example, in the recent trial for the murder of Faheem Thomas-Childs, the evidence showed five shots fired by the Broaster gang, and Johnson and Spady (who were convicted of murdering the boy) fired *42*...and *nobody* hit who they were shooting at.

The photog said that once, while covering a court beat, he'd asked a dealer why they seem to have *so* much "collateral damage". The answer was: "We're all high and nobody knows how to shoot."

So it's a "make my day, please fall inside" law. Good.

There are some states that you not only have to leave when an intruder breaks in, but you must also have low cal sandwhich fixings ready with a six pack of cola beverage, as well as having the TV remote included with that package.

There is no law at this time that the TV remote must have multilinguial instructions available, which is truly a violation of civil rights.

Hell, drag em inside after they fall. Why quibble over a few feet?

The only side of the story the cops should hear is YOURS! Dead men tell no tales.

Better make that low-fat sandwich fixins as well, because you'll be sued for contributing to their future heart attack or obesity problem as well. Let's hear it for victim mentality!

Indeed, they don't. Apparently, in Colorado, an intruder may prance around your yard all they want and all you can do is to tell them to not trip over the garden hose. However, once they cross your threshold, the laws of the old West apply, and you are free to shoot the sucker between the eyes and skate. However, if the deceased is inconsiderate enough, and you are fast enough on the draw that you shoot him just as he attempts to step over the doorway, and he falls backward out of your house, his loved ones will complain that he was but an innocent collecting donations for the Kiwanis Club and you may end up down in the state pen in Canon City. Even Colorado will let a home owner get away with only so much. After all, what if people started shooting girl scouts selling cookies?

The important factor, of course, is that in states without a castle doctrine, you have to shoot your intruder front to back. They are actually allowed to fall OUT your door, but must do so because they have been blown through it from the impact of the rounds, just like in the movies.

(This statement is not to be construed as legal advice of any kind, especially in New Jersey, New York, California, and Maryland)

I believe that there is a waiver that eliminates this liability for those retreaters in NY, but it's not often signed as you might imagine.

Finding a notary this quickly is also quite a problem.

Just make sure the "intruder" isn't really an unarmed 16 year old Japanese exchange student showing up at the wrong house for a Halloween party.

You can Google "Yoshihiro Hattori" if you have forgotten, and want to see why these restrictions exist today.

This isnt the official account of the incident but provides more details.

Yoshihiro Hattori - answers.com

I would guess that having all these circumstances happen all at the same time would be extremely rare.

Tragic? Of course. Common? I would think not.

What might you think?

"As ringing the doorbell[2] did not provide an answer, Hattori and Haymaker started moving towards the carport door on the side of the house to find the party entrance. Inside the house, however, Mrs. Bonnie Peairs had answered the door, only by this time meeting nothing but an empty yard. Alerted, she also looked through the carport door. Realizing two strangers were moving on her property and approaching in a hasty manner, Mrs. Peairs, startled, backed up inside the house, locking the door, and then ran to tell her husband to "get the gun". Hattori and Haymaker were still pondering the situation, when the carport door was opened again, this time by Mr. Peairs who was armed with a stainless steel revolver. Noticing someone appear in the doorway, Hattori ran towards him saying "We're here for the party" in broken English, unaware of the imminent danger. Haymaker, seeing the weapon, shouted after Hattori, but his warning was either not heard, or was misunderstood during the short time the event unfolded. (Kernodle 2002; Fujio 2004; Harper n.d.) - this paragraph to be updated -"

It is these rare circumstances that create the legislation of retreat.

They are hardly that recent; the legal principles are much older than the Hattori case.

That said, many justification statutes include a "reasonable belief" provision; if if it turns out that you were not in danger, your use of deadly force is viewed as justified if you reasonably beleived you were.

This is where the "judged by twelve vs. carried by six" decision comes into play. (c.f. the "naked drunk" case I cited in another Cellar thread back in 2001)

The Hattori incident was one of the straws that broke the camel's back and caused the government to pass the Brady Bill.

If an industry appears to have problems and doesn't police itself, the government steps in to police it. The perception in the early 90's was that gun owners were a bunch of irresponsible nuts who needed to be told how to handle their guns safely. Doesn't matter if it was true or not, that was the perception of many (possibly most) americans back then. As a result, you had restrictions placed on gun ownership. Same principle applies to many industries. Right now it's the FCC against TV nudity.

Of course glatt.

Of course, the connection between "gun safety" and anything in Brady is tenuous at best.. "Gun safety" is the latest code word for gun prohibition...because the euphemism "gun control" has been used up.

http://www.clintongunban.com/

Kind of like how "liberal" has been replaced with "progressive".

Hm. The reason I advocate for the second amendment? I don't want the King of England coming over here and shoving me around. Plus, without guns there would be no Forensic Files or CourtTeeVee.

Sure there would...but the ballistic evidence might be replaced with stab wound patterns, tox screens, and trace evidence on Blunt Instruments (tm) . There's a fair amount of that already anyway.

In any event, "without guns" isn't one of the options. There's only "without legally-owned guns".

It's happened again. Not in our part of town, but still:

<a href="http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3747765.html">Hoist upon his own petard</a>

Heck, in some places the robbery suspects are police officers.

WOW! What a bizarre story! I wonder if they would have killed the restaurant employees if they had just handed over the money? That woman doesn't sound like the smartest cookie in the box. She could have used her police force position to pull off more clever stuff than that and with much less chance of getting caught. Probably tanked up on drugs. I liked the part where they found her father's skull buried on her premises. That was a nice touch. Sometimes, I think I should become a true crime writer - Ann Rule's gotta retire sometime! The stuff that happens in real life is better than anything Stephen King dreams up. :eek:

Recently in the St. Louis area (E. St. Louis, IL), an elderly woman blew away an intruder who was trying to break into her house. She was not charged with any crime. I'm not sure if IL allows you to use deadly force against an intruder. MO does not...it's been the subject of recent debate in the legislature.

Incidents like the Hattori one are few and far between. If some motherfucker tries to break into my house or come at me, I should be able to whoop his ass without repercussions.

A friend of mine used to live in Florida, kinda out in the boondocks. There was a swamp near his property, I know that much. At one point some rapist got loose in the area, and the police told his mother that if she sees him, shoot him and drag him into the house.