Murder rate in Florida headed toward ZERO per 100,000!
 

So, Expanded Castle Doctrine or Right to Commit Murder?

"Duty to retreat" was an evil doctrine from the get-go. I'm glad to see it gone.

How did any laws as good as this "maybe," get by a BUSH?

Some people just need killin'. :cool:

No argument there.

I do wonder about how this changes our current system about who decides who needs killin'. Back in September, juries made the decision, prosecutors suggested candidates with captial charges, and judges have made the decision. These decisions took place in the highly controlled environment of the criminal justice system, and mistakes were rare.

Policemen made the decision on the street in situations of extreme stress and danger. These decisions are routinely examined for their validity. Mistakes are more common, but still rare.

Criminals made the decision too, of course. These are all mistakes.

Back in September, sometimes citizens in their homes made the decision. I have no idea how many of these decisions were mistakes.

I wonder how many times I have caused someone to feel threatened. What about on the road, when I follow too closely or change lanes without signalling? Is this a capital crime now? Who decides? The citizen, the shooter. They now have the protection of the law to become the judge, jury and executioner.

Where will this lead to? Where will it end?

Not only is the world my castle, it is also my oyster.

Except for months without an "R" obviously.

They're examined, but the only way a cop is actually going to get jail time or even dismissed is if he kills someone politically connected and there's a videotape. They've got pretty much carte blanche to kill whoever they want.

Even with the new law, ordinary citizens don't have that kind of protection. They're still going to be prosecuted and judged; it's just that they'll be judged based on more reasonable criteria.

Protection? What's to prosecute?

If I am not in the process of committing a crime (drug deal, etc), and I feel threatened, I can legally apply deadly force.

What more reasonable criteria are you talking about?

Overall, I think it's a good thing.

However, I believe that repo men in Florida will soon be demanding a performance bonus beyond their usual fee per car.

yeah, it is a good thing. your going to have to justify to a grand jury though why the said dead person needed killin'. they're going to frown upon someone who shot someone because they said they felt threatened and there were not any witnesses. now if the assailant had a gun, crowbar, baseball bat or the like and it was found at the scene then your chances of not getting charged with some form of murder are far less.

You seem to be focusing on the word "threatened," as if the legal statute includes nothing more specific than that. That was the article's word. It clearly goes on to state that the citizen specifically "has the right to use deadly force against an intruder if he feels that his or his family's life is in danger;" and also, "persons attacked in any place outside the home" may fire their weapon as well.

This will get people like my dad, who tends to get loud and obnoxious when his blood pressure goes up, shot for no other reason than they have a whiplash temper coupled with an excellent system for projecting their voice.

Maybe the grand jury will indict the shooter later, but hey...dad has still been plugged. Might be something that the blood pressure people will fight...kill enough blood pressure drug users and some of those monster pharm companies will lobby.

Isn't this the only threat the shooter faced prior to this law as well? People with a whiplash temper were either going to shoot your dad before or not. They're not going to look at this law and say "Well whoo-ee! All those consequences that were keeping me in check are gone! Let's get to killin'!"

I suspect that what will happen is that the criminal element will make more use of this law than the honest citizens. Stop and think about it. How many regular citizens, other than our new director of FEMA, of course, have guns and are trained in their use? And how many folks pack guns around with them when they go down to the grocery store or the office? Not many.

Who is the most likely person to have a gun on them and feel no hesitation in using it, outside the police? A criminal. So, a drug deal goes bad, Joe Gangbanger shoots his dealer and claims he was threatened and walks. :eyebrow:

Joe Gangbanger won't have a legally purchased weapon, and he won't have a concealed carry permit.

It's not going to be the wild west, people. Otherwise law abiding citizens will not be calling each other out on whatever they call Main Street in Miami Beach.

My mother, father, and stepfather for starters. Also most of their friends and associates. But then, I do live in Texas.

Maybe, but how has that changed from the way it was before this law?

Eh. That's one less drug dealer at least, right? ;)

I can see the enterprising gun dealers' ads now: "Free with every handgun, your choice of a ballbat or crowbar! Don't be caught without a *complete* self-defense kit!"

i used to carry. i let my conceal license expire on my birthday. the only place that i would not carry were places that it was prohibited. why did i get my license in the first place? i was walking my dog down the street from my house and was held up by four individuals from the car they had stolen. three of them held a gun on me. now, would having a gun in that situation of helped? no, not immediately, you can't win an already drawn gun fight. i could have, however, shot the back window out of the car or shot it in the trunk or whatever as to mark it because the cops were called and had someone pulled over that matched the description that i gave over the phone. when i was talking to the cops they mentioned in so many words that "marking" the car would've made it a lot easier to identify the assailants.

Uh-huh, and if you missed the bullet could have traveled how far and to where?

I'm constantly reading about 9-year-olds being shot by drug dealers. This isn't because drug dealers deliberately target children, it's because they point the gun and shoot without considering where the bullet goes if it misses.

If you want to 'mark' cars buy a paintball gun.

No loss there. The whole repo industry sucks. If they want to do their jobs like car thieves instead of debt collectors, they ought to be liable to be shot like car thieves instead of like debt collectors.

Also because the 9-year-old's parent lets them wander around in the streets where the drug dealers are.

'Nuff said! ;) Us wuss's in Colorado generally don't, unless you count the rifle prominently displayed in the rack on the rear window of the pick-up truck crowd. Most of them are ranchers on the Western slope, though, and they use their guns to shoot coyotes and Texans! :D



Not a bit as far as I know. But now the criminal might have a better chance of evading prosecution. Granted, there's lots of dumb criminals out there, but the smart ones will register a gun to keep handy just in case.



Agreed! Should have used a different example. How about Joe Gangbanger having a bad hair day and randomly shooting an innocent bystander just because he can and he was smart enough to go get his little self a permit?

Joe Gangbanger won't qualify for a permit, nor can he make a legal firearm purchase.

Neither of which stop him from being a Menace 2 Society®.

Assuming that the law will allow for random shootings is the kind of ridiculous extrapolation for which anti-gunner rhetoric is known.

"Just needed killin'" is not a valid legal defense, even in Texas.

Oh, and don't be so sure about the number of people carrying guns in Colorado. You might want to refresh yourself on the meaning of "concealed."

Philadelphia-area Cellarites have seen me at a variety of social functions in different settings. Exactly how many of those times have you seen a weapon, other than my razor-sharp wit?

Old Joe might be a crafty little devil who managed to acquire a weapon before he got his list of priors, but we are wandering far afield into hypothetical land on that one, I'll admit. ;)

Oh, and I did some checking, and for the most recent year I could find statistics (2001), Colorado issued less than 600 concealed weapons permits. I imagine that with the war on terror, blah, blah, that number has gone up, but, in general, Coloradoans really do seem to prefer the chic "rifle in pick-up window" thing. Its so Cowboy, ya know?

No, you're wandering into the special land occupied by Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Honest Politicians, and Sincere Reporters.

I suggest an extra 5 mg of Haldol.

WHAT!? There's NO Santa Claus? But, Virginia...! :lol:

So is not bothering with a permit. ;)

And because the 9-year-old "honor student" (every dead kid is an honor student) was probably involved in the drug trade.

And because the bullet went through a window and killed a 9-year-old playing in his apartment.

NINE YEAR OLD HONOR STUDENT KILLED IN APARTMENT WHEN DRUG DEAL GOES BAD! Oct 5, 2005 Faux News

Nine year old Timmy Jones seemed like just another unsupervised child in his low income neighborhood. Neighbor Cindy Lou Ferrakim, a welfare mother of 8, described Timmy as a "good kid".

"He wuz alwaz gonna out of hiz way to hep folks round here," she said. "He'd let me slide on the crack money ah owed him till my gubberment check come in at tha end of tha month," she explained.

Timmy's third grade teacher at nearby WeAintPayingforTHEM Elementary School, expressed surprise at the shooting incident which occured yesterday afternoon. "Timmy was the brightest kid in the class! I even helped him fill out his application for a concealed gun permit. He said he needed it when he baby sat for his two younger sisters when his mother had to work the late shift at Burger King."

Police questioned and then released 10 year old Abdul Smith in connection with the Jones shooting. "Abdul claims Timmy pulled his weapon first," explained officer Rodriguez of the 666th precinct. "not much we can do about it."

Officials from Burger King were unavialable for comment.

In the neighborhoods where these sorts of things happen, that's true. By the time these kids are 8 or 9 they are working as runners, lookouts, and holding onto a few things for the big kids.

maybe. i would still fire. and not a paint gun.

ah shit! :lol2:

Wait a minute. Not every kid that's stuck in the slums with his poor family is in the drug trade. There are plenty of victims on the other side of the tracks.
That's like saying the scumbags that we saw on the news, looting after the hurricane, are representative of New Orleans residents. :headshake

No, REALLY, Bruce? Nah, all poor folks are drug dealers with guns. I'm sure of it! I'm poor. I have a gun. And I take meds. QED! :D

Rich, you are BS'ing again, and lame to an amputated and not merely gimpy degree. I'd really rather you grew some common sense, but then again, you never showed much of that under the RichLevy handle in AoL Chat, either. Carefully fatuous or visibly hemipygian, take your pick -- you haven't got the brains you credit yourself with having.

If you're going to carry a shooter of any description around, it must be lethal to save you in any possible threat scenario.

Watch out, everyone! Somebody let UG watch a "Rambo" rerun again! :worried:

If that's how you feel, go back to watching Desperate Housewives and put him on ignore.

Heheheheh! What's "Desperate Housewives"? You could always go back to watching "General Hospital" and put ME on "ignore"! ;)

In DC, where honest citizens voluntarily surrendered their right to own guns, 9-year olds wind up with bullets in their heads while watching Sponge Bob with grandma in their living room. There's at least one or two of these per year where the bullet enters the home through a window or through a floor or ceiling of an adjacent unit and kills a perfectly innocent child - sometimes a sleeping child.

In Virginia, where its legal to carry a fully visible firearm, these things are unheard of.

Gun control is not only ineffective but counterproductive. The higher the firearm restrictions, the higher the proportion of gun ownership among the criminal element, the higher the crime rate. Duh. I live in VA and have met all the requirements to own and carry a firearm. I have chosen to stick with knives and do not own a gun. However, I praise the effort of the NRA (not across the board but in general) and will vigorously oppose any proposed restrictions on the rights of Virginians to own and carry firearms.

But which is cause, and which is effect?

Fair question. I'll research instances where gun control was relaxed and where gun control was tightened and compare the before and after crime rates and report back.

But, common sense seems to apply here - when controls are tightened, its the honest, law-abiding folk who "turn in their weapons" which tilts the balance in a predictable direction.

DC is fond of laying some of the blame for its gun crime problems on Virginia by pointing out that while guns are "not available" in DC, the bad guys just cross the Potomac and load up. Ummmmmmmmmm.

I may be wrong about this, but...

When I have visited the DC area (been a few years now, admittedly), it seemed to me that the middle class enclaves were mostly in northern VA. The poor folks lived in DC proper. Could the difference in shootings be more about socio-economics than gun laws?

The demographics of DC aren't quite that simple but one cannot ignore the overwhelming correlation between median income and gun-related crime in the DC metro area (or any other in America).

But, given HM's question, if the causal relationship between gun control and gun crime is unknown then the defacto revocation of the fourth amendment seems a little draconian if not downright small-minded.

What, and give up the fun of reminding you in perpetuity that you're old enough to know better -- and so clearly do not? :lol: C'est rire!

As a rule, on this matter the NRA-ILA has the right idea. For convincing demonstrations of just how right the NRA is, read Stopping Power, by J. Neil Schulman; More Guns, Less Crime, John Lott -- this is his comprehensive study encompassing all 3015 counties in the United States over a period of fifteen years; That Every Man Be Armed: the Evolution of a Civil Right, by Stephen P. Halbrook, the Constitutional lawyer who argued before the Supreme Court against certain provisions of the Brady Act and got them repealed; and the final condemnation of any kind of gun control: Lethal Laws: "Gun Control" is the Key to Genocide, by Simkin, Zelman, and Rice. These people all know what they're at.

I've studied all these texts, and more besides. They are why I know gun banning is inimical to the existence of a genuine republic, and how important gun banning is to keeping crime high and genocidal episodes practicable.