Tag: Gun Rights

Champlin Police Chief Lies About Minnesota HF 1467

As the Senate debated HF 1467 the anti-gunners brought up the usual nonsensical arguments. One of these arguments, as I’ll demonstrate, was entirely false:

“This bill provides a loophole for a defense of what I would call cold-blooded murder,” said Champlin Police Chief David Kolb of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association.

Kolb recounted being 10 years old and sneaking onto a neighbor’s south Minneapolis property to steal apples from a tree.

Based on the proposal, “now the property owner can use force, and even deadly force, against that 10-year-old apple thief,” Kolb said. “You can see the disconnect here with reality.”

Let me say this as nicely as I possibly can, Police Chief David Kolb is a lying sack of shit. I say this with confidence because unlike him I actually read the bill and the scenario he describes, even with the passage of this bill, is clearly illegal. Let’s look at the language:

Subd. 3. Degree of force; retreat. An individual taking defensive action pursuant to subdivision 2 may use all force and means, including deadly force, that the individual in good faith believes is required to succeed in defense. The individual may meet force with superior force when the individual’s objective is defensive; the individual is not required to retreat; and the individual may continue defensive actions against an assailant until the danger has ended.

In order to legally employ the use of deadly force one must first in good faith believe it is required in defense. One does not have good faith that deadly force is needed to prevent a child from stealing an apple. While the bill gives a person using deadly force the presumption that such force was necessary the following must be remembered:

Subd. 6. Justifiable use of force; burden of proof. In a criminal trial, when there is any evidence of justifiable use of force under this section or section 609.06, the state has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant’s actions were not justifiable.

Section 609.06 describes the legitimate scenarios in which a person can use deadly force in Minnesota, a kid stealing an apple isn’t one of them. Ignoring 609.06 we still have the fact that even the dumbest of lawyers could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person who shot an apple stealing child had no reasonable expectation that such force was necessary.

The fact that an anti-gunner said this statement doesn’t surprise me, the fact that a police chief said this statement demonstrates how unqualified he is. If he can’t even read the law how does anybody expect him to enforce it?

Minnesota HF 1467 Passes Senate

Good news has come down from the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance (MNGOCRA), HF 1467, the Defense of Dwelling and Person Act of 2011, has passed the Senate:

Your calls and emails made a difference. Tonight, the Minnesota Senate passed the Stand Your Ground bill with a vote of 40-23.

The bill will go to a conference committee on Monday, and should be back in front of the House and Senate soon. Following that, the next challenge will be convincing Governor Dayton to sign the bill. We’ll have more on that soon.

Now we need to get the governor’s signature, something that may or may not be easy depending on how inebriated he is when we put the bill on his desk.

Death of the Pointless Canadian Long Gun Registry

Canada’s fear of firearms lead them to implementing a $2.7 billion long gun registry that accomplished nothing of value. Thankfully their parliament finally admitted their mistake and dismantled the atrociously expensive registry:

Despite spending a whopping $2.7 billion on creating and running a long-gun registry, Canadians never reaped any benefits from the project. The legislation to end the program finally passed the Parliament on Wednesday. Even though the country started registering long guns in 1998, the registry never solved a single murder. Instead it has been an enormous waste of police officers’ time, diverting their efforts from patrolling Canadian streets and doing traditional policing activities.

$2.7 billion and not a single murder was solved? How do the anti-gunners consider these registries a good idea? Firearm registries are worthless systems designed solely to let the government know who has firearms for a time they decide to confiscate them. As the article points out, registries almost never solve crimes because guns used to commit crimes are seldom left by the perpetrator:

Crime guns are very rarely left at the crime scene, and when they are left at the scene, they have not been registered — criminals are not stupid enough to leave behind a gun that’s registered to them. Even in the few cases where registered crime guns are left at the scene, it is usually because the criminal has been seriously injured or killed, so these crimes would have been solved even without registration.

Why would a murder leave evidence at a crime scene? Especially when that evidence is a tool they wish to keep to perform future crimes? It’s not a logical assumption, which makes it not at all surprising that anti-gunners came up with it since they’re the masters of illogical assumptions. Either way the experiment has been performed and it has failed so anti-gunners can stop claiming that we should be registering firearm with the government.

Burying Gun Control Fallacies

The Brady Campaign, Violence Policy Center, and Mayors Against Illegal Guns must really be worried at the moment. As their fallacies are stomped into the ground their funding shrivels into nothingness. Forbes has a good writeup that details the fact that none of the doom and gloom scenarios perpetuated by gun control organizations have come to fruition even though the rate of gun ownership has been skyrocketing:

As much as gun control advocates might wish otherwise, their attacks are running out of ammo. With private firearm ownership at an all-time high and violent crime rates plunging, none of the scary scenarios they advanced have materialized.

With an opening like that you know the anti-gunners are going to be horribly upset with the story. The author goes through a few common myths parroted by anti-gunners and demonstrates their falsehood:

Caroline Brewer of the anti-gun Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has reported that “The research we’ve seen indicates fewer and fewer people owning more and more guns.” Yet one can only wonder where they are getting that information. In reality, public support for personal gun ownership is growing. According to Steve Sanetti, president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group that represents about 7,000 firearms manufacturers and related companies, in 1959 some 70% of the American public favored handgun bans, whereas today that number has flipped. This support is reflected in the marketplace. Sanetti observes that the $4.1 billion gun industry “has had nineteen months of growth in an otherwise anemic economy.”

Recognizing these positive trends, most states now issue permits allowing qualified law-abiding people to legally carry handguns outside their homes. Unprecedented numbers are becoming licensed to do so, now totaling an estimated 10 million Americans, contributing, in turn, to a dramatic growth in gun sales.

The anti-gunner bullshit about gun ownership rates going down has been one of my favorites to laugh at. Their argument that fewer people are simply buying more guns is shown to be entirely false by the sheer fact that carry permit rates are going up. When one gets a carry permit it’s pretty reasonable to assume that person also has a gun. In many cases people getting carry permits previously held no interest in guns and obtained their first firearm when they desired to get a permit.

As pointed out in a recent paper titled “Tough Targets” released by the Cato Institute, “The ostensible purpose of gun control legislation is to reduce firearm deaths and injuries. But authors Clayton E. Cramer and David Burnett believe these restrictions put law-abiding citizens at a distinct disadvantage to criminals who acquire guns from underground markets since it is simply not possible for police officers to get to every scene where intervention is urgently needed. They also document large numbers of crimes…murders, assaults, robberies…that are thwarted each year by ordinary persons with guns.

The paper, Tough Targets, can be found here. It’s a good read and very well researched. Basically it’s the exact opposite of the drivel put out by the likes of the Brady Campaign and Violence Policy Center. Instead of making baseless assumptions or using statistical voodoo, Cramer and Burnett comb through self-defense stories and present the raw numbers.

Whereas gun control proponents often argue that having a gun put people at risk because a criminal will take it away and use it against them, it seems the reality is more often to be the reverse situation. The Cato data contains only 11 stories out of 4,699 where a criminal took a gun away from a defender, but 277 where the intended victim disarmed the bad guy, although the authors acknowledge that these event reports may be printed more frequently due to newsworthiness.

Arguing that a criminal is simply going to take your gun is one of the dumbest arguments that the anti-gunners have brought up. If taking a gun from somebody is so easy who really cares if a criminal takes yours since you can just take it right back. Hell you can stand there for an hour taking the gun back from the criminal every time he takes it from you and eventually he’ll get bored and move on. On a serious note Tough Targets does a marvelous job of proving how false the anti-gunner’s claim really is.

This is why gun rights activists win, we do actual research and show real numbers whereas the anti-gunners do hand waving an pull random numbers out of the air. If you make claims and fail to ever back them up people will eventually stop listening to you.

Then there is the argument that more private gun ownership will lead to more accidents because the average citizen isn’t sufficiently trained to use a weapon defensively. While gun accidents do occur, the Cato study indicates that they are the most overstated risks. There were 535 accidental firearms deaths in 2006 within a population of almost 300 million people. Although every lost life is tragic, the proportion is not particularly startling.

Another false claim is shot down in flames.

On the other hand, Newsweek has reported that law-abiding American citizens using guns in self-defense during 2003 shot and killed two and one-half times as many criminals as police did, and with fewer than one-fifth as many incidents as police where an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal (2% versus 11%).

I can only imagine that this short article has caused numerous gun control fanatics to breakdown into tears. It’s basically a bullet point summary of why anti-gunner claims are wrong. The above mentioned statistic makes a lot of sense when one realizes that police officer can’t magically materialize upon call. When you’re being attacked the police may take hours to arrive (or may not arrive at all) and during that time you’re on your own. If you have a means of self-defense on your person you greatly increase your chances of survival and can resolve the situation even if the police fail to respond.

Finally, on the subject of public safety, just how well have gun bans worked in other countries? Take the number of home break-ins while residents are present as an indication. In Canada and Britain, both with tough gun-control laws, nearly half of all burglaries occur when residents are present. But in the U.S. where many households are armed, only about 13% happen when someone is home.

Robbing a home in the United States while the person is home is a bad idea and criminals know it. This is a side-effect of a well-armed nation.

A Justice System Designed to Take Everything

As I said more commentary related to this story was coming, I just didn’t have time to write it all out yesterday when I penned the first post. Aside from the lack of “stand your ground” law the story of Mr. Lewis demonstrates a failure of our so-called justice system in general.

In fact I don’t refer to what we have in the United States as a justice system. Justice would imply compensation for your losses and life returning to normal if you’re incorrectly accused of a crime. The system we have in the United States would best be labeled a punishment system. My reason for saying this is because everybody, the innocent and guilty, are punished severely in our system either through prison terms or property loss. A perfect example of this is the recent case of Jay Rodney Lewis who lost everything for simply defending himself:

Ludwick, a former soldier and convicted felon, was driving four people home from a Halloween party. Documents say Ludwick slowed; Lewis passed him. Ludwick sped up, and the cars raced down 11th Street until they came to Regency Woods. They collided when Lewis, in front and on the right, started to turn left.

Lewis said Ludwick and a passenger, Justin Lossner, got out of the Taurus and began punching the Mustang’s windows.

They backed off when Lewis pulled out his .380-caliber pistol. But they came back.

Lewis said he was outside his car, evaluating its damage, when he caught Ludwick and Lossner trying to sneak up on him from two different directions.

The recording of a 911 call made by Lewis begins with Lewis yelling at the two to “just stay where you are. Get back! Get back! I’m going to start shooting!”

There are exchanges of profanities while Lewis explains the situation to a police dispatcher. Then, “Get away from me. Get away from me!” And a bang.

The 911 call makes it pretty obvious that Mr. Lewis attempted to resolve the situation without resorting to violence, which was later upheld by a jury. Considering the call and the situation I would not have initially arrested Lewis but the police not only saw fit to arrest him but the court saw it necessary to put such a high bail on his release that he had no hope of paying it:

The initial bail asked Lewis to post $225,000 cash.

Lewis, who made $32,359 a year at the IRS, didn’t have the money. So he sat in jail.

Bail is one of the most sickening ideas our punishment system has come up with. If you’re arrested you can give the state a pile of money and they’ll let you walk around freely until your trial date. Whether you’re found guilty or innocent the state gets to keep the bail money. It’s hard to argue that bail is anything besides a fund raising attempt by the state since an act of justice would be returning that money to any person found innocent of the crime they were accused of. I’m still unsure of how the average person came to accept the idea of bail as a justifiable idea.

The state didn’t get Mr. Lewis’s money though because he didn’t have enough, but they did make sure he lost all of his property by keeping him locked up:

One week after the shooting, a lawyer for Regency Woods typed up a notice that eventually was posted on the door of Lewis’ apartment. It described Lewis as a “clear and present danger to the health or safety of the other tenants.” As evidence, it cited Lewis’ involvement in “an assault with a weapon within 1,000 feet of the property described above” and the fact that he’d been arrested because of it.

[…]

Despite the fact that Regency Woods knew Lewis had been arrested, no one ever contacted him at the jail. Instead, the apartment complex won a default judgment when Lewis failed to appear in court on Nov. 22.

Lewis learned about all this at roughly 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 30. One jail guard led him to another, who was on the phone. The deputy serving the eviction warrant wanted to know if Lewis had any relatives who could get Lewis’ belongings off the 11th Street curb.

“All my relatives are in Kansas,” Lewis said.

The evicting deputy seized four handguns, three rifles, a shotgun and a machete that had been left in the apartment. But all his clothing and furniture disappeared on Nov. 30, along with a laptop containing the only copy of his fourth novel (a western).

First of all let me say this: fuck Regency Woods. Those guys must be some tremendous assholes if they’re not only willing to evict a tenant for defending his life but also to serve the eviction notice before the man has even been released from prison. I hope those fuckers go bankrupt.

Second I must say that holding Mr. Lewis in prison while his stuff was being tossed out is a terrible act built upon a terrible act. Not only did they hold him in prison for defending himself but they didn’t even both sending somebody to retrieve his stuff when their actions lead to the stuff being tossed out on the curb? Nope, instead they only send an officer to retrieve Mr. Lewis’s weapons, everything else be damned.

What tops this all off though is the fact Mr. Lewis will probably never be compensated for his losses even though he was found entirely innocent:

Prosecutors eventually dropped most of the charges. Trial on the sole remaining count, reckless use of a firearm causing injury, began on Feb. 6. and ended late on Feb. 8.

It was over early the following morning.

“I just don’t think the state did its job to prove he was guilty,” juror Mary Kinney said. “I think the man felt he was in danger.”

That’s a bittersweet victory if there ever was one. Sure Mr. Lewis is out of prison but all of his stuff is gone, he has nowhere to live, and months of his life have been stolen from him by the state that decided it was necessary to kidnap the poor man and throw him in a cage. Legislation is moving through the Iowa legislature that would have prevented this but that does Mr. Lewis no good:

Lewis’ case appears to fit the scenario envisioned by House File 573, a bill now working its way through the Legislature. It would expand current law to specify that a potential victim in a violent situation has “no duty to retreat” and has the right to “meet force with force.”

The legislation, which Sarcone argued against before a House subcommittee last month, also says a person cannot be prosecuted for using force against someone perceived to pose a threat, even if that perception is later proved incorrect.

Let me state that I’m entirely unaware of who Sarcone is, but I do know that he’s a completely asshole:

What Lewis’ case shows is that current law works, Sarcone said: “I don’t know why people are afraid of jury trials. I’m not.”

This has nothing to do with a jury trial. Mr. Lewis is a perfect example of all the punishments an innocent man faces. Sure the jury round him innocent but he lost all of his property and months of his life to a prison. He should have suffered nothing because he did nothing wrong. The 911 call should have been enough evidence to, at least, let Mr. Lewis await his trial date outside the confines of prison walls. Were he not kidnapped and held in a cage he would have been able to retrieve his stuff.

I truly hope Mr. Lewis can get some actual justice. The state should be compensating him for the loss of property caused by their actions of holding him for months. Unless his contract with Regency Woods allows them to evict tenants for defending themselves (since he wasn’t found guilty of any wrongdoing at the time of his eviction they can’t claim they were tossing out a criminal) he should have the right to seek compensation from them as well.

The United States justice system punishes everything. If you raise the ire of the state you will be hurt regardless of your innocence of wrongdoing. Tragedies like this should be made widely known so that people realize how horrible the police state they live in truly. The mantra, “You’re innocent until proven guilty” is a crock of shit and entirely irrelevant since being innocent doesn’t prevent you being punished.

Shit like this is why I’m a voluntaryist.

A Case for Stand Your Ground Law

With the imminent hearing on HR 1467, the bill that would bring “stand your ground” to Minnesota, tomorrow I think we need an example of how important such legislation is. For an example we need look no further than Iowa:

One couldn’t blame him. Lewis had just finished 112 days in jail because he didn’t have the cash to make bail. When jurors finally freed him on Feb. 9, Lewis walked out homeless, unemployed and minus most of his possessions.

[…]

Ludwick, a former soldier and convicted felon, was driving four people home from a Halloween party. Documents say Ludwick slowed; Lewis passed him. Ludwick sped up, and the cars raced down 11th Street until they came to Regency Woods. They collided when Lewis, in front and on the right, started to turn left.

Lewis said Ludwick and a passenger, Justin Lossner, got out of the Taurus and began punching the Mustang’s windows.

They backed off when Lewis pulled out his .380-caliber pistol. But they came back.

Lewis said he was outside his car, evaluating its damage, when he caught Ludwick and Lossner trying to sneak up on him from two different directions.

The recording of a 911 call made by Lewis begins with Lewis yelling at the two to “just stay where you are. Get back! Get back! I’m going to start shooting!”

There are exchanges of profanities while Lewis explains the situation to a police dispatcher. Then, “Get away from me. Get away from me!” And a bang.

You read that correctly, Mr. Lewis was found innocent of any crime was greeted with a loss of his property and months of his lives stolen as he rotted in prison awaiting his trial. What’s most egregious about this story is the fact that Mr. Lewis would have been legally protected from all of this if Iowa had a stand your ground law as it gives the defender the benefit of the doubt. Without such legislation the state gets to assume guilt until innocence is proven, and in such cases those forced into a self-defense situation may lose everything even if a jury acquits them.

As I stated yesterday the other problem when a stand your ground law isn’t on the books is the fact that any action taken in self-defense can be argued to be “unreasonable.” One person looking at Mr. Lewis’s situation may claim his use of a firearm wasn’t reasonable because his attackers were, apparently, unarmed. Another person would point out the fact that Mr. Lewis was outnumbered, a fact that makes a self-defense situation far more dangerous. Mr. Lewis had every right to be where he was and therefore should have the right to defend himself at that location. Stand your ground laws benefit those who find themselves having to defend themselves against initiators of violence.

I have further commentary about this story that I’ll post up tomorrow. Considering that the “stand your ground” bill is being debated tomorrow I wanted to get this out so people could read it and understand the importance that this law holds.

Obama’s Advancement of Gun Control

Obama has been pretty careful about the topic of gun control, a stance that has left some of his supporters less than impressed. The National Rifle Association (NRA) has been warning the people about a second Obama term without offering any real solution, Obama has been fulfilling his promise of working on gun control under the radar in the form of Fast and Furious. Fast and Furious has been a fiasco, one so severe Congress put a prohibition in the Department of Justice appropriations bill against using funds for another Fast and Furious-esque operation. As Uncle brought to our attention, Obama wants to strip that prohibition from the appropriations bill:

President Obama is using his budget to advance an anti-gun agenda just before the election. One particularly sneaky provision buried deep within his submission to Congress Monday would, if enacted, allow the mistakes of the “Fast and Furious” gun-walking scandal to be repeated.

In November, the president signed the Justice Department appropriations bill, which included language from Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, prohibiting federal agencies from facilitating the transfer of an operable firearm to an individual known or suspected to be in a drug cartel, unless they monitor the weapon at all times.

Now Mr. Obama is proposing to remove that provision from the 2013 spending bill, thus making it legal to revive gun-walking operations in the future. The White House justification is merely that the prohibition is “not necessary.”

Emphasis mine. The prohibitions isn’t necessary? I think the very fact that Fast and Furious exists is enough proof that such a prohibition is necessary. Fast and Furious isn’t a hypothetical operation that has been whispered about in the halls of the Department of Justice, it is an actual operation that went down and cost lives.

Wanting to remove the prohibition from the appropriations bill demonstrates the desire of Obama to enact stronger gun control in this country. The same goes to every member of the legislature that agrees to the removal of the prohibition. Fast and Furious being about gun control isn’t an unsupported conspiracy theory, it’s an accusation backed by strong evidence.

Why Minnesota Needs Stronger Self-Defense Laws

I was bored and needed something to write about so I went to my favorite source of inane stupidity, the Star Tribune. Let me say that I found some gold:

Those writing letters in favor of the “shoot first” bill apparently haven’t bothered to check out existing relevant law.

It is clear, in my opinion, that Minnesota statutes 609.06 and 609.065, taken together, authorize a person to use force, including deadly force, that is reasonably necessary to prevent an offense upon that person, or when assisting another.

I’m not aware of any “shoot first” bill making its way through legislature, only HF 1467 and SF 1357. My assumption is that the letter writer is referring to those bills without actually understanding them because there is no wording in either version that authorizes anything about shooting first.

Either way, being a diligent man I decided to look up the statutes being referred to by the author. First we have 609.06 titled Authorized Use of Force:

609.06 AUTHORIZED USE OF FORCE.

Subdivision 1. When authorized. Except as otherwise provided in subdivision 2, reasonable force may be used upon or toward the person of another without the other’s consent when the following circumstances exist or the actor reasonably believes them to exist:
(1) when used by a public officer or one assisting a public officer under the public officer’s direction:

(a) in effecting a lawful arrest; or

(b) in the execution of legal process; or

(c) in enforcing an order of the court; or

(d) in executing any other duty imposed upon the public officer by law; or

(2) when used by a person not a public officer in arresting another in the cases and in the manner provided by law and delivering the other to an officer competent to receive the other into custody; or

(3) when used by any person in resisting or aiding another to resist an offense against the person; or

(4) when used by any person in lawful possession of real or personal property, or by another assisting the person in lawful possession, in resisting a trespass upon or other unlawful interference with such property; or

(5) when used by any person to prevent the escape, or to retake following the escape, of a person lawfully held on a charge or conviction of a crime; or

(6) when used by a parent, guardian, teacher, or other lawful custodian of a child or pupil, in the exercise of lawful authority, to restrain or correct such child or pupil; or

(7) when used by a school employee or school bus driver, in the exercise of lawful authority, to restrain a child or pupil, or to prevent bodily harm or death to another; or

(8) when used by a common carrier in expelling a passenger who refuses to obey a lawful requirement for the conduct of passengers and reasonable care is exercised with regard to the passenger’s personal safety; or

(9) when used to restrain a person who is mentally ill or mentally defective from self-injury or injury to another or when used by one with authority to do so to compel compliance with reasonable requirements for the person’s control, conduct, or treatment; or

(10) when used by a public or private institution providing custody or treatment against one lawfully committed to it to compel compliance with reasonable requirements for the control, conduct, or treatment of the committed person.

Subd. 2. Deadly force used against peace officers. Deadly force may not be used against peace officers who have announced their presence and are performing official duties at a location where a person is committing a crime or an act that would be a crime if committed by an adult.

The obvious fact I wish to point out is the wording “reasonable force.” What amount of force is “reasonable?” There is no set in stone answer to that because everybody’s idea of reasonable is subjective. Whereas I find it reasonable to use deadly force to defend yourself from a mugger (because you can’t be sure mugging you is the only thing they intend to do) another person may not. As the law is currently written any use of force subjects the person using force to scrutiny and another person’s idea of what amount of force was reasonable (and remember that the person(s) judging were not there when you had to restort to force).

The use of deadly force is outlined in the second law mentioned by the author, 609.065:

609.065 JUSTIFIABLE TAKING OF LIFE.

The intentional taking of the life of another is not authorized by section 609.06, except when necessary in resisting or preventing an offense which the actor reasonably believes exposes the actor or another to great bodily harm or death, or preventing the commission of a felony in the actor’s place of abode.

Emphasis mine. 609.065 specifically states that 609.06 does not authorize the use of deadly force. Therefore the use of deadly force in all mentioned actions in 609.06 is prohibited except “when necessary in resisting or preventing an offense which an actor reasonably believes exposes the actor or another to great bodily harm or death…” Once again the wording of this law is the part that can bite you in a self-defense case. Is deadly force necessary in resisting an assailant? That really depends on who you ask and whether or not the person you ask can come up with methods in which deadly force could have been avoided. If you’re being mugged and you shoot the mugger was violence necessary? Could you have simply surrendered your belongings? Some people would say yes, while others would say there is no way of knowing.

The self-defense bills in the legislature are written to eliminate these subjective statements and give those involved in self-defense cases the benefit of the doubt. Namely the bill removes the argument that a person involved in a self-defense case could have retreated by eliminating their duty to retreat:

Subd. 3. Degree of force; retreat. An individual taking defensive action pursuant to subdivision 2 may use all force and means, including deadly force, that the individual in good faith believes is required to succeed in defense. The individual may meet force with superior force when the individual’s objective is defensive; the individual is not required to retreat; and the individual may continue defensive actions against an assailant until the danger has ended.

If a person no longer has a duty to retreat they can no longer be prosecuted for using deadly force if a third party could perceive a method in which the defender could have fled. Remember that those judging your actions and determining whether or not your use of force was “reasonable” weren’t there, they didn’t witness or take part, and they have no firsthand knowledge of what went down. Hindsight is 20/20 and it is possible that an outside looking at the situation after the fact could conjure up an avenue of retreat the defend did not notice. If somebody attacks you the benefit of the doubt should be on your side and you should have a legal right to take any means to ensure the preservation of your life. In a self-defense case the defender is not the initiator of violence and thus should not be judged as the criminal.

Not written into these statutes is the requirement to first “retreat” from a confrontation if it is reasonable and safe to do so. Importantly, the requirement to retreat does not apply in one’s home.

People need to understand that Americans inherited a great deal of common law, which is where the duty to retreat originates from. If the author of this letter actually read either HF 1467 or SF 1357 he would know this:

relating to firearms; clarifying and delimiting the authority of public officials to disarm individuals at any time; clarifying law on use of force in defense of home and person; codifying and extending Minnesota’s self-defense and defense of home laws; eliminating the common law duty to retreat in cases of self-defense outside the home;

Emphasis mine. Both bills specifically state that they eliminate the common law duty to retreat; it does not make any claim of repealing a supposed duty to retreat statute currently on the books. You don’t even have to be a lawyer to figure this out, you need only open Google and search for “common law duty retreat.”

The author is correct that the duty to retreat doesn’t apply to one’s home. This was decided by the Minnesota Supreme Court:

A duty to retreat does not attach to defense of dwelling claims. So long as a person claiming defense of dwelling meets all of the criteria for making his or her claim – that the killing was done in the belief that it was necessary to prevent the commission of a felony in the dwelling, that the person’s judgment as to the gravity of the situation was reasonable under the circumstances, and that the person’s election to defend his or her dwelling was such as a reasonable person would have made in light of the danger to be apprehended – the person need not have attempted to retreat from his or her home.

Of course the failure here is, once again, the author’s lack of actually reading either self-defense bill (or, if he did read them, a lack of comprehension). Let’s look at the language in HF 1467 and SF 1357:

expanding the boundaries of dwelling for purposes of self-defense;

[…]

(d) “Dwelling” means a building defined under section 609.556, subdivision 3, an overnight stopping accommodation of any kind, or a place of abode, that an individual temporarily or permanently is occupying or intending to occupy as a habitation or home. A dwelling includes, but is not limited to, a building or conveyance and that building’s or conveyance’s curtilage and any attached or adjacent deck, porch, appurtenance, or other structure, whether the building or conveyance is used temporarily or permanently for these purposes, is mobile or immobile, or is a motor vehicle, watercraft, motor home, tent, or the equivalent.

Both bills expand the definition of dwelling to include things like camping tends, automobiles, etc. In other words you will enjoy the same protections in your car as you would in your home.

Minnesota’s self-defense laws have worked very well for a long time. No one is in prison for acting reasonably in defense of one’s self or home. There have been several cases in recent years of the use of deadly force by a person in defense of their home, and the defenders were not charged with any crime.

The bill proposed by Rep. Tony Cornish would seriously alter long-accepted standards of reasonableness, to the detriment of our citizens and the safety of law enforcement officers.

Actually the bills add clarification to a currently subjective scenario. Instead of leaving the just use of force open to interpretation it more strongly clarifies when force can legally be used. As I stated before “reasonable” is a subjective and as much subjectivity as possible should be removed from law.

Our legislators would better serve if they paid heed to the positions of Minnesota’s Police Chiefs, rank-and-file law enforcement officers and our state’s County Attorney’s Association, all of which adamantly oppose this bill.

JERRY DHENNIN, COON RAPIDS

Why would they be better served?

Minnesota HF 1467 Being Heard Tomorrow

Just a heads up, HF 1467, the Minnesota self-defense bill, is being heard in the Minnesota Senate tomorrow. The bill already passed the House last year so once it’s through the Senate is merely needs to get Dayton’s signature (some people are doubting he’ll sign it but he’s an alcoholic so we only need to wait until he’s drunk before slipping it onto his desk) and Minnesota will have some much needed improvements to our self-defense laws.

Old People Don’t Mess Around

Via Gun Free Zone we get a lesson in fighting with the elderly, and that lesson is don’t fight with the elderly or they’ll outlive you:

When a residential burglar fired a gun at Jay Leone last month, he was initially too angry to realize he had been shot in the head, he testified Friday.

“To tell you the truth, I never felt a thing,” said Leone, 90, of Greenbrae. “I said, ‘F—- you, you son of a bitch, now it’s my turn.'”

Getting shot in the head won’t stop a pissed off old man. Some punks forget that these people didn’t get old by being total pushovers, they got old by being bad asses. So if you’re cruising around looking for easy marks to rob just remember that the 90 year-old man walking down the street is 90 years old and has probably dealt with far worse than you’re little punk ass.