Land Owner
StandFree, beautifully said!Originally Posted by StandFree
That's a detail the media has left out. When Darren Wilson turned his cruiser down that particular street in Ferguson, he was already on high alert. He was in the projects, and that's a dangerous place to be.
Land Owner
We're no longer a "gun culture" as we once were.
Most of the fools making these comments (one shot, shoot at the foot) have never fired a firearm in their entire life.
They don't know what on earth they're talking about, but they keep babbling anyway.
Banned
You should only speak for yourself. These broad-brush declarative statements are not proven as-yet to be true for one thing, and don't even begin to analyze or evaluate the shooting itself at all. For me, every life a cop takes matters. I am as outraged over Kelly Thomas' murder as I am over Oscar Grant's as I am over Keith Vidal's as I am over Jose Guerena's as I am over Eric Garner's as I am over Louis Rodriguez' as I am over Frank Mendoza's as I am over Henry C. Taylor's as I am over John Wrana's as I am over Eugene Mallory's as I am over Daniel Saenz' as I am over Marie Zienkewicz' as I am over.....
Good grief, this forum has a very high character limit compared to other forums, and I could go on and on and on citing killings by cops for which very little, if any, consequences ever ensued, and run out of characters before I got through just the ones since the full-on militarization started in earnest shortly after 9/11.
Sharpton, Holder, Obama, et al came after the shooting. Their presence in Ferguson was/is an opportunistic race-pimping endeavor that doesn't speak at all to the justifiability of the shooting.
White folk are no less prone to being opportunistic when justifying questionable police shootings when the people being killed by them are black, as-evidenced by several posters on this forum.
So are you speaking from the benefit of such training? I've had extensive (and expensive) training and never once has an instructor said to shoot someone dead. Advanced civilian and old-style police training should be similar. Military training has little value in defensive handgun shooting. It was long after my short stint in Nam that I got my handgun training, but I can tell you that for me, it would've had zero value for me there. I never even qualified with a handgun in the Army, and neither did most of my brothers.
You should probably name the academy where you got the training that said to shoot people dead in a defensive encounter so that readers concerned with attaining the best defensive mindset can avoid that instructor/school. Or better yet, tell the DA and jury at your trial that you had that thought in your mind when you pulled the trigger. Best of luck with that.
I haven't seen anybody here come close to suggesting that you shoot to wound, but sorry, you are just 100% wrong on that statement in bold. The same "state of mind" evidence will be put forth for every single round fired if a trial ever ensues out of the Brown case, just like every single boot stomp, club strike and taser deployment was put forth in the trial of the cops who beat Rodney King.
That's not intended to take a position on the "rightness" of the two convictions that came out of that trial, or even to support the fact that they were found guilty in a federal trial. It's just to show that every use of force by cops requires its own justification at trial, and the only thing I was talking about when you replied to me was a potential trial, and at trial, justifiability of every use of force is precisely what's being decided.
My personal view is that with (at least) four unconnected eye-witnesses to the last shots being fired who vary only slightly in their accounts about whether or not his hands were up (three say that) or down around his midsection where they were as he laid there for hours afterwards (one witness said that), but since all of them say that he was not charging the officer, there is at least probable cause for the Grand Jury to bring an indictment and let a jury decide if those final shots were justified. The dichotomy in my view is that I seriously doubt that an indictment will be brought, so Wilson's state of mind for each and every individual round fired will never be tested against eye-witness testimony, nor will the credibility of the witnesses ever be tested. But you're absolutely wrong in asserting that it's not about how many individual shots were "justifiable" at trial.
Since dancerdoc was replying directly to something I said, perhaps you will understand my curiosity as to who the "fools making these comments" might be?
I'm a Vietnam combat vet, I've worked many years as an armored transport driver/courier which included fairly competent biannual training and quarterly qualifying, and I've completed every non-law-enforcement course offered (totaling 9) at ShootRite Firearms Academy on my own dime (totaling in excess of $20K worth of training). Those courses required a minimum of 800 rounds sent downrange, up to over 2,000 rounds per course.
I've carried a weapon nearly every single day of the last 30 years.
As maybe the first true tyrant in power in this once-great country said, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln -
He probably got the idea from his Bible:
28Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding. (Proverbs 17:28 KJV)
There's babbling, and then there's babbling.
Blues
Land Owner
Let me thank you for your service to this country.
I too worry about all the "cop shootings" that take place these days and wonder if they're justifiable. I do not obsess over every one and remember the name of every person this has happened to in the past. Since you state you are a Viet Nam vet, let me ask, have you been diagnosed with PTSD? Or is it you've had a close call with the cops; or both? You seem to have a considerable amount of anger in your statements is the reason I asked. That anger is a symptom of either or both and NO I'm not a psychologist.
So far as your picking apart my posts, that's your opinion; you are definitely entitled to it. By the same token, I feel I am entitled to mine. I do know what I have been told to do(by more than one person all ex-military) when someone as angry as you is coming at me with the clear intent of doing bodily harm. And trust me it's not to just slow them down, or stop them for a few seconds. And, yes, I do know how to shoot and am pretty good.
BTW, the frame you "quoted" was not my statement. But I do agree with RosemaryT.
Banned
No need. It really wasn't my idea to "serve." I was a drug-addled punk who got out of going to juvenile "camp" for truancy by enlisting when I was 17. I wasn't a public servant, I was cannon fodder.
You "worry" about it, but I "obsess" over it? It is mock-worthy to pay attention to the names of innocents who die violent deaths at the hands of people supposedly "serving" them? Perhaps it's more like I actually worry about it, and you give it some passing thoughts and lip-service but never take a principled, liberty and constitutionally-based stand against it? Your "worry" is underwhelming in any case.
Neither. I simply pay attention to what's going on in this country, and I don't like what I am seeing.
Can I ask that you re-read the post to which you are replying and point to where I showed any anger at you? From what you say below, you apparently think what I said to Rosemary was directed to you. I showed no anger towards you. I replied to you. That's what people do on a discussion forum.
Then kindly stop playing one on the internet, because you suck at it.
What is it with people on the internet who get ticked off over someone actually responding directly to what they said? I was not trying to "pick apart" your post, I was replying directly to individual thoughts you expressed, just as I would during a face-to-face discussion in the real world, and just as I'm doing here now, and do whenever I'm replying directly to a whole post rather than just a snippet of one.
I purposely and presciently separated military training from police/civilian training because it appeared to me that you were conflating the two, which now becomes apparent you were/are. War-fighters have a very different mission than people just trying to defend themselves within the parameters of self-defense law, or than cops charged with keeping the civil peace. The civilian will never enter a free-fire zone. The civilian will never be supported by any authority when they open fire outside the bounds of use of force and self-defense laws in their jurisdiction.
In every classroom training session I've ever participated regarding civilian home-defense and out-in-public self-defense, the legal training includes only one thought on what your state of mind must be to pass legal muster; you stop the threat. You mentioned stopping an assailant and if you had stopped there, I would not have even replied to that part of your post, but you included the word "...shoot until the target is... dead." If you make a statement after the shooting to the cops similar to what you say above about me, "He was coming at me so angry. Saying things that scared me or pissed me off. I felt I had no choice but to kill him." Then the cop asks, "Did he have a weapon?" You say, "No, he just said things to me like right in front of me. He wouldn't listen or consider my opinions, so I shot until I thought he was dead," you my friend, will spend the rest of your life in jail.
Obviously, that's a bit of sarcasm loosely based on things you said, but the point, as it applies to the Brown case, is that shooting with the state of mind to kill is not legal anywhere for anyone, including cops, in this country. You shoot to stop the threat, period. If an assailant dies in the process of him/her being stopped, that is justifiable homicide, but a perceived threat must be present for each and every use of force delivered. That is not my opinion, that is the law. Don't take my word for it, read it from a self-defense legal expert in an article posted on Bearing Arms.com quoting Andrew Branca, author of The Law of Self Defense.
Sounds very nearly exactly like what I first said in this thread, doesn't it? I didn't just pull "opinions" out of my backside. I cited what I know to be the laws of self-defense.The issue you raise is a common one, but fortunately not a complicated one. It’s simply the self-defense law element of proportionality–a person is allowed to use only as much force as is necessary to neutralize the threat, and no more than that. Proportionality has both an intensity and a temporal (or time) dimension.
In terms of intensity, one can meet a non-deadly attack only using non-deadly means, and a deadly force attack with deadly means (also, of course, non-deadly means).
In terms of time, one can use force only for as long as the threat remains imminent (that is, until it is neutralized). If it takes 5 shots to do that, but 6 are fired, that 6th round is excessive force and does not qualify for justification as self-defense. The first 5, you may be all good. The 6th gets you a murder conviction.
In this context, whether the threat has been neutralized is based on the reasonable perceptions of the defender. Nevertheless, if the defender did or should have reasonably known the threat was neutralized, the legal justification for the continued use of force is gone, and every additional quantum of force thereafter is unlawful.
So you agree that anyone who focuses squarely on the shooting of Michael Brown, tuning out all the extraneous issues of race and riots that followed it, and wants questions about it answered by a jury of Darren Wilson's real peers, rather than his LEO peers, are just "babbling fools?" If that's what you're signing onto by agreeing with her, then I must repeat for your benefit rather than Rosemary's this time, there is "babbling," and then there is babbling.
Blues
Land Owner
After reading your above post, I have changed my mind. You Sir, are not just angry, you are in a rage. About what? A difference in opinion? I'm so glad your opinion is the only one that counts here. And, believe me, you need to be screened for excessive anger. It does not take a psychologist to realize that.
When someone takes every damn sentence of another's post and critiques it, that definitely is picking it apart. If that's a "discussion" I thank my lucky stars I'll never be in a fact to face with you. I feel you don't have any idea what a "discussion" is; you prefer to preach your opinion while demeaning the other persons. That being said, I concede, you win, I have nothing further to say on the subject.
Congressman
Actually, Blue's post seems just fine. You might not like it, but that's likely because you're "butt-hurt".
Tree of Liberty Benefactor
Wow, you are way out of line, doc. You are reading something entirely different from Blues post. I don't see where you're seeing the anger part.....
Land Owner
If we {whites} had been out rioting decades ago, TPTB would have had the Pinkertons shoot us to death.
Banned
One cannot concede a point they failed to ever understand or cogently address.
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