No doubt I will incur the wrath of any anti-gun doper, yet it offends my sensibilities that someone who is assaulted in their place of work at gunpoint and returns an equal repelling force is now charged with a crime.
“You didn’t say, Simon says” fails to deter the modern day thug, and I don’t fault law enforcement, as they cannot be everywhere.
Silly me, thinking that if you don’t try to rob me, I’ll have no reason to shoot you. :rolleyes:
The article didn’t say what they were charged with, although it did mention that the handgun was unlicensed. I don’t know what the penalties are for possessing an unlicensed firearm, let alone shooting someone with one, but it’s a slightly different situation than a law-abiding citizen legally defending themselves from robbers.
It’s not like he’s being charged with murder. He used an unlicensed gun. He’ll probably just get a fine.
And fatal shootings are always investigated. What are the cops supposed to do just take everybody’s word who claims self-defense?
The unlicensed part is the meat of the story. I doubt the prosecution (even for the licensing requirement) goes very far at all. New York has some of the most repressive firearm laws in the US. Just looking at a firearm the wrong way gets you investigated.
These two will emerge with nothing more than a scare.
We recently had a similar case in these parts. A drinker-slash-neighborhood activist put a cap in a guy who was attempting to rob the bar he was watering at.
The grand jury declined to even indict him on charges of carrying a gun into a drinking establishment, despite the fact that he did, indeed, carry a fucking gun into a drinking establishment.
Bravo to the cops in the OP for doing something other than winking an vigilantism. Here, the prosecutor, knowing that public sentiment was behind the shooter, basically halfassed the whole thing.
From a standpoint of terminology, since the perp was shot while he was pointing a gun at the employees, this is self-defence, rather than vigilantism.
Should the shooting be applauded or deplored? The robbers might have killed both employees if the employee hadn’t shot first. By shooting, the employee may have saved his own life and his cow-orker’s life. He prevented further armed robberies by this miscreant. He also discouraged armed robberies by others.
“Vigilantism”, as yes. Another inflammatory word rooted in “vigilante”, typically used by anti-gun persons to deride and sneer at anyone who dares to stand up for themselves and defend themselves with a firearm.
Old Mr. Dictionary says vigilante means “One who takes or advocates the taking of law enforcement into one’s own hands./A member of a vigilance committee.”
I don’t think the employees in question were members of a “vigilance committee”, but did they really take “law enforcement” into their own hands? By defending themselves? From the sketchy info in the article, they didn’t lay in wait for the criminals, nor had they set a trap, nor were they hunting them down, nor were they actively pursing them as a mob. There is no real indication that they were anything more than employees of the store who were being held up at gunpoint by armed criminals, and who felt that their lives were threatened such that they needed to act to defend themselves. This doesn’t make them “vigilantes”.
Or does it? If by definition defending one’s self is “taking the law into your own hands”, then anyone whatsoever who ever defends themselves from an attack, assault, rape, or criminal action is a “vigilante”. Somehow, I don’t believe that’s the intent of the slur.
Yeah… but that’s the crux of the whole original post- whether that makes much of a difference!
Personally I tend to think that it’s a crap law and stomps on most people’s personal freedoms. None of my guns are registered, but then again, I live in Texas!
I’ll concede that vigilante was the wrong word. But I’ve gotta wonder at the attitude of those people who are willing to overlook the obvious violations of gun laws in situations like this. I mean, would the OP express the same outrage if the guy were a drug dealer who, in defending himself from being jumped, blasted the attacker with an illegal piece?
Based on the nearly complete lack of actual details, I could see several possible scenarios:
Two guys come into a store to rob it and are gunned down with an illegal weapon. Police follow law and arrest employees on weapons charge.
Two guys come into a store. Employees have long-term grudge and try to gun them down, then put a gun next to the body and claim self-defense. (With no reports of customers or video tapes, we have only the employees’ word on the initial robbery attempt.)
Two employees successfully defend themselves against an armed robbery, but, shaken up by the events, give wildly conflicting versions of what happened, leading police to arrest them on a weapons charge until the details can be sorted out.
(Given some time and a more serious interest, I’m sure I could come up with some more.)
I’d say they have surveillance video of the event, since the word “allegedly” is conspicuously absent. Law-enforcement types are very careful about making such statements based only on eyewitness accounts, and in the absence of demostrable evidence such as video.
Real life example - I had a client once who claimed to have choked some one “in self defense”. I questioned him, and according to him, the other guy had “gotten in his face”, which meant that, to this guy, he was justified in ‘defending himself’ by choking the other guy.
We further nailed down the ‘got in my face’ to “stepped too close to me while talking to me”. (the person choked had a developmental disability and wasn’t always aware of ‘personal space’, and the aggressor was some one who had a very generous view of what was his ‘space’.).
I submit this as a cautionary note to the concept of justifiable self defense. Not everyone sees it the same way. I can understand the rationale in the scenario partially described in the OP, but as tomndeb rightfully constructs, there’s other possabilities as well.
So, umm… who exactly is “overlooking” the violation of the gun law? The cops arrested him, everyone in the thread here has highlighted the violation and expressed the opinion that he’ll likely be charged with an unliscenced firearm but not with the homicide, which seems to have been a clear case of self-defence. Obviously, the difference between this case and your hypothetical drug dealer is that these guys were involved in lawful commerce when they were attacked, and the drug dealer wasn’t*, and was probably attacked in as a result of his drug dealing*, thus compounding his crimes.
*Assuming that your hypothetical drug dealer killed someone who was trying to steal his drugs. If he killed someone with an unliscenced firearm for reasons entirely unconnected with his chosen trade, then it’s no different from the situation outlined in the linked article.
I’ll concede that overlooking the violation of the holders/users of the illegal weapon would be wrong as well. It is a violation of the law, and must be acted upon. However, we do get into the bit of “They may have broken the law, but do they deserve to be punished? Or to what extent?”
And what extent would depend entirely on what really happened at the store. We can come up with scenarios for either end of the spectrum. But in each of these, the disposition, history, and “savoryness” of the accused do come into play. Put in front of a jury, it’s hard to see that the drug dealer in your example would get the same consideration as a (hypothetical) frightened store employee who was given the gun by his father after she was gang-raped by robbers the last time the store was held up. And really, they shouldn’t, IMO. The law cannot be blind to any and all surrounding and precipitating events - IMO.
No? Then explain why a burglar can successfully sue you in some states if you smack him upside the head with a bat while he’s robbing your premises. Justice is supposed to be blind, but it only is when it wants to be.
Perhaps if you had a link to the specifics of the case you’re talking about, folks could weigh in. I’ve known of cases where booby traps catching criminals = succesful lawsuits, and generally speaking, depending on the state you’re in, using a weapon on an unarmed person (trespasser or not) may get you in trouble, etc.
and of course, you need to understand the difference between criminal and civil law as well (‘sued’ generally refers to a civil suit which may or may not be related to a criminal procedure.).
