Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/30/florida-sheriff-ok-to-shoot-a.html
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I dunno, if the other guy got out of his car and you’re still in yours, just drive away while you call the cops. I’m not sure this shooting was necessary. Then we would just have a story about an asshole who was talking on his cellphone while driving.
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If you’re in a Prius and are being chased by a V8 pickup truck, you don’t stand a chance. The truck is faster and heavier. If the truck wants you off the road, you are going to be pushed off the road.
Plus, the Uber driver believed the other guy had a gun. You aren’t going to outrun bullets in any vehicle.
I have no problem with this shooting.
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"Good people carry guns and they will shoot you. A lot. Graveyard dead."
@Headache I have no problem with this shooting.
See gif above…
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Mad Max approves too.
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The problem I have is with a mouth-breathing sheriff who thinks that this is a “moar gunz” example of how he thinks disputes are best settled in his county.
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If the stand your ground law is a bad law, then maybe, just maybe the shooter could be exonerated without calling it a “stand your ground shooting”. [Edit: I watched the video]
Or maybe when white people shoot other white people, it’s just a different legal landscape from when white people shoot black people. The whole topic makes me throw up a little in my mouth.
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You mean the fictional bullets, from the fictional gun that Boek talked about, but didn’t actually have? Yeah, even a Prius will outrun those.
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So long as guns are ubiquitous in America, the right to actual self-defense against being shot is reasonable, even when it involves first shooting someone threatening to shoot you.
Exactly. If the Uber driver had been a POC, he’d be in jail waiting for a biased trial followed by a racist sentencing hearing. Unequal under the law is the American reality.
Obviously, but how was the driver to know the threat was empty?
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Uhhh. No. Prius’ are NOT bullet proof.
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@Headache was throwing around hypotheticals. The gun itself was a hypothetical. I sympathize with Westlake, but the shooting (and death) was unnecessary.
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It sounds to me like he (the sheriff) makes it sound like a reasonable stand-your-ground shooting. Which it was.
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At the point when he said he had a gun, the path to peel out of there would have been over his body: The truck is in front, and a high-speed reverse certainly wouldn’t be wise. (Probably moot. I think the driver switched off the ignition.)
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So if a white guy makes a mortal threat to another white person, per this incident, he’s a “goofball”.
And if a black person so much as walks the wrong way near a white person, per just about any incident in recent memory, they’re a “killer thug”.
Then it logically follows that… no, you know what, NOTHING LOGICALLY FOLLOWS THAT BS.
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The threat though was not. That to me is the stark difference between something like this shooting in self-defense and the blatant murder of Trayvon Martin. George Zimmerman felt threatened by a black kid he hunted down and murdered. Jason Boek chased down Robert Westlake and actually threatened to shoot him. Any shooting death is tragic, but one was murder and the other self-defense. Westlake had no way of knowing Boek wasn’t armed and sincere.
In short, the problems are racism and guns, not self-defense, which this was.
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Right. A guy swerving at me and blocking me off at 2 a.m., then coming at my car is a threat. Easy to say, “oh, back up” – and I like to think I would have done that – but I’ve got no problem with this. The Uber driver seems likely to have had his handgun out given the timing, so I’m curious about how aggressively this pick up was driving right ahead of this to get it to the ready. More restraint than some LEOs.
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Oh, definitely. The threat itself was credible because of the gross proliferation of firearms.
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You do make a good point; if threatened by someone cutting me off and hopping out of their vehicle, I’d probably floor the gas pedal while still in ‘drive.’
O_O
While the shooting may have been a valid example of ‘the Castle Doctrine’, the sheriff himself sounds very irresponsible and unprofessional.
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Exactly!
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