“If you don’t love Louisiana, leave it” is not a surprising message to hear from government supporters, but sure disappointing to hear from its ostensible critics too.
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I’m… Gonna go read that bill. Because that description makes it sound like the bill allows summary execution of anyone you believe is committing a crime, at least insofar as their civil liability. I assume it’s still criminal to shoot someone who is no threat to you whatsoever and not on your property, in most circumstances? Should I assume that? And as most lawyers will tell you, EVERYONE commits some kind of minor technical offence every day so kinda everyone is technically a perpetrator…
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I am soooo pumped about jazz fest this year. /s
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The background is that there has been “constitutionally carry” and stand your ground laws in place in Louisiana for years and many high profile cases of people shooting and killing someone, then if they’re white and wait for police and claim they felt in fear of their life they get to go home (actually illegal to arrest them immediately). Unfortunately, civil courts don’t always recognize this right to kill as quickly as the local sheriff.
The new law says that if the cops claim a shooting was self defense, that makes the shooter immune from civil liability as well. I don’t know if it’s legally enforceable, but like everything else coming out of Landry’s Louisiana it is fucking terrifying
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Thanks for the background! That is useful info and also - yes - deeply, deeply disturbing
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It’s only 2 pages long, so short read. It immunizes victims if they need to use force from being further victimized through the legal system, because the process is the punishment.
It definitionally requires the force be justified first, with is defined as reasonably believing of imminent danger to life, or of great bodily harm (or attempting to illegally enter an occupied building (in which case the legislature has decided that a reasonable belief of danger to life or of great bodily harm is assumed)). This is because we’re talking about using a handgun here.
It’s not any crime, because most crimes don’t have a reasonable belief that some one will die.
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Yes, because that’s always how these laws are used, to defend victims rather than to justify shooting Black people… Not a single innocent person has died, while the killer got off to go on to grift for years after he put someone’s child in the ground…/s
Laws are not written to say “go shoot people legally”. They are written to give plausible deniability for the white public to legally lynch people they claim to fear. 
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To echo Mindy, but…you know how that’s judged right? By whether a “reasonable person” would feel threatened. And we have seen repeatedly that said “reasonable person” knows that white men will just walk around with AR-15s and shirts talking about murder sometimes, but is terrified when black teenagers have skittles. It is very much a license to kill anyone there’s prejudice against.
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See, for example, 400 years of racial stereotypes about Black men (starting at about the age of, oh, say 5) being terrifying hence the justification for use of force against them…
I’ll remind people once again, that the various laws about voting were not written to say that Black people can’t vote. they created the means by which to keep Black people from voting (whites only primaries, literacy tests, etc).
We know how these laws will be used, because of how history tells us these sorts of laws have been used.
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And then there’s the placing oneself into a situation to claim imminent danger to life. Cops do this all the time. Stand in front of or behind a stopped vehicle and claim the murder they then commit against driver and passengers was justified because the.cop feared they would get run over. Car moving, being within a dozen feet, having easy ways to step aside before collision, or the car actually functional at the time are all completely optional
And even if this law is interpreted rationally, dare I say strictly and without bias, a whole bunch of racists will think they can get away with murder anyway. Meaning a whole bunch of dead BIPOC and queer people. Won’t matter to the dead even if later on the murderer gets charged.
Seriously. Go look up some cases about cops not being charged and see exactly how far they’ve stretched the “reasonable” part.
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No it does not. It is specifically limited to immunizing someone that shoots a person with their concealed hand gun. When does anyone ever need to pull a concealed pistol and shoot someone? Certainly no scenario that “victims” are currently being sued for using force.
I don’t know if you have any experience with Louisiana or U.S. legal systems, but that description contradicts reality. To echo the posts above, this is about trying to remove consequences for “good” white people that choose to shoot someone they feel uncomfortable around.
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But what if they’re afeared… you know… of those people… /s
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