Originally published at: Texas grand jury declines to bring charges against a man who shot and killed a 9-year-old | Boing Boing
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so sad that this trigger happy idiot won’t do any prison time, BUT there is a very strong case for wrongful death to proceed and hopefully get some sort of justice.
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The linked article says she was nine years old.
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The grand jury also heard the proper-soundin’ accused’s name and then heard the foreign-soundin’ victim’s name and made the decision accordingly.
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Edit made, thanks.
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“A jury of one’s peers” becomes meaningless when all of one’s peers are monsters as well.
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Ah, yes, the old “my dollars were worth more than the life of a nine-year-old child who had nothing to do with the attempted crime against me.”
We are a fucking monstrous society.
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That there is your good guy with a gun. Well, pard – ya fucked up but ya got away with it. Get me off this planet.
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Is this still the future?
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What happened to the requirement that deadly force may only be used by an individual to protect their life or to protect the life of another person, and that the force may only be applied in kind? AFAIK police are the only citizens that can escalate force disproportionately. (Silly me, I live in Canada, not in the Upside Down.)
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There are huge swaths of Americans who carry firearms in the explicit hope that they will one day have a chance to kill someone committing a nonviolent property crime.
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Expect more stories like this, especially after the “good guy with a gun” actually succeeded (for certain definitions of succeed) in that mall shooting the other day. The media is treating him like a hero instead of a lucky idiot. Even the police are praising him. I can remember when the police would respond to something like that by saying, “While we’re glad it worked out this time, we do not condone people taking the law into their own hands.” This nation is headed towards some amalgam of Gotham City and Idiocracy.
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So, he fired a gun into a random car and killed someone inside the car. A car and person that were not involved in any interaction with him at all.
I am unable to comprehend how firing into a random car can be considered “defense” of anything.
This is the society that many seem to want to live in. One where the only law is the gun you carry. Where every interaction or simply venturing outside comes with the possibility of being shot by someone. I’m also unable to comprehend how anyone can support and want a government or politicians where this is the goal. Yet, it’s clearly the goal many campaign on.
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The US is, as always, inconsistent. In some states, e.g. Maryland, you have a duty to retreat. Others are stand-your-group. (e.g. Texas and apparently California) How each interprets these is also inconsistent.
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You need to understand that in the U.S. a white man can kill any human being he wants without consequence (as long as it’s not another white man). A Black man cannot accidentally give someone a paper cut. All the rest of us are spread out on the continuum between these two end points.
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I had these exact thoughts when arguing with a 2A musket-fucker. They’re begging for a reason to use deadly force. It’s like a nightmare midlife-crisis, spread to all and sundry.
Feel/regain/retain power, own a gun!
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Never mind that, how is shooting a fleeing suspect a defense of anything?
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If you’re implying that the grand jury was racist… no this wasn’t racist Texans letting a white guy off, that’s a fact.
I don’t know the details of this case but I’m as outraged as everyone else that it was charged with manslaughter.
The key factors in thinking about use of force to respond to a threat are immediacy, blamelessness, and proportionality. Is the threat immediate? Is the defender a prudent person who didn’t do anything to cause or escalate the situation? Is the force proportionate? From my read of the news article, it sounds like there wasn’t immediacy. The threat was over, he was firing at unidentified targets, and it made no sense.
I think Texas does allow defense of property. Most states don’t, and even in states that do, it’s going to be a very thin legal defense.
Here’s the thing with the entire premise of carry outside the home for self defense; you better be right, and you better be good. That is how it is defended legally and morally.
If you miss either one of those two things, you have to be prepared to face actual consequences. Otherwise, we have no society at all.
If you are wrong, you’re shooting the wrong person and should face consequences.
If you are not good (and I mean skills here), and you shoot the wrong person because of inaccuracy, you should face consequences.
What we cannot tolerate as a society is armed civilians who face no consequences for being wrong or unskilled. If that is the situation, then all private guns need to be banned until each owner establishes the ability to be consistently right in their target selection and skilled in their use of weapons. We require neither right now, and that’s how we have the highest firearm fatality rate in the developed world.
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