Ideally, all homicides should be investigated to determine whether or not they were justified. In the case of a Kansas City woman, she claims that after she was assaulted she was able to access her defensive firearm and shot the offender. If the investigation shows that she did not know the offender, the shooting will likely be ruled justified. Probably . . .
From kctv5.com:
According to police, a woman in her 60s answered a knock at her door and a man who she didn’t know asked for someone the woman had never heard of. When she told him he had the wrong house, the man reportedly forced his way inside.
Once inside, the woman told police the man sexually assaulted her.
After the attack, police said the woman claimed the man started to leave the room and she was able to get a hold of a gun she had and shoot the intruder.
Just because the attacker was leaving the room is doesn’t mean he wasn’t prepared and willing to continue the attack. A common pattern that’s seen in defensive shootings is that the attacker becomes distracted or complacent, allowing the victim to fight back effectively.
The report then goes on to mention this unrelated fact:
(Police Chief Darryl) Forte said this is the 94th homicide in Kansas City this year. He also said a handgun was used in 81 of those homicides.
What’s the purpose of this little factoid, especially one that lumps together all homicides, justifiable and unjustifiable together? It seems designed to make the guns somehow responsible for the killings. This is a manifestation of the discredited “progressive elite” model of modern homicide, where most people (aside from the progressive elite and state agents), are considered to be murderers in waiting, needing only an easily available weapon to complete the equation. In fact, the vast majority of murders are committed by a small minority of people with long histories of violent behaviour.
One could ask, how many of these homicides involved the use of automobiles to transport the murderer? I suspect that the number is as high as the number of those which used handguns.
If the accessibility of guns increased the chance of homicides, then homicides should go up as the number of guns goes up. This does not happen. We often see the number of homicides go down as access to guns increases. John Lott has repeatedly shown this in his book, More Guns Less Crime.
The way to decrease homicides is to decrease the number of violent people who are likely to commit homicides. The immediate solution is to allow people to defend themselves, which also has the tendency to reduce the number of violent criminals. The medium term solution is to lock up the violent criminals so that they can’t prey on the innocent. The long term fix is to assimilate those in the violent subcultures in America into the mainstream through the time-tested methods of church, personal responsibility and the requirement and reward for honest work.
Institutions that degrade honest work as “exploitative,” evade responsibility for personal actions by validating excuses for bad behaviour, and foster illegitimate distrust of the criminal justice system all contribute to higher crime rates and homicides.
©2013 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
I have read several stories (some truly horrifying) where an attacker came back to continue or kill any witnesses to the attack. These ranged anywhere from immediately following the attack to days after the attack.
In my mind, if the predator is still in your house, you are still under attack.
If the predator is still alive or not locked up, you are still under attack.
Cough Cough *Kitty Genovese*
Just another example of the F$%^ing liberal press. They always have to add their own 2cents at the end of every story involving gun play.
The dammed if it bleeds it lead BS.
Never the good story about the defensive uses of a hand gun.
Just another story of the bad parts.
Must have been a simple farm girl. She’s supposed to yell, “hey, you dropped your wallet!” Then shoot the bastard once he turns around.
As for elites, the only murder in my township during the last twenty years was committed by an Ivy League professor. Elites kill each other all the time, and know it. But they are cultivated in their means and muster excellent defense teams.
In case it was unclear (see infra) the “wallet” joke simply meant “next time don’t shoot the b@stard in the back. It looks bad.
“Must have been a simple farm girl. She’s supposed to yell, “hey, you dropped your wallet!” Then shoot the bastard once he turns around.”
Oh gawd… I was just turning in. Now I’ll be up for another fifteen minutes, laughing. 🙂
Oh well; I’ll appreciate it again tomorrow.
Didn’t Ted Kennedy knock off a hooker? Dangerous profession.
While Mary Jo may have been at one of Teddy’s parties I missed the part where she was hired help.
As for this Kansas City story, are you implying this 60 year old woman was a hooker?
Mary Jo was Teddys secratary and lover.
I’ll thank you to more respectful of women. And your elders, you skunk.
A culture of paranoia from the federal government down. If the woman was raped, why does it matter if she knew the guy or not? Victims of date rape know their attackers (other than drug induced maybe), is marital rape still a crime, assuming they know who they are married to? If someone you know tries to kill you and you have to shoot them dead, is it murder because you knew them?……… { “Hi there jim bob, fancy you breaking into my house at 3 AM, gave me a fright. I would shoot you, but I know you, and that would be wrong. Yes, my wife is home, why do you ask? Oh, of course you can take a look at my gun, gee, it’s great to see someone I know in my living room this early. I can fix the door tomorrow sometime. Hey, how about coffee? Borrow my cell phone?, sure, oh yeah, by all means go wake the wife up, she will be thrilled to see you}.
Rant of the Day! Excellent.
Daryl Forte is an Idiot.Typical cop response” why didn’t you just get raped and be happy about it?” “we would have asked the neighbors what the name of your body was!” “next time just let us do our job and arrive too late,so we can take a report!
*typical police chief response
All the cops I know would give the woman a high five.
It goes by the forensics. Let’s assume it went down as reported and that the attacker was on his way out. Then he was shot in the back or at least from an angle suggesting he was not resuming the attack? Huge assumptions here, I know, but given them, this sounds unjustified to me. I don’t want to re-victimize this woman by prosecuting her, but neither do I want to incentivize others to commit murder.
The law has lines, whether gray, blurry, bright, or fine, for a reason: to delineate actions which our society finds unacceptable. It’s a sweet, seductive siren song that begs us to take short cuts, look the other way, and make exceptions “just this one time.” It never works. It makes it right the way saltwater slakes thirst.
If the law is substantially similar to that of Texas, then you don’t get to shoot after the immediate danger has passed. There’s a truck driver in a Houston jail, awaiting trial for shooting a fleeing, empty-handed, would-be tire thief, after disrupting the theft in progress.
There’s a pharmacist sitting in an Oklahoma prison tonight, convicted of murder, for “finishing off” a robber whom he’d previously, righteously shot. So this woman’s problems may not be over.
Truck tires are expensive (I know), but the trucker had NOT been raped (I presume). Unjustified.
The guy in Oklahoma had stopped the perpetrator (I’ve seen the video), then walked back and coldly shot him dead. Murder, pre-meditated.
A woman raped in her own home by an unknown assailant who may or may not be leaving who then shoots the guy in the back? I’m not going to sit on that jury and decide she was at that point sufficiently in control of her emotions to make complex life-or death decisions regarding the attacker’s intentions. Yes, it might have been revenge for the rape. Or she could have still felt her life was in danger. He could have seen the gun and turned away just as she pulled the trigger. Too many variables and not enough witnesses. I would definitely giver her the benefit of the doubt.
Inconclusive is inconclusive and like I said it goes by the forensics. If the experts can’t testify she did this while free of immediate danger, then I’d vote to acquit, too. Or not, depending on the evidence, but I’m not walking in there with a free pass in hand.
Sudden passion, such as red mist anger, arising from adequate cause, such as rape, is a defense (in Texas), but it’s affirmative and mitigating. That means she’d still have to go to trial and actually make that argument, and even then it would only reduce the offense by a notch and not let her off, if guilty.
All I can say definitively at this point is that this needs to go to the Grand Jury for review.
Jury nullification. Enough gray area here that they’d have to come up with some pretty damning evidence before I would vote to convict.
Forensics may provide indicators, but rarely enough direct evidence
to prove or disprove much. That conviction through forensics thing
only happens on tv. Without any other evidence any decent lawyer
can put a serious crimp on using forensic evidence. Forensic
analysis is actually no different than taking a photo of a crime. The
only difference is that the evidence is a lot smaller. An investigator
still has to piece together what happened and how. Think how many
times there has been a wrongful prosecution and even conviction
due to forensics.
For instance, just a few months a Mass. crime lab “scientist” (turns
out she really wasn’t one) was charged with evidence tampering
along with several other serious charges. The tech worked on over
60,000 cases. Over 1140 have been convicted in part to the tech’s
reports. All are now in question. Given the scope of this scandal,
how can anyone not seriously question the results of any forensic
lab.
I’d give her a lot of credit. Rape is one of those crimes where it is almost never a one time deal. It is a behavior that is difficult if not impossible to cure. The only known cure that is proven to work is a heavy metal injection. He got his, it worked, he;s cured, there will be no more victims from him. She saved more women from suffering her fate at his hands.
Chiefs just mad he won;t have the crime stats to justify more money in the budget.
Yer ma just called. She said come on home. Your diapers is all washed and ironed, jest like you like ’em.
Does it have to include “church”? I’ll be honest I’ve never been a fan of religion so I have to wonder if there are non faith oriented ways to reeducating potential offenders.
Exactly. I was thinking the same thing.
Here’s this about that: I think it’s entirely possible for people to grow up in a non-religious environment and still understand morals. There are good people from every situation, and some people will inherently have a strong sense of right and wrong. It’s definitely possible, but IMHO it’s more difficult, and here’s why: Religions teach morals from the perspective that a god or gods established rules to live by. These deities or beings of higher power or knowledge set down rules, rewards for following them, and punishments for disobeying them. Most people get that, and it’s pretty easy to convince people to follow your rules if they believe they’ll get rewarded in the here-after if they do, and punished if they don’t.
The potential problem with removing religion from the equation is, again IMO, that you remove the reason for right and wrong. You remove the “an all-powerful, all-knowing being said to do this and be happy or suffer if you don’t” part of it, and some begin to see “moral absolutes” as arbitrary and imposing. Then you get the mentality that there IS no absolute right or wrong, that doing what feels good or what one wants to do is fine if one has the ability to do it. See: Rape.
I’m a very religious guy, and I love having a moral compass that I believe comes from a higher source than human understanding. But I respect the individual right to reject that belief, and by no means assert that being religious is the only way to be moral. I think it’s a safe generalization, however, to say that if more people went to church, more people would be taught to act morally, and many (though certainly not all) crimes would decrease.
Factoid: The Chief sounds like one of Bloomer’s ass-clowns.
This is proof that no matter how innocent you know you are, there are only three things you should say to the police after a DGU without your lawyer present: (1) “I was afraid for my life.” (2) “Did you arrest him/her for trying to kill me?” (3) “I apologize for the inconvenience, but I want to speak with my lawyer before saying anything else.” Even police officers use their right to have a lawyer present after being involved in a DGU.
I would skip the apology. I would not be sorry for invoking my rights and I would not be sorry if it made the prosecutor’s attempts to convict me more difficult.
you’re not apologizing for using your rights-just apologizing for the additional time it’s going to take the officer. Being polite cost nothing and helps smooth friction.
Skip all three and ask for a lawyer. Buy time that way to gather your thoughts and compose yourself. When the dust settles you can make a statement through an attorney, ANY attorney, that flows with what the police say and are doing. In an hour or two you’ll know if they are working on convicting you or not. even if they are not prosecuting you on the spot, they are always looking for another angle to a case.
“I was in fear of my life” can be argued all day long in court and used to show you in a bad light. Asking for legal representation is not only your right but completely understandable in the situation. If anyone later asks how you could remain silent you can say, under oath, that you were speechless.
“church, personal responsibility and the requirement and reward for honest work.” I’ve never needed church or religion to tell me not to be a POS. The other three are spot on though.
“…illegitimate distrust of the criminal justice system…”
—–
What about those of us with a legitimate distrust of the criminal justice system?