Agreed, it can - but he was more heavily armed. You enter into a situation you have no natural presence in (not your home, not your neighborhood, not even your state). And then you introduce an “assault” rifle into the mix? And multiple people come toward you? Ans you were the victim?
I agree it’s not a slam dunk. But all it will take is one email exchanged prior to the night in question where the shooter says something like “can’t wait to light up some antifa libs!!!” - which my guess is there’s a high likelihood of - and it’s over for the shooter.
I do think people underestimate the damage that even low level crime does to people, the scars from having a picked pocket or a house broken into can be lasting.
Pissing into some old ladies plants may not seem major in the grand scheme of things, but those plants mattered to her.
Because not all lives matter. People don’t want others to say all lives matter instead of black lives matter because it diminishes BLM but because they want to dehumanize whites. They want to put an emphasis on black victimhood at the hands of whites, whiteness and white supremacy. This is why they ignore black on black crime (black criminals are also victims). This is why you even hear white protesters yell “kill whitey.” They see themselves as evil and need to atone for the sins of white people and be ever vigilant of their inherent racism.
Because you have to start at the beginning - a homicide has taken place. After that, you determine if it was justified under the circumstances. And self-defense isn’t assumed - especially not in a circumstance like this.
You just want to skip to the part where we assume self-defense and all go home. Doesn’t work that way.
Well clearly that would be major evidence for the prosecution, and would change the variables considerably.
In fairness, it’s an open carry state, and it’s hardly like the group approaching were ambassadors of peace.
Like I said, this is something for jury to hash out. The guys involved don’t seem like stand up members of the community, but we’re all missing facts right now.
Irrelevant. A football team comes at you unarmed but you have a .50 cal. What do you do? A victim of a crime has no obligation to make things a fair fight.
What crime was the kid a victim of prior to shooting a person in head? At that point, he was the one illegally carrying an assault rifle, and also illegally assembling after a curfew order. Heck, he very likely was menacing as “low ready” would be considered a lethal threat according to the Uber driver who shot the dude in Austin, TX that had an AK at low ready.
The legality of him showing up with a firearm isn’t the issue - it’s the factual context of the act of carrying what he was carrying and why that inform motive. It’s perfectly legal for me to have a pocket knife and having one is of no issue to anyone - but me deliberately trying to sneak one past security in a federal courthouse is suddenly a very bad thing, even though it’s perfectly legal to possess.
I actually predict it won’t make it a jury, precisely for the reason you noted after that - additional facts are yet to be discovered. My guess is they’ll have ample info to show he had motive to show up and hurt someone - even if it was just overheated tough talk by a young, immature kid.
Assuming you can convince a jury that the people coming at him were acting criminally (as opposed to trying to protect themselves), yeah, he does have an obligation - read the damn statute. The act of defense has to be reasonable.
Kid hadnt been touched, so not sure how its aggravated assault. All he knew was someone lunged at him. Thats it.
Its still illegal, even if you don’t get caught. Except in sports.
That uber driver approached the guy with the AK by aggressively accelerating his car into the group of people that he was in. Not to mention, didnt this kid go running off into the night to confront/approach others?
They were coming at an armed person. How is that protecting yourself? It sounds like the opposite. And keep in mind that earlier the person he shot was yelling at the kid to shoot him.
A 17 year old getting chased by someone over 30; sounds reasonable.
Because people who think someone might shoot them will occasionally come up and try and disarm the armed person - especially if it is a bigger weapon you can get your hands on to control (like grabbing a barrel). This is often how a mass shooter is stopped.
