Blatant misinformation about Stand Your Ground laws and principles continues to abound.  Sometimes, when you have to tell someone “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” it’s not an insult, but simply a statement of fact.

Here, Howard Nemerov imparts a much needed dose of the curative after a typical BS editorial in a major newspaper:  http://pjmedia.com/blog/e-j-dionnes-stand-your-ground-fantasies/ .

Knowledge is the only cure for ignorance.  However, when you have metastasizing willful ignorance – sometimes complicated by long-festering intentional deception – it takes repeated and massive doses of truth to fight the infection.

1 COMMENT

  2. Mas said, “Sometimes, when you have to tell someone ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ it’s not an insult, but simply a statement of fact.” Saying such things probably ought to be limited to being done online behind an anonymous pseudonym, rather than being done face to face, however. Asking someone to turn down their music also isn’t an insult, but if they take it as one you may end up in a confrontation which requires you to kill them. Saying anything face to face which anyone could take as an affront in today’s CCL society could end up with you dead. Robert Heinlein was only partly right when he said, “An armed society is a polite society.” What he should have said is “An armed society is a stay-at-home and keep-your-opinions-to-yourself society.” Why? Because the gun-carrying person who you state your opinion to may make a mistake about exactly what constitutes self-defense, emboldened by SYG-anywhere and SD-immunity laws to have a “I’ll be damned if you can say that to me, pilgrim” attitude. And people who make mistakes about just what self-defense justifies, such as Raul Rodriguez, kill people like Kelly Danaher without justification and go to prison. We liberals who make mistakes about what technically constitutes self-defense just take the risk of being corrected. At least if we keep it online.

  5. ‘There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know’. Thomas Chalkley, 1713. OK, so the quote gives Dionnes a bit too much credit but then so might the concept of “willful ignorance”. I prefer the theory of Innate Stupidity.

  6. Andrew Branca also wrote an excellent article on legal insurrection regarding Dionne’s editorial.

    it takes 2 to nourish misinformation: one to supply, another to consume. the ignorance is equally shared by both sides.

  7. The old saying about leading a horse to water applies here. Liberals know what they know and don’t want to be bothered by the facts. Liberal should be a four letter word!

  8. I dunno, Dave. I’ve had good luck in seminar and debate environments standing face to face with my own name and explaining the truth…

  9. Mas, I love your writings…why don’t you wrete some columns for major newspapers to reach a larger, and much more diverse, audience. Much of what is read here is preaching to the choir, so to speak. If you would like to change people, you have to reach them first.

  10. I am of the opinion that E. J. Dionne is completely aware of the SYG facts. He simply chooses to run with the racially-charged “research” and such to advance his own agenda. He is not interested in reasoned conversation or an open exchange of ideas; he wants to impose what he and his like-minded leftists think is a gun-free utopia, and any leverage that might be obtained will be jumped upon like a duck on a June-bug. Further example above from another comment supports this; the concept that a CCW/CCL owner may always and everywhere resort to the use of a firearm to settle any disagreements is ludicrous, but accepted as a given… and shouted from soapboxes at any opportunity.

  11. The problem with “Duty to Retreat” vs. Stand Your Ground” is that the former assumes all deadly force incidents are equal.
    Several years ago, while on a vacation that carried us through Montana, myself, my wife, and two pre-teen children spent the night in a picturesque little town in the western part of the state. The next morning we decided to walk from our motel room to a small cafe two blocks away for breakfast. Half-way there a man in a small pick-up truck came sliding to a stop, blocking our path, rolling down his window and screaming at us ” I know who you are and I’m gonna’ kill all of you!”while leaning over and reaching under his seat. I had a small high standard two shot .22mag derringer in my jacket pocket which I immediately gripped while still inside my pocket, positioned myself between him and my family, telling my wife to run with the kids back to the motel office and call the police. I remained, blocking his ability to see their escape as he continued to threaten to kill us all, still leaning forward with his hand under the seat. After seeing that my family had made it back the motel and fearing turning my back on this crazy man, I maintained my position, feeling I had the tactical advantage, as I was standing and mobile while he was sitting in the confines of the truck leaning forward.He continued ranting, cursing me and verbally threatening my life. After about five minutes (seemed like an hour ), he yelled “f___ you” and burned off as he left.
    Forty five minutes later, the on call deputy arrived, telling me that he knew the suspect, relating that he was a meth-head Blackfoot Indian that probably thought I was a “narc”.
    Had I been forced to use deadly force that morning, my actions could have been interpreted as violating “duty to retreat”, but “SYG” would have bolstered my defense.
    My actions that morning, my thought processes, should not be ( and were not ) clouded by some liberal, feel good, “duty to retreat”. Situations like this should be decided only on “reasonable and prudent”.

  12. It is hard to expect any true Liberal, to accept, or admit to, anything about Firearms, except they are Bad, Cause Violence, and Can Never, Never, be trusted, except maybe hands of other rich Liberals, who don’t need to defend themselves, since most of them hold Public Office, at some level, and so have automatic Government Protection, for FREE ANYWAY.

  13. Dave (the liberal, non-Uncle one) feels safe because he is in what used to be a free country, protected by the greatest military force in the known universe, and dedicated police and committed civilians who carry and keep the criminal element down as much as possible. In some of the hell-holes around the world he would have to watch his words very carefully. He is free to dream that life on this earth could actually be better than it is here in America today. His utopian ideas have been tried around the world back in the twentieth century, the bloodiest century ever. His big-government ideas, probably inspired by Karl Marx, have been tried and failed in Russia, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, China, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea.

    He believes that a government which can’t run the Post Office profitably, (I like the P.O., but it should at least break even), and can’t put up a website that works, should be entrusted with our healthcare. He wants bureaucrats making decisions about brain and heart operations, and rationing out healthcare to those the government judges are worthy of it. I’m sure citizens who vote for Democrats will be judged to be worthy of healthcare.

    Dream on, Dave, while you still can. Your ideas are being implemented now, and your dream will turn into a nightmare, just as it did back in the 1900s.

  15. I am reminded of the response of a famous physicist to a confused questioner following his colloquium presentation: “That’s not right. That’s not even wrong.”

  16. Mas, et al…

    Are there good examples of WHY we need SYG? Court cases, new clips, etc where someone used deadly force, but got in trouble simply becuase they did not “retreat”?

    Thanks

  18. Chris, yes there are. I do not know the court case names or the states they were tried in off the top of my head. However, I’m sure Mas knows. But I’ve heard multiple times about the one where a woman kills her murderous ex-boyfriend who is coming after her, and she is tried b/c she didn’t “retreat” (apparently she was supposed to leave her home when he began telling her he would come by and kill her and her daughter, according to the prosecution). When he had her cornered in the basement, it was still the opinion of the prosecution that she should have tried to escape out the basement window. I forgot if the jury embarrassed the prosecution with a not-guilty verdict or not, but that’s the one that comes to mind when I think of the necessity of “SYG” and “Castle doctrine” laws: vicious prosecution who will, in willful ignorance of all sanity, try the victim and paint the criminal of the piece as the victim.

  19. @Chris: I can’t give you any examples, but the fact is that in every trial in which self defense is an issue every possible legal requirement will be scrutinized in detail to find any flaw in the facts which would disqualify the defense. The requirement of retreat — if reasonably and safely possible — often proves to be such a flaw because it requires the defendant to act coolly, analytically, and altruistically at the very point at which emotion and instinct, not to mention hormones, say to fight back. Of course, that is also what society should expect of all its citizens, i.e. to avoid the use of force, much less deadly force, if reasonably possible without risk to themselves or others, so as to avoid disturbing the public peace, and should especially expect from someone who is lawfully carrying a deadly weapon.

  20. Old Fezziwig feels deprived because he is in a truly free country, protected by the greatest military force in the known universe, and dedicated police and committed civilians monitor and preserve civil rights by advancing the rights of racial and religious minorities, atheists, LGBT individuals, and women and by carefully protecting the rights of those accused of crime, who the law presumes to be innocent until proven guilty. He is free to dream that life on this earth could actually be better than it is here in America today by being reversed in time back to the antebellum South. But his utopian ideas have been tried and defeated in the American Civil War back in the nineteenth century, the bloodiest war ever fought on our soil. His love of oppression, probably inspired by Jefferson Davis, have been tried and failed every country of the world.

    He believes that the best government is no government, and what government there is should only be elected by white people who own property. While believing that there should be no government, he also believes that there should be a government monitor in every bedroom to ensure that sex is only between heterosexual married adults of the same race and that any fetus which is conceived is carried to term (whereupon it can be discarded like a used car). He does not care a whit for the fact that despite having the best healthcare system in the world that there are millions of people who cannot afford to utilize it; he opposes the Affordable Care Act, but has no plan, motive, or intent to find a different solution to the problems it is intended to address.

    Dream on, Fez, while you still can. Your dream ended in 1865 and the South will never rise again.

    Were some of those presumptions unwarranted? What’s good for the goose…

  21. The case of the woman shooting her ex when he cornered her in the basement sounds like Commonwealth (Massachusetts) vs. Shaffer (it may be Schaefer or Shaeffer). At the time, that state apparently imposed a duty to retreat even in one’s own home. A post on this blog in July of last year includes a video of Mas making a speech at the Cato Institute re: self-defense legal issues and Stand Your Ground laws. IIRC, he cited a case in which a citizen was effectively railroaded after justifiably shooting an attacker. There was also the case of Harold Fish in Arizona, who went to prison after shooting a weirdo who attacked him. I don’t know if “Stand Your Ground vs. Duty to Retreat” was an issue in that case, but it did show how a prosecutor can suppress evidence (the jury was not allowed to know that the deceased had a history of violent crimes, because the defendant presumably didn’t know it at the time of the shooting), and paint a false picture (the county attorney made a big issue of Fish’s “deadly” hollow point ammunition, to make him look bloodthirsty and trigger-happy).

  23. Mas, I’m trying to play nice. Actually Liberal Dave and I are playing nice compared to Syria, I guess. Dave, I’ll try to answer you briefly, so my fingers don’t fall off from typing.

    You don’t quite paint me well, but how could you? Good try. I will admit to having some fondness for Calvin’s Geneva and Puritan New England, but those were not utopias. I believe with Jeremiah that, “The heart of man is desperately wicked.” Utopia is not possible in this world. Ancient Israel was directly ruled by God, and that was still not utopia. You liberals are pushing your laws on those of us who prefer small, Constitutional government. How would you like it if Christians came into power in some state, outlawed abortion and told stores they had to close on Sundays? You would howl. Well we are howling because you are pushing us in the wrong direction. How long can people with such strong disagreements live together in the same country?

    I want everyone to have the best healthcare in the world. I want an 85-year-old death row inmate to be cured of cancer before being executed. The best way to have excellent healthcare is to use the capitalist system, augmented by private charitable giving by doctors and those with money. Government should just be a referee. Liberals are very generous with other people’s money. The perfect is the enemy of the good. America was good. Trying to make it perfect will ruin it. Healthcare wasn’t broken, but the government is trying to fix it anyway. Our government hasn’t even won a war since 1945. It is incompetent, but that is the fault of the voters.

  24. Mas, I think that Fez and I have just been having fun with one another so far, but I’ll take your caution and not reply to anything he said in his last post except one point and I’ll try to be entirely serious and non-snarky about that. I certainly admit that we’re way off topic for this forum, even if we don’t have the knives out.

    That one thing is this: “You liberals are pushing your laws on those of us who prefer small, Constitutional government. How would you like it if Christians came into power in some state, outlawed abortion and told stores they had to close on Sundays? … How long can people with such strong disagreements live together in the same country?”

    The fact that you would make that comment, using those particular examples, Fez, bothers the heck out of me. If you’d referenced the ACA or environmental regulations or welfare I would have just shrugged and thought, “So sad, too bad, elect better politicians.” But the examples you gave — all of them — aren’t “laws” but matters protected by the Constitution. How would I like it? Not much, but if you had stopped with the word “Sunday,” I could rest assured that the courts would uphold the Constitution and put those things to right in due course. But your “live together” closing comment is chilling.

    If I were going to be glib, I’d say back to you what was said to me back in the late ’60’s and early ’70’s when I was marching in antiwar demonstrations: America, love it or leave it. (Yeah, I’m not just a liberal, I’m an _old_ liberal, but don’t presume that I’m anti-military, our soldiers — including Vietnam vets — are heroes, but that’s another discussion for another time.) But I’ve always hated that insanely un-American slogan and it would be the height of hypocrisy for me to say it to you today, even in jest.

    What’s chilling about it is the lack of realization, or perhaps acceptance, that what you’re howling about is now simply the way it is. The things that you find most objectionable are protected by the Constitution, the bedrock, most fundamental source of our law. Yes, I know that the common response is, in effect, “Where? Where does it say that?” But the Supreme Court has decided those things. I also know that you want to treat those decisions as changeable, mutable, provisional, unauthorized, correctable through court-stacking, or at the very least finagleable, but that’s just denying reality, much like those tax protesters of years ago who thought that they could avoid paying their income taxes by appealing to the Magna Carta or the Northwest Ordinance. Continuing to complain or to make veiled threats of insurrection about them is no more than a temper tantrum over, first, the fact that the things you always thought were yours turning out not to be true and, second, the realization that the only real and legitimate way to regain those things – Constitutional amendment – is never going to succeed. Why not? Because as many people as may want to reverse those things, the vast majority of Americans are not willing to start tampering with or making exceptions to Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion under the First Amendment.

    How long can people with such strong disagreements live together? If the premises upon which our nation was founded have any substance, forever. That’s because the lack of freedom you perceive is in actuality you just not getting your way. In truth, it is the expression, not limitation, of freedom that you’re complaining about. It’s the freedom of Americans not to be governed by a theocracy which constrains their own beliefs. It’s the right of women to be free in their reproductive choices without the imposition of your beliefs about when life begins. It’s the freedom of store owners and consumers to not have to limit their commercial activities because of someone else’s belief that one particular day of the week is “holy.” You’re free to be a Christian, to not have an abortion, and to refrain from shopping on Sunday; what you’re actually unhappy about is being unable to impose those practices on everyone else. But _that_ restraint on you is exactly what the Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights, was intended to do: to make it possible for people with such strong disagreements to live together in the same country without any group getting the upper hand over another.

    Again, what’s chilling about that is your open failure to realize or accept that fact. You’re not howling at liberals’ laws or doings, you’re howling at the freedom upon which this nation is founded.

  25. Non-Uncle liberal Dave,
    Not picking a fight, but I am curious. When you were participating in the anti-war protests, was it because you agreed with or disagreed with the government?
    Did you man up, face to face, to confront those comrades who spat upon and cursed those that you now, four decades later, say are “heroes”? Was your admiration of Viet Nam vets made manifest in your younger anti-war life, or did it come as an epiphany in later years when most 60’s liberals came to realize that the way they had treated returning soldiers didn’t look good on their resumes as they tried to convince folks of their tolerance?

  26. In a thread that has become somewhat derailed, I have three respected blog commentators now who each have one foot on ad hominem arguments and the other on a banana peel.

    Argue the issues, not the personalities, please, fellas. I don’t want to have to close this.

  27. The people who believe other people should always retreat probably think, that if you shoot, you should shoot the gun out of their hands like in the old cowboy movies. I guess they also believe, that if you are alerted to the bad guy breaking in and position yourself behind cover and in the dark, you should retreat hoping the bad guy will not shoot you in the back.

    Yes, there is a point where the defender should cease action and wait for the police to arrive. I believe in the Dunn case, at least as I understand the circumstances, he was wrong to run firing after the retreating vehicle. Wrong even if someone initially pointed a weapon at him.

    However, I believe, the person who is attacked has ever right to take every advantage he can, as long as he considers his life and well being or those under his protection at risk.

  28. Mas, I apologize to you, liberal non-uncle Dave, and fellow commentators. Everyone has deeply held beliefs and when one feels those beliefs are being attacked we tend to respond.
    You’re correct, we should stay on subject and avoid clashes of personal ideology outside the topic at hand. Disagreement can be enlightening, personal attacks, not so much.

  29. Having read the articles referred to I would make the following observations:

    None of the articles and reports have great methodology, either for or against, but it does appear, based on the limited number of Florida cases given, that you are most likely to go to prison if the victim is white, least likely if you are white.

    However, as an outsider (U.K.), the most striking aspect is how quickly US citizens turn to firearms, whether legally justified or not – a lot of the cases seem to occur around bars or parties or altercations in public spaces – call me naive but this side of the pond most of these would result in, at worst, a busted nose or just wounded pride.

    I would agree with the writers who feel that the ‘Stand your ground’ law seems overkill, especially considering most US legal systems seem to be supportive of most half reasonable claims under traditional ‘Self Defence’ laws.

    BTW, I own firearms, shoot in local pistol and rifle competitions and for game but would definitely qualify as a pinko liberal by US standards. (but for God’s sake please keep Piers Morgan!)

  30. (I’m dropping the “non-Uncle” bit from my username because the user who signed in as “Uncle Dave” doesn’t seem to come around much any more and it doesn’t make much sense without him around. But there’s still a lot of Dave’s.)

    @Dennis: Actually, it came much earlier than that, and had nothing to do with my resume. After graduating and while in my 20’s I became a Civil War reenactor. I’d always been a history buff and was particularly interested in that period and was (and am) comfortable, believe it or not as you will, around guns. Though the moccasins were kind of make-believe, it was nonetheless a walk-a-mile-in-his-moccasins experience for me and caused me to reevaluate some of my prior opinions.

    I didn’t change my mind about that war or about my opposition to it, but it did change my mind about the men who fought it. Fortunately, I had never disgraced myself by being disrespectful or less than kind to one of them or, for that matter, to them as a whole (I grew up in yessir and nossir rural Texas; my mamma — who was also a liberal, by the way, as is my father — would have whalloped me if I had been disrespectful to a soldier), but I did think ill of them in my mind.

    I thus became ashamed of how I felt and, after I came to know some of them, admitted my feelings to them and apologized to them for them even though I had never acted on those feelings. Even though I’ve repented of them, I nonetheless remain ashamed of those youthful feelings to this day. Men and women who are willing to lay down their lives for our country and who serve honorably are heroes and deserve nothing but our respect.

    (Oh, and before someone asks, my reenactment unit did both Union and Confederate impressions, but by far more Union than Confederate. For me it was a historico-military pursuit, not a political statement, so I could, as they say, swing both ways, though I was glad that we were more often in blue than in gray. I gave it up as too time-consuming when I got married in my 30’s.) (And, oh part two, yep, I’m a gun-owning liberal, I bought my first .22 when I was 13 and by the time I was in my 50’s owned a gun safe full. Pistols, rifles, and shotguns, black powder and modern, including even an assault rifle or two. Now approaching retirement, I’m back down to just a couple of .22’s. But I just had all of them mainly to punch holes in paper. I’ve never felt the need to carry in self-defense and, while I can’t say that I’ve never hunted, it was never a passion for me.)

  31. Liberal Dave, thank’s for the clarification. We have some things in common. I was born and raised in rural, and as you probably know, conservative north east Texas. My college was Stephen F. Austin, we’re probably about the same age. I knew very few in our age group that were in favor of the war, but I also knew no one who questioned their duty to serve when called. One of my room-mates was a hard core liberal from Dallas, but we became good friends even though our politics were diametrically opposed. Folks can usually find common ground no matter what their persuasion as long as they’re civil in their discourse.

  32. Charles, sorry, keeping Piers Morgan is simply out of the question. Although we realize you don’t want him back, perhaps some other country could be persuaded to accept him. However as Idi Amin, the former dictator thug of Uganda found out, sometimes it is difficult, given your past, to find new living arrangements.
    At this point all we want to see is the back of his head getting smaller, and smaller and smaller….

  33. It seems that liberals are liberals are liberal and they are incapable of seeing those who disagree with them as actual people.They see them as demonized stereotypes and that’s that.

    So they are free to malign their opponents intentions, decry their positions and mock their humanity; knowing that any and all who disagree are unutterably wrong, arguably evil and definitely disagreeable.

  34. Charles in England:

    I appreciate your comments , but I think they are product of an incomplete understanding of the issue.

    Please note, in Florida there are more than 1.15 million active Concealed Weapons Permits, in Texas more than 750,000 Concealed Handgun Licenses. Other states have similar participation numbers. Statistically, in every jurisdiction, concealed firearms licensees are moreeven more law-abiding than sworn peace officers.

    The current flap over “Stand Your Ground” laws is an attempt to deligitimize the common carriage of weapons for personal defense – an idea that is as much abhorred by Leftists in this country as it is on your “Scepter’d Isle”. The stated Leftist meme, is of course simple- if Joe Citizen is required to run from the guy with a knife who is attempting to rob him, then Joe doesnt really need to carry a gun; running away will solve the problem non-violently.

    So we have the intentional demonization of Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws by everyone from the New York Daily News, New York Times,and The Economist, to MSNBC cable and CNN to people such as our current Attorney General and Mr. Obama and the Vice President. The drumbeat is rivetting – the claim is bald “SYG leads to gunfights in parking lots and to the shooting of innocent minority youths and the perpetrators act with impunity and SYG covers their crimes”.

    Delivered breathlessly, of course.

    Not true. Not even a little bit.

    1) The “gunfight in a parking lot” over things of trivial matter, are statistically never involving people with a lawful carry permit. Most commonly, at the end of the day, they are altercations between two people, both who already have a criminal background and are carrying illegally; two thugs who are gettin’ back at each other for a “dissin'”. As such, Stand Your Ground CANNOT be invoked, as the combat is mutual, and likely both parties are engaged in illegal acts.

    The image of the upstanding Anglican vicar shooting it out in the parking lot with the a local civil engineer after a fender bender is absolute fiction.

    2) As has been noted here, actual invocation of SYG in Florida most frequently is not cross-racial, it usually involves a black shooter and a black attacker.

    3) Racial differences in the statistical data merely demonstrate what is well known- the bulk of felonious attacks that would justify deadly force as a response, and the invoking of SYG, are committed by black attackers.

    4) Every self defense claim, anywhere in America, such as Florida, Texas, New Jersey, etc. follows the Common Law doctrine , as well as a statutory requirement in most places – the actor’s actions must be REASONABLE in light of the circumstances at the time.

    It is a bald-faced lie perpetrated by the malicious or ignorant ( and possibly the maliciously ignorant) that ” I saw this young man and he looked at me cross-wise and so I was scared and I shot him”, is some sort of justification or defense. Michael Dunn was convicted for his un-reasonable response.
    It is not LEGAL, and has nothing to do with Stand Your Ground, actually.

    SYG says I am not required to attempt to flee when under a felonious and deadly attack. I am not required to respond to the upraised knife, or looming blow from a club, or a gun pointed at me by turning my back on my attacker and attempting to run. Attempting to run will merely allow my attacker to stab me in the back, or strike my exposed head with his club, or shoot me at his convenience.

    Some of us cannot flee- the young mother with a toddler, the elderly gent with a cane, my lawyer who only has one leg and can but stiffly hobble on his prosthetic limb. Some of us might potentially be able to flee, but attempting to do so creates a tactical disadvantage for the victim which may prove impossible to overcome; attempted flight increases risk of death or injury to the victim in many , many cases.

    Stand Your Ground allows me to meet force on force, if necessary, knowing I will not, at a later, calmer time, have some grand juror or prosecutor, while they sit safe and comfortable in a fancy leather chair in the Grand Jury Room ask me ” why didnt you try to run before you defended yourself ?”

    With SYG, I can respond with 1) I was someplace I was legally allowed to be, ie, a public street 2) I am not a member of a criminal street gang 3) I was not committing any sort of crime other than a traffic offense 4) I did not provoke the incident – and when the decedent presented a knife and said “give it up or else…”, thereby indicating that he was willing to kill me and committing ( in Texas) the crime of aggravated robbery, I defended myself lawfully against a felonious and deadly force attack.

    The Grand Jury and the prosecutor and the police will still look at “necessity” and “reasonable-ness” and what the statute specifically says. As an example, since I am a Texan, Texas Penal Code Section 9.32 says I may use deadly force to defend myself against deadly force, or to prevent the imminent commission of murder, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, robbery , aggravated robbery and aggravated kidnapping.

    I contrast this with the report I received of an occurrence in Hyde Park, London several years ago. A man and his wife were accosted by thugs as they walked through the park. The thugs threatened rape and robbery, and the intended victim demonstrated he is a real man of honor- he defended his wife with a pocketknife. Apparently he cut up the thugs fairly extensively. When Bobby arrived, not just the would-be rapists were arrested, he was too, for “malicious wounding”. The Crown Prosecution Service was more interested in punishing the defender of the woman than they were in dealing with the thugs. He was punished, with a sentence more severe than the would -be rapists.

    The average British mind has been cowed into submission by those who insist that only “agents of the Crown” can defend anything; all others are to meekly submit, cry for help and hope for the best. The average Brit no longer understands the concept of lawful self-defense, a concept at the very heart of the Common Law. I do not find it surprising that it has difficulty with the concept of Stand Your Ground.

    I will keep my ability to defend myself, and Stand Your Ground is an important component of that ability. The Law-abiding must maintain their ability to protect themselves as they go about their lawful pursuits, or else we cede the streets to those who prey upon the labor and persons of the innocent. If we do that, they win.

    I would be pleased to discuss this further if you wish

    Regards
    GKT

    Taggart
    Plano, Texas
    GKTTXAG@aol.com

  35. What I’ve found over the years is that people pick up attitudes and convictions by osmosis. They don’t know where they picked up an idea, and they have no personal stake in it, but they’ll go nonlinear trying to defend it. Anything that counters their unfounded belief is viewed as a personal attack.

    I’ve come to view this as a normal human thing, and just work around it when I can. No amount of reason, fact, or logic I’ve employed has changed any of those persons’ convictions.

    I’ll occasionally try anyway, but it’s more of a “wrestling with a pig” situation than anything else.

  36. Mas – “Robert” proposed that you (and others) somehow gain access to a much larger audience. I have suggested this in previous posts on several sites. Articulate, intelligent, knowledgable authors such as you, Andrew Branca, John Connor, et al – simply must be heard if indeed, the voice of common sense and reason are to ever win out. It is precisely because the majority of Americans do NOT understand the laws but instead, blindly accept the views and opinions of people with personal agendas – agendas driven by fear and ignorance – that we have these useless arguments. Every time I have had the opportunity to explain something, I can see the lights going on. Educating the masses is the answer.

  37. Don and Robert, I have a feeling most of those outlets don’t want to hear what I would have to say.

  38. Mas said, “I have three respected blog commentators now who each have one foot on ad hominem arguments and the other on a banana peel.”

    If there’s peels, there must be bananas, and since there’s more than one and since no one just keeps unpeeled bananas around, there must be banana pudding. Now we may all disagree with one another’s politics, but to roughly paraphrase my friend Sara Lee, nobody doesn’t like banana pudding. So, rather than offering an olive branch, can I invite my interlocutors to sit down to a friendly bowl of ‘nana pudding?

    I think Mas would be happy to serve.

  39. “Don and Robert, I have a feeling most of those outlets don’t want to hear what I would have to say.”

    Have you exhaustively tried ?

  40. Robert, I haven’t. It’s all I can do to keep up with the stuff people want me to write, without trying to sell myself to folks who don’t want to hear what I have to say.

  41. Mas – I’m desparately trying NOT to sound like a suck-up, but you have taught me so much since I began reading your words and I thank you for that. It is partially because I AM so grateful, but more that I feel a responsibility – a duty – to share what I have learned. Robert – everyone, we have to find a way to “preach to the masses!” We are not on a level playing field here and in my opinion, this is the only hope for our future as gun owners/enthusiasts. Above all, we simply must quit bickering amongst ourselves and unite to educate the ignorant on the subjects that really matter – the ones that we all agree on and believe in. The anti-gunners just love it when we fight – “divide and conquer” sound familiar to anyone? We’re better than that!

  42. After posting yesterday, it occurred to me that in what is supposed to be a democracy, Massad Ayoob shouldn’t have to sell himself. You would think there would be interest in what EVERYone has to say, not just the so-called “rich and famous.” If things truly were “fair and balanced,” Massad (and others) would be sought out to balance the discussions. This is the very crux of the problem – the bottomless pockets of a very few dictate what everyone hears and sees. The citizens who actually know what they are talking about get a very small opportunity, if at all. The exposure we DO get – as good as it is in all the firearms publications – simply is not enough. Surely somebody (other than the NRA, which has been doing nearly all the PR heavy lifting) should be able to figure out a way to be heard by the masses. Gentlemen?

  43. All of the major, and many of the minor, newspapers have an online op-ed submission webpage. You just paste your text in there. They decide to print it, or not. No salesmanship required. Many of the things you write here would fit perfectly, with little or no modification.

    Not trying to create more work, just increase effectiveness for all of our benefit.

    Keep up the good work Mas !

  44. Robert – your suggestions are exactly the type of things that we must do – on a unified, local AND national scale. Thanks for the idea – keep them coming! I WANT everyone to “create more work,” as you put it! I remember the first time I read something written by Massad Ayoob – besides being educational (I’m constantly re-reading stuff of his I’ve read before – and learning something new), AND “page-turning material” – it was INSPIRATIONAL! He – and many others – can and would do the same to anyone who read them. Do all of you really believe in our rights and want to keep them – or do you want to sit back – and wait for the “grabbers” to come for our firearms? Because they will! All of us must cease to think the opposition will just go away. They aren’t – and won’t. The truth can set the ignorant free – but only if WE make it known to them. Get busy, people!