Get a pistol, .38 caliber snub nosed automatic, learn how to diassemble and clean and to safely handle. Get a concealed weapon's permit. Go to a gun range for situational training. Talk to others, as you have, but about self defense. This progressive county you live in Maryland is useless. They're going to pretend that this was the first…
Get a pistol, .38 caliber snub nosed automatic, learn how to diassemble and clean and to safely handle. Get a concealed weapon's permit. Go to a gun range for situational training. Talk to others, as you have, but about self defense. This progressive county you live in Maryland is useless. They're going to pretend that this was the first time this ATM was hit or that they couldn't patrol all ATM's? Was the assailant Black? Think about going to the bank during a weekday to make checks payable to cash for cash. I don't know why people use ATM's? Develop situational awareness. Had you had a weapon that you were competent with you could have waited until the assailant started running away and then left him a calling card. For some reason I think of a jingle from a war novel long ago(Leon Uris? ), "This is my rifle, this is my gun(penis). One is for fighting , the other is for fun."
I was mugged in my youth, in Berkeley. The assailants were black, from Oakland. I also lived in an affluent enclave of Montgomery County MD for decades, before moving to my current location. In both cases, you have affluent areas surrounded by or in close proximity to non-affluent areas. Would-be assailants are attracted to where the money is, and the DC metro system affords them easy and cheap access to affluent areas. Post George Floyd, police protection is practically nonexistent, because what cop in their right mind would want to risk ending up in prison for life as a result of a criminal dying during an arrest? Same goes for citizens engaging in self-defense, as others have noted on this comment chain.
Montgomery County is one of the highest-taxed places in the country. I moved to a place with much lower property taxes, and no state income tax. My thinking was that, even if police protection was no better, at least I didn't have to pay through the nose for public services I'm not going to get. The demographics here are also different, and that was part of my calculus. I also like to pay cash for groceries and local services, and the closest bank branch to me has had a private security guard posted in front where the ATM machines are since last year. So far, I have no regrets about moving away from MontCo, even though the place to where I moved is not nearly as convenient for shopping and walkability, and has other downsides. In a way, I'm kind of grateful for having been mugged early in my life, because the resulting situational awareness has served me well throughout my life.
This is where libertarian-conservative responses become hydra-headed. Because this tack - the individual initiative to procure a gun and learn how to use it - is another legitimate response from a right wing pov, and not appealing to the community for collective action in restoring law and order.
Citizens of Wheaton and MoCo Maryland need to watch the film "Who shot Liberty Valance"
Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) is a frontier thug who steals, assaults and kills as it suits him. Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart) is the young city slicker lawyer who comes out west to start his career. Doniphon (John Wayne) is a frontiersmen who knows the law in the frontier is enforced by the point of the gun.
Stoddard is morally indignant that Valance be brought to justice. No one supports this because they know once Valance is out of jail - if he even went to jail - he will seek revenge. Doniphon is not afraid of Valance because he has a gun and is willing to use it .
[Doniphon has just faced down Valance in the diner]
Tom Doniphon: "Well, now; I wonder what scared 'em off?"
Dutton Peabody: [poking fun at Stoddard for his idealism] "You know what scared 'em - the spectacle of law and order here, risin' up out of the gravy and the mashed potatoes"
Stoddard realizes the only fix is for him to stand up to Valance. And Stoddard does this because his idealism isn't just words but actions to back up his words.
MoCo residents need more Stoddard's and Doniphons. But they run off the Doniphons and, well, without a Doniphon, the Stoddards only have words and criminals know words will never hurt them.
There have been a number of prominent cases of people using firearms or physical force to defend themselves and others in circumstances that would have been considered indisputably justified in almost every jurisdiction only a few decades ago, but who nevertheless were prosecuted or made to go through various kinds of hell by the decision-makers in the local criminal justice system.
The message is clear: "Self-defense is no longer a natural right but effectively illegal here, don't even think about it, especially if your identity is outranked by the assailant's identity, and take your lumps, and mind your business if someone else is taking the lumps, or else, your own government will crush you like a bug."
True. It appears to me that progressives view theft as a means of economic redistribution. As long as no one gets hurt they feel the thief gets what he/she deserves and the victim is just paying a penance that society owes.
There are legal defense funds for people who are involved in use-of-force situations. I highly recommend anyone who expects they may have to use force in self-defense join one of these groups. I would also recommend Andrew Branca's book "The Law of Self Defense".
There are also some practical things you can do to decrease your risk of legal issues. The first of which is to *use your voice*. You want to do two things when someone presents a threat:
1) make it crystal clear that they intend to harm you. If you say "stop following me!" loud and clear and they continue to follow you, then their likely intent is to hurt you.
2) Draw attention to the situation. Even if you don't have the ability to stop them physically, drawing attention to the situation changes the risk/reward calculus.
There are definitely some high profile cases in which prosecutors have tried (with varying levels of success) to overturn centuries of precedent of common law regarding self-defense, but the reality is that most legitimate uses of force in self-defense never go to trial. I know several people who have defended themselves many times while never going to trial, despite living in very blue cities in very blue states.
Simply put, prosecutors will only charge you if either there is a good chance you are guilty of an actual crime, or if it is a high-profile case and they will face political backlash if they don't bring charges.
Just as there is "risk homeostasis" for when psychology intersects safety regulation, there is "prosecution homeostatis" for when criminal justice intersects with political imperative. Anything people do that might be temporarily legally effective to decrease their chance of prosecution will cause the system that wants to prosecute them to react and adjust the rules so that those steps no longer work. Like a legal arbitrage opportunity, once exploited, it can't be used again.
In general the institution of district attorney prosecutors in the US is in a state of utter degeneracy, in large part because prosecutors have license to abuse their discretion both in letting violent felons skate and subjecting their political enemies to hellish, selective prosecution and then seeking obscenely unjust and excessive sentences for petty infractions. Until these avenues of rampant abuse are somehow brought under control, no advice is good advice.
I agree with your diagnosis, but not your prognosis.
Not that prosecutors aren't going to try to do all that you say, but rather that they are still limited in time and money, and many were clearly chosen for reasons other than pure competence.
It is simply not inevitable that they will be *able* to restore "prosecution homeostasis" even if they wanted to.
Now, it is still best to fix the abuse at its root (or move to a saner jurisdiction) but being hard to convict is still a rational strategy. Not just individually either - being hard to convict robs these prosecutors of power. The more that people see these prosecutors defeated in court, the less they will fear them.
Defeating a malicious prosection in court is a Pyrrhic victory, because you're still out the cost of your lawyer, and the prosecutor gets paid and doesn't go to prison. There is no substitute for changing that.
If you belong to a legal defense fund/legal insurance, the cost of your lawyer is covered.
If you have conducted yourself well and have your legal expenses covered, it is unlikely you will even go to court. The prosecutor likely won't want to bother with a case that won't add to their win percentage.
Defending yourself and your property was much more of an option when this was true for all prosecutors. Nowadays most prosecutors in large cities are the Soros type, malicious allies of thugs who eagerly prosecute people they know perfectly well have done no wrong, such as George Zimmerman and Kyle Rittenhouse. Outrages like those will continue until someone punishes those malicious prosecutors.
Rittenhouse is a great example of how, even when you have bad lawyers and a malicious prosecution, it is still hard to get a conviction against someone who lawfully defended themselves.
Rittenhouse was a poster boy for lawful self-defense, and the jury clearly saw that.
But don't get caught up in the streetlight effect. Lawful self-defense occurs all the time in this country without it ever becoming national news or even going to court.
In many places like Montgomery County, the same system which pleads helplessness when it comes to finding a robber will spare no expense to locate, arrest, and throw the book at anyone who even threatens a robber. The press likes to reward conservative critics of other conservatives with "strange new respect". Likewise, our era's indolent Keystone Cops will suddenly display "strange now adept" competence and vigor when going after the right kind of suspect.
Who said anything about shooting? Simply make the thug aware he will be shot if he persists.
Now listen, I would do exactly what Arnold did. I have no desire to shoot anyone or face the legal consequences of exercising self defense in a progressive locality. But the truth is that making it easy for criminals to succeed invites more criminality.
See my comment about Liberty Valance. I talk like a Stoddard but unlike him I would not commit suicide for my idealism. I would need a Donophon and I don't think many exist.
Get a pistol, .38 caliber snub nosed automatic, learn how to diassemble and clean and to safely handle. Get a concealed weapon's permit. Go to a gun range for situational training. Talk to others, as you have, but about self defense. This progressive county you live in Maryland is useless. They're going to pretend that this was the first time this ATM was hit or that they couldn't patrol all ATM's? Was the assailant Black? Think about going to the bank during a weekday to make checks payable to cash for cash. I don't know why people use ATM's? Develop situational awareness. Had you had a weapon that you were competent with you could have waited until the assailant started running away and then left him a calling card. For some reason I think of a jingle from a war novel long ago(Leon Uris? ), "This is my rifle, this is my gun(penis). One is for fighting , the other is for fun."
I was mugged in my youth, in Berkeley. The assailants were black, from Oakland. I also lived in an affluent enclave of Montgomery County MD for decades, before moving to my current location. In both cases, you have affluent areas surrounded by or in close proximity to non-affluent areas. Would-be assailants are attracted to where the money is, and the DC metro system affords them easy and cheap access to affluent areas. Post George Floyd, police protection is practically nonexistent, because what cop in their right mind would want to risk ending up in prison for life as a result of a criminal dying during an arrest? Same goes for citizens engaging in self-defense, as others have noted on this comment chain.
Montgomery County is one of the highest-taxed places in the country. I moved to a place with much lower property taxes, and no state income tax. My thinking was that, even if police protection was no better, at least I didn't have to pay through the nose for public services I'm not going to get. The demographics here are also different, and that was part of my calculus. I also like to pay cash for groceries and local services, and the closest bank branch to me has had a private security guard posted in front where the ATM machines are since last year. So far, I have no regrets about moving away from MontCo, even though the place to where I moved is not nearly as convenient for shopping and walkability, and has other downsides. In a way, I'm kind of grateful for having been mugged early in my life, because the resulting situational awareness has served me well throughout my life.
This is where libertarian-conservative responses become hydra-headed. Because this tack - the individual initiative to procure a gun and learn how to use it - is another legitimate response from a right wing pov, and not appealing to the community for collective action in restoring law and order.
Citizens of Wheaton and MoCo Maryland need to watch the film "Who shot Liberty Valance"
Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) is a frontier thug who steals, assaults and kills as it suits him. Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart) is the young city slicker lawyer who comes out west to start his career. Doniphon (John Wayne) is a frontiersmen who knows the law in the frontier is enforced by the point of the gun.
Stoddard is morally indignant that Valance be brought to justice. No one supports this because they know once Valance is out of jail - if he even went to jail - he will seek revenge. Doniphon is not afraid of Valance because he has a gun and is willing to use it .
[Doniphon has just faced down Valance in the diner]
Tom Doniphon: "Well, now; I wonder what scared 'em off?"
Dutton Peabody: [poking fun at Stoddard for his idealism] "You know what scared 'em - the spectacle of law and order here, risin' up out of the gravy and the mashed potatoes"
Stoddard realizes the only fix is for him to stand up to Valance. And Stoddard does this because his idealism isn't just words but actions to back up his words.
MoCo residents need more Stoddard's and Doniphons. But they run off the Doniphons and, well, without a Doniphon, the Stoddards only have words and criminals know words will never hurt them.
There have been a number of prominent cases of people using firearms or physical force to defend themselves and others in circumstances that would have been considered indisputably justified in almost every jurisdiction only a few decades ago, but who nevertheless were prosecuted or made to go through various kinds of hell by the decision-makers in the local criminal justice system.
The message is clear: "Self-defense is no longer a natural right but effectively illegal here, don't even think about it, especially if your identity is outranked by the assailant's identity, and take your lumps, and mind your business if someone else is taking the lumps, or else, your own government will crush you like a bug."
True. It appears to me that progressives view theft as a means of economic redistribution. As long as no one gets hurt they feel the thief gets what he/she deserves and the victim is just paying a penance that society owes.
(I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice)
There are legal defense funds for people who are involved in use-of-force situations. I highly recommend anyone who expects they may have to use force in self-defense join one of these groups. I would also recommend Andrew Branca's book "The Law of Self Defense".
There are also some practical things you can do to decrease your risk of legal issues. The first of which is to *use your voice*. You want to do two things when someone presents a threat:
1) make it crystal clear that they intend to harm you. If you say "stop following me!" loud and clear and they continue to follow you, then their likely intent is to hurt you.
2) Draw attention to the situation. Even if you don't have the ability to stop them physically, drawing attention to the situation changes the risk/reward calculus.
There are definitely some high profile cases in which prosecutors have tried (with varying levels of success) to overturn centuries of precedent of common law regarding self-defense, but the reality is that most legitimate uses of force in self-defense never go to trial. I know several people who have defended themselves many times while never going to trial, despite living in very blue cities in very blue states.
Simply put, prosecutors will only charge you if either there is a good chance you are guilty of an actual crime, or if it is a high-profile case and they will face political backlash if they don't bring charges.
Just as there is "risk homeostasis" for when psychology intersects safety regulation, there is "prosecution homeostatis" for when criminal justice intersects with political imperative. Anything people do that might be temporarily legally effective to decrease their chance of prosecution will cause the system that wants to prosecute them to react and adjust the rules so that those steps no longer work. Like a legal arbitrage opportunity, once exploited, it can't be used again.
In general the institution of district attorney prosecutors in the US is in a state of utter degeneracy, in large part because prosecutors have license to abuse their discretion both in letting violent felons skate and subjecting their political enemies to hellish, selective prosecution and then seeking obscenely unjust and excessive sentences for petty infractions. Until these avenues of rampant abuse are somehow brought under control, no advice is good advice.
I agree with your diagnosis, but not your prognosis.
Not that prosecutors aren't going to try to do all that you say, but rather that they are still limited in time and money, and many were clearly chosen for reasons other than pure competence.
It is simply not inevitable that they will be *able* to restore "prosecution homeostasis" even if they wanted to.
Now, it is still best to fix the abuse at its root (or move to a saner jurisdiction) but being hard to convict is still a rational strategy. Not just individually either - being hard to convict robs these prosecutors of power. The more that people see these prosecutors defeated in court, the less they will fear them.
Defeating a malicious prosection in court is a Pyrrhic victory, because you're still out the cost of your lawyer, and the prosecutor gets paid and doesn't go to prison. There is no substitute for changing that.
If you belong to a legal defense fund/legal insurance, the cost of your lawyer is covered.
If you have conducted yourself well and have your legal expenses covered, it is unlikely you will even go to court. The prosecutor likely won't want to bother with a case that won't add to their win percentage.
Defending yourself and your property was much more of an option when this was true for all prosecutors. Nowadays most prosecutors in large cities are the Soros type, malicious allies of thugs who eagerly prosecute people they know perfectly well have done no wrong, such as George Zimmerman and Kyle Rittenhouse. Outrages like those will continue until someone punishes those malicious prosecutors.
Rittenhouse is a great example of how, even when you have bad lawyers and a malicious prosecution, it is still hard to get a conviction against someone who lawfully defended themselves.
Rittenhouse was a poster boy for lawful self-defense, and the jury clearly saw that.
But don't get caught up in the streetlight effect. Lawful self-defense occurs all the time in this country without it ever becoming national news or even going to court.
Also a good way to start to get of theives. Such thinking helps perpetuate robbery. Time for you and others to start to change the legal system
In many places like Montgomery County, the same system which pleads helplessness when it comes to finding a robber will spare no expense to locate, arrest, and throw the book at anyone who even threatens a robber. The press likes to reward conservative critics of other conservatives with "strange new respect". Likewise, our era's indolent Keystone Cops will suddenly display "strange now adept" competence and vigor when going after the right kind of suspect.
Who said anything about shooting? Simply make the thug aware he will be shot if he persists.
Now listen, I would do exactly what Arnold did. I have no desire to shoot anyone or face the legal consequences of exercising self defense in a progressive locality. But the truth is that making it easy for criminals to succeed invites more criminality.
See my comment about Liberty Valance. I talk like a Stoddard but unlike him I would not commit suicide for my idealism. I would need a Donophon and I don't think many exist.