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 decisio…
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.
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.