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15 States Expand Right to Shoot in Self-Defense


It sounds like progress for civil rights, but of course the NY Times reports it as a travesty.

    In the last year, 15 states have enacted laws that expand the right of self-defense, allowing crime victims to use deadly force in situations that might formerly have subjected them to prosecution for murder.

    Supporters call them “stand your ground” laws. Opponents call them “shoot first” laws.

    Thanks to this sort of law, a prostitute in Port Richey, Fla., who killed her 72-year-old client with his own gun rather than flee was not charged last month. Similarly, the police in Clearwater, Fla., did not arrest a man who shot a neighbor in early June after a shouting match over putting out garbage, though the authorities say they are still reviewing the evidence.

Even if these handpicked isolated cases the Times presents were as bad as they try to make them sound it still wouldn’t reflect the overall intention or results of these laws. However, the picture that the Times paints isn’t quite so accurate as to what really happened.

The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller does the research:

In the first case where a prostitute shot a client he finds some important details left out by the Times using a simple tool called google. In the Tampa Bay Online he finds:

    Galas of New Port Richey shot longtime client Frank Labiento with his .357-caliber handgun inside his Port Richey home the evening of June 11.

    She immediately told deputies that Labiento had threatened her with the gun, and the evidence bore out her account, Halkitis said.

    In addition to finding a suicide note in which Labiento said he planned to kill Galas before taking his own life, investigators determined that Galas had managed to call a friend on her cell phone during the incident and the friend overheard Labiento making threats, the prosecutor said.

    “There is plenty of evidence that his plan was for him to kill her,” Halkitis said. “He can’t live without her, one of those deals.”

And so the Rottweiller asks:

    “Killed by stand your ground laws” or “killed in self-defense?” We report, you decide.

    No wonder the NYT wasn’t overly eager to get into details.

As for the second example the Times provides the Rottweiller shoots it down in flames too finding the detail left out by the Times was that Mr. Rosenbloom tried to enter Mr. Allen’s residence univited and in a manner unwelcome.

Regardless of the details left out by the Times, their story still doesn’t reflect the overall picture of these laws. The Times makes no mention of the many righteous uses of the laws of which there are many.

The rest of the NY Times article goes on using the same old over-used anti-gun cliches repeated so many times from the left. Leftie bloggers are buying the NY Times version hook, line, and sinker. One goes to the point of comparing the law to the Wild West! The Times goes on to quote one professor that does a great job summarizing the way most on the left view issues like this.

    The central innovation in the Florida law, said Anthony J. Sebok, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, is not its elimination of the duty to retreat, which has been eroding nationally through judicial decisions, but in expanding the right to shoot intruders who pose no threat to the occupant’s safety.

    “In effect,” Professor Sebok said, “the law allows citizens to kill other citizens in defense of property.”

Bill Quick at The Daily responds rightly:

    And that, of course, is a great crime in the eyes of statists, lefties, anti-capitalists, the New York Times, and other haters of individual liberty in America. And yet without the right to protect your own property with all effective force, you are a slave - because your ultimate property is your own body and your own life.

Make sure to read the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller’s version where he rips it up like no one else can.