Webloggin » Justifiable Use of Self Defense Laws Expanded to 15 States. NY Times Whines

Leave it to the New York Times to cover the good news item of the day with a sensational picture of a guy who has been shot and the lead as follows:

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. - 15 States Expand Right to Shoot in Self-Defense, NY Times

Imagine that, two examples which are intended to pull at the heartstrings. Must be a bad law; after all, it removes a criminals right to enter your house uninvited.

Sometimes “shut the hell up” is too subtle. If I wanted to read an editorial I would go to the editorial section.

The law gives people the right to use deadly force against intruders in their house and vehicles in some circumstances.

But the fear mongering writers over at the NY Times appear to prefer that you attack a gun wielding assailant, rapist or car jacker with a toothpick or perhaps wait until harm has been done before you can repel the criminal with force.

They no longer need to prove that they feared for their safety, only that the person they killed had intruded unlawfully and forcefully. The law also extends this principle to vehicles.

Can you imagine? You no longer need to bring crappy pants to court to prove that you feared for your families’ life when you heard that window break or a strangers footsteps tiptoeing down the hall.

In addition, the law does away with an earlier requirement that a person attacked in a public place must retreat if possible. Now, that same person, in the law’s words, “has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force.” The law also forbids the arrest, detention or prosecution of the people covered by the law, and it prohibits civil suits against them.

This has been one of the few times I have even bothered to read the NY Times online edition since Bill Keller held his print version of a conference call to warn the terrorists that we are going through their Swiss bank records. Now I am reminded why I left the rag behind.

This article isn’t a news report. It is simply another whiney liberal editorial that is posing as news. Someone apparently thinks that citing examples forms a rule or that finding an expert sympathetic to ones’ cause states an axiomatic truth.

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.

Notice the innovative way that Sebok has framed the argument. Typically the victim is the person who just happens to wander into someone’s house; because that happens all the time. Likewise, intruders must be assumed to cause no threat to the occupant’s safety. Of course they just wanted a small snack and perhaps a beer or two while they watch “Academy Award®-winner Geena Davis” solve all the worlds’ ills with a family quorum.

But that’s OK. Let them whine. It won’t be long before the hypocrites in Hollywood get on a podium flanked by their gun toting bodyguards and decry the audacity of hick America.

They have that right; unless of course they want to break into my house before they make that speech.