On November 24, 2010, 28-year-old Thomas Baker of Florida went out for a jog, carrying cash and armed with a handgun. He was assaulted by 18-year-old Carlos Mustelier. Baker responded by drawing his handgun and shooting Mustelier eight times.
Go and read the post, then come back here.
Now, you'll notice the majority of the post gives us a fairly decent narrative of the incident and the resulting judgment.
Here's where it gets interesting.
We're told
The NRA couldn’t be happier with the results, calling its law "common-sense."Then in the next paragraph we get
The family and friends who loved Carlos Mustelier feel differentlyWait a minute.
Granted Mustelier's family and friends lost him to the shooting, but let's not forget what we were told earlier:
18-year-old Carlos Mustelier and his 16-year-old friend saw Baker as they headed to a Beverage King in the neighborhood. Mustelier told his friend he was going to rob Baker. After leaving the store, which was closed, they saw Baker passing them again. "I'm going to bam him. I'm gonna knock him out," Mustelier announced.Mustelier planned to rob Thomas Baker.
Then we get
No one should paint Carlos Mustelier as a hero in this incident—-he was wrong to confront and attack Baker that night.Okay. That's true, given what we've read so far.
But here's where it gets interesting:
On the flip side, Baker is no hero either. It’s hard to pinpoint the definition of "Looking for Trouble," but leaving one’s house after midnight with $950 in cash and a loaded handgun must be close.See what's going on here? Notice the sly, subtle switch-up?
Let me translate: "Carlos Mustelier was wrong to confront and attack Baker. But if you leave your house after midnight armed and carrying a lot of money? Why, you're a bad guy, you're up to no good, and you're planning to randomly kill someone. (wink-wink, nudge-nudge)"
Notice how they conveniently forget that Mustelier attacked Baker with the intention to robbing him.
According to CSGV, we should be on Mustelier's side because he was shot with a gun.
In other words, we should be on the side of someone intent on breaking the law.
To that I say: No.
Uh-uh.
Fuck that.
4 comments:
A good response that I have seen to this type of garbage-thinking is that if a woman is not covered head-to-toe in a burlap sack and gets raped is that she was asking for it being dressed provocatively.
Notice how upset they are about a robber getting shot during the commission of a violent felony. If it was reversed and the innocent guy was killed during the robbery then we hear nothing but chirping crickets. Hypocrites!
They lack a moral compass. If they cared about reducing violence they would not make excuses for violent criminals.
I'm tired of them hiding behind their false appeals for "public safety" and "reducing crime" to promote gun control when they do not care about these laudable goals. I say they do not care about them since all of their proposals do not do anything to address them.
Gun control measures are USELESS.
Molon Labe!
Braden beat me to my favorite response to this kind of bullshit, so I will not rehash that territory, except to say that the "asking for it" "defense" is a particularly disgusting and despicable one.
Your title, however, says it all; in Ladd's universe, "self-defense" simply does not exist. There is only "gun violence", and whoever is perpetrating the "gun violence" is the person in the wrong... at least, so long as that person is a law-abiding firearm owner. If the person doing the "gun violence" is just a scumbag criminal raping/murdering/robbing someone, well, then, he is obviously just a victim of society and the lax "gun laws" "forced" on the world by those NRA crazies.
I wish I could understand that mentality. I can identify it, and I am completely revolted by it, but damned if I can see the A -> B -> C progression. Probably because there is not one, aside from "guns and ownership guns are evil", which is not something I hold to or can understand either.
@Linoge: I now read a lot of really smart pro-2A blogs (like yours) so I likely got the "asking for it" theme from you. Thanks!
The world is upside-down when the gun-control, anti-freedom types do implement their legislation.
We have to stomach the "blame the victim" defense for criminals, we see increased violent crime since criminals know their victims will be defenseless, and some nations will do the perverse prosecution of citizens who defend themselves with a firearm! That is sick.
The fact that the Brady Campaign and others, seem to always lump the suicides and criminals into their bogus statistics shows that it is their fascination with the gun, not the violence or deaths is what matters to them. Likewise, I am revolted by their unachievable goals and their tactics.
Finally, I do not believe Joan Peterson and her comrades for a minute that they do not want the total ban of firearms and their confiscation. The stakes are too high to listen to their proposals and they have zero credibility.
@Linoge: I also wish I could understand the mentality you mention. That of "no self defense, only gun violence." I believe a lot of that mentality is rooted in a denial of reality. A "head in the sand" outlook on life. Never acknowledging that there are bad people in the world who will go and do bad things.
Now I'm an optimist. I believe that at some future point, there will be a gigantic paradigm shift and we will have a world in which such bad things happen rarely. It may not be a true utopia, but it will be a world in which we all recognize the interconnectedness of humanity, that hurting one person hurts everyone else.
Yeah, call it a pipe dream. But I think one day we'll get there.
Until then, I acknowledge the existence of bad people. Wolves.
And while there are still wolves out there, I plan to be one of the sheepdogs.
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