Gov. Ron DeSantis is cracking down on a “lawlessness” problem that doesn’t exist in the Sunshine State.
The Miami Herald reported Tuesday that the governor has drafted “anti-mob” legislation that would expand Florida’s Stand Your Ground law to allow armed citizens to shoot looters or anyone engaged in “criminal mischief.”
This gives vigilantes, hotheads and the simply mistaken too much leeway to open fire.
DeSantis would let more killers in Florida off the hook with expanded Stand Your Ground | Editorial
It is still obvious that the Herald’s hate for a very successful Self Defense law remains high. At least they have not made the claim (yet) that the law is racist and bad for minorities. But let’s continue with the first article on the law:
Shortly after the announcement, a DeSantis’ administration attorney circulated a draft version of the bill — titled “anti-mob legislation draft” — to the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, according to emails and a copy of the bill draft obtained by the Herald/Times as part of a public records request.
DeSantis pushes expansion of Stand Your Ground law as part of ‘anti-mob’ crackdown
And here is where you hear the first alarm about the possible BS and outright bias by the Herald: They don’t show the bill they say they have. It seems we are too dumb to read and interpret the proposed bill, so Our Betters at the Herald have deemed unnecessary for us to read it. It is not like the Herald has ever steered us wrong and we should trust them with our lives.
I am going to wait till the bill is officially filed to give my opinion on it or at least till a confirmed version of the proposal is available from a trustful source. Anything else will be taken with a huge grain of salt.
And a reminder for the Miami Herald: The reason you are now with less of the infrastructure of a high school newspaper is because rather than informing us so we could make our minds, you told us so and we were supposed to believe you blindly.
PS: I wondered why this proposed bill did not get a derogatory nickname like Lefty Journos usually do. The obvious choice was the “You Loot, We Shoot” bill, right? But then I figured that in Florida that is not a negative concept, but just the way we have been protecting homes and business since we had guns and hurricanes. And Law Abiding Floridians of all colors and languages like it very much.
What I want to see is the law changed to treat the mob as a single criminal entity.
Right now if someone in the mob tries to throw a brick at you, you can shoot back. But you have to be absolutely sure you hit only the brick thrower. When the brick thrower dives into the mob and uses his comrades as human shields it takes away your ability to defend yourself.
If the mob is one entity, you don’t have to identify the brick thrower. You can open fire into the mob because the mob collective threw the brick and you are defending yourself from the whole mob.
Thin out the meat shields and the true Antifa terrorists will have no one willing to let them (Antifa terrorists) hide behind them.
Massad Ayoob covered this: We have Antifa cowering behind people truly being peaceful, no Mens Rea (or none that you can prove) so shooting an innocent person will get you a murder charge.
Sorry but I have to agree with his side.
Plus, it would be a violation of the First Amendment.
No.
I assume Ayoob is right as far as what the law says today, but if it does, the law is wrong and needs to change. I explained a while ago why this is so: if a part of a crowd is committing felonies and you protect them by letting them hide within the larger group, then that larger group is accessory to the crime. And for some crimes (in some states at least) there is no distinction between being accessory and the actual perpetrator. For example, if a murder is committed as part of the commission of a felony, all the participants in that crime can be convicted of murder, without worry of who among them pulled the trigger.
If you allowed shooting into a mob once a single person became violent, it’d make for a heck of a variant on the heckler’s veto. Any peaceful gathering could be ended by one member of an opposing faction tossing a brick. While there may be some justification for enforcing an expectation that the gathering police its own, there’s an awful lot of “gray area” here, if we don’t want our first amendment rights to be voided by a single member of an opposition willing to use violence.
I’m interested in suggestions for how you’d suggest writing a law to address both violent mobs’ use of human shields, and peaceful gatherings not being subject to this particular variant of the hecker’s veto.
Back when BLM first started to be a “thing” and they took to blocking highways as a protest tactic, we had an incident in Nashville where a lady tried to make a right turn and a protester jumped in front of her car.
She hit them, and it was all caught on video by the local news.
The State Legislature was in session, and since Nashville is the capitol, many legislators saw the news report and how the driver was absolutely, positively not at fault. Yet local activists were talking about suing the driver.
So, the Legislature quickly enacted a law to specifically cover this case: A driver cannot be held civilly liable if someone intentionally jumps in front of their car and the driver is not acting recklessly or intentionally tries to hit them.
The local, state, national, and *international* news media all portrayed the new law as a free license to kill for anyone who wanted to mow down protesters.
It wasn’t true, of course, but that’s what they ran with. Perhaps they thought the courts would strike it down later or something, but instead the result was…
Highway blocking protests immediately stopped.
It seems that the Tennessee-flavor of BLM protesters don’t want to be run down, so rather than risk it, they started to behave better.
I imagine that the Florida-flavor of *actually* peaceful protestor will read the news and decide they don’t want to be caught by a stray bullet from a cousin humping redneck vigilante out looking to murder colored people, and instead stay home.