Fearing for life, pharmacist kills gunman

“He was in fear (for) his life,” the chief said. “He has a right and state law allows him to defend himself.”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/Attempted_pharmacy_robbery_turns_deadly.html

while the kid is face down on the ground...self-defense my ass.

...shooting someone face down would be considered self-defense there.

It plays right into the hands of the most reactionary, regressive aspects of this society. It celebrates the fact that a citizen felt the need to kill someone in order to feel safe. It subtly (or not-so-subtly) advocates for the position that the real solution to crime is not reducing poverty, it's not increasing access to mental health care, it's not working together to build a more egalitarian, more democratic, more CIVILIZED society. No, it's making sure that every adult is armed to the fucking teeth.

This is the attitude of the Sarah Palin voters, of the teabaggers, of the 20% who still love George W. Bush. It's an attitude that anyone pretending to be a Democrat should have grown beyond.

We can have a debate about gun policy, but can we please stop pretending that incidents like this represent ANYTHING good about the current state of our nation?

No one is or should be happy to have shot and or killed anyone. I hope I never have to use a gun to defend myself. If anything DU is over board with anti gun posts which are an attempt to divide the DU community with the sensational criminal use of a gun.

Seriously, what is the point of your post, if not to suggest that what happened was right and good and proper? Do you even know the name of "the gunman" who was shot? It's like he's some hollywood extra in an action movie.

I guarantee you that someone will post -- on this thread about an anonymous dead guy -- something about how guns save lives. They will then go on to differentiate between "innocent" lives an "criminal" lives -- the assumption being that anyone on the wrong end of a "law-abiding citizen's" handgun is, by definition, a criminal who needed to be killed for the good of society.

You will not see one single pro-gun advocate ask the questions that most true progressives should be asking: why was that robber in the pharmacy to begin with? And how did he get his hands on a weapon? And what is going on in that neighborhood that the pharmacist felt the need to keep a gun on the premises?

That is how you really prevent crime: by getting at the root causes and working to solve the problems. You don't do it by setting up the Wild Wild West at your local Rite-Aid.

Since when should anyone be interested in why someone becomes a criminal with a gun? Like we should be blaming video games or the war experience or poverty or the poor person with mental problems or the police who didn't defend the public or the government for not providing food, shelter and money for crack? pffft

Note that I said "most", not all. And I said "accompany" most posts. Then I gave a specific example of a post I expect to show up on threads like this.

Now, can you explain how you got "all pro gun self defense posts are GOP talking points" from that?

because someone might say that it's a GOP talking point ...like if the GOP says it then no Dem can also say it. I suppose you are in charge of censorship here for anything that remotely resembles a GOP talking point.

And, when is the last time that sounding like a right-wing reactionary kept anyone from posting on this forum?

The truth is that many posts on this forum would feel right at home in a right-wing board. You see posts about "frivolous lawsuits", when any real civil libertarian would be in favor of a citizen's right to sue under the law. You see characterization of shooting victims as targets, simply because they are accused (not convicted) of some illegal activity.

What you rarely see from pro-gun advocates is any real attempt to address the root causes of crime in our society. If you bring that up, you'll most likely get laughed at.


Oh, and you also see whining about "censorship" when anyone disagrees with them.

Coincidentally, the post right before mine.

You say this plainly here:

"You see characterization of shooting victims as targets, simply because they are accused (not convicted) of some illegal activity."

On several threads you have characterized career criminals, thugs with raps sheets that run into volumes, "as the least among us", and declared that if only we gave them more welfare money, eliminated poverty, had midnight basketball, better social interaction, etc etc etc, some magic combination of social services would eliminate psychopaths and the crimes they commit.

A guy with a gun, walks into a place filled with people and announces a hold-up has already decided he has no qualms about endangering his victims. I have looked at too much surveillance tape where some hapless convenience store clerk, often a single mom struggling on the barely above minimum wage job, gets executed even after turning over the till.

But you defend that kind of predatory bastard, someone who remorselessly kills a complete stranger just to steal as some poor misunderstood soul, disenfranchised by society, yada, yada, yada..........

If only we gave them more money their sorry ass would not get off on the thrill of victimizing others. Robbery as often tangentially about the money just as rape is tangentially about sex. The objective is to induce the terror and humiliation in the victim. It is about holding the power over those they CHOOSE to rob. That is one thing you constantly overlook, that the robber made the choices, he decided on method and victim both!

............and as far as being accused and not convicted, I bet you a dollar to a donut, if some punk shoves a knife, gun or even a tire iron in your face and demands your watch, wallet and credit cards that you won't need need the corroboration of eleven other people to decide if he's really a robber?

So what will you do? Hope if you can't outrun him maybe you can outrun your date?

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You either meant it seriously or you didn't. Which is it?

reduce the number of illegal guns that are easily available off the street. We need to work to eliminate the crippling poverty that leads many people to a life of crime. However, when faced with a split-second, life-or-death decision, sometimes the only way to defend yourself is with deadly force. You just don't have to time to consider the would-be robber's particular situation. Doing so could cost you your life, or the life of a loved one.

I'll also respectfully submit that most pro-gun advocates are not quite honest about their desire to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. One of the most powerful tools we had for reducing black-market weapons was the right to sue gun manufacturers for negligently supplying criminals through the overproduction of their product. That right has now been taken away from us, and I bet you won't see one single 2nd-half 2nd Amendment advocate standing up for *those* civil liberties.

Do think it would be ok to sue Budweiser for "negligently supplying" drunk drivers?

Or is the second-half of the 2nd Amendment the only civil right that counts?

You ducked it via the same means you ducked my post in another thread. There is such a thing as malicious prosecution("malicious use of process" in some areas), and suing gun manufacturers for producing a weapon that is later used in a crime is malicious. Despite that, as I said in the other thread, I wouldn't mind seeing the ban repealed, if the "loser pays" rule were passed in the US to help protect legitimate business and punish the perpetrators of these ridiculous claims.

you're right about that!

It was a nice try, but fortunately it failed. Lawsuits would have effectively put the gun manufacturers out of business or would have firearms so expensive that only the rich could have afforded them. (That's the 800 pound gorilla in the room as the bottom line of gun control is it is designed make sure only the ruling elite can own firearms.)

The most powerful tool for reducing the number of firearms in the hands of criminals already exists. It's called enforcing the laws we already have.

The pro-gun advocates here routinely talk about the root causes of crime. They also routinely propose ideas to get guns out of the hands of criminals. In the mean time though you accuse us of all "pretending" to be democrats because we feel that people have the right to self protection while we work on the root causes of violent crime.

David