Reply #9: Look at what it allows.....

[iwishiwas]

....If the proposed bill becomes law, for example, there would be nothing to prevent one gang member from shooting another and claiming immunity because of having felt threatened by a rival.

I can see it now---"he/she was reaching for his gun" (but I was faster)....


This bill encourages escalating conflict. It sanctions shooting when there is a threat of substantial harm, allows the shooter to continue shooting until the danger is "eliminated," and frees the shooter of all civil or criminal liability for innocent bystanders who get shot.

As Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom said in his testimony in opposition to the bill: "It creates a subjective standard of the reasonableness of a person's actions in using deadly force, rather than the objective standard in current law.

In other words, the issue becomes what is in the mind of the person using deadly force rather than how a reasonable person would have reacted under the same circumstances."

Who will gainsay the shooter who claims reasonable threat if the only other witness to the shooting is now dead?

Backstrom quotes a former president of the National District Attorneys' Association who said that these "shoot first/ask questions later" laws being pushed by the gun lobby in one state after another "basically give citizens more rights to use deadly force than we give police officers, and with less review."

And, it should be said, without the training a police officer receives.