On November 5, 2021, Kyle Carruth fatally shot Chad Read in the chest in a child custody-associated dispute taking place outside Carruth’s Texas home.

On March 31, 2022, news media announced that a special grand jury convened in this case returned a “no true bill,” meaning they declined to indict Carruth on any criminal charges for his having killed Read. Accordingly, it appears that Carruth will face no criminal liability over this event (although he continues to sued civilly over his killing of Read). //

At the moment that Kyle Carruth shot Chad Read in the chest with a rifle, Read was standing entirely still some dozen feet away, not presenting as an imminent deadly force threat to anybody nor as an imminent threat to any property. A killing cannot be justified in the apparent absence of any such imminent threat, and therefore the killing of Read by Carruth in the absence of such an apparent imminent force threat cannot be legally justified. //

(If you’re wondering why I’m suggesting this looks like manslaughter, and don’t go all the way to full-blown murder, it’s because the immediately preceding heated physical confrontation between the men strikes me as the kind of “adequate provocation” and “hot blood” that would typically mitigate what would otherwise have been murder to voluntary manslaughter.) //

MajorWood | April 8, 2022 at 10:52 pm
My takeaway has always been that the mom orchestrated a situation to get her ex killed. she provoked the ex by not having the child where he was supposed to be and at the new “highly aggitated” boyfriends house. I just feel bad that the victim took the bait in the heat of the moment. //

when the deceased stepped onto the porch and committed an assault, that was burglary under TPC 30.02. This is the key to this case. (Again, other states’ definition of burglary may be different, but here you have to address Texas law as it exists.)

Ergo, the deadly force analysis is be under TPC 9.42(2)(A) — was deadly force reasonably necessary to prevent / stop the commission of burglary (which, because the deceased was still on the porch when shot, will boil down to whether the shooter reasonably believed that the deceased was going to continue to commit assault).

Just as Texas law allows deadly force to prevent/stop “theft at nighttime,” it also allows deadly force to stop the commission of burglary as defined in the TPC. This doesn’t require an imminent threat to the person — which makes it different than most other states.

If Georgia, Nebraska, and Indiana follow through and join Ohio and Alabama, the U.S. will have 26 states that have some form of constitutional carry on the books.

The people of Ukraine have a chance because they are armed. Imagine if they had been training with these weapons their whole lives. //

The world is captivated by Ukraine’s resistance to Russian invasion, especially since much of Ukraine’s resistance comes from ordinary citizens taking up arms in defense of their homeland.

Ukraine has a fighting chance in part because it has taken dramatic steps to provide its people firearms. More than 25,000 automatic rifles and 10 million rounds of ammunition have been distributed to volunteers in Kyiv.

In the United States, even supporters of draconian gun control are announcing they “stand with the brave Ukrainian people” in their armed resistance. The glaring contradiction between these positions — supporting gun confiscation one day and gun distribution the next — seemingly hasn’t dawned on many of these ideologues. //

Ukraine is certainly moving in the right direction on gun rights, something that can’t be said of the entire United States. The chairman of Ukraine’s parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, says the new law is meant “to ensure that every citizen receives the sacred right to self-defense.”

The people of Ukraine have a chance because they are armed. It’s a lesson the world should never forget.

tobybrut
26 minutes ago
These cases are superficially similar but have a huge difference between them. In the Coffee case, Coffee was considered the bad guy and was arrested and tried. In the Taylor case, the police were assumed to be the bad guys with lies about Taylor being innocently in bed being thrown around in order to railroad the police officers. In both cases, you saw criticism by conservatives on the policies surrounding how these officers ended up getting in shootouts. Whether it was lies about no-knock warrants or whatever, it wasn’t the officers who screwed up. It was the people who put them in that position. The left kept lying about the Taylor case, yet the right pointing out the lies are somehow hypocrisy when there were no such dynamics in the Coffee case. There were no leftist lies to debunk because the left was utterly silent on the case. In that respect, politically, these cases are not remotely similar.

In both cases, conservatives were fine with the outcome. Both boyfriends got off on murder charges, where people understood in both cases, self-defense was an issue. The boyfriends didn’t know they were cops shooting at them and had legitimate rights of self-defense. In the Taylor case, one officer was charged with indiscriminately shooting into the next apartment. Whatever happens to him is fine with whatever the law says. If he goes to prison according to the law, that’s the way it should be. Coffee is going to prison for a gun charge, which is fine because it has nothing to do with his right of self-defense.

The big difference in the Taylor case was that the left was trying to destroy the cops before the case was even investigated. In the case of Coffee, nobody had heard of the case until a few days ago, so people had a different perspective with which to decide since the jury had already resolved it. We saw the Coffee case, heard the jury’s decision, and thought, good, it seems the law was followed and the right decision was made. There were no politics about anti-cop versus pro-cop surrounding that case, merely the right of self-defense. The only reason conservatives brought it up was to fight the politics surrounding Kyle Rittenhouse and how both were self-defense cases. The only reason Coffee’s race mattered was because the left accused Kyle of white supremacy. If the left had said nothing about Kyle, no one would have ever mentioned the Coffee case as it likely would not have generated any controversy. Was the Coffee case opportunistic for refuting the left’s arguments against Rittenhouse? Yes, because the same result happened for people of different races as it should. Opportunistic is not the same as hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is saying Coffee was innocent while Rittenhouse was guilty. The hypocrisy is all on the left.

Absent the Rittenhouse case, I can say conservatives would have responded to the Coffee case the same as they did with the Rittenhouse case. Justice was done and the right decision was made. The Taylor case was different in that the emphasis was on the cops, not the boyfriend, as to who did wrong. The boyfriend was practically an afterthought while the left demanded the cops be charged. But in all three cases, it seems justice was done. Where is the hypocrisy on the right?

LGB //

VRW
28 minutes ago
I think the real question is why is the Left choosing to use the Taylor case to push their race-baiting defund the police systemic racism narrative, but not the Coffee case.

It’s always a good thing to evaluate why the Left supports an issue since generally the “issue” is not the issue.

You seem to be painting with a very broad brush, Scott, and it’s not a good look. As for the Taylor case, why is a no-knock raid that ends tragically a sign of systemic racism? I keep hearing about this system that is racist, but no one can ever give specifics. It’s so tiresome. Is it a system in desperate need of reform? Absolutely. That doesn’t make it racist. Is it a system that disproportionately affects poor people negatively? Absolutely. It doesn’t make it racist.

Ask yourself this, Scott, had Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend been white would we have ever heard about them? Nope. No one would give a sh** about her. This constant pandering to race is muddying the waters to a real problem this country has, that problem being an ever increasing descent into totalitarian government control.

the same people who find George Floyd a problematic hero for the left, are suddenly foisting felony-convicted police assaulter Andrew Coffee IV upon a tower and claiming “justice was done!” The same people who claimed Breonna Taylor got what she deserved for formerly dating a drug dealer, are the same people ignoring that Alteria Woods was in bed next to Andrew Coffee IV. The same people saying Gaige Grosskreutz shouldn’t have been in possession of a firearm without a license, are praising a man who shot at police with an illegally possessed firearm. Here, they are cheering Andrew Coffee IV, who is still going to prison for possession of a firearm as a convicted felon, but should you ask these same people the name of Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, they wouldn’t have the first clue. Can you blame me for thinking the only reason they care about this case is that Coffee’s blackness could be weaponized against claims regarding Rittenhouse? If it isn’t, why do they support Coffee and not Walker?

This brand of conservatives is so laser-focused on opposing the left that they are willing to sacrifice truth and justice at the altar of “owning libs.” Instead of taking a look at the facts of cases and making their own determination as to what “justice” looks like, they look to the left to see what they are doing so that they can do the exact opposite. Instead of taking a moment to acknowledge that we are failing at “liberty and justice for all,” they are busy googling “black guy self-defense acquittal.” They aren’t choosing what to support. They are choosing to oppose BLM and the left at all costs.

Both of these cases are tragedies. Both of these cases are examples of injustice. Both deserve our support and outrage and not just when it serves our narrative. If anything, the Breonna Taylor case is more of an injustice and something for which we should be more outraged, but I guess there were no white kids recently acquitted of self-defense at the time.

Furthermore, two innocent women are dead as the result of the incompetence of police officers, and no one is being held accountable. That is the biggest injustice. //

Being at war with the left should also be a war against the type of tactics they employ. Not the use of them. Being glad that Coffee was acquitted is commendable. I am glad to see conservatives supporting it. I just wish it was because they understood the case and agreed with it and not because they are using it to dunk on liberals.

Kyle Rittenhouse: "This case has nothing to do with race."

Watch our exclusive interview, tomorrow at 8pm ET on @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/vXLEVtfycc

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 22, 2021 //

Tucker Carlson
@TuckerCarlson
"It wasn't Kyle Rittenhouse on trial in Wisconsin. It was the right to self-defense on trial."

Tonight at 8pm ET on @FoxNews

11:10 AM · Nov 22, 2021

Justin Hart
@justin_hart
Did you hear of the guy who was acquitted of murder by pleading self-defense today? No not that guy Kyle… This guy…
8:10 PM · Nov 19, 2021 //

It is interesting that there are no cries of injustice, systemic racism, or a weighted judicial system on the Andrew Coffee IV trial. In fact, it didn’t even hit the national press, mainly because it does not fit their chosen narrative of gun control and dangerous white men with guns.

But the same trial-by-jury system, and the same gun freedoms and gun laws upheld the rights of two young men: one White, the other Black, to defend themselves. The same American court system in different states affirmed those rights for both men. It is absolutely schizophrenic, not to mention disingenuous, to cry that the system worked for one person because of their race, but didn’t work for another in spite of theirs.

And remember the lesson of the Fauxnly Ones, just in case your legal defense is that you weren't sure the scary person you resisted was really an "Only One."

The case comes from New York and is called New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. This is a thumbnail sketch of the issue. For 108 years, the state of New York has severely curtailed the ability of ordinary citizens to carry concealed weapons outside their homes. New York follows what is called a “may issue” standard for obtaining a license to carry your weapon. What that means is that to carry a firearm outside your home, you must convince some state apparatchik that you have a “proper cause” to do so. //

The main arguments of the left seemed to revolve around the fear that New York was much more violent than the 41 “shall issue” states. //

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. pointed out that constitutional rights do not have to be justified, such as the Second Amendment right to bear arms. “The Constitution gives you that right,” Roberts said. “And if someone’s going to take it away from you, they have to justify it.” //

Roberts responded: “I’m not sure that’s right. I mean, regardless of what the right is, it would be surprising to have it depend upon a permit system. You can say that the right is limited in the particular way, just as First Amendment rights are limited. But the idea that you need a license to exercise the right, I think, is unusual in the context of the Bill of Rights.”

The 4 universal rules of gun safety are:

1. Treat all guns as if they are always loaded.
2. Never let the muzzle point at anything that you are not willing to destroy.
   1 Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target and you have made the decision to shoot.
3. Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

Most people familiar with these matters understand that the gun control movement was rooted in racism. Despite attempts by hard leftists like those at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to convince the American public that the roots of the creation of the Second Amendment are racist, history clearly demonstrates that the first gun control laws were specifically designed to prevent black Americans from obtaining firearms.

But one of the issues that is not highlighted nearly enough is the fact that gun control laws never actually stopped being racist. What the gun-grabbing crowd won’t tell you is that in many major cities with high black populations, the gun laws are very much prohibitive against black and brown Americans. //

This issue was highlighted recently in an amicus brief that was filed in a Supreme Court case. The brief was filed by an organization called The Black Attorneys of Legal Aid in the case of New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Corlett. The plaintiffs in the case argue that New York’s system for issuing permits to carry guns is unconstitutional. //

For our clients, New York’s licensing regime renders the Second Amendment a legal fiction. Worse, virtually all our clients whom New York prosecutes for exercising their Second Amendment right are Black or Hispanic.

New York enacted its firearm licensing requirements to criminalize gun ownership by racial and ethnic minorities. That remains the effect of its enforcement by police and prosecutors today. //

This is only a small sampling of the laws Democrats have championed that have made it more difficult for black and brown people to obtain firearms. It has created a situation in which minorities living in high-crime areas have to purchase guns illegally in order to defend themselves.

Indeed, it is a common belief that those who obtain illegal firearms are doing so to engage in gang violence. But most often, these individuals are getting them for self-protection. They figure the risk of catching a possession case is not as dangerous as being unarmed if an assailant attempts to harm them.

Taliban executions remind Americans to never give up arms they need for the primary reason the Constitution guarantees their right to have them.

In Afghanistan the world is again seeing that radical Islam is an ideology premised on murdering non-believers and using that example to intimidate everyone else. Historically, the same has been true of leftism, when its adherents have achieved totalitarian control in a country.

Leftists don’t have totalitarian control in America yet, so over the last few years they have mostly given us a heads-up about their desires by rolling out mock guillotines during their protests and riots, posing for photographs with mock-ups of President Trump’s guillotined head, talking about burning down the White House, and on social media wishing death upon Trump, his supporters, and Americans who express skepticism about the 2020 presidential election, masks, or vaccines.

However, they are working toward totalitarian control, by opening the border to people they think are future Democrat voters; proposing that felons, illegal aliens, and minors be allowed to vote; threatening to pack the Supreme Court; pushing federal legislation to take over election rules to benefit the Democrat Party; and, as Democrats have done for decades, stealing elections.

Even if they had totalitarian control, they would still need a willing army to do in America what they have done in every other country in which they have achieved it—disarm, then round up and kill or imprison their opponents. Under the noses of naïve, uniform-worshipping Americans who have assumed everyone in the military has the same values they do, the transformation of the military has been underway for a long time. It is being continued by the Biden administration and its Marxism-enabling sycophants among the military’s senior commissioned and non-commissioned officer ranks, but it is not complete, particularly in the military’s all-important combat arms elements.

However, even if the left had a willing army, it still would not be able to impose the tyranny for which it lusts because, unlike its victims in other countries, the American people are armed. Contrary to Biden’s claim that Americans would not be able to protect their liberty without F-15s and nuclear weapons, it is still true today, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in “The Federalist Papers,” No. 29, that the Army “can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow citizens.” //

Coincidentally, on the heels of the Biden administration getting American troops killed in Kabul and handing over Afghanistan’s lithium deposits to China, and millions of dollars worth of military aircraft and other equipment to the Taliban (thus China, for its inspection), the upcoming anniversary of the radical Islamic terrorist attack in New York City in 2001 precedes by two days the anniversary of the Sept. 13, 2004, expiration of Democrats’ attempt to ban the manufacture of some of the best terrorism- and tyranny-fighting rifles on the planet. //

A criminal’s use of a gun doesn’t cancel everyone else’s constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms, and activists and politicians who support that right should not pretend they can protect it by parroting crime statistics. Nevertheless, since the ban expired, Americans have acquired another 15 million or so of the previously banned guns and hundreds of millions of the previously banned magazines, and the nation’s annual murder rate has averaged 22 percent lower than during the 10 years the ban was in effect.

The AR-15 has, for the better part of the last two decades, been the most commonly acquired rifle in America.

If you have a mental illness and know you are barred from buying a gun but have sufficient wits to circumvent a background check, adding yourself on a list to keep someone from selling you a gun when you are actively evading the process designed to keep you from buying a gun makes no sense. //

My concern is that this is a backdoor for getting doctors more involved in gun ownership than they should be (they shouldn’t be at all) and builds on the CDC attempting to frame gun ownership as a public health issue.

But newly retired Detroit Police Chief James Craig argues the country has a criminal problem, not a gun problem and that demoralizing law enforcement has led to a crime wave.

“Conveniently, a lot of the issues are left out, and I’ve seen this, criminals are emboldened. You talk about bail reform, it’s a miserable failure,” Craig said during a recent interview with The Next Revolution. “We have to start supporting the men and women who do the tough job.”

“It’s ridiculous, it’s surface and we’re not going to the root,” he continued. “We don’t have a gun problem in America. What we have is a criminal problem…criminals don’t follow the law. They’re going to get guns, so what do we want to focus on? Getting guns from law-abiding citizens?…it’s not about guns, it’s about criminals who have guns and they don’t get the guns legally. That’s the bottom line.”

Actually, I think a fair and dispassionate reading of this article and the rest of Ms. Schumann’s work would say she is selfish (her irrational fears take precedence overall). If being opposed to the Constitution and our traditions qualifies one as unpatriotic, then bingo.

She and her experience are the focal point of everything she writes about…like, for instance, the book from which this essay was extracted. She is demanding that others give up something to make her feel better, while she gives up nothing. Her definition of “compromise” seems to be “how much of your stuff am I going to take.”

Her rhetorical question is just stupid. The only way me giving up my guns saves a life is if you are accusing me of being a murderer-in-waiting. One might, with equal justice, demand, “If buying a gun meant saving a life (this is much, much more likely scenario than hers), would you do it?”

Her denigrating the faith of others because they don’t share her unreasoning fears is the action of someone who is actually using God as nothing more than a debate tactic. //

Then we have this, which seems theologically ignorant as well as manipulative and selfish:

If you know and love Jesus and are going to spend eternity in Heaven with him, why does the idea of not having guns anymore scare you so much?

When we recite the Lord’s Prayer, we say “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” There are no guns in heaven. When I pray this prayer, I ask that God would help me bring some of his kingdom to earth. I pray that, in the same way, there would be no gun violence here on Earth, just as there is no gun violence in heaven.

One hardly knows what to do with this. There is no food in Heaven, so why do you care about it here? And yet, one of the Christian Corporal Works of Mercy is feeding the hungry. There is no marriage in Heaven (Matthew 22:30), but it is a significant religious rite on Earth. //

What Ms. Schumann loses track of, along with a crap-ton of other things, is that the gun is nothing more than a value-free tool. It is much like a hammer or a wheel, or a screwdriver. What you do with the tool makes the difference. Murder was forbidden long before the invention of gunpowder. In Schumann’s view, owning a gun means that you, by definition, place gun ownership above being a Christian.

I don’t come from whatever religious tradition that spawned Ms. Schumann. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states in very strong terms that protecting others from harm is part of the Golden Rule. That extends to the use of deadly force if there is no other way. //

In Exodus, we are told we can kill a home invader at night. In Nehemiah, we are told to fight to defend our families. In Esther, Jews take up arms against an unjust ruler (sort of the main purpose of the Second Amendment). Jesus frequently uses the metaphor of a shepherd protecting his flock from thieves and robbers. Because a shepherd killed marauding animals (see David and his sling), one can assume He is not talking about hugging it out.

No matter how you come down on guns, we should be able to agree that murder is wrong, that self-defense is a right, that defending the helpless is an obligation, and that gun regulation is a secular policy argument and not theology.

If Biden and his party truly believe the government is so all-powerful that any possible rebellion would be put down with ease, then how does that square with their claims that our “democracy” was on the brink of destruction on January 6th because some unarmed people took selfies in Pelosi’s office? Either our system of government is so fragile that a dude in horns and facepaint can threaten its existence, or it’s so untouchable that the government would just nuke anyone who got within a mile of doing any harm to it. Which is it? Because it can’t be both.

tsar becket adams
@BecketAdams
A president implicitly threatening to scramble jets and nuke American citizens is about as good a defense of the 2A as I can think of. Gun rights groups couldn’t have made a better argument.

Breaking911
@Breaking911
BIDEN: "Those who say the blood of Patriots, you know, and all the stuff about how we’re gonna have to move against the government.”

"If you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons." //

Greg Price
@greg_price11
"You don't need a gun because the government can destroy you" is the best case for the second amendment any president has ever made

Texas doesn’t shy away from gun ownership because it recognizes that law-abiding gun owners are the key to a peaceful society. The old adage that an armed society is a polite one is absolutely true, and while Texas isn’t perfectly safe from crime (it is a border state after all) its citizen’s ability to obtain and use firearms quickly makes it a safer place by default.

To be clear, the more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens the safer the area.

It’s hard to commit a crime when you have to weigh your life against its success. You’ll be far less likely to carry out a carjacking, assault, home invasion, rape, etc. if there’s a high probability that your victim can easily kill you.

When state and local officials decline to help enforce federal firearm rules they view as unconstitutional, The New York Times says, they are adopting “a legally shaky but politically potent strategy” with racist roots.

But when state and local officials decline to help enforce federal immigration rules they view as “unjust, self-defeating and harmful to public safety,” the Times says, they should be “proud” of “choos[ing] not to participate in deportation crackdowns.”

That blatant double standard illustrates how policy preferences and partisan allegiances color people’s views of federalism, which they tend to endorse when it serves their purposes and reject when it doesn’t. But as Missouri Gov. Mike Parson and Attorney General Eric Schmitt recently observed while defending that state’s Second Amendment Preservation Act, “you cannot have it both ways.”

…

Contrary to what the Times reported, that policy is not “legally shaky.” It relies on the well-established anti-commandeering doctrine, which says the federal government cannot compel state and local officials to enforce its criminal laws or regulatory schemes.

That doctrine is rooted in the basic design of our government, which limits Congress to a short list of specifically enumerated powers and leaves the rest to the states or the people, as the 10th Amendment makes clear. That division of powers gives states wide discretion to experiment with different policies, some of which are bound to offend the Times.

The paper suggests that defending state autonomy is disreputable, because that argument was “deployed in the past in the South to resist antislavery and civil rights laws.” But federalism does not give states a license to violate rights guaranteed by the Constitution or to flout laws authorized by it.

Background checks blocked nearly twice as many gun sales in 2020 as in the year before, FBI numbers provided to The Associated Press show. About 42% of those denials were because the would-be buyers had felony convictions on their records.

The number of people stopped from buying guns through the U.S. background check system hit an all-time high of more than 300,000 last year amid a surge of firearm sales, according to new records obtained by the group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Denial data is released by the FBI, but the information collected by Everytown breaks it down by year and includes data from states such as California and Florida, which conduct their own background checks. //

However, let’s also remember that there were almost 40 million NICS checks conducted in 2020. That was almost a third more than in 2019, which wasn’t a bad year for NICS checks by any stretch of the imagination. Now, many of those weren’t for firearm purchases, but a lot of them were.