A necessary complement to legal gun ownership is legal recognition of the right to use them, both de jure and de facto. The wide discretion and unpredictability of district attorneys in their decisions to pursue charges against individuals using arms in clear self-defense can cost tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees even when one is acquitted. Additionally, civil courts’ willingness to entertain bogus lawsuits from criminals against their victims presents an additional risk. Under such conditions, it should be no surprise that some businesses are hesitant to hire additional security officers who might need to use force to defend property. Losses from theft can often be lower than losses from legal liabilities.
For similar reasons, it makes sense why business owners might choose not to repair or replace defunct security cameras (if Lightfoot is talking about an actual phenomenon). In several major cities, including Chicago, prosecutorial discretion has been stretched to its limits in terms of the refusal to prosecute criminals against whom sufficient evidence exists. All the video evidence in the world doesn’t matter if prosecutors offices simply drop cases. It doesn’t make business sense to spend money to make home movies of thieves ripping you off.
In short, what must be fought against are the conditions of (the unfortunately named) “anarcho-tyranny,” in which there is “the simultaneous existence of armed dictatorship and the absence of the rule of law.” If state actors are going to fail in sustaining basic order, the least they can do is stay out of the way of private individuals who protect property rights. It makes no sense to extend Chicago law enforcement officers tremendous protections from liability while also expecting private citizens to protect themselves without the tools to do so and with the legal burden of proof essentially against them.
— Tate Fegley in What Chicago’s Mayor Gets Wrong about Private Security
What is a “security guard”, but a glorified paid-witness?
Cameras do the same thing & they don’t show up to work drunk.
This is just another Democrat shifting the blame for an increase in lawlessness away from their stupid, naive policies such as Defunding the Police, Not Charging Criminals for Nonviolent Crimes, and Lowering Bail so low that everybody just walks after being arrested. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. If we keep electing such fools, it is us who are to blame for all of this madness.
That philosophy of governance isn’t restricted to businesses, they apply it to individuals as well. You’re not allowed to carry a weapon but we aren’t going to do anything about the criminals and if you do carry a gun anyway and use one to fend off a felonious attack it’s you who we’re going to throw in jail.
It was the rapist bill clintoon and his democRat pals like joe biden who used “crime” to pass the 1994 Crime Bill/Assaults Weapons Ban. This time around sneaky democRats bit off a a bit more than they can chew and this time around the public is not falling for sicko democRat Gun Control to keep them safe. Frankly it is difficult to determine which is worse for freedom and prosperity, A) lowlife criminals. B) lowlife democRats.
If you try to ban me, I shall become more popular than you can possibly imagine.
Too true. Before 1994 the semi-auto rifle market was dominated by Ruger’s Mini-14. Of course Colt letting the patents run out on the AR15 also contributed to it’s rise.
I also believe Uncle Scam introducing untold thousands of young men and women to it via visits to the sandbox had a big effect. The timeline of the rise of the AR seemed to parallel the timeline of the rise in US militarism.
Hence why I’ve personally grown to absolutely despise cops. If they are asked not to by their political paymasters, they will refuse to protect you even if they have the opportunity. But then, if you lawfully defend yourself, rather than turn a blind eye they are all too happy to throw your ass into a concrete box. They wont protect you (which is honestly fine), but they also wont allow you to protect yourself without major consequences
It’s always somebody else’s fault and that somebody should complain about being scapegoated call them racist and you win.
Unarmed guards make no sense to me.
Looters should be shot on sight, and that sure as hell includes organized criminal gangs doing these store invasion, snatch and run raids.
Laws are needed to spell this out loud and clear. To operate as organized crime, to use looting as a mode of operation, is a clear threat to innocent life and the use of deadly force to halt such an attack is a lawful act of self defense.
Shooting thieves on sight actually undermines the entire concept of legal self-defense that goes back something on the order of 4000 years.
Many have tried mental gymnastics to excuse angrily killing thieves. All have failed. Societies that allow such things rarely last long.
While I’m not explicitly advocating a “shoot on sight” policy for looters, you need to understand that property has (until modern Leftist ideology) historically represented an extension of someone’s life. If I purchase something for $10K, and at my daily wage it took me three months (before taxes) of working to earn that money from someone else, then a looter/thief is, in effect, stealing the value of three months of my life.
On an individual level, it can be successfully argued that theft is not a capital crime worthy of death, and many would agree with that. But if allowed to flourish on a wide scale through society, theft robs that society and acts to fray the threads that hold it together, threatening its existence as a safe community. It cannot be allowed to grow.
Bullshit mental gymnastics that’s based in fallacy.
Time = life = money. They stole your money and stole your life?
Oh, then they can repay you money to restore your life and as punishment they can be forced to overpay, hence they stole part of their own life. This is basic logic which is something ancient civilizations recognized.
It’s is why the Romans had the rules they did. Thieves return what’s stolen (or equal value) and then pay 200-400% the value of the theft as recompense. If they can’t afford it? They literally become your slave until the debt is paid.
This also shortcuts the problems the Egyptians found millennia before, that allowing killing over theft encourages murder because it becomes very hard to discern who the real thieves are and who the victims with planted goods are.
Would you rather shoot some fucker who stole stuff from you or have them pay you back the value plus 400%? Would you rather that +400% or would you rather them go to jail and suck more money out of you via taxes?
Stop fellating the State as if we never got the The Enlightenment. There’s no Divine Right of Government and you don’t need to worship them.
It’s not the Middle Ages. We don’t have Kings that are “wronged” by a crime against you, which is exactly how the court system works because we overlaid Medieval governmental practice onto Roman law and ended up with an abortion.
Shooting thieves on sight… all depends on the situation. If there’s a thief in your house at 3:00am, how do you know he’s just a thief and not a rapist or sociopathic killer? In situations like these looters, IMHO only shooting them in the ass with #8 shot as they run away would be a good compromise. There must be negative consequences for such behavior.
When you can articulate a threat to you or another person that existed at the time you squeezed off the shots, good to go.
A threat to property? No.
Or do you guys want to go back to the timeframe right after the sack of Rome? Maybe go back to the beginning of Athens where a mob gets to be your jury for everything and the penalty for most “crimes against the people” (sounds very commie, huh?) was death, usually in horrific ways? Perhaps we shall revert straight to Medieval law where you don’t matter for shit but the offense is purely against the governmental entity. You can’t be wronged but the government can and it may authorize you to do things that you should not. I mean, that’s what the Middle Ages were all about, politically speaking. Divine Right of Kings and such. Hobbes loved this shit, it’s the basis of Leviathan.
The point I’m making isn’t that theft is good or even neutral. Quite obviously it is bad. However, the proposed solution here doesn’t work and is, in fact, worse than the original problem. Picking a highly corrosive solution to a relatively minor problem isn’t actually a solution (unless it’s highly acidic or basic, sorry couldn’t resist). This is very quickly how you go from a justice system to a vengeance system because you’re angry.
Which, by the by, is kinda the entire point of that story about Jesus being crucified next to two thieves. The Romans are making what appears to be an exception to their own generally accepted rules because, in some ways, they are. In fact we kinda know that because of Pilate’s acquiescence to the Sanhedrin Council instead of following Roman law evidenced by his dithering between the two before picking an asininely inappropriate set of punishments that escalate.
However, they’re not if you realize that in this area at the time of the Crucifixion you have enormous political upheaval that the Romans have lost whole Legions putting down and that the rules for citizens are different than those for non-citizens and disfavored classes of people. This is why there’s such fanfare over the title King of the Jews, that’s treason in the Empire and the result is that if one is a citizen then one can be stripped of that citizenship which opens up whole new methods of execution that are normally barred for citizens.
Considered in light of the obvious political motivation for crucifying Jesus himself, a big part of this story is about how God’s rules don’t bend and apply to everyone equally because they don’t need to bend since God is perfect and man is the flawed entity in any equation involving both.
However, men’s rules do bend when it’s convenient, which is part of what makes the Empire’s treatment of people in the Levant, and Jesus in particular, so abhorrent, because it’s a “morals for me, not for thee” situation that God doesn’t engage in which is why God is superior to the Emperor, and more generally speaking to the Empire. God does the right thing, men often have a hard time doing that. Jesus and the two thieves all being treated as they are is evidence of this human failure in multiple ways.
Which is why I constantly point out that it’s called the High Road for a reason, because it’s fucking difficult to walk.
It should also probably be noted here that there’s a difference between a thief and a robber, yet people often use the term interchangeably.
Thieves steal by stealth. Robbers steal by force. These are clearly different crimes meriting different responses both at the time and later on legally.
This matters to a greater or lesser degree based on what you think about the linguistic scholarship on old Greek texts, which indicate that the “thieves” in the Crucifixion story is probably a mistranslation carried through in some version of the Bible and not in others. Where specific reference to these two guys is made in the Greek and Latin texts they are described either as “others” (being superfluous to the main story) or in a manner consistent with what we would call a “highwayman”.
Further still, a deeper analysis of the difference between κλέπτης ( thief) and λῃστής (robber/highwayman) suggests that the description of these two may actually be a parable where the “theft of sheep” is actually the “theft of souls” (murder).
This suggests rather strongly that they are accused and/or guilty of crimes of violence, possibly including murder. Historically, in the place and time of the Crucifixion, they likely would have also been considered insurrectionists against the Empire because highway banditry was a major source of financing such resistance.
In either case, contemporary people hearing the story would get the message that the Roman system is flawed no matter what. They’d get that mostly based on the treatment of Jesus Himself, not the exact disposition of the men crucified next to Him.
Later translations of the Bible use both words depending on the opinion of the translator and the overarching story of thieves being crucified next to Jesus is, IMHO, a convenient mistranslation in many regards (though IRRC, the English Standard Version does use the word robber). It helps to sell a narrative that is, in some regards, better for the story of how badly Jesus was abused by Pilate while at the same time highlighting the absurdities of this so-called justice system.
Regardless of if you buy the linguistic research done on older documents and various books of the Bible, both canonical and non-canonical, you arrive at the same basic conclusion to one degree or another based on the actions of Pilate and the Sanhedrin Council. That conclusion is a clear demonstration that Jesus was the victim of a system that doesn’t live up to a higher moral/ethical standard and that this should be remedied in some manner now that the failures are obvious.
Like a DC cop shooting a unarmed woman for trespassing?
Note that as a slave under Roman law, your “master” still had the power of life and death over you. The coming repayment with interest was the incentive to not kill you straight away.
But unlike chattel slaves centuries later, a slave under Roman law could still own property and even have slaves of his own.
The Illinois statute regarding self-defense states, “[A person] is justified in the use of force which is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm only if he reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or another, or the commission of a forcible felony.”
Forcible felonies in Illinois are the following acts, when combined with violence:
These Specific Crimes Are Defined As Forcible Felonies In The Statute
Treason
First Degree Murder
Second Degree Murder
Predatory Criminal Sexual Assault Of A Child
Aggravated Criminals Sexual Assault
Criminal Sexual Assault
Robbery
Burglary
Residential burglary
Aggravated Arson
Arson
Aggravated Kidnaping
Kidnaping
Aggravated Battery Resulting In Great Bodily Harm
Aggravated Battery Resulting in Permanent Disability Or Disfigurement
I am not a lawyer, so this isn’t legal advice. However, shooting looters in Chicago may be justified, especially if you contribute sufficiently to Kim Foxx.
The mayor of Chicago is as dumb as a box of rocks.
And her constituents love her.
I agree she is a useful fool but she also may be an informed active participant in the work to create chaos in America.
It’s ALWAYS someone else’s fault, ain’t it!?
Did you hear the one about the Democrat Congresscritter carjacked in Philly?? Karma is sweet!
https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2021/12/23/multiple-arrests-after-democrat-rep-carjacked-in-philly-n53807
Hear, hear. Don’t be surprised if you get nothing but a clown show whenever you hire the inmates to run the asylum. Sorry for the mixed metaphor, but I think it fits to paint them with both brushes.
HOW does a video camera “secure” ANYTHING?
One thing for sure is that it doesn’t secure a conviction!
This goes straight to the concept in legal philosophy of being obliged vs. being obligated and how this relates to the public’s internalization of laws. This area used to be a major area of concern but it has fallen by the wayside in a manner that has created chaos.
The general concept here is that if someone jumps you in a bathroom and gets a knife to your neck demanding your wallet you are obliged, under threat, to fork over your property. However, you are not morally, ethically obligated to do so. Therefore by extension you shouldn’t be legally obligated to hand over your stuff either because then the law would be immoral.
People statistically tend strongly to internalize a law when the law makes sense and lines up with basic morals and ethics or because it just makes logical sense. People stop at a stop light not because someone’s going to jump out and beat you or because there’s a huge risk of a fine if you run a stop light but because it actually makes sense from your point of view to follow the legal instruction contained in the sign.
When these factors are respected by both the law giver and the law abider the system works fairly well.
But there’s a downside to this when the philosophical underpinning isn’t actually taught to children and young adults. The law then becomes learned by rote, a reflexive action based mostly on a fear of reprisal for breaking it. This has two major effects on people.
The first is that if the law disappears people are rudderless because they fall back on a system that no longer exists. The learning process and therefore the behavior produced by that process are inflexible. If you’ve spent significant time in certain other parts of the world you’ve seen this with traffic lights. In a major US city when the power goes out you end up with a mess. In some other parts of the world people just revert to what we would generally refer to as the “right of way”.
That leads to the question of why the US produces people that are inflexible. The reason is based essentially in a legalistic society run by professional politicians and administrators. Much of what they do is arbitrary and capricious. They cannot justify it on moral or ethical grounds and therefore where it is adopted by citizens the adoption is that of an inflexible system based on rote learning backed by fear.
The second effect is a general lack of respect for “Rule of Law” and for it’s enforcement agents. The people who fear the government apparatus will act in accordance with government diktats so much as they feel like it and will break those diktats when they feel it is safe to do so. Nothing stronger undergirds their willingness to follow the law because, generally, the law (and/or its enforcement) do not line up with logic, morals or ethics.
We have both problems with parts of this country.
Mainly that’s because the “law givers” don’t respect the law either. Their guiding principle is power and personal advancement. There’s no higher cause for them to adhere to. So, to them the law is not a moral or ethical code but rather a tool of power and coercion. They don’t care if it makes sense or has a guiding principle. What they care about is the ability to enforce it ruthlessly as they see fit. This results in the law being a cudgel to swing at political adversaries and the police as a tool to be used against those people.
And so much as they can, which is quite a bit, they’ve corrupted law enforcement with the same set of problems. LE follows rules, even abhorrent ones from time to time, for fear of reprisal from their superiors.
The result is that since many LE and most pols/admins don’t respect the law, virtually no one else does either. They live by their own code entirely. If they come up the wrong way they see things exactly the way someone like Kim Foxx does.
The difference between a street thug and a corrupt DA is that you’re actually probably safer around the thug in many cases.
Here’s another Dem that got carjacked! This time in S*cago. HILARIOUS!
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/12/another-one-illinois-democrat-senator-carjacked-gunshots-fired/
You can’t make this s* up! I dare ya to even try.
Advice for people in Chicago who have a moral compass, save a thousand dollars and leave, by bus, boat, truck, Hitchhike or whatever gets you out. Go somewhere else where there is a rule of law and trust for your neighbors. It’s still out there and work hard and have a good life. However if you voted democrat, stay put and I hope you get what you voted for, good and hard.
Speaking of trusting your neighbors, I have family that live in a rural area. I was camping nearby one night, and needed a truck to haul some firewood. I borrowed my uncle’s truck without waking him up. He left his truck unlocked overnight with the keys in it.
Why have a “guard” if you can’t(or won’t!)shoot the scum??? A recent smash n grab at an extremely upscale car dealership(Joe Rizzo)revealed armed sis er guards merely watching homie n company smash cases with expensive watches. All on vivid video© Pathetic…
Scarecrows would be cheaper.
In those situations, there are invariably customers present, and in the case of the dealership, likely very wealthy ones. A gun fight in which one or more of them was shot or killed would be bad juju, no matter who fired the shot.
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