Poll: Teen Shot dead after attempting to mug man

[lvl9000_woot]

Simple, don't want to get shot? don't mug people. He deserved it.

You know, I don't agree with the kid for trying to mug the guy.
I also think the guy was right to defend himself.

But to say that this kid deserved to die for trying to mug a guy is horrifically wrong. This kid didn't deserve to die for his crime. He certainly made poor choices, and, again, the guy had a right to defend himself, but the guy having that right and the kid deserving to die are extremely different things.

He didn't deserve to die. And the loss of his life is a tragic waste.
We don't know all the circumstances of this case, we weren't there. But I hope that the man who was mugged did what he could to avoid the shooting before he took it. Because that was a drastic, permanent reaction. He certainly was within his rights to protect himself, and I don't fault him for that at all. But a kid lost his life, and that's a pretty heavy price to pay.

I agree. You don't have to kill the other person to keep them from mugging you. I'm sure a shot to the legs would do. Also, I think 4 shots were a bit much but as somebody else had said:

"According to the article it looks like they jumped him by surprise. In those situations you don't have time to think things through. Besides those teens could have still killed him or caused permanent injury."

so only shooting the legs might not have been realistic at the time.

 

[Mako SOLDIER]

It's a shame things like mace or tazers haven't been invented...oh wait, and does no one see the potential loss in civil liberty? He 'believed' the kid to be armed, only the kid wasn't, which means his judgement was wrong, which means his decision was wrong, which means he's a murdering prick as opposed to a mugging prick. This will now set a stupid, pro-gun precedent, in that as long as you 'believe' you should have killed someone, your belief is all that's required.

Scenario; I knock on your door to get you to turn the music down, you answer drunk with something small and black in your hand, your trying to hide it. I shoot you dead, ending your drunken Wii session, which I 'believed' to be a weapon, or maybe you weren't holding anything at all, turns out I can kill you anyway.

You realise that alot of countries consider a tazer or CS to be a class one firearm? Furthermore the redundancy of your statement is spectacular given that he is an American. Not only is the right to bear arms constituitional but given the proliferation of firearms, why would you bring mace to a gunfight or a tazer for that matter?

Moving swiftly on because this obliterates the irrelevance of the prior paragraph but ....

If you knock on my door & shoot me, your going to jail regardless. You instigated the event. Your humped no jury will find you innocent.

In a fallacious attempt to prove 'This will now set a stupid, pro-gun precedent, in that as long as you 'believe' you should have killed someone, your belief is all that's required.' exists in law already. Its called reasonable force in the UK. If someone is intent on harming you & you cant stop them without hurting them you must hurt them to defend yourself. 'No man may surrender home or health to the government or any other individual' Very very old law. The statement 'No man may' actually makes it illegal for the individual to surrender himself to injury.

Again just to summarise ... Dont go knocking doors , thats what the police are for.

I live in the UK, and I think you've got a very skewed misunderstanding of 'reasonable force'. The fact that the assailant was using his fists and was found to be unarmed would be evidence enough to rule that Baker was in fact guilty of significantly unreasonable force. Which of course, to any rational human being, he was. America's 'constitutional right to bear arms' has a lot to answer for and very little going in it's favour.

Past tense, was found later to be using his fluffy pillow would still be irrelevant. Do you mind for a moment old chap I need to check to see if your carrying any other weapons on your person .....

If you consider & a jury considers your life to have been threatened and your physical security compromised (A blow struck in the dark in a creepy park at night qualifies)then ANY action to deter further assualt is LEGAL. If it was broad daylight in a playpark & the muggers promised not to kick him to death then youd have a point.

I used to bounce (doorman for you Americans) so I know people who have twatted knife wielding little plebs with a fire extinguisher. Boy nearly died, pal did a night in the jail and was let out on consideration of the fact the junkie POS had a KNIFE. Proof of intent to cause physical injury justifies reasonable force to resist it, within a reasonable practical & ordinary level.

The arguement the mugger wasnt armed & the victim should have known that isnt ordinary, reasonable or practical.

It is in fact perfectly reasonable and practical. An armed mugger does not lead with their fists, no matter how much the NRA members in this thread might like to think otherwise, and reasonable force only means enough force to safely neutralise an attacker. In the example you used, the guys were clearly wielding the knives (from the start from the sound of things, funnily enough), and so the use of whatever was nearest to even the odds was perfectly reasonable. If the person being attacked had ignored the fire extinguisher and instead chosen to pull a gun then you bet your ass they would have been convicted (ignoring the fact that we're not dumb enough to legalise firearms in the first place). Proof of intent to cause physical injury must be consistent with the method of defense. Again, if you were to shoot someone who was clearly unarmed, regardless of their intent, you would be convicted here.

 

[LondonBeer]

He was assaulted using fists, he responded with a gun. That's excessive force.

As far as "they say shoot to kill, not wound", I have no respect for whoever 'they' are in the first place. If someone is teaching how to use a gun on another human outside of the military then they're just as bad as any common murderer. The moment someone pulls a gun on someone who has already demonstrated that they are clearly unarmed, that person becomes the aggressor. One that gun was out, he was attacking, not defending. Cases like this, and the people who defend guys like Baker, are the reason why American gun laws are just plain idiotic.

The "they" are the teachers of the law [http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1143] such as former police officers, lawyers, and regular citizens who carry.

I notice that you're coming at this from a moral perspective, stating "it's wrong to do this"

No, as the article explained many times, he felt his life was in danger, which it was. The alternative could have been that the teenager may have gotten the gun as he was robbed, then we'd be hearing of a story about a robber murdering a jogger. And no, a common murderer doesn't stay with the kid as he dies. He doesn't ask questions first, shoot later. That's a disingenuous argument, conflating two things that shouldn't be near each other.

If he had fired after the kid went down, I'm sure that would have been murder. As it stands, you have a 2nd Amendment right to carry. This kid brought up the situation by his own stupidity, to which I have no sympathy.

His life wasn't in danger. The kid was unarmed. You really think the mugger is going to knock someone unconscious, rob them, and then shoot them with their own gun? That's some seriously exaggerate cynicism there. Ok, so here's where to pro-Baker people are contradicting themselves/each other. The general consensus from the article is that Baker had been punched and was confused, with blurred vision, and unable to know for certain if the kid was armed, so he shot to be on the safe side. You are saying that he asked questions first and shot later. So which was it, because it can't be both.

Oh come off it - if he hadn't stayed with the kid while he died it would have essentially been a hit and run. Baker clearly knew the law and how to best exploit it to get off scott-free.

Yes, I'm coming at this from a moral perspective, but only after logic and rational thinking has been applied. One man's paranoia that someone else 'might' be armed is not grounds to shoot someone multiple times. If someone were to punch you in a bar fight or something along those lines, would you really consider it reasonable to assume they're armed too and open fire until they're dead?

How did the victim know his life wasnt in danger ? How did he know that his assailant wasnt armed ? Your next sentence degenerates into reductio absurdum, no one said hed take the gun & shoot him, however contrary to schoolyard fights which Im guessing youve never seen or participated in are not the same creatures as a physical assualt. Several hundred people a year die from blows to the head many not intended as malign harm.

You have applied no logic to your arguement at all. Logically it would be impossible for the victim to assess the threat level & the armanent of his opponent without frisking him & assessing his state of mind prior to being SLUGGED IN THE GUT IN THE DARK. Rationally assualt is not assessed by weapon used but by damage done. Logically & rationally ask yourself why glass ashtrays & pint glasses are banned from pubs in the UK. Ill save you 2 milliseconds because a 1 kilo glass ashtray can easily cave in a mans skull. Logically a bar fight is as dangerous as a fight in a dark alley, so yes that would be an apprioriate response to a uninstigated assualt.

 

[Tiny116]

I live in the UK, and I think you've got a very skewed misunderstanding of 'reasonable force'. The fact that the assailant was using his fists and was found to be unarmed would be evidence enough to rule that Baker was in fact guilty of significantly unreasonable force. Which of course, to any rational human being, he was. America's 'constitutional right to bear arms' has a lot to answer for and very little going in it's favour.

Any reasonable human being ought to realize that whether he was armed or not was irrelevant, what is relevant is what Baker could have known. It would be unreasonable to expect Baker to act on what he cannot know and have to wait once it's too late. A reasonable person would judge him based on the evidence he had when he acted. But I suppose being a snob about which country you're from overrides reasonable.

I think you should rethink the word Snob. [sub]Sorry but I'm British to, gotta stick up for my countrymen and all that [/sub]

Anyway to my point. I do agree that whether or not the kid was armed is irrelevant all Baker needed was a fear that the kid would pull out a knife or a gun. I said in my fist post on this forum that I felt baker used unreasonable force, granted he was just decked hard enough to give him a near concussion. But the fact of the matter is it would have only taken ONE bullet to make the kid back off, whether he was armed or not.
Baker fired over half his ammo at that kid, instantly. If Baker had a licence for his concealed gun then that suggests to me he's had some basic training in firearms and "appropriate use" of that firearm. Now I've not been trained in how to handle a weapon but I'm fairly sure that Baker wouldn't have been taught to pull out his gun and nearly empty his clip into an assailant from what I assume was not far off point blank range. (Considering He was punched I think it's reasonable to assume Baker was within 2 to 6 feet).

To clarify I don't think Baker was wrong in pulling out his weapon, or even firing. Just his excessive force.

 

[Mako SOLDIER]

Yes, I'm coming at this from a moral perspective, but only after logic and rational thinking has been applied. One man's paranoia that someone else 'might' be armed is not grounds to shoot someone multiple times. If someone were to punch you in a bar fight or something along those lines, would you really consider it reasonable to assume they're armed too and open fire until they're dead?

It's funny how you try and change context to demonize Baker. This was not just a bar fight. They were all alone in the dark and the other guy had back up. There was no apparent reason for the mugger's violence. The scenario has changed radically. Context makes a hell of a lot of difference concerning what is or is not reasonable to assume.

So a guy who was armed would clearly need a whole load of backup? That's a reasonable assumption to you? Um, no. In fact, in that situation, the fact that Baker didn't himself die riddled with bullets or stab wounds is overwhelming evidence that the whole group was a bunch of unarmed opportunistic idiots. Context does make a massive difference, but the pro Baker crowd in here is choosing to mostly ignore it. A grown man should not be letting the fact that a park is 'dark and creepy' influence their judgement, and if so they certainly should never have been granted a firearms license. If you own a gun, you should be damn sure you can remain cool-headed enough to use it responsibly. Baker didn't.

 

[Chaza]

Sadly yes. Though the mugger did not deserve to die. Really there were so many better ways of dealing with the situation e.g mace or maybe a taser?

 

[Candidus]

If you attack somebody, you run the risk of killing them. If you believe otherwise, you might want to get acquainted with the real world.

If someone attacks me, I respond though the aggressor is `prepared` to kill me, whether or not he means to. Ask yourself; what's an appropriate level of defense, versus a man or group of men who are prepared to kill you in order to take your things?

Just because they might be too stupid to realise that an attack is communicating that much doesn't mean they ought to be protected from their victims, and it doesn't mean they deserve to survive their crime.

Good on the shooter. One less worthless shitbag.

 

[justnotcricket]

So many sad things here - sad that the kid was attacking someone, sad that the attacker felt threatened enough by someone to have to use his weapon, sad that people even feel they have to carry guns around...

In my opinion, the kid didn't *deserve* to *die*, but if you're going to attack people, you have to be prepared that they might fight back, and that that fighting back might include a gun and the desperation to use it.

 

[KindlySpastic]

Snip

What? No, seriously, WHAT?

Where to begin? First of all, where did you get your perception of "honor" and "strenght"? It sounds an awful lot like something a pre-teen who has played too many shooter games would say.

What the mugger would have done later on in life has no bearing on whether it should be allowed (or even desirable) to kill him. In a judicial context it would be like assuming guilt (of future crimes) by default until disproven - which is the exact opposite of how a proper legal system works. It is even more bizarre to allow administering of capital punishment in this way since it can't be revoked. So that entire line of reasoning falls flat on it's face in light of how a functioning legal system is set up.

I would like to see you cite some kind of research that indicates that no one can ever stop committing crimes. Far from everyone does, but claiming that nobody does is equally absurd.

This is not to say that I don't think people should have the right to defend themselves from those who would threaten them. I just think that the defense should be somehow more proportional to the threat than what it seems to have been in this situation. Admittedly it is always hard to judge just how big a threat you are facing and especially so in a surprise attack like this one. Maybe they made the right decision in letting him off the hook for this specific incident on account of that. I'm not too sure one way or the other myself.

 

[NezumiiroKitsune]

Seems utterly fruitless throwing my comment into the maelstrom this topic has produced but.

While I do believe he had resonable cause to protect himself, and fully support his right to carry his weapon, firing 8 times, employing hollow-point rounds, and carrying a .45 seems complete overkill for self defense. He's highly likely to cause hydrostatic shock to the target with a single round, causing incapacitation and death in seconds. Something more sensible like 9mm rounds, maybe try to get back and fire a single warning shot. He seems to have acted rashly given the power of the weapon and the nature of the rounds at the distance he was firing.

Unless of course he intended to kill him. In which case, death for a simple mugging seems extreme to say the least.

 

[Daddy Go Bot]

Sadly yes. Though the mugger did not deserve to die. Really there were so many better ways of dealing with the situation e.g mace or maybe a taser?

Do humor me.

Mace? He was sucker punched and could barely see and outnumbered to say the least.

Taser? Good luck with that ONE-SHOT taser of yours when you're outnumbered and battered.

 

[Mako SOLDIER]

I live in the UK, and I think you've got a very skewed misunderstanding of 'reasonable force'. The fact that the assailant was using his fists and was found to be unarmed would be evidence enough to rule that Baker was in fact guilty of significantly unreasonable force. Which of course, to any rational human being, he was. America's 'constitutional right to bear arms' has a lot to answer for and very little going in it's favour.

Any reasonable human being ought to realize that whether he was armed or not was irrelevant, what is relevant is what Baker could have known. It would be unreasonable to expect Baker to act on what he cannot know and have to wait once it's too late. A reasonable person would judge him based on the evidence he had when he acted. But I suppose being a snob about which country you're from overrides reasonable.

I think you should rethink the word Snob. [sub]Sorry but I'm British to, gotta stick up for my countrymen and all that [/sub]

Anyway to my point. I do agree that whether or not the kid was armed is irrelevant all Baker needed was a fear that the kid would pull out a knife or a gun. I said in my fist post on this forum that I felt baker used unreasonable force, granted he was just decked hard enough to give him a near concussion. But the fact of the matter is it would have only taken ONE bullet to make the kid back off, whether he was armed or not.
Baker fired over half his ammo at that kid, instantly. If Baker had a licence for his concealed gun then that suggests to me he's had some basic training in firearms and "appropriate use" of that firearm. Now I've not been trained in how to handle a weapon but I'm fairly sure that Baker wouldn't have been taught to pull out his gun and nearly empty his clip into an assailant from what I assume was not far off point blank range. (Considering He was punched I think it's reasonable to assume Baker was within 2 to 6 feet).

To clarify I don't think Baker was wrong in pulling out his weapon, or even firing. Just his excessive force.

Given the circumstances he couldn't aim very well, so how many bullets was he supposed to fire off to know he'd hit the guy? And one bullet isn't necessarily enough, the better way to tell is if the kid fell over or ran off.

Others have said several times in the thread that usually you're supposed to shoot several times. And that police are trained to do so. Not sure where you get your information on how many times he ought to be shooting if properly trained.

He couldn't aim very well, sure, but he wasn't completely blind. He could at least have aimed in the vague direction of the legs, after all if he was planning on emptying his clip it's pretty safe to say he would have at least hit once or twice. He was careless.And yes, a reasonable person would judge him based upon the evidence he had when he acted, and that's exactly what I'm doing.

 

[Gindil]

He was assaulted using fists, he responded with a gun. That's excessive force.

As far as "they say shoot to kill, not wound", I have no respect for whoever 'they' are in the first place. If someone is teaching how to use a gun on another human outside of the military then they're just as bad as any common murderer. The moment someone pulls a gun on someone who has already demonstrated that they are clearly unarmed, that person becomes the aggressor. One that gun was out, he was attacking, not defending. Cases like this, and the people who defend guys like Baker, are the reason why American gun laws are just plain idiotic.

The "they" are the teachers of the law [http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1143] such as former police officers, lawyers, and regular citizens who carry.

I notice that you're coming at this from a moral perspective, stating "it's wrong to do this"

No, as the article explained many times, he felt his life was in danger, which it was. The alternative could have been that the teenager may have gotten the gun as he was robbed, then we'd be hearing of a story about a robber murdering a jogger. And no, a common murderer doesn't stay with the kid as he dies. He doesn't ask questions first, shoot later. That's a disingenuous argument, conflating two things that shouldn't be near each other.

If he had fired after the kid went down, I'm sure that would have been murder. As it stands, you have a 2nd Amendment right to carry. This kid brought up the situation by his own stupidity, to which I have no sympathy.

His life wasn't in danger. The kid was unarmed. You really think the mugger is going to knock someone unconscious, rob them, and then shoot them with their own gun? That's some seriously exaggerate cynicism there. Ok, so here's where to pro-Baker people are contradicting themselves/each other. The general consensus from the article is that Baker had been punched and was confused, with blurred vision, and unable to know for certain if the kid was armed, so he shot to be on the safe side. You are saying that he asked questions first and shot later. So which was it, because it can't be both.

Oh come off it - if he hadn't stayed with the kid while he died it would have essentially been a hit and run. Baker clearly knew the law and how to best exploit it to get off scott-free.

Yes, I'm coming at this from a moral perspective, but only after logic and rational thinking has been applied. One man's paranoia that someone else 'might' be armed is not grounds to shoot someone multiple times. If someone were to punch you in a bar fight or something along those lines, would you really consider it reasonable to assume they're armed too and open fire until they're dead?

It's late at night, you're in the US where you don't know who's packing. Someone decides to rob you. Top that off, he punches you, initiating a conflict.

Personal opinion, I'd drop him like a bad habit. Texas law, same thing. Basically, you can respond with the force because you don't know what he's capable of. He initiated the conflict, he could hurt you, it seems he has intent to follow through with what he's planning to do. Maybe he has a knife, perhaps a gun to train on you after the initial stunning. Don't know, don't care. I'm preserving myself. That's what goes through my mind as I read the article. After 30 odd pages, it should be clear that he shouldn't have tried to rob someone in the first place. Had he have just kept walking, everything would have been fine.

This is the ask questions first:

Did he just hit Baker with no provocation?
Can he harm me in any way possible?
Do I have the means to retaliate before he gets me?

If not, then he would have been a murderer if he passed two teenagers and fired upon them with no happenstance.

Same thing if he had fired at the second teen as he ran away. All he did was take down the one that attacked him first, scaring the second one to flee the scene.

Ya know, I'm not Baker, and I don't know why you seem to want to dismiss everyone as "pro" or "anti" Baker. That seems to ignore the argument(s) that people put forth or condense them into something that it may not intend.

What my argument is, Baker defended himself by emptying the gun into an unknown assailant (we agree he is that, because he attacked first), preserving himself against the person that hit him. All of the other things can't be found out in the heat of the moment. And as taught in most classes with guns, you defend yourself when fired upon. It's a similar idea to martial arts, just a little different for in the US. Any martial art has crippling techniques, but those aren't used except in certain events. A gun just has deadlier consequences when brought into the equation.

So yes, I think he was right in stopping the boy from trying to harm him further. He defended himself, his life may have been in further danger, and the alternative in this random event of circumstance would have been far deadlier.

It's great to think the world is peaches and cream, but the emphasis is that you shouldn't try to rob people in the first place. Morally speaking, I still think that Baker was right to defend himself the way he did so. While I would do something different (Break an arm, beat a person to a bloody pulp from years of martial arts training) the results would be similar. I would stop an unknown with the means I had available.

Bar fight, where the expectation of a gun is miniscule, versus late night jogging in a park or secluded area are two different areas of expectations. You really can't compare the two. If anything, the first is the equivalent of someone pulling a knife against you. The second isn't where an expectation of mugging occurs. Finally, this:

His life wasn't in danger. The kid was unarmed.

We know that AFTER the fact. Far different from him raising his hands up when the gun is pulled or in the heat of the moment, firing blindly from blurred vision ( I don't think that's the case but eh...)

 

[RelexCryo]

The "kid" was 18. He was an adult, not a child.

 

[Crazycat690]

Yes, I support the shooter, this is the only thing I hate about Finland, and that is that the criminals have more rights in a situation than the victim. If someone broke into my house, was about to steal all my stuff, money etc and held a gun pointed towards my family, if I got the chance to shoot him in that situation, I'd go to jail.

I'm not saying the teen deserved to die, I'm only saying if you're being threatened, you should have the right to defend yourself, because it could have been much more serius, he was hit, his vision was blurred, it was the right thing to do.