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Law of Self Defense Tag

Posted by Andrew Branca on September 25, 2019 56 Comments
This past September 17, a white Saint Paul, MN, police officer shot and killed Ronald Davis, a black male. Within five days, organized protests took place against police brutality, complete with professionally printed signs and “Stop Killing People of Color” banners. This is how a “news” (actually propaganda) source, that self-identifies as focusing on “the People’s Struggle," described the shooting:
31-year-old Ronald Davis was a father, recently married, and had just graduated school. After allegedly bumping his vehicle into the back of a cop car, he stepped out of his vehicle and Mattson gunned him down.

Posted by Andrew Branca on September 02, 2019 161 Comments
On Friday, August 23 , 2019, a Florida jury convicted Michael Drejka, the handicap parking spot shooter who killed Markeis McGlockton, of manslaughter. As a result, at his September 10 sentencing hearing the 48-year-old Drejka will likely be sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 25 years to life in prison, without possibility of early release.

Posted by Andrew Branca on September 01, 2019 51 Comments
Today’s post is prompted by a strange and horrifying knife attack—strange because it happened on a public street, and horrifying because it involved slashing attacks to the faces of two small children. As you might imagine I’ve been inundated with a single question: would deadly defensive force be lawful against such an attack. Naturally, the answer is both “yes” and ‘no.”

Posted by Andrew Branca on August 24, 2019 125 Comments
Last night “handicap parking spot shooter” Michael Drejka was found guilty of manslaughter, as charged, for the shooting death of Markeis McGlockton. The verdict was returned quickly last night, after the jury had deliberated only a few hours.

Posted by Andrew Branca on August 23, 2019 14 Comments
I’m seeing a lot of excitement in the gun community about the decision this week out of the Michigan court of appeals, People v. Siwatu-Salama. The drama around the decision represents some significant expansion of self-defense rights. The decision does nothing of the sort. It is no reason to get excited o. If anything, it does far more to create ambiguity around self-defense than it does to create certainty. To the extent it encourages the defensive display of firearms, it also substantially raises the legal risks for well-intentioned defenders.

Posted by Andrew Branca on August 19, 2019 102 Comments
The Florida “handicap parking spot shooting” trial of Michael Drejka starts this week, and accordingly news coverage of the case—by which, of course, I mean “media lying” about the case—can be expected to spike. An excellent example of such media lying is found in CNN. In today's post we step through that "news" report and fisk out the many lies within.

Posted by Andrew Branca on August 10, 2019 40 Comments
I’ve received a lot of requests to comment on the recent arrest of a man who walked into a Springfield, MO Walmart carrying a rifle, wearing body armor, and packing over 100 rounds of ammunition (all that according to news reports, of course). The man was held by gunpoint by another patron of the store, an off-duty firefighter, and turned over to responding Springfield police a few minutes later.

Posted by Andrew Branca on July 17, 2019 43 Comments
Five years ago, on this exact date, Eric Garner died while violently resisting lawful arrest for a petty crime. Yesterday the Department of Justice announced that there would be no civil rights charges against the police officer most associated with that arrest (although numerous officers were involved). This perfectly reasonable decision by the DOJ —- consistent with similar conclusions drawn by every other official review of this case, including that of a grand jury—has predictably led to confusion and outrage among the ill-informed, so it seems worth taking a moment to recollect the facts and law that apply to the Garner case.

Posted by Andrew Branca on June 11, 2019 133 Comments
There was a recent leak, in violation of court order, of the 911 call made by former Dallas cop Amber Guyger (mugshot in featured image). The call came immediately after she shot and killed Botham Jean when she mistakenly walked into his apartment, thinking it was her apartment and perceived him as an intruder. This post examines some of the legal implications of Guyger's statements during that 911 call.

Posted by Andrew Branca on April 13, 2019 36 Comments
There's a video making the internet rounds of an apparent security guard outside a McDonald's being attacked by two young black men, and I'm being asked if the guard pointing his gun at the two was a lawful threat of deadly defensive force, on the one hand, or a crime, on the other.

Posted by Andrew Branca on April 02, 2019 51 Comments
Here’s a pro-tip for all of you who will be seeing headlines in coming days from “news” articles writing about a recent “scientific” study on gun violence: Any time you see such a study purport to examine “gun violence” but actually examine “homicide” and “suicide,” you can be pretty sure it’s a hack job.

Posted by Andrew Branca on March 30, 2019 19 Comments
There is yet another outburst of outrage propagandized into being by the racial grievance industrial complex, this time over the acquittal this past Friday of East Pittsburgh (now former) police officer Michael Rosfeld for the shooting death of Antwon Rose (in feature image, above). But for the fact that Officer Rosfeld is white and Rose is black this shooting would never have made national headlines.

Posted by Andrew Branca on March 16, 2019 35 Comments
This Case of the Week is on an interesting defense of dwelling situation out of Louisiana that illustrates both that the legal risks for use of force are never zero, no matter how favorable the law appears to be to the defender, and also why a defender with the law on their side might nevertheless agree to plea to a felony conviction with a multi-year sentence.

Posted by Andrew Branca on March 03, 2019 20 Comments
Ever wonder how to get yourself shot and killed by police? It’s not as difficult as you might think.

Step 1: Present yourself as a reasonably perceived imminent deadly force threat. Step 2: Wait for loud noises, flashes.

And let’s not forget the postmortem:

Step 3: Family files multi-million dollar §1983 Federal civil suit against the police department, hoping that political pressure from the usual racial grievance industrial complex will induce the local pols to give away large sums of other people’s (taxpayers’) money.

Posted by Andrew Branca on March 03, 2019 14 Comments
It’s become a standard propaganda technique of the modern racial grievance industrial complex to target self-defense law for particularly intense hate-based attacks. This is most notable in their attacks on “Stand-Your-Ground,” a term that they've sought to make, and with some success, synonymous with "RACIST!!!” These efforts are not limited to “Stand-Your-Ground,” however, but rather are broadly applied to generally constrain the scope of conduct that qualifies as lawful self-defense, and thus deemed free of criminal liability.

Posted by Andrew Branca on February 22, 2019 16 Comments
An acquittal in a murder case out of Louisiana provides a real-time illustration of the difference between the application of what I refer to as “hard” Stand-Your-Ground provisions versus “soft” Stand-Your-Ground provisions. (Details here are as reported by The Advocate and other news sources.) The facts of the case involve a bare-handed attack by a large aggressor against a smaller defender, one Jacob Westbrook, who was armed with a knife. Westbrook, who testified at trial that he had never been in a fight before, stabbed the aggressor once in the chest after, he says, the larger and stronger aggressor punched him in the head. It is noteworthy that the aggressor was a guest, perhaps little wanted, in Westbrook's home at the time of the conflict.
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