commentaries

Why is this a legislative priority?

"How about cases in which such a citizen successfully diffuses a situation by brandishing a weapon?" There are *plenty* of those incidents, David. But it is decidedly not a question of, as you so very smugly put it, "they don't like to brag." It is instead, that they don't want the authorities hassling them about their weapon or when/where/how they brandished it. It should therefore be obvious to even you that this reticence is precisely why we *need* a 'Castle Doctrine' in our state. Despite you blithely passing it off as no-big-deal, there are many grey areas in our existing legal understandings of the right of self defense. Homeowners therefore, are rightly wary of reporting these incidents. We decidedly should not need to be.

Go listen to the Joe Horn 911 call where he told operators that he suspected a couple of people robbing his neighbor, and wanted to go "defend" himself with his shotgun. You can hear him outside as he shoots the 2 suspects 3 times in the back as they tried to flee. Joe Horn was cleared of all charges under his state's recent Castle Doctrine. I'm not sure why we'd want a law that allows that behavior in our state. Watch out babysitters and house guests, your neighbor might now have the right to shoot you if you look like you don't belong!

Nuthin' like a good ol' fashioned 2nd Amendment debate to get the electorate all fired up and distracted from the fact that their legislature hasn't done anything substantive to benefit the State this time around.

Even the Clinton administration's Department of Justice believed that the number of self defense uses of firearms per year was 1.5 million instances. Per year. www dot ncjrs dot org/txtfiles/165476.txt Perhaps Mr. Banks you haven't heard of many folks saving their own lives or the lives of their families because you haven't looked? Perhaps you just need to spend a month or two with a family living in a less privileged area of the cities? We do exist.

An excellent piece of today's readers letters: "While our existing laws are more than adequate to control the use of force by a reasonable person, the problem is that prosecutors such as Dakota County Attorney Jim Backstrom ("A bill for the trigger-happy? Bulls-eye," Feb. 15) have had a free hand to define for themselves what a "reasonable person" is. They have chosen to consider the most timid and victimizable as the proper prudent person. A violent home invader might burst through a front door of a residence with a baseball bat and order everyone to the floor. If the mother of the house came from the kitchen and shot this monster, she would be at risk that prosecutors would think it would have been more prudent to simply comply with the invader's demands and avoid the confrontation. She might be charged. This fear of risk comes not from the direct threat of the perpetrator, but quells any firm response due to fears of our nonreasonable prosecutors. HF1467 defines what you can do and where you can do it, and places the decision in the mind and hands of those immediately at risk. It restricts the self-defining capabilities of overzealous prosecutors." MICHAEL GRANT, CAMBRIDGE, MINN.

Wow did they teach condescension, patronization and elitism in J school?

dubs what would make this year any different than normal?

betty99Feb. 16, 1212:16 PM Why is this a legislative priority?______________Because Cornish thinks he's Wyatt Earp.

I would be hesitant to talk to the county about my gun not because I "don't like to brag" but because my county's attorney has very publicly stated that, in his view, his civic duty is guided by his emotions, not laws. I wonder, in these guys' opinions, if someone attacks me and I hit them back should I be charged with assault?