On June 19, 2000, when the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA championship, rioters celebrated by smashing shop windows, looting, and setting police cars on fire, causing millions of dollars in damage. The LAPD stood down, and city leaders bragged about the non-policing strategy.
Now someone explain to me why Americans only need guns for hunting and target-practice?
And while we're at it, why is vigilantism, by definition, a bad thing?
On June 19, 2000, when the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA championship, rioters celebrated by smashing shop windows, looting, and setting police cars on fire, causing millions of dollars in damage. The LAPD stood down, and city leaders bragged about the non-policing strategy.
Now someone explain to me why Americans only need guns for hunting and target-practice?
That was a rhetorical ploy the Left used as part of their gun-grabbing strategy. To tell you the truth, until a few years ago, I thought they were right. Growing up in New York, and attending college and graduate school here, I had never read the Constitution, and had been taught that there was no RKBA. I was in my thirties before I read the Constitution for the first time, and started reading up on its original meaning.
And while we're at it, why is vigilantism, by definition, a bad thing?
It isn't by definition bad, but in practice it usually is. I've heard of too many cases of people killing the wrong guy.
However ... let's get straight what we're (or at least what I'm) talking about here. "Vigilantism" means to me, that after a (usually violent) crime has been committed, a group of outraged people, who were not witnesses to the crime, get together to hunt down and punish the assailant. Since the vigilantes were rarely witnesses to the crime, they often grab and punish the wrong guy.
Defending oneself against an attack is not in my book -- or according to the law books -- "vigilantism." However, New York is a law-free zone. And so, I have been told by a supervising Legal Aid attorney, that I do not have the right to defend myself against an assault, and indeed, that I am legally obliged to run away. A few years ago, I met a Puerto Rican fellow who had the same notion, so I'm guessing he got it from Legal Aid, too.
In the (1984?) Bernard Goetz "subway gunman" case, Goetz was often referred to as "the subway vigilante." In fact, Goetz had defended himself against four men who were trying to mug him, one of whom was brandishing a screwdriver, which is a deadly weapon. If that makes him a vigilante, then I say, we can't have enough vigilantes.
Because it eliminates those overpaid prima donnas we call "judges",as well as their "go-fers",the police. The plain truth is the ONLY reason those people have their jobs at all is to keep the citizens from having to bother with this crap themselves. Look at both as janitors.