Alabama Municipal Judge Carlton Teel is packing more than legal principles under his robe. When a defendant Brian (Bryant) Keith Ford reacted badly to a sentence and started swinging his crutches at the judge, Teel whipped out a gun and then a deputy shot Ford in the side.
Accounts differ on how much danger the man posed — with some witnesses saying that he was not attacking the judge when he was shot. Others say he tried to grab the gun.
Ford was in the courtroom on a harassment charge from a neighbor who said Ford had cursed at her in December after accusing her of talking about him to police.
Teel reportedly fined him $800 — a rather modest sum when one considers he now faces serious criminal charges and remains in critical condition.
The most disturbing account was:
Sara Williams said she was sitting in the front row when the man, whom she knew, got agitated after the judge fined him $800. He waved one of his crutches in the air.
“The police were hollering for him to get down” when an officer opened fire, she said.
Williams said she yelled “Don’t shoot him no more!” right before the officer fired again.
If that is true, it is hard to see why potentially lethal force was used. However, others describe Ford as attacking the judge.
Do you believe judges should be allowed to pack heat in a courtroom?
Source: ABA Journal
@savaship: The preamble was not what you were talking about, that is evident from your posts, as I have pointed out. You skipped to that when I made your original stance untenable. I invite anybody to read your posts and see this switcheroo for themselves, you are being purposely deceptive about your original statements.
@Brian: I cannot ever build myself up by tearing someone else down.
Sometimes the point is not to build oneself up; sometimes the point is to prevent liars and deceivers from gaining ground, even if it costs us something.
Tony C said:
“In contrast, Savaship cannot read one lousy sentence and admit that it says something different than what he wants it to say”
Add hypocrisy to the list of dishonest tactics Tony uses. He faults me for doing the exact same thing he has done. For he can’t read the preamble of the Bill of Rights, and figure out that his interpretation of one sentence is diametrically opposed to the defining mission statement of that sentence.
So I will entertain you… The right to keep and bear arms is for only the militia… who are the militia?
Richard Henry Lee: “A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves…and include all men capable of bearing arms.” (Additional letters from the Federal Farmer, at 169, 1788)
George Mason: “Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually…I ask, who are the militia? They consist of now of the whole people, except a few public officers.”
Elbrige Gerry: “Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.”
This coupled with the mission statement of the Bill of Rights, which is to “to prevent misconstruction or abuse of (the government’s) powers” This means even if I read it as though it applies only to a militia… that militia is everyone, and their purpose of keeping and bearing arms is to prevent the abuse of the government’s powers. So even if I read it as you stated, given the facts of the time, that the people; each of them were the militia, and that the bill of rights is intended to limit the government’s power, this still says the right to keep and bear arms is a check or balance to the government’s power to raise armies, and a protection for each individual against invaders, foreign and domestic.
It gets harder to twist meanings with that pesky preamble to the Bill of Rights that no one reads.
Tony C.
Your view is, methinks, the view that is most common.
Some graduate communication theory engineering courses, along with a thorough understanding of Hayakawa’s “Language in Thought and Action” has provided me with a way to parse interpersonal communication into minute aspects.
People who “think in words” are certain to find your view correct; yet I live the inner process mechanism of language, thought, action, and living, and, because I consciously experience what is ordinarly the pre-conscious, I have clear sentient awareness in the sense of connotation of what, for word-thinking people is purely denotation — that is, what is impossible to put into words.
Because word-thinking people sometimes have he experience of havinga “a word on the tip of the tongue,” I allow that the way I consciously think is the way thoughts which arrive at consciousness in word-thinking people are generated.
While I reject the notion that one person can define another, I also consistently observe that I can toss words around about as well as many people can; they just are merely ways of encoding meanings in a transmissible form; the difficulty I have with words is my not thinking with them makes my internal way of using words very different than it appears to me word-thinking people use words.
This is of a profound connotation contrast.
Nonetheless, I observe that baby I have ever observed thinks in the way I do; an event happens and I adapt to the event as my ability to respond to the event becomes manifest by my response to the event itself, and my response, as I respond becomes of the event, also.
Every brain is different. What one brain can easily accomplish may be impossible for another. This is the mere result of the biological diversity which has made human life possible.
At issue is not the denotation, the predicament is within connotation.
Hayakawa first wrote in formidable detail and exactitude in his first, 1939 edition of “Language in Thought and Action,” the year I was born. What I attempt to learn how to share has been of the academic-scholarly literature at least since the year I was born.
It is not new in fact, though many people may yet remain blissfully unaware of it.
I bring no criticism, I am merely an understanding I have somehow acquired.
Dr. Marshall B. Rosenberg has done extensive work no nonviolent communication. I find his writings truly worth whatever effort is needed for reading and understanding nonviolent communication and its formidable value. I have in hand, “Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, 2nd Edition, Puddle Dancer Press, Encinitas, CA, 2003.
While clobbering one another with words may enhance some sort of neurlogical “high” that may be addictively self-reinforcing; what of the human wreckage and havoc concomitant with violent communication?
I asked, genuinely asked, Buddha is Laughing for help in understanding aspects of human interpersonal language which I am, by not being able to think in words, experience directly in my own life, and he really helped me make what I hope us useful sense of how thought works in words. And I thank him for that.
It appears to me that interpersonal communication difficulties arise from some sort of belief that a given word will have the same meaning for two or more people. Sufficiently accurate communication process understanding shows unambiguously why this is impossible and why error-correcting communication methods are mandatory for decently accurate communication to occur.
With the help of the people, all of them, who have been putting words on this blawg, I am essentially finished with the analysis phase of the in-principle-preventable causes of human violence.
I now set out to accomplish the second phase of engineering, the synthesis (as word strings) of what may be a viable remedy.
I will continue to participate in this blawg unless Professor Turley requests that I cease and desist. I have never once intended to bring any actual harm to anyone here.
I have never once intended to castigate, deride, or denigrate anyone here. Yet, when words in combination appear to me to plausibly be of derogatory form, I check to what extent I may be mistaken.
I can only tell another person about my understanding of the other person, I am powerless to actually tell another person anything not solely of my personal knowledge understanding, about another person.
Thus, I can never actually say anything about any person save myself. That is not egotistical, rather, it is utterly neurologically ineluctable.
I make mistakes because I have yet to learn everything!
I have learned one thing that seems to never fail.
I cannot ever build myself up by tearing someone else down.
So I didn’t complete that thought: It is possible to read facts without deciding to change their meanings because they don’t fit with one’s prior beliefs. I firmly believe electrons are unitary particles, but that belief is a part of a system of understanding, not a system of faith (which is what an ideology is). If somebody some day produces a repeatable experiment proving that electrons are a composite of some more fundamental particles, I will readily change my understanding.
In contrast, Savaship cannot read one lousy sentence and admit that it says something different than what he wants it to say.
@Brian: I did say “ideology,” dude. His ideology (or system of beliefs) is that the right to bear arms is specifically designed and granted to enable citizens to resist their own government. And although that is a consequence of citizens bearing arms, although Jefferson, Washington and other founders applauded that consequence, it was not the specific justification for that right given in the Constitution, or agreed upon by the First Congress that ratified the tenth draft of the 2nd second amendment.
It is impossible for anyone to be “capable of reading a fact without coloring it with” all the internalizations (connotations or intensional meanings) of all accumulated prior experience.
Tony C., I observe you claim that Savaship cannot do what you cannot do because no one can do it.
There is an extant alternative.
@savaship: As I took care to emphasize when I posted it, that quote was from the author. Not from the reviewer. A book reviewer is not going to make up quotes from the book or the author.
Maybe you’re not lying, maybe you are just incapable of reading a fact without coloring it with your ideology.
Are the Judge and the deputy charged and behind bars yet to protect the public from their crimes?
There are your distortions and disillusion again. To fight any regular militia that oversteps its bounds is not equivalent in any way to insurrection, or overthrow of the government, plain and simple. A regular militia could be an invading one from China, Russia, or Mexico… you read into what you don’t understand, and assign your own meanings to it.
The “evidence” you claim the author of the cited book was against, you quoted that from a blogger’s analysis of the book, and not from the author, or the book itself. The numeric facts from the book remain constant regardless what the thesis of the book was, and that was all I was using, were numeric facts. In fact, the author agrees where apparent lawlessness existed, homicides were lower, something even the blog you referenced mentioned.
Once again, you are twisting words and lying, this is called a “straw man” argument, and using ad hominem attacks like “any competent eighth grader” implying that I am not as competent as an eighth grader because I don’t agree with you. You sir, are being dishonest, and focusing on straw man, ad hominem and red herrings to distract readers from the fact that you have no idea what you’re talking about, and you’re probably in Law Enforcement and me pushing for occupational equal rights likely pisses you off, which is why you identified your agenda as accusing me of lying, which is not an agenda as much as it is a smear campaign, specially when I have stated no lies at all.
@savaship: I am not frustrated; my “agenda” is pointing out that you are illogical and wrong and making idiotically unworkable assertions, like saying that if the law enforcement officers in a courtroom are carrying guns then everybody in the courtroom should be allowed to carry guns. You claim this is “equitable treatment.” (anybody can read your first post on this topic).
My agenda for arguing so vehemently against you is you are an promoting a stupid ideology that should not go unchallenged. Your “agenda” is ridiculous and dangerous. And BTW, as I posted, the book and person you cited (Hallon) actually provided evidence against your case, not for it.
And of course you think you are countering points well, because in your addled illogical brain I would not expect you to conclude anything else!
In your post here
you say, But because this amendment was intended to prevent being controlled by tyrannical state militia, the people must preserve the ability to fight any organized, or regular militia that oversteps its bounds, making it a fundamental individual right for defending freedom and liberty.
So again you lie, you are not talking about “all amendments,” you are talking specifically about the 2nd Amendment and claiming an intent for it that did not exist. The 2nd Amendment was NOT intended to “prevent being controlled by a tyrannical state militia,” EVER.
In fact, it is one damn sentence, and any competent eighth grader can read it and see that the intent is to allow the state to call up battle-ready citizens with their own arms into an orderly state militia for the purpose of defense or police action on behalf of the State.
So the answer is, you are not telling the truth. Is there any better reason to argue vehemently against someone?
Tony C… I explained it 6 posts before to you without ignoring the first half of the sentence, and used historical context, with illustration and example. You dismissed my proof, examples, and supplanted your own assertion that the 2nd amendment guarantees only the right to the Army reserve. Which I countered very well, and we spun right down to where we are now.
Discussing this with you is obviously pointless, as you’ve gone right back into name calling and putting words in my mouth. I never said anything about insurrection, or overthrowing the government… I merely stated the 2nd amendment exists, just as every amendment in the Bill of Rights exists, to protect the liberty and freedom of the citizens.
Assuming this argument is over my head because you are frustrated that every ridiculous point you tried to make was countered by me very well, without the name calling, is immature. I have obviously made nothing up, as I was the only one providing sources and examples, I believe it is you who makes things up, and puts words into peoples’ mouths, which is lying.
And I simply started by posting that I am against inequitable treatment under the law based on your occupation. That’s it! That’s my agenda! Equal treatment under the law regardless of occupation… what’s your agenda for arguing so vehemently against me?
@savaship: No it isn’t; the Bill of Rights is indeed restrictive clauses, and do prevent abuse of power. They are specifically things the government cannot do.
But you cannot just ignore the first half of the sentence because you want to, the Founders put it there for a reason and (by your own logic) would not have put it there if it was not intended to modify or justify the rest of the sentence which follows the comma.
Your paraphrase is inaccurate; I did not say the 2nd amendment was invalid; in fact I support it (and my wife and I own handguns).
It hardly takes a genius SCOTUS to correctly interpret “shall not infringe.”
This argument is apparently over your head; the argument is whether the founders (3/4 OF THEM, not just a handful of them) intended the 2nd Amendment to give citizens the means to resist government or the means to mount an insurrection to protect personal liberties. My argument is the language is clear and purposely clear in the 2nd amendment, the grammar is clear and purposely clear in the 2nd amendment, it was revised something like 8 or 10 times in debate, and what got ratified does NOT justify an armed citenzry for THAT PURPOSE.
You seem to think I have some agenda to remove the right to own guns when I do not. I am saying you are lying when you say “a right to bear arms exists for all the people to guarantee their liberties are not infringed,” that is bullshit. That is NOT why the right to bear arms exists, by making that claim you are implying that is how the right reads and it is not, or that is the explicit justification of the right in the Constitution and it is not. The only explicit justification is to permit citizen militia. Period. You not only try to take half a sentence as a whole, you are making shit up and pretending it is part of the Constitution to boot.
Tony C:
You stated:
“There is no getting around that fact. Your argument, that your right to bear arms is to prevent your rights from being infringed upon by the government, is not IN the Constitution.”
It actually is… have you ever read the preamble to the Bill of Rights? From how you write, it sounds like you haven’t, if you haven’t, you should, it describes the Bill of Rights as
“restrictive clauses” on the government “to prevent … abuse of its powers” meant to instill “Public confidence in the government”, and to “ensure the beneficent ends of (the government’s) institution.”
I believe this properly backs up my SCOTUS backed interpretation, and refutes your interpretation that (paraphrasing) “the 2nd Amendment was written to strengthen the Government by making the citizens subservient to the government in the form of militia duty which you argue we replaced with the national guard and Army reserve, making the 2nd Amendment completely invalid.”
@savaship: You misread me. Re-read what I wrote. I was saying that the founders envisioned a militia as similar to our current conception of an Army Reserve, or if you prefer, our National Guard: Citizens with day jobs that could be called upon to defend the state.
Thomas Jefferson can believe what he wants, I stand by my original assertion: The Bill of Rights, which was introduced to the First Congress, and had to be ratified by 3/4 of the states, contains language that was debated and picked over for years and the result is exactly what they could get ratified. Jefferson’s opinion of arms is nothing more than that, that was undoubtedly his position when debating, but it is not what is written in the 2nd Amendment. That is the reality of the situation, not my opinion.
What IS written in the 2nd Amendment, by the rules of grammar now and the rules of grammar then, very clearly justifies the right for people to bear arms with the necessity of a “well regulated militia.”
There is no getting around that fact. Your argument, that your right to bear arms is to prevent your rights from being infringed upon by the government, is not IN the Constitution. If Jefferson or other founders or other contemporaries circa 1776-1790 agreed with you, and Jefferson’s writing proves that at least some did, it obviously wasn’t enough to get that kind of language by the States and into the Constitution.
The right to bear arms is expressly for the purpose of States having a well-regulated citizen militia. THAT is how the 2nd amendment reads, and Jefferson’s letters and opinions or Washington’s are not even law, they certainly do not carry the weight of a ratified amendment.
My head wraps just fine around the right of the PEOPLE; but the right as written is to allow you to be familiar with the weaponry to be part of a ‘well-regulated militia’ to be USED by the State, not to overthrow the State (or Federal Government).
“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage then to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” – Thomas Jefferson, quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria in On Crimes and Punishment, 1764
Tony,
I disagree with everything you have written. You call me and anyone who agrees with me a fool, where I provide contextually supporting arguments, you throw out ad hominem attacks as though they’re going out of style. You also throw out wild assumptions without any fact checking. The Army reserve didn’t exist when the Constitution was written, it was started in 1908. In fact, there were serious discussions about whether or not to keep a standing army at all. The only reason you are resistant to the ideals I posted is because you can’t accept the fact that our country was founded on the premise that all governments are evil (including our own), and all rights are for the individual citizens, not law enforcement, or Army reserves, or congressmen, but for the “people”. You have already changed your argument from the 2nd amendment only applies to the Army reserve, to now it only applies to the militia, and not “the people” as the the amendment is written, yet you claim I am the one misinterpreting the writing. You disagree so harshly to this concept, that you revise history with your own twisted and politicized definitions, ignoring the volumes of data that speak against your claims. Reading (probably abridged) literature of the time has nothing to do with understanding the simple words that you can’t wrap your head around “The right of THE PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Whatever qualifier, explanation, or story that comes before that, bears no relevance on that statement. Here are some of my examples to back up my claims:
Alexander Hamilton: “…that standing army can never be formidable (threatening) to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in the use of arms.” (Federalist Paper #29)
George Washington: “A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.”
Richard Henry Lee: “To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them…” (LIGHT HORSE HARRY) LEE, writing in Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic (1787-1788)
Richard Henry Lee: “A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves…and include all men capable of bearing arms.” (Additional letters from the Federal Farmer, at 169, 1788)
George Mason: “I ask you sir, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people.” (Elliott, Debates, 425-426)
Thomas Jefferson: “And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms… The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”, letter to William S. Smith, 1787, in S. Padover (Ed.), Jefferson, On Democracy (1939), p. 20.
The Judge threatened the defendant with his gun and the deputy had no right to pull his gun on the defendant because even with a crutch, there is no courtroom in America where a crutch could even reach a Judge if the actions were done inside a courtroom. Yes, it’s still remains true, both the Judge and the deputy need a severe consequence, including the possibility of life imprisonment imo.
@Michelle: Self-Defense does not include drawing on an officer of the law in the course of a crime. The officer may have broken a law shooting him, but it is against the law (and rightly so) to threaten an officer (implicitly or explicitly) doing his job, and in his job, he is explicitly authorized to use necessary force or threat of force to subdue a threat.
Self Defense is only valid if an innocent person is defending themselves against an illegal assault, a bank robber that kills a cop in a shootout doesn’t get to claim he was just shooting back in self defense.
@savaship: Had the crafters intended only state militia to have arms, they would have specified militia instead of people.
By this criterion, had the crafters intended for people to defend themselves against their own government, they would have found a way to say that, and they did not.
When the Constitution was written, the crafters envisioned “militia” as much like our Army Reserve; meaning working citizens with non-soldiering jobs that could, when called upon, form a military outfit.
The language […] requires considerable time to understand because we’re not used to it.
I smell bullshit; your claim of superior understanding may work on your fellow fools, it won’t work on me. The language says what it says; I have successfully studied classics written in English from before the Constitution was written and English has not changed so much as to mean the opposite of what it says here.
No matter what arguments were put forth during the course of the debate, after extensive debate and several revisions and tweaks to the language of the 2nd, what the founders ultimately were able to agree upon and able to pass by vote was this: An EXPLICIT justification of arming citizens to be in a militia to DEFEND the State.
Any subtextual implication that this also armed citizens AGAINST their Government is an opinion of an individual and is, obviously and by your own criterion, not language upon which the early Congress could agree. Else they would have written it that way.
I hope this little lesson in hoists and petards helps you understand that the Constitution does not mean whatever you want it to mean, and that you are engaged in explicit deception of others and an immoral act.
Hypothetically, if the defendant had smuggled in a gun and drew out a pistol after the Judge aimed his gun at the defendant, and then the defendant shot the Judge and then the deputy who also pointed his gun at the defendant, and was also shot by the defendant, would the defendant be charged with crimes, or would they say it was simply self-defense (which that is)?