This weekend, Caleb Gordley, 16, was shot and killed in a home that he mistook for his own after sneaking out for a party. The homeowner confronted Gordley on the stairs inside the home and said that the teenager ignored a warning shot. The shooting occurred after the failure of a “Castle Doctrine” law in Virginia’s General Assembly — a law that we have discussed previously on this blog that gives homeowners protections in the use of lethal force with anyone illegally entering their domicile. Ironically, the bill was shot down by gun groups that felt that the common law offered more protection.
Caleb was told that he could not go to the party because his room was not cleaned up. He decided to sneak out and his friends helped him get back in through a window. He had mistaken a similarly constructed home for his own. He had been drinking. The home is owned by Donald West Wilder II.
The scene is all too familiar to critics of Castle Doctrine laws. We have seen a long line of mistaken shootings of neighbors and others who go into the wrong house in developments with similarly constructed homes. There are also cases of standard home and workplace disputes that lead to fatal shootings.
In this case, there is the questioning of whether the first shot was a warning shot or a miss. However, in these circumstances, there is no alternative account to rebut the homeowner and police are left only with the trajectory of the bullet to confirm the account. The strongest case would be a round in the ceiling where there was clearly no attempt to aim at the suspect. When you add that the teen was drunk, the homeowner is unlikely to be charge presuming the forensics do not conflict with his account.
The Castle Doctrine law proposed in Virginia failed due to opposition from gun groups which did not like the requirement of an “overt act” by the intruder to justify a shooting. The gun groups felt that such a requirement is more restrictive than the common act and opposed the requirement that the intruder show aggression or threatening behavior.
Source: Washington Post
Hey lotta,
Just having a nice, quiet night. I’ve been retired forever and am glad to welcome you to the late night, don’t have to worry about the morning world.
I’ll check out the link tomorrow as I need to be fortified with caffeine before getting the jade on.
Think about setting up that fake facebook page and joining in our scrabble matches
luv ya
Hi Blouise, Are you just up late or early or do you have a totally disrupted sleep pattern as I do? Thank doG I’m retired, it was a witch to start feeling tired about 4:30am and have to be at work at 6:30am. I thought my last several months at work were going to kill me. I added a link in the last posting on the India Police Spokesman Blames…” thread which you might find appalling and awe inspiring, or awe inspiringly appalling actually. Just when one thinks one is too jaded to be surprised by anything… 🙂
Who is paying the 12 million
‘Gun Culture’ Nice.
I prefer to call it ‘Supporting the 2nd Amendment’
But its safe to say that the gun grabbers are ‘Fascist Nazis’ who are going to cause a war they will lose and badly.
The commercials promoting background checks will be starting soon. I understand $12 million will be spent.
More angst for the gun culture. Who will pass? Who will fail?
They should. That is how our govt was designed. To fear the people. Only over the last few decades they stopped fearing the people as much.
I personally cannot believe that anyone after the last 12 years could possibly have ANY trust in our government. During the Bush years the Liberals were melting down. Cries of Fascism and Totalitarianism were everywhere. People were outraged at Bush sending us to war. They were up in arms with the Patriot Act. Democrats everywhere were stroking out over ‘the loss of freedom’. There was endless comments over Bush outlawing dild0s while governor of Texas. The outrage over the US Govt lying to the American people and the world about WMD’s. Remember that? Remember every effin Democrat voter in the country claiming we COULD NOT TRUST THE GOVT?!?!?
Guess what. The Liberals were right. Bush was all of that. He was a tyrant.
Obama ran on the principle of overturning all of that. He claimed the Patriot Act was unconstitutional. He claimed that he was against Tyranny. He claimed he was against the persecution of medical marijuana etc. He claimed he was against wars and wanted to end them immediately. He claimed that he felt gitmo was unconstitutional and would be closed.
He has lied every single step of the way. But now the blind foaming at the mouth zealots on the left are too ignorant and arrogant to admit that their guy is no freakin better than the guy before. That Obama is just as much a War Mongering liar who strips freedoms even MORE than Bush did.
Why is that? Well we know that the rightwing is filled with Hypocrisy but for those not paying attention, the left is even worse. The Democratic party disgusts me at this stage and that is coming from a Liberal. It has become a party of cowards, hypocrites and crooks. Just like the Republican party.
Liberal USED to mean freedom. Now its a label being applied to Fascist hypocrites. That pisses me off.
I will not ever tolerate or excuse Rightwing fascism. I sure as hell will not accept it from the left.
Anyone against American citizens being well armed is either badly uninformed and uneducated…. or an absolute fool.
Anyone who would trust President George W Obama is an idiot. There is no polite way to put it. Yes that name was intentional because they are one and the same. Both were lying crooks who are destroying our Constitution.. Open your d*mn eyes. Jesus, even Michael Moore is realizing what a abomination and liar Obama is. Now all he has to do is put 2 and 2 together and then he will finally understand WHY we MUST fight tooth and nail for the 2nd Amendment.
Answer this, with all these standards Obama is setting as far as Drones, govt spying on US Citizens, how will you react if in 4 years we have another Bush as President and he starts talking about invading some country or another?
If you are a Liberal/democrat or whatever and you disagree, then there is something wrong with you and you are incapable of admitting you were WRONG. You are nothing more than a disgraceful hypocrite…and guess what? When the day of reckoning comes and it will eventually come, there are plenty of Liberals like me who will NOT defend you when you find your azzes being shipped off the island. In fact, ill be waving Bon Voyage. Id rather live with Tea Party people and argue over things like social security and socialized health care but who can respect the Bill of Rights, than with Democrats who cannot. Those Democrats can go to hell. Because they do not deserve a bit of safety or security. Let them cower in fear in another land.
I have gotten a real eye opener to the hypocrisy of the left. I have personally now witnessed exactly what the right calls ‘elitist arrogance’. I now realize that partisan politics is destroying this nation by dividing us to keep us from holding the govt as a whole accountable.
I absolutely will NOT support anyone who undermines the Bill of Rights in any way shape or form. If you are willing to throw away the 2nd amendment then you need to get out of this country. Just leave. You do not deserve to live here.
“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
Thomas Jefferson
watch this.
“Maybe our government fears the population?” (Bron)
Maybe?!
The only Americans who want to take guns away are fascist nazis. They should be exiled. They deserve neither liberty nor safety and do not deserve the protection of the bill of rights as they seek to rewrite it one step at a time. I am a liberal but I will admit that the left fascists are every bit as dangerous as the rightwing fascists are.
Born,
Blouse brings a breath of fresh air to this blog…. I’ve said the same thing to Mike S., (btw how’s he doing) in that there’s very little difference between the slave days and today…. We all work for the man…. In one way or the other…..
It should be pointed out that it was illegal for slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries to own weapons whereby they could challenge the authority of their masters. Slave owners feared their slaves and did all manner of psychological and physical torment to keep them in line. A favorite was to divide the slaves into house slaves and field slaves-divide and conquer was as useful then as it is today.
Maybe our government fears the population? And like those slave owners of yester year they desire to keep arms from the hands of those who would restrain their desire for unlimited power.
Blouise, I think you have a point. Thanks for bringing that to the debate.
“Slavery is a distraction to the real debate.” (Bron)
You wish.
Camo baby, camo.
State:
5. A political body, or body politic; the whole body of people united under one government, whatever may be the form of the government.
Madison did not mean anything but what it meant. The founders were well versed in the classics and studied all manner of constitutions to learn how to comprise one. That ours is a Republican form is not coincidence or good fortune but was rationally conceived by these men based on their study of history. Based on that study they concluded a well-armed populace is an impediment to tyranny by the state or an individual.
These men thought in principles not concretes, that is why the text does not say rifle, pistol, sword, musket, etc. but uses the word arms which means:
1. Weapons of offense, or armor for defense and protection of the body.
The very word arms, leaves open the type of arms which may be owned. If the Constitution were written in 1187 we would be arguing if the founders meant it was Ok to own a longbow or a standard bow which was less powerful and less accurate.
Slavery is a distraction to the real debate. And I might also point out if Africans had been armed with European weapons in the early 17th century, we would not be having a conversation about the 2nd amendment in relation to slaves on this blog.
Now I could also write about the “fear” of standing armies and thus a reason for an armed citizenry that would enable the “country” to raise a militia. That particular point goes back to before the “Glorious Revolution” and beyond … and fortified with that documented history, put forth the stance that it is upon those experiences that the Second relied.
But it is Saturday and one shot across the gun culture bow will suffice …
One has to also consider the history involved concerning slaveholders. For us the history is 200 + years old, for them it was yesterday. The British had offered emancipation to all slaves who left their plantations (also encouraged active uprisings) and joined in the fight on the King’s side. Many did. Eventually Washington even let free black men join the ranks. Southern politicians worrying that a Federal government would/could emancipate their slaves was not an unfounded fear … they’d experienced that very thing during the war and we all know that that very thing did eventually occur. Assuaging that fear was important at the time of ratification and Madison did it, as he did so many other things, brilliantly. Voilà … erase country, write in state.
The 2nd was purely put in to keep citizens armed to prevent Tyranny in government. Any other suggestion is a desperate straw man attempt to associate gun ownership with slavery which has become standard tactics of the leftwing these days. It is greatly disappointing to engage in such an intellectually dishonest or ignorant propaganda. It is also a dangerous path to follow down.
here is the link:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=875&chapter=64065&layout=html&Itemid=27
and this part is shear brilliance:
“We believed, with them, that man was a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice; and that he could be restrained from wrong and protected in right by moderate powers confided to persons of his own choice and held to their duties by dependence on his own will. We believed that the complicated organization of kings, nobles, and priests was not the wisest nor best to effect the happiness of associated man; that wisdom and virtue were not hereditary; that the trappings of such a machinery consumed by their expense those earnings of industry they were meant to protect, and, by the inequalities they produced, exposed liberty to sufferance.”
Rational animal indeed.
I especially liked this:
“Still further to constrain the brute force of the people, they deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty, and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus barely to sustain a scanty and miserable life. And these earnings they apply to maintain their privileged orders in splendor and idleness, to fascinate the eyes of the people and excite in them a humble adoration and submission, as to an order of superior beings.”
Things never change.
speaking of Thomas Jefferson, I found this brilliant letter. What a fantastic mind he had.
Thomas Jefferson to Justice William Johnson 12 June 1823
… I learn … with great pleasure that you have resolved on continuing your history of parties. Our opponents are far ahead of us in preparations for placing their cause favorably before posterity. Yet I hope even from some of them [for] the escape of precious truths, in angry explosions or effusions of vanity, which will betray the genuine monarchism of their principles. They do not themselves believe what they endeavor to inculcate: that we were an opposition party, not on principle, but merely seeking for office. The fact is, that at the formation of our government, many had formed their political opinions on European writings and practices, believing the experience of old countries, and especially of England, abusive as it was, to be a safer guide than mere theory. The doctrines of Europe were that men in numerous associations cannot be restrained within the limits of order and justice but by forces physical and moral, wielded over them by authorities independent of their will. Hence their organization of kings, hereditary nobles, and priests. Still further to constrain the brute force of the people, they deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty, and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus barely to sustain a scanty and miserable life. And these earnings they apply to maintain their privileged orders in splendor and idleness, to fascinate the eyes of the people and excite in them a humble adoration and submission, as to an order of superior beings. Although few among us had gone all these lengths of opinion, yet many had advanced, some more, some less, on the way. And in the convention which formed our government, they endeavored to draw the cords of power as tight as they could obtain them, to lessen the dependence of the general functionaries on their constituents, to subject to them those of the states, and to weaken their means of maintaining the steady equilibrium which the majority of the convention had deemed salutary for both branches, general and local. To recover, therefore, in practice, the powers which the nation had refused, and to warp to their own wishes those actually given, was the steady object of the federal party. Ours, on the contrary, was to maintain the will of the majority of the convention and of the people themselves. We believed, with them, that man was a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice; and that he could be restrained from wrong and protected in right by moderate powers confided to persons of his own choice and held to their duties by dependence on his own will. We believed that the complicated organization of kings, nobles, and priests was not the wisest nor best to effect the happiness of associated man; that wisdom and virtue were not hereditary; that the trappings of such a machinery consumed by their expense those earnings of industry they were meant to protect, and, by the inequalities they produced, exposed liberty to sufferance. We believed that men enjoying in ease and security the full fruits of their own industry, enlisted by all their interests on the side of law and order, habituated to think for themselves and to follow their reason as their guide, would be more easily and safely governed than with minds nourished in error and vitiated and debased, as in Europe, by ignorance, indigence, and oppression. The cherishment of the people, then, was our principle, the fear and distrust of them that of the other party. Composed, as we were, of the landed and laboring interests of the country, we could not be less anxious for a government of law and order than were the inhabitants of the cities, the strongholds of federalism. And whether our efforts to save the principles and form of our Constitution have not been salutary, let the present republican freedom, order, and prosperity of our country determine. History may distort truth, and will distort it for a time, by the superior efforts at justification of those who are conscious of needing it most. Nor will the opening scenes of our present government be seen in their true aspect until the letters of the day, now held in private hoards, shall be broken up and laid open to public view. What a treasure will be found in General Washington’s cabinet when it shall pass into the hands of as candid a friend to truth as he was himself! When no longer, like Caesar’s notes and memorandums in the hands of Anthony, it shall be open to the high priests of Federalism only, and garbled to say so much and no more as suits their views! …
The original objects of the Federalists were, 1st, to warp our government more to the form and principles of monarchy, and, 2d, to weaken the barriers of the state governments as coordinate powers. In the first they have been so completely foiled by the universal spirit of the nation that they have abandoned the enterprise, shrunk from the odium of their old appellation, taken to themselves a participation of ours, and under the pseudo-republican mask are now aiming at their second object and, strengthened by unsuspecting or apostate recruits from our ranks, are advancing fast towards an ascendancy. I have been blamed for saying that a prevalence of the doctrines of consolidation would one day call for reformation or revolution. I answer by asking if a single state of the union would have agreed to the Constitution had it given all powers to the general government? If the whole opposition to it did not proceed from the jealousy and fear of every state of being subjected to the other states in matters merely its own? And if there is any reason to believe the states more disposed now than then to acquiesce in this general surrender of all their rights and powers to a consolidated government, one and undivided? …
The Second Amendment was not passed to protect slavery, the wording of the Second Amendment was modified to allay the fears of the Southern colonies that a Federal Government might disarm the militias … use the word state instead of country and the South could maintain control over their militias and thus their slave patrols.
“The article you cite is from a blog, and not from a scholarly source.” (OS)
Oh please … as Elaine pointed out several sources are quoted in that article and I have tons more in my research of the Second. I choose that particular article because it was well pulled together and well sourced.
The point being made has nothing to do with the actual firearms available to militia members but to the change in wording to satisfy the real concern of the Southern colonies/states that the “Country” government would work to eliminate slavery by disarming the colony/state militias. Once those militias were disarmed, the police state necessary to maintain and contain a slave population would no longer exist and the institution would suffer.
Letters from all sorts of influential folk at the time exist if you want to check the validity of the claim. Madison thought the boys were being paranoid but in order to get them to go along he promised appropriate wording to allay their fears. He then changed country to state and everybody was happy.
Like it or not, it is part of our history and very much a part of the evolvement of the Second.