Latest Breaking News
In reply to the discussion: Man shoots, kills elderly man with Alzheimer’s at Walker County, Ga., home [View all]Major Nikon
(36,818 posts)While it's true that this is the result of what happens when any idiot can own a gun, the fact that they can't be prosecuted or sued after the fact is the gift of shoot first laws.
I'm not familiar with the GA law in particular, but shoot first laws often (if not always) require only the belief of a threat and not an actual threat. So once you remove the duty to retreat, perfectly innocent people can and are killed by gun happy loons and there is absolutely no accountability to said loons.
So what is the benefit to shoot first laws? The NRA and ALEC never provided any evidence that any significant number of people (or any for that matter) were being maliciously prosecuted for "standing their ground". The gun happy crowd promoted these laws on the basis that perfectly innocent people could go to jail for reasonable self defense without providing any actual tangible data to support those claims. The results speak for themselves and who could have ever guessed this would happen? Well, it turns out pretty much everyone smarter than head ogre, Wayne LaPierre. Police, prosecutors, and gun control advocates warned that THIS was going to happen and it does. This isn't the first time and it won't be the last. To the gun happy crowd we can say we told you so, but that is of little consequence to the family of the victim. They will probably never see justice.