This should be a no brainer
Md. Boy, 12, Kills Man Attacking Mother
The 12-year-old boy had finished his homework and was playing a video game when he heard his mother cry out. Rushing to her aid, he found her on the kitchen floor, straddled by a fellow resident of their Prince George's County boarding house, the man's hands wrapped tightly around her neck, the boy said yesterday.
"I kept saying, 'Stop! Stop! Stop!' " the boy said, describing the events of Monday night. "But he just ignored me. He didn't stop. He just kept hurting her."
The boy said he grabbed a knife and swung, slashing 64-year-old Salomon Noubissie across the neck and opening an artery. Noubissie was fatally wounded.
The mother, Cheryl Stamp, said she did not immediately understand what had happened. "What did you do?" she said she asked her son.
"He didn't say anything," she said. "But I knew when I looked in his eyes. I said, 'Oh, Lord.' "
Law enforcement officials were reviewing evidence yesterday and had not decided whether to file charges. Their preliminary account of the incident broadly matches that of the boy and his mother.
File charges? They should give him a medal!
posted by Anonymous at 5:53 PM
9 Comments:
The very first police story I ever reported (I was still a teenager) concerned a 14-year-old boy whose father was 'chasing his mother around the house.'
So he got the family 12 gauge, hid behind a door and as his parents finished another lap, gave his dad both barrels in the back.
I asked the sheriff is he was going to charge the boy.
'Hell, no,' he said. 'I'da done the same thing.'
That was 43 years ago, in North Carolina.
Presumably the police have to decide whether the boy and mother are telling the truth. There don't appear to be any other witnesses.
We don't have nearly enough facts to be able declare it is a "no brainer".
Keep in mind Maryland is adjacent to DC.
Which recently argued in front of the Supreme Court that there is no individual right to self defense.
Charging this boy might just be the catalyst needed for public opinion to go postal.
Kudos to Mark Frank for an unwillingness to leap to conclusions in the face of insufficient evidence of fact. It's a levelheadedness not usually on display in this day and age.
Hey Skipper, perhaps you were just trying to convey a deeply nuanced issue with undue brevity, but the DC law presently before the Supreme Court in Heller in no way speaks to the 'individual right of self-defense,' nor do those arguing in favor of the DC handgun law rely in any respect on arguments that claim there is no such right. Your depiction of the case and the argument is incorrect and misleading.
lonbud:
... but the DC law presently before the Supreme Court in Heller in no way speaks to the 'individual right of self-defense,' nor do those arguing in favor of the DC handgun law rely in any respect on arguments that claim there is no such right.
You better send a memo to the lawyers advocating for DC.
The DC law is specifically based upon denying there is any individual right to bear arms for the purpose of self-defense.
Yes, well, as I said, the issues at hand are deeply nuanced as your Volokh citation highlights (if not exactly doing much to clarify).
Heller is a case about the right to bear arms and not, as your original comment states, about the right to defend oneself.
Regardless how the Court comes down in Heller the ruling would likely have little probative value in a discussion of the situation posed by the boy who is the subject of the original post, because he wielded a knife and not a firearm.
The individual right to self defense is a matter of well-settled law, as are the limitations on its exercise.
With respect to the law at issue in Heller, no one is prohibited from owning or keeping a firearm in their home for self defense so long as that firearm is equipped with a trigger lock. Seems reasonable to me.
Actually, lots of people, and some courts, deny that the 2d Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms.
Also, DC banned ownership of handguns, except for police officers, private security firms and guns registered before the ban took affect in 1976.
However, it is probably true that, even if Heller strikes down the DC law, that will have little effect on other gun control laws.
Or on guns. Where I grew up, people just had guns. That's still pretty much true. Americans don't pay attention to gun laws.
Post a Comment
<< Home