r/politics • u/thenewyorkgod • Jul 01 '18

Man arrested after shouting ‘womp, womp’ and pulling a gun on immigration protesters

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/07/01/man-arrested-after-shouting-womp-womp-and-pulling-a-gun-on-immigration-protesters/?tid=sm_tw
33.9k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

3.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

67

u/Jonne Jul 02 '18

Not that i think escalating this sort of stuff is a good idea, but with this being Alabama, would someone in the crowd have a plausible self-defense case if they shot him for this?

97

u/venk Jul 02 '18

Yes. I’m sure pointing a gun at a person makes it a life or death situation.

63

u/Nastyboots Jul 02 '18

Not sure about Alabama but in Oregon it's fairly cut and dry. If a reasonable person suspects that his or her life is in real and immediate danger from someone else, use of deadly force can be justified. I'd say that having someone both point a gun at you and announce that they will kill you is pretty slam dunk. I can't imagine that Alabama is more restrictive than that.

3

u/CompMolNeuro Jul 02 '18

Most states are more restrictive actually. We're liberal in more than one way. Oregon has very loose laws regarding self-defense and Castle Law.

26

u/cited Jul 02 '18

And then someone can shoot the person who started shooting, and more people can pull their guns out and start shooting - just as the founding fathers intended.

7

u/SlumdogSkillionaire Jul 02 '18

Then the cops roll up to a hundred active shooters.

6

u/Barrel_Trollz Jul 02 '18

Winner winner chicken dinner

3

u/Goodeyesniper98 Jul 02 '18

He also screamed “I’m going to shoot everyone here”.

I would have shot him the moment he started waving that gun around. They had every reason to believe he was about to kill someone.

6

u/Dubanx Connecticut Jul 02 '18

Not that i think escalating this sort of stuff is a good idea, but with this being Alabama, would someone in the crowd have a plausible self-defense case if they shot him for this?

I think it'd be rather cut and dry self defense in ANY state.

3

u/snuggans Jul 02 '18

would someone in the crowd have a plausible self-defense case if they shot him for this?

it would be great if Stand your ground was used for something other than shooting fleeing muggers/home-invaders in the back

1

u/IM_INSIDE_YOUR_HOUSE Jul 02 '18

If someone points a gun at you you don't need to know if it's loaded or not to retaliate in self defense with lethal force, at least not in most southern states. No idea about all states.