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White man faces trial in US for shooting Black teen who went to wrong house

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/1/white-man-faces-trial-in-us-for-shooting-black-teen-who-went-to-wrong-house

Teenager Ralph Yarl was shot without warning through a door after going to the wrong house to collect his brothers.

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The more stories like this I see, the less I sympathise with gun owners. If you all are so cowardly that youll kill anyone that stepped on your property or looked at you "the wrong way" or was black or a child in school, I want your hobby taken away.

You should have reigned in your crazies if you wanted to not be seen as a threat to society.

ashok36

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In my town, Tampa, a retired police chief shot and killed a dude at the movie theater because they got in an argument and he threw popcorn on the cop.

The trial was extended over two years and the cop got off scott free.

LetterboxPancake

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That must have been tactical assault popcorn, the cop was lucky to get out alive. What a poor little soul...

massive_bereavement

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There's a very profitable industry that lives out of scarying this people. The same happened with that lady that killed a Uber driver because she thought she was gonna get kidnapped.

There's a Behind the bastards episode dedicated to this subject worth checking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK2ADmAjiF0

Bipta

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This is blaming a group for the actions of some individuals, which has got to be some logical fallacy.

If you want to call for no more guns have at it, but I've got to take issue with your reasoning.

Pregnenolone

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There‘s a hell of a lot of “some individuals”

DragonTypeWyvern

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There are 72 million gun owners in the US.

There were 42,000 gun deaths in 2021. A slight majority were suicides.

Can y'all do the math on that one? Or is that too big an ask?

Pregnenolone

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Yep, adds up to “too many gun deaths”.

Good one though

DragonTypeWyvern

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Lul, disarm the people over a rounding error as the fascists work themselves up to a civil war again, libs gonna lib.

Rambi

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I know this was a few days ago but this argument from a leftist pro-gun point of view is so stupid to me. If you're concerned about fascists, why do you support arming them lol?? It's just the easily rebuked good guy with a gun bad guy with a gun argument repackaged to appeal to left wing people. Muricans going Murican

DragonTypeWyvern

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They're already armed. Besides immediately triggering a civil war that push a whole bunch of "independents" to the wrong side, all it will do is disarm the sane.

Harrison

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That's 4x higher than car related deaths per number of car owners, and cars require a license and insurance, and doing something dangerous with one can have you lose your right to use it permanently.

Cars have the additional factor that they are practically required for living in the US, so reasonably we would be willing to accept a higher number of deaths than we would otherwise for other objects.

DragonTypeWyvern

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I agree, let's do gun licenses.

ZodiacSF1969

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OK, now do African Americans.

FlyingSquid

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Being black isn't a choice. Owning a gun is. And gun owners keep telling me how they are and need to be responsible... but never take responsibility for all the gun crime.

escaped_cruzader

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Most gun violence is gang/suicide/assault/robbery

The outliers that generate more outrage are the mass shooters, racists and accidents involving children

Pretty hard to take responsibility for any of those if you are not the perp

ZodiacSF1969

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Hush, you are ruining their narrative. Don't you know statistics are racist?

stopthatgirl7

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Ffs, leave us out of this.

xkforce

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Blaming a group that is many many times more likely to kill those around them and habitually defends their hobby with gems like "What if we need to overthrow our democratically elected government?", "There is no amount of people that die due to guns that would convince me gun ownership isn't worth the cost" and some lame analogy equating guns with penises and gun homicide with rape as if that didn't write the jokes about gun owners itself. (If you're a little slow, it means a lot of you just came out and said the quiet part out loud. Some of you really do use guns to compensate for... shortcommings)

And the fact that further down, you're arguing that "only 42,000 die a year" and that most of them are suicides (as if those deaths matter less for some reason) just proves my point. Could many of you handle guns responsibly? Sure. But I dont think that tens of thousands dead a year is worth waiting to find out which ones.

keeb420

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i dont think everyone should have their guns taken away. i used to have a coworker, retired now, who when the topic came up of crime hed say something like "i hope someone would, id love to." to me that sounds psychopathic. someone like that might should have their guns taken away.

JustZ

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Well you're clearly not as smart as you think.

some_guy

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“He said he hoped he didn’t kill anybody,” Gale testified.

Prosecutors don't want you to know this one wild phrase.

reverendsteveii

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Mfw face when I get my neighbor's mail by mistake and as I'm dropping it off to him I hear "IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR US!"

BubblyMango

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What im wandering is this: is this one of those houses where you have to enter the yard in order to ring the bell/knock on the door? If so, this is an actual death trap - you dont know if this is the right house, and in order to verify you have to step into the property where you may be legally shot.

How do you protect yourself when you have to visit a house but are not sure which is the correct one?

Stuka

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You can't legally shoot someone for entering your yard...thats why he's on trial.

BubblyMango

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I think there is a low in the US that if someone infiltrates your property you can legally shoot to kill. Not sure about the specifics. I assume this case was either too extreme or that there are more specifics to this law.

Stuka

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No, specifics depend on the state but in none are you allowed to shoot someone for entering your yard.

Dark_Arc

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These laws, castle doctrine, are not anywhere near that crazy. They're the same idea as self defense... however, normally you have a "duty to retreat", what castle doctrine says is if you're in your own home you no longer have that obligation.

You still have to meet the bar for self defense, i.e., they need to be a threat... someone walking in your yard or knocking on your door that's not brandishing a weapon is not going to meet that bar.

Edit: Wikipedia disagrees with me ... though I'm not sure if that's a factual disagreement or an editorial disagreement.

Justifiable homicide[2] in self-defense which happens to occur inside one's home is distinct, as a matter of law, from castle doctrine because the mere occurrence of trespassing—and occasionally a subjective requirement of fear—is sufficient to invoke the castle doctrine. The burden of proof of fact is much less challenging than that of justifying homicide in self-defense. It would be a misconception of law to infer that because a state has a justifiable homicide in self-defense provision pertaining to one's domicile, it has a castle doctrine protecting the estate and exonerating any duty whatsoever to retreat therefrom.

There's a lack of citation here which honestly should probably be raised on the wiki. The cited source does not support that text (I've added the appropriate citation requests on the wikipedia side -- if anyone can prove these claims, we should contribute the reference there as well).

BubblyMango

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Yeah i remembered seeing something similar to this somewhere. Either way US laws are completely irrelevant to me so this is pure mild interest.

some_guy

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You're talking about "Stand Your Ground" laws. They allow you to shoot in self-defense when someone enters your home or otherwise threatens you. This is why George Zimmerman got off after murdering a child. Don't forget, kids, George Zimmerman killed a child.

Being on your property probably doesn't count in most states, but I say "probably" because some states are fucking insane, so who knows.

reverendsteveii

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George Zimmerman killed a child.

Hey now, that's not fair. Zimmerman stalked a child through the night after police told him not to, started a fistfight with that child, and only murdered the child after it became evident that he was losing the fight he started.

That's what stand your ground is for, shooting your way out of fights you start. Ask Marissa Alexander, it's certainly not for firing warning shots at your abusive ex husband when he's on your property in violation of a restraining order and threatening your kids.

zimmernan

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I know How could this monster

Have really killed this totally innocent angel of a child,

His social media post were so innocent!

reverendsteveii

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BuT hIs SoCiAl MeDia

Get fucked

skittles

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reverendsteveii

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The laws on self-defense are extremely state specific. Your understanding of self defense laws is highly sensationalized and I recommend in the strongest possible terms you do some research before they become relevant to you personally one way or the other.

BubblyMango

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I dont live in the US and dont plan on visiting there in the near future. I am aware of the laws in my country.

Dozzi92

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But you had no qualms opining about those laws on the internet.

BubblyMango

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My posts here were full of "i think" and "not sure". Also not sure which part here was an opinion.

And this is the internet. Not an academic paper. This IS the place to ask/discuss topics you are not sure about. Just dont go around claiming to be an expert in something you are not.

reverendsteveii

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As a young black man what actually has to happen in order for it to be illegal for someone to shoot you?

mightyfoolish

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Vitiligo?

In all seriousness, MLK Jr. style of mass protesting and boycotts. It will be tough to sell such an inconvenience, so getting that ball rolling seems very difficult.

sumofchemicals

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I don't consume conservative media, but I'm wondering is there some current of thought that's leading to all these shootings after someone goes to the wrong door? Seems like there's been a lot recently, and makes no sense to me.

baruchin

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And then there's this. So that makes me think that the shooter will win this case.

Otkaz

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That's a very different case. Read the actual article. That guy broke a window and was reaching in to try and unlock the door at 3am. The whole thing was caught on a surveillance camera. I think they made the right choice not charging the home owner if those reported facts are accurate.

reverendsteveii

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Is anyone else seeing a broken link to the piracy community when they click this?

inanna

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How do you goto the wrong house?

snooggums

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People make mistakes sometimes. For example, your post.

freeindv

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Or yours, for another example

ThePac

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Oooh a "no u' in the wild. Spicy AND convincing!

freeindv

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The double no u!

EDIT: or maybe more like triple...

mustardman

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The word "another" would implies theirs was true which means yours a contradiction, therefore an example of a mistake.

🤓

Procleus

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He was picking his brother up from a friend’s house. It wasn’t where he lived and he was unfamiliar with the area. If you search for the original news stories from when the event took place, more detail is given.

ThePac

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That's your question? Not "how do you shoot a kid through your front door?"

NatakuNox

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Maybe there was a typo in the address he was given. Maybe the house didn't have clearly marked address on the front. Or just maybe your question has nothing to do with a gun nut shooting anyone that knocks on his door.

ElectricCattleman

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Tbh it doesn't matter if he had any business at the house. He could go there to ding dong ditch, or ask a survey question, or complain about their yard, or ask how their day is going.

None of these things are a legal reason to shoot someone knocking at your door.

stopthatgirl7

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He had the wrong street name when he was going to pick up his little brother.

Nurse_Robot

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This question cannot be legitimate