- “Every single human being that was in front of my house was a criminal trespasser,” McCloskey said on October 6. “They broke down our gate. They trespassed on our property. Not a single one of those people is now charged with anything. We’re charged with felonies that could cost us four years of our lives and our law licences.”
Fuck aljazeera, they didn't say what the charges were until the sixth paragraph. I clicked on the piece to with the goal of finding out what the couple was charged with. I used to think Aljazeera was a useful outside perspective but more and more it's just a shoddy time waster. A decade ago they were occasionally doing the some of the very best reporting on some issues.
It honestly doesn't matter. The only real question is whether or not it jeopardizes their ability to practice law, which isn't really a legal question either. Pragmatically speaking we're talking about the opening volley in a years-long performative wrangle over whether or not Missouri thinks their lawyers should be allowed to wave guns around in the presence of black people. This thing is going to become a Fast & Furious franchise by March.
The "they broke down the gate" part of the story is not something I had seen/heard before. And it supports his use of a firearm, according to the Castle Doctrine. So... is there even a gate on the property? Or is it a gated community, and since the crowd was going to the Mayor's house in the gated community they knocked down the gate? Hm.
Get over yourself. It's a "gated community" and the "community" gate is adjacent to their property. Which has not stopped them from claiming the property as their own. All photos of the "destroyed gate" are from the McCloskeys; meanwhile, police actually led protestors through that gate. All of this is available to you in like two minutes of Googling. But you've got a hard-on for pointing guns at trespassers so now you're scratching your chin and going "hmmmmmmmbothsiiiiiiiiiiides" and it's fucking childish.
Nah. I just figured the lawyers are fudging the truth because they are lawyers, and as soon as I saw THEM talking about a "gate" that hadn't been a part of any other news story... I got skeptical. But you know me... I always give them a chance... and they invariably prove to me in the wrong again.
Real talk? There are two legal concepts that I hear CCW owners discuss that are completely fucking alien to literally everyone else: "Castle doctrine" and "felony murder." And real talk? "Castle doctrine" and "felony murder" are dog-whistle language every bit as much as "death panels" or "death tax." The rest of the goddamn world knows them as "stand your ground laws" and, if you're a foreigner, "holy fuck you insane goddamn yanks" laws because in both cases, they are vestiges of a legal system that dealt with some of its issues since Dred Scott but not all of them and that fuckin' hell it flies in the face of lex talionis which has been around since paperwork looked like this: It will not surprise you to learn that both "castle doctrine" and "felony murder" are racist piece-of-shit laws championed by racist pieces of shit and that both are instrumental legal concepts designed to maximize the 'othering' of anyone in a conflict while also advancing the role of deadly force in conflict resolution. They are, in a nutshell, bullshit racist cracker dogwhistles designed to make you think like Wayne LaPierre. Don't think like Wayne LaPierre.