Colorado Weekend: Big Gun Coming to Town.

I'm not trying to set up Joel for our next gun discussion, really I'm not.

After all, Minneapolis has a ripe current case that provides a provocative example of the ambiguities surrounding self-defense claims.

I'm just showing that out here in Colorado, where the buffalo roam, the varieties of gun news have a different tenor right now.

(The 32 buffalo were shot near my great grandmother's former homestead, a place the columnist called "the middle of a lot of central Colorado nothingness," which must make Denver the center of everythingness.)

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Some exciting news from where I sit. Dick Cheney's coming next week to the far left part of the state — a better description might be "to the right of Utah" — for Senate fund raiser for Bob Schaffer — a good description would be to the right of Mark Kennedy... or maybe near the center of nothingness.

I'm wondering if would be worth 150 bucks to get close to Cheney and really confuse the hell out of anyone checking out my political donations.

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My brother-in-law had Tombstone on when I went over for dinner. Damn, they ran a tight ship back then. Oh, sure there were murders and all. But they kept all traces of horse manure off the main street day and night, and the dirt stayed as smooth as my living room floor. Clothes were always clean, women were hot and well kept, except for the one doing the laudanum, and the good guys were are all pretty sensitive for the 21st century, let alone the 19th.

Even when there was bloodshed and Kurt Russell had blood up to his elbows, he could caress his dying brother's forehead and never leave a print! The bar and rooms, including the jail? Immaculate. The consumptive Doc Holliday? Pale, yes, but otherwise, Paul Verlaine with six guns. Three bad cowboys went to Boot Hill in curved glass-topped coffins that looked better than any piece of furniture I've ever owned.

Doc Holliday died in Glenwood Springs, the town where I grew up, and making the little hike up the mountain to see his tombstone was like going to Mall of America. (It's what you did when you had visitors and didn't know what to do with them.)

My grandfather's ranch (not the Colorado side of the family) was near Tombstone in Cochise county. I don't recall any woods like they rode through, but maybe life was better around there in the frontier days, and we don't realize how bad we have it.

Comments

[Joel Rosenberg]

It would be okay if you were. Unfortunately, I don't know nearly enough about the present case that you refer to have an opinion about whether or not it was self-defense. Even assuming that all the information in the Star Tribune report is accurate -- and I have quite literally never been present at an incident that the Star Tribune has reported on that was completely accurate -- there's just not enough of it.

There is enough information to say that if it was self-defense, the victim behaved both foolishly and understandably. Fleeing the scene after such a violent encounter is to be avoided; flight is evidence -- not proof, but evidence -- of guilt. There's no reason to believe that he immediately called either 911 or his attorney, and he should've called both.

I'm sure that there will be some people who leap to the conclusion that it couldn't have been self-defense; a young black man shooting another young black men? To some, that's obviously just a couple of inner-city black thugs acting the way thugs act. (I'm not accusing you of leaping to that conclusion; if I was, I'd say so.)

What we know -- assuming the Star Tribune is right on the facts -- is consistent both with a clear-cut case of self-defense with the victim acting less than perfectly, and a guy getting mad because somebody shouted at him and hit him and murdering that person. Which is it? There, for once, the Star Tribune asks just the right question, and perhaps, at some point, we'll have a better answer.

As to Tombstone, my view on the actual historical events doesn't track the myths very much. Seems to me that two gangs -- Wyatt Earpp and his brothers were known as "the fighting pimps,", after all -- shot it out. All in all, I don't see a lot of romance in that.

Meanwhile, I've got some more writing to do...

[serns]

I watched parts of those PBS shows about life in the olden days, 1875 house or whatever. We no way have it bad. (You were kinda joking, anyway, right Charlie?) Arguably they got more exercise, but they didn't generally get the exercise in an ergonomic, moderate way, combined with good nutrition and health care that would've tended to extend their lives rather than shorten them.

[Charlie Quimby]

Joel,
Not sure which version of the story you read, but the online version said the shooter was black and the dead man and his three friends were white.

"He carried a gun because he was afraid to go out unprotected," said Tyeric Lessley's aunt.

[Joel Rosenberg]

I haven't followed the case closely, but I'd heard that all the participants were black.

Not that it matters -- to me, or, I think, to you; both white folks and black folks are utterly capable of doing both good and bad things.

That said, given that -- in the US, at this time in our history -- black people are disproportionately likely to be victims of violent crime, it probably makes even more sense for black folks than white folks to carry a tool to protect themselves from violent crime. One of my frustrations with the demographics of permit issuance in Minnesota is that folks in the black community seem to be underserved. (The fix for that, in my strongly-held opinion, isn't for fewer white folks to take out carry permits, but more black folks to.)