It's been more than ten years since I started to realize that there are a few million people in this country who look at self-defense cases and can't picture what would have happened if people who made the decision to defend themselves had chosen not to, even up to this weekend, there are people with platforms orders of magnitude larger than mine who just say, "there's a dead person. this person shot him. the person who shot him was the murderer." and refuse to think of what might have happened had the person pulled the trigger or drawn the knife.
The reality is that just about every self-defense case that ends up in court or in the news resulted in death or severe bodily injury to somebody. The difference is that there are millions of people in this country (I don't think that I'm exaggerating) that think that the person who is still breathing after the altercation is immediately guilty regardless of the context - who brought the fight and who wanted it?
The thing is, it shouldn't take much imagination to see what could have been if people chose not to defend themselves. Every murderer, rapist, batterer, domestic abuser, etc.. is somebody who did something to somebody else who could not or did not defend him or herself.
The fact that so many of these incidents are captured on video now should be heartening; but, it's not. It's revealed how morally vacuous people are on this issue. It's shown how little people are willing to think things through. It may have even created a mental block wherein all we're seeing is what's there on camera and we're Monday morning quarterbacking the fuck out of everything and blocking out what likely would have been.
I don't want to focus on police shootings, especially since those are often defense of a third party (which is also valid); but, millions of people were crying for blood after Ma'Khia Bryant was shot. She was in mid-stabbing motion with a knife against an unarmed girl who was in no position to defend herself. What do you think was going to happen if the cop hadn't fired? Was Bryant gonna give the girl a big, albeit aggressive hug?
Now, looking away from police, okay, people are still beating the drum that Rittenhouse killed two people. Yeah, he killed two people. The first person was somebody who displayed himself as a violent manic who tried later tried to chase Rittenhouse down and disarm him. Is it possible that Rosenbaum would just have disarmed Rittenhouse, put his gun aside, and given him a fatherly talk about the dangers of guns and how awesome BLM is? Kinda? What's more likely is that Rosenbaum would have raped Rittenhouse, taken his gun, killed him, and started blasting everyone that he could to go out in a blaze of glory.
You have to dig a little harder for anybody who legitimately thinks that Jose Alba is guilty; but, when you find them, they have to be entertaining the possibility that this big dude who was half Alba's age and twice his size who was shoving Alba around and cornering him was just gonna lead him out so Alba can apologize to the dude's girlfriend and then it'd all be good. I think it's clearly more likely that Alba would be dead or badly injured and his assailant would be facing another assault charge (which would probably only be six hours in jail under the current DA).
There was a story that came out of Chicago a few years ago in which a vagrant assaulted a homeowner. They were both unarmed. The vagrant gouged out the eyes and bit off the ears of the homeowner. There's no video of the incident. I'm willing to bet that almost all of you would, in retrospect, say that the homeowner would have been justified in pulling a knife or a gun and killing the vagrant.
The key is "in retrospect." If there were video and the homeowner had had a gun and killed the vagrant the moment that the assault began, millions of people would be calling for the homeowner to be charged with murder.
This isn't for lack of imagination. I'm not the person to make legal judgements on the basis of imagination. The problem is a lack of logic and a lack of empathy.
Could the knife brandishing manic who fought his ex-girlfriend and the police and was still standing after two taser hits be walking to a vehicle with two children in the back just to take them out for ice cream and return them immediately? Sure. It's not bloody likely and, if you're making that split second decision, you're not probably not making that bet.
I think that a world in which an aggressor is warned that he or she (usually he) is making himself fair game for a response of deadly force by initiating a physical altercation is better than a world that tells people to take the beating and hope for the best if a bad guy initiates force. Sadly, millions of you are pushing against me.