• Twitter
  • Facebook
News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

Bad aim

Hysterical, anti-gun bunk from Bloomberg columnist Mark Niquette:

Every time police Sgt. Joseph Hubbard stops a speeder or serves a search warrant, he says he worries that suspects assume they can open fire - without breaking the law.

Hubbard, a 17-year veteran of the Police Department in Jeffersonville, Ind., says his apprehension stems from a state law approved this year that allows residents to use deadly force in response to the "unlawful intrusion" by a "public servant" to protect themselves and others, or their property.

"If I pull over a car and I walk up to it and the guy shoots me, he's going to say, 'Well, he was trying to illegally enter my property,' " said Hubbard, 40, president of Jeffersonville Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 100. "Somebody is going get away with killing a cop because of this law."

[. . .]

Opponents see a potential for mistakes and abuse.

It's not clear under the law whether an officer acting in good faith could be legally shot for mistakenly kicking down the wrong door to serve a warrant, said state Sen. Tim Lanane, the assistant Democratic leader and an attorney.

I wouldn't have thought it possible, but the headline is even more misleading than the article itself: "Indiana law lets citizens shoot at police." Run for your lives, coppers! It's open season and the Hoosier yahoos are locked and loaded!

The article barely mentions in passing the "unfavorable court decision" many felt required a change in the law. In fact that Indiana Supreme Court decision went against eight centuries of legal precedent in ruling that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry. The corrective by the General Assembly merely adds language that makes "any person" the potential recipient of defensive force. 

Comments

tim zank
Wed, 06/06/2012 - 10:22am

With a headline and article  like that I just can't imagine why so may people think the press is biased, inflammatory and generally full of sh*t. (present company excepted of course Leo)...

Christopher Swing
Wed, 06/06/2012 - 3:41pm

"Every time police Sgt. Joseph Hubbard stops a speeder or serves a search warrant, he says he worries that suspects assume they can open fire - without breaking the law."

Hubbard would be an idiot if he really believed that. But I'm certain he doesn't.

This is typical "officer safety first" garbage that gets spewed any time there's even a hint that "law enforcement" might not or isn't getting its way. It's just convenient for anti-gun groups to participate in.

Remember, when "officer safety" comes first, everyone else's comes last.

Quantcast