Self-defense killings increase Wichita’s homicide total

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M-Quigley
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Self-defense killings increase Wichita’s homicide total

Post by M-Quigley »

https://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime ... 67510.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So many times you hear people say "We've got to reduce gun violence" when they really mean "gun crime". Sometimes "gun violence" is unfortunitely necessary to prevent an innocent person from being a victim of a violent crime. If people who supposedly care about "gun violence" would concentrate on reducing the chances of the crime occuring, the violence part would go down regardless of how it was committed.
Wichita had more homicides this year than any year since 1995, driven in part by an increase in self-defense killings, an analysis of law enforcement records shows.

At least 43 people died by homicide in Wichita this year, up five from last year. The increase came because of self-defense killings, which increased by five — from three to eight, Wichita police said.

Before Kansas’ stand-your-ground law passed in 2007, if there was an opportunity to escape violence, or a chance to retreat, a person had to make that the first option before using force.

That’s no longer the case. Kansas is one of many states where citizens have no legal duty to retreat from an attacker in any place where they are lawfully present. A killing is justifiable in Kansas when a person “reasonably believes” that the use of deadly force is “necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm” to that person or a third party.
In the past three years, Wichita police have worked five times as many justifiable homicides as during the first six and a half years of the stand-your-ground law, according to numbers provided by police. From 2006 to the middle of 2012, Wichita police worked three justifiable homicide cases, police said at the time. From 2016 to 2018, there have been 15.

Nationally, police shootings account for the majority of justifiable homicides — 429 of the 782 justifiable homicides enforcement in 2017 were by police.

That wasn’t the case in Wichita this year. None of the self-defense killings in 2018 was by on-duty police officers. One was by an off-duty police officer who shot and killed a man who had entered his west Wichita home high on meth and armed with a stolen gun, police officials and an autopsy report said.
If you scroll down partway it lists a paragraph or two of details of each self defense shooting for the year and when it happened.
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High Power
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Re: Self-defense killings increase Wichita’s homicide total

Post by High Power »

M-Quigley wrote:So many times you hear people say "We've got to reduce gun violence" when they really mean "gun crime". Sometimes "gun violence" is unfortunitely necessary to prevent an innocent person from being a victim of a violent crime. If people who supposedly care about "gun violence" would concentrate on reducing the chances of the crime occuring, the violence part would go down regardless of how it was committed.
Excellent point. That's one that I'll have to remember. A wise man once told me that in any debate or discussion, the terms must be clearly defined.

The proponents of reducing "gun violence" versus "gun crimes," would want to take the ability of someone to defend themselves away. That, in turn, would actually cause all crime to increase.

So the next time someone spouts off on reducing "gun violence" I'll have to get them to make a distinction between a violent act (fighting back) versus a criminal act.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
WhyNot
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Re: Self-defense killings increase Wichita’s homicide total

Post by WhyNot »

So the next time someone spouts off on reducing "gun violence" I'll have to get them to make a distinction between a violent act (fighting back) versus a criminal act.
And if any further distinction is needed, being a criminal act is illegal activity, ultimately being decided by a jury of peers. A primary component of the self defense scenario is , what others would do if in same/similar circumstance.

And that jury has been in for a very long time now.
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