Charges to be brought against man who defended himself and shot 3 boys.
I heard about this story when it first broke. I didn't say anything about it because there wasn't a lot of information. There was only speculation from people who generally agree with me. Sadly, that's still mostly the case.
I did just hear that charges against the twenty-five-year-old who defended himself and his girlfriend are to be presented in front of a grand jury. Again, I can't seem to corroborate the sources. If that's true, I don't know what the charges are.
That said, there are a few things that should be pointed out.
One is that, at least in Texas and Arizona, two states for which I've thoroughly looked into self-defense laws, there's no exception carved out on the basis of age. A twelve-year-old with a gun is a deadly force threat, just like any adult with a gun.
Also, even if the media aren't trying to fuck with our brains to push a narrative like they did after the Trayvon Martin shooting, in which they only showed photos of Martin when he was several years younger, several inches shorter, and several pounds lighter, it's natural that we project images of what twelve and fourteen-years-old looks like. That's an imperfect perception. In the case of Tamir Rice, all we heard was the age of thirteen, and all we saw were, once again, photos of Rice when he was younger and smaller. At the time of death, Rice was 5'7" and 195 pounds. Namely, we've all met grown men who are smaller than Rice was.
It has been mentioned that the boyfriend in this case might have thought that the robbery was a prank. That would indicate that at least a couple of the robbers looked their ages. It also says something positive about the boyfriend that, seemingly, his first reaction wasn't to pull his own gun and start blasting. What's astonishing is that the boyfriend got out of the situation unharmed despite the delayed reaction and the disparity of numbers.
Still, what if it were a prank? What if the guns carried by the boys were unloaded or fake? That wouldn't change whether or not the boyfriend was justified in taking defensive action. It would be absurd to expect a person in that situation to read the minds of his potential attackers. There's a reason why people check guns the moment a gun is handed to them (unless it's Alec Baldwin) -- you can't tell whether or not a gun is loaded by simply looking at it from the outside.
Does any of this mean that the boyfriend is innocent, and that no charges should be filed? Not necessarily. It's entirely possible that the boyfriend was justified in shooting the first one or two robbers, and then the third was surrendering or running away at the time that he was shot. It's possible that the boyfriend kept fighting after the threat was over.
Finally, we should be happy that nobody died as a result of this. I hope that nobody was injured in a way that it permanently physically crippling. I hope that the boys learned a valuable lesson about trying to rob people in a state wherein a lot of people are armed.