Dear KAG: 20200723 Information Warfare Open Thread

“I know in some states that’s felony menacing, the idea being that only if you need to fire and are about to do so, should you point your gun at someone.”
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Except when a weapon is drawn in self-defense, of course.
When confronted by a mob, how can you know whether one or more members of a moving, raucous crowd, is aiming their guns at you?
It is the mob that is in violation of law; it is the mob that committed breaking and entering; it is the mob that is trespassing on private property; it is the mob — especially in the recent/current context of panti-fa and BLM rioting and looting and cop-killing — that presented a clear and immediate threat of danger.
The law is very clear on the danger of mobs, both the ‘disparity of force’ issue and that every member in particular of a mob is culpable and “individually fair game for the defensive violence suffered at the hands of the lawful defender(s).”
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Deadly Force — Understanding Your Right to Self Defense Massad Ayoob, 2014 — excerpt, pages 48-49:
“Because so few people among the general public, who constitute the jury pool, understand this – and because so many attorneys never even hear the term “disparity of force” in law school – it is important to discuss it here in detail.
The law has long since recognized that when two or more criminals attack a lone victim, their physical and tactical advantage is so great their single victim is likely to suffer death or grave bodily harm if the attack is not stopped immediately. (And, of course, the innocent victim has no prudent reason to believe that the attack will be stopped before that point by his or her violent assailants.)
A classic case in this vein was Michigan versus Ossian Sweet, in 1925. Dr. Sweet was a black physician in Michigan, in a time when segregation was law in the South, and “practice if not law” even in the North. He and his wife Gladys purchased a home in a Detroit neighborhood that was “all-white.” Hellish racial animosity ensued, and rose to the level of deadly threat.
On the day in question, Dr. Sweet had been so alarmed he had bought guns for the friends and relatives who came to his home to protect him. Hostile crowds formed, at fi rst held back by local police. When the mob began to storm the house, first throwing rocks through the windows, the defenders inside opened fi re. One white man was killed, and another wounded. Murder charges resulted. Legendary attorney Clarence Darrow took the case for the defense. In the chain of trials that followed, all of the defenders were ultimately exonerated, either by verdicts of not guilty or by prosecutorial dismissal of charges.
Not long after this trial, the classic legal text Warren on Homicide appeared, in 1938. This was the authoritative text destined to become known as “The Bible of Homicide Law” among lawyers and judges. The author(s) made it clear that when an individual faced a mob bent on doing violence to
him or his compatriots, each member of that mob shared the culpability of the entire organism of the mob…and, therefore, was equally and individually fair game for the defensive violence suffered at the hands of the lawful defender(s).”
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