A gun rights group sued New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) and other state officials on Saturday over an emergency order banning firearms from being carried in public in Albuquerque.
The National Association for Gun Rights, alongside Albuquerque resident Foster Haines, filed suit just one day after Grisham announced the public health order temporarily suspending concealed and open carry laws in the city.
The group argued that the order violates their Second Amendment rights, pointing to the Supreme Court’s decision last year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
That’s an example of my point: your statement demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of the laws governing use of force. The government has trained police on these laws, but they have not trained you.
First off, referring to it as “capital punishment”: the only entity authorized to mete out capital punishment is a judge and jury. Police are not at all involved in anything that can be described as “capital punishment”.
Police may only use lethal force in the same circumstances that you or I may use it. The law does not grant police any additional authorization to use lethal force. Such force may only be used to stop a credible, criminal, imminent, threat of death or grievous bodily harm to an innocent person. The only difference between you shooting someone and police shooting someone in an identical situation is that the government has expressly trained them on the law, and they have not trained you. So, when you articulate your reason for shooting, your explanation is very likely to miss some important requirement, while the cop’s explanation is fully consistent and compliant with the law. Your neighbor could be involved in an identical shooting, remain silent, and have his lawyer offer an explanation. I could be involved in an identical shooting, and articulate my justification the same way as the cop. Everyone of us - except you - would be deemed justified. But you, not having been trained on the laws governing use of force, could blurt out some irrelevant comment like “he needed to die” and be charged, because that comment suggested you had a mindset inconsistent with self defense.
The cops aren’t the problem here. The problem is that the government has not provided you with the proper training on the laws governing use of force, so you don’t understand the ramifications of what you say.
More importantly, because the government has not trained you on the laws governing use of force, you cannot accurately distinguish between a justified and an unjustified use of force. A cop, a lawyer, a juror, or someone else who has been trained in the laws can look at the situation and make an informed decision on whether the shoot was justifiable or not. You cannot. You can only make a decision on what “feels” right.
You need to be able to identify the law in question, and articulate your opinion on a use of force in terms of that law for your opinion to be sufficiently informed.