Justifiable
Justifiable and excusable are synonymous.
Jus-ti-fi-able (adj): capable of being justified: excusable (first known use in 1561)
The above description of the word justifiable comes to us from Merriam Webster dictionary. According to Webster’s the first known use of the word was in 1561—not 1560 or 1562, but 1561—so that tells me they are pretty confident in its origins. (Don’t ask me how they know that little tidbit, but I’ll trust they do). My point is that we all know what the word means. Justifiable and excusable are synonymous. A lawful self-defense shooting (justifiable homicide) might just as well be referred to as an excusable homicide because that is what it means. In this case, a person is “excused of guilt” for lawful reasons such as shooting an individual during the commission of a violent crime against oneself.Every single antigun group … uses “murder by gun” figures while the mainstream media laps it up like a slobbering St. Bernard…
Yes, we all know what it means to use justifiable deadly force to defend ourselves. In a recent Detroit Fox News 2 (WJBK) report, Detroit’s Justifiable Homicide Rate Increased in 2011, January 10, 2012 by Charlie Leduff, the columnist reports Detroit’s 2011 homicide number of 344. According to the reporter, that number is up from 308 in 2010, an increase of “36 bodies” or 10 percent. The reporter goes on to tell us, “There is another category of homicide that is not in those numbers. This is called justifiable homicide. That’s when a citizen takes the life of another because he fears for his own life.”
According to the report, in 2010 Detroit recorded 19 such justifiable homicides, which reflected approximately 10 percent of that county’s total. In 2011 that figure increased quite substantially to 34 cases ruled justifiable, a whopping 80 percent, an increase of 15 over the previous year’s total justifiable homicides.
Okay, so what’s the beef? I mean, Detroit is a rough town, always has been. I know that from first-hand experience spending a few years as a youngster living in Ann Arbor many years ago, and I’m pretty confident that you won’t get any argument about that fact from any living resident of Michigan, former or current. Yup, Detroit is a rough town and the homicide figure went up in 2011 over 2010 by 36 bodies. No shock there, right?
Let’s call it what it is, shall we? The “homicide rate” is most commonly referred to as a city’s “murder rate” and most Americans use that number to determine the relative safety of a city. In fact, we use that number to prove that gun control is an abject failure in notoriously gun-hating cities such as Chicago, Washington D.C., etc.
It is the “murder rate” that provides us with shining examples of how those “gun free” metropolises continue to stand at the top of the heap of cities with the highest total of murders. What we never consider though, is how many of those murders are actually justifiable, and the recent Fox 2 Detroit story provides us with the best example yet by giving us hard figures to look at from Detroit.
To lump justifiable homicides (read: lawful self defense) into the total “murder” rate would be disingenuous at best, yet we allow the gun haters to get away with it every day.
Consider this: Every single antigun group (the Brady Campaign, the Violence Policy Center, and others) uses “murder by gun” figures while the mainstream media laps it up like a slobbering St. Bernard, face first and paw-deep in a toilet bowl. Never, and I do mean never, does the media make an even remote attempt to separate the number of justifiable homicides that these groups use to intentionally inflate the statistics. Unless they are patently stupid, and they are not, the gun-haters know quite well what they are doing and that the number they are using is false if they have failed to separate the justifiable shootings from the actual homicide figure.
The gun-haters would probably tell us that they only report murder figures that are publicly available, and they will use as an excuse the fact that they have no way of knowing if those numbers include justifiable killings. Although that might actually be true, they certainly do not add that disclaimer when reporting their numbers to the media and therefore to the general public, that an estimated percentage of shootings are in fact self-defense related. Nope, that would be too … honest.
A citizen forced to defend himself against an uninvited, unprovoked, violent attack that may take his life … is a vigilante?
The Detroit Fox 2 News, without intentionally doing so, makes it perfectly clear just how this happens and in many cases who is behind it. In an astonishing quote from the report, former Detroit homicide detective, Mike Carlisle says, “Justifiable or not, 378 people were murdered in the Motor City last year. You don’t get the true meaning of what the homicide count means if you’re going to start deleting figures from it. You’re getting a false sense of security, and right now I don’t think a false sense of security is what this city needs.”
Are you kidding me? From a former homicide detective? That’s about as polite as I can be! Is this guy for real? Let’s knock this kook back a few yards, shall we? Three hundred and seventy eight people were not murdered in the city of Detroit last year. The actual number of people murdered in Detroit (according to Fox 2 News) last year was 344 with an additional 34 justifiable homicides (read: self defense) rightfully not included in that number and nor should they be, unless you’re former detective Mike Carlisle.
The true number according to this man includes the grandma who kills the home invader who wanted to rape her and steal her life savings. It includes the 18-year-old recently widowed mother of two who uses the family shotgun to shoot the intruder who wants to kill her and her kids to get to her medicine cabinet. It includes the man who shoots a carjacker trying to steal the shiny new car with two kids strapped into car seats in the back seat and use it in a planned robbery. The former detective apparently doesn’t have the cognitive reasoning skills to distinguish between the forms of homicide; pretty scary considering he was a homicide detective, huh?
Based on his comments, it would not be a stretch to believe that the former detective might not even believe in justifiable homicide, if in fact he thinks the actual murder rate includes lawful self-defense killings. That sounds like the cop you want showing up at the scene of your lawful defensive use of a firearm (that may have resulted in the death of the meth tweaker who just tried to kidnap your children and plunge a 12-inch kitchen blade into your chest in the process), doesn’t it? Call me a fool, but I’d rather arrive at the scene to find the good guy standing over the body of the bad guy!
It gets better. In response to the Fox 2 News report, former Detroit Police Chief Ike McKinnon made the following statement:
“Fewer cops and runaway violence in Detroit is causing people to become the cop, the judge, the jury and the executioner. We don’t want that to occur. We want our police to stop the crime. We don’t want the citizens to stop the crime. We don’t want vigilantes to do so.”
To lump justifiable homicides into the total “murder” rate would be disingenuous at best, yet we allow the gun haters to get away with it every day.
This is why each of us as law-abiding gun owners and CCW holders must absolutely be awake at all times, sleeping with one eye open, a toothpick under your eyelids as I like to say, to counter this type of garbage when we see it or hear it. It’s why we have a responsibility to call these people out by writing a letter to the editor, the newsroom, the reporter who wrote the story, etc. to correct this crap whenever and wherever we see it.
If not you, who?
Thank God for all of us as CCW holders (and especially Detroit residents) that these two men are former Detroit Police Department employees.
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