In this case, a man in a wheelchair is accused of shooting a man with a fake gun. The defense argues that he was defending himself against a thief in a stolen patch. The prosecution argues that the man should have returned the stolen patch back to the thief.
00:00:00.000If this existed in a vacuum, I would say if anyone now has their hand on what you believe to be a gun, you panic, you're like, okay, if I run away, can he shoot me?
00:00:12.000And if you have a gun, you're probably best served to protect yourself.
00:00:14.000As far as if you're trying to live, you don't know, especially is there a corner he could run around?
00:00:19.000Or is it, you know, the guy's seated, so it's almost like he's a built-in bench rest.
00:00:23.000Do you think that a defensive measure against a disabled person in a wheelchair that goes five miles an hour might be to return the stolen property?
00:00:54.000So he is an actual veteran and wrongly accused of stolen valor.
00:01:00.000But this is the practical part of when whether you have a real gun or a fake gun or a knife or not, is like those moments start having a big impact.
00:01:08.000Moving forward in the wheelchair to do what?
00:01:10.000Were you going to chase the guy down and steal the patch back?
00:01:19.000What we're saying is how the jury will look at it.
00:01:20.000So I'd be very careful with, I agree with you in principle, but if you do that afterwards and you don't go to the authorities first, very likely you are going to be charged with assault at that point if you just roll up on a guy with a business.
00:01:32.000Especially in Washington, you are not allowed to pursue somebody who stole from you.
00:01:36.000Is that, yeah, is that the Castle doctrine a little bit differently on your property, et cetera.
00:01:43.000But here's one other factor I'll point to.
00:02:52.000But if as he was reaching for the guy's patch and ripping it off, if the guy in the wheelchair went, ah, and shot him, that'd probably be well within the realms of the law, him defending himself, right?
00:03:00.000In a wheelchair, he's disabled, the guy getting physical with him.
00:03:03.000In other words, that would be simpler.
00:03:05.000Or if separately, if this guy hadn't grabbed his patch, if some guy with a wheelchair said, hey, you disrespected me and was coming up with the gun and you shot him, that would probably be much more cut and dry.
00:03:15.000In this case, it's because of what preceded it and then this guy going forward afterward.
00:03:48.000So in this instance, Beretman, standing man, is moving backwards after the initial knife is pulled, after the initial stealing of the patch, right?
00:03:57.000So sure, there was arguably an assault or a battery in taking the patch, but he didn't then at that point stand there, wait for the guy to pull the knife and then immediately pull a gun and start plugging him, right?
00:04:06.000So that little back and forth is going to be in favor of the man who was standing in just looking at the revival of his ability to defend himself because he was moving away.
00:05:44.000But make sure that it's very clear, legally, we're not talking about right and wrong, that you are defensively using a firearm.
00:05:51.000And that also, I've read quite a few blogs from firearm experts who say that's also a complication with having it in the bag because you will have people go, well, if you had time to go get it in your bag, why don't you have time to run away?
00:06:02.000Well, his bag was on his shoulder, so I understand.
00:06:07.000A factor in whether or not it was self-defense versus premeditated is how long you had before you pull the trigger, right?
00:06:13.000So if you, like even little instances of like, I saw something happening and I went inside the house and how far they had to go in the house, right?
00:06:21.000If it's like reach for the shotgun behind the front door, maybe less premeditated.
00:06:25.000If you had to go all the way to the back of the house and open the safe and pull it in and load it and then walk back to the front of the house.
00:06:33.000You know, the reason they have, or they switched to off-duty officers carrying, you know, revolvers, a double action only, meaning it's a shrouded hammer or an internal hammer.
00:06:50.000A famous case where he had a guy at gunpoint.
00:06:53.000The guy, I believe, was a violent drug dealer.
00:06:56.000And if you look back, rightfully should have been shot, was an aggressor.
00:06:59.000But because the cop had the hammer cocked, they said it could have been a negligent discharge and the man was reprimanded.
00:07:06.000And they switched a lot of police service revolvers over to double action only, even though he could have been completely justified and he could have had it cocked into single action because he thought this guy's going to continue being violent.
00:07:18.000So that's unfortunately the technicality of the laws when you get the wrong, when you get the wrong judge, it goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you shouldn't, even though this guy was violent, even though this guy was, he was resisting arrest, and even though this guy had tried to attack you, you had it in single action.
00:08:11.000I would say, yeah, in Washington, in Washington, both guys, individual actions would be against the law.
00:08:19.000My understanding of Washington's law, but also more practically, how Washington and specifically Seattle would approach something like that is you needed to call the cops.
00:09:25.000The options that you lose, obviously, in a wheelchair is, hey, you could physically, it would be...
00:09:32.000You could grab the guy and try and get your patch back.
00:09:34.000Now, that would still be assault, I would guess, right?
00:09:37.000Well, I mean, look, if the guy's reaching for it, you can, again, defend yourself, push him off, you know, but you can't just grab him by the collar and just start popping him in the face, right?
00:09:45.000I mean, again, it's about proportionality, right?
00:09:47.000Okay, the guy reached down, ripped the patch off.
00:11:50.000Now, if they steal it from your house in Texas, until when they're climbing over the fence, you can still shoot them because that's your property, right?
00:12:46.000It was a great time, had a lot of great people.
00:12:47.000And the people there who are the most die-hard gun advocates were also the ones who were like, do not pull your gun unless you are 100% sure.
00:12:56.000And by 100%, I mean 1000% sure you're in the right.
00:12:59.000Because it's not about whether you could make an armchair argument or technically be correct.
00:13:04.00012 people with an average eighth grade, maybe sixth grade education, depending on what state you're in or county, and a DA with a political leaning, depending where you're at, is going to decide they want to do it.
00:13:20.000In other words, if this story read, hey, man steals homeless, steals, sorry, disabled veterans patch and gets shot for his troubles, that'd be a feel-good story.
00:13:28.000Or the crowd beat the crap out of him and return the patch.
00:13:31.000Unfortunately, that's not how it went.
00:13:32.000And so, as far as dispensing advice to people out there, don't do that.
00:13:35.000Also, do we know the caliber of the gun fired?
00:13:40.000Because the guy, as I understand, the guy lived.
00:13:42.000I mean, he shot him pretty much point blank straight there.
00:13:44.000It also just reminds me how surprisingly ineffective pistol calibers can be.
00:13:50.000It really does come down to shot placement because people are like, I only use 45.
00:13:53.000It's like, he just shot that guy who's literally in a chair, and he's pretty much fine.
00:13:57.000He looked like he had a few layers to a little bit of probably had a few layers, but when people go, oh, you're carrying that, you're going to say, ah, I don't really know if it would have made a difference from 32 all the way up to 45 at that point.
00:14:09.000Unless you're talking about a rifle, it seems like if you miss something vital, like don't rely on one shot from a pistol.
00:14:14.000If it's actually someone on PCP who's a threat, one shot from a pistol often is not nearly as effective as people expect.
00:14:33.000So some DAs have argued that if you shot once, you were not in imminent danger because your adrenaline was not too high because you were able to shoot once.
00:14:43.000If you thought that he was actually a harm with a real gun, you would have shot him multiple times.
00:14:48.000On the other side, you shoot multiple times.
00:15:13.000But at the same time, I don't, like, if I'm in a situation, not like that, obviously, but if I'm in a situation where I might have to reach for a firearm, I don't want the, oh, God, am I going to go to jail for murder defending myself going through my mind?
00:15:31.000Now, obviously, I don't want there to be room for people to just randomly blow people away because they felt quasi-threatened because a black guy walked up to me.
00:20:36.000I can tell you this, it doesn't look like a very obvious jam.
00:20:39.000In other words, it might be one where there's a failure to fully extract that you wouldn't know.
00:20:42.000In other words, from the back of the game.
00:20:43.000You have to look if there are some jams that you don't know from the back of the gun until you look.
00:20:48.000And the only way you would know it's jammed is if you pull the trigger and it's not going.
00:20:52.000In other words, you can't know if it's jammed or not until you either do one of two things, look or pull.
00:20:58.000And we were just giving the guy, we were just giving the guy credit for having good weapon discipline, good barrel discipline, and not, oh, he didn't shoot until he had acquired a target.
00:23:25.000If there's another camera angle, if there's another angle and it shows in any way that he tried to pull that trigger a second time, that would factor in, I would imagine, quite a big deal because at that point, the guy is neutralized.
00:23:43.000If he does, but there is a second angle.
00:23:46.000I think that there's no indication there that he saw more danger, but there is the risk of it because literally the gun's just for still right there.
00:24:17.000Outside of the state, we're just going, Abbott's going for the gold here, right?
00:24:22.000The Warwanto or the Warranto, which is a maneuver to say you've neutralized because you failed to do your duty, is actually has a lot of historical precedent around you've decided you're not going to do your duty, right?
00:24:33.000You have actively solicited funds to leave the state.
00:24:36.000You have said, we're going to continue indefinitely staying out here because we don't want this one item out of 18 items on this special session to get passed.
00:24:44.000And the reality is, is that this power does exist.
00:24:48.000Now, Abbott was going for the immediate strike on getting them bounced right now with the Supreme Court.
00:24:53.000Supreme Court does clearly have the authority to make this.
00:24:56.000The Texas Supreme Court make this decision.
00:24:58.000But I think understandably so, because this is a very rare situation, they're waiting and have required additional briefing until September 4th.
00:25:05.000And then at that point, there can be another session that gets called by Abbott to do another special session, another 30 days.
00:25:12.000Why does all this matter from a timing?
00:25:14.000September 9th is one of the earliest deadlines for primary filing.
00:25:18.000So if you're going to start running or doing other things, you're going to want to know by early September because you've got to get those dates in.
00:25:24.000So there's definitely a game of chicken here.
00:25:27.000But without question, the Texas Constitution imbues within these legislators as officers of the state an obligation to come and participate.
00:25:35.000And their decision not to gives very wide open for Abbott to do what he's doing.
00:25:41.000All of that said, I really don't like the idea of Abbott saying, well, they're gerrymandering.
00:27:30.000Just brandish it and hope somebody else doesn't have a gun?
00:27:32.000You know, hey, he was on his way to an airsoft competition.
00:27:37.000I think maybe the guy, you know, maybe he's one of those guys where he wants test something for self-defense, but he doesn't feel comfortable.
00:27:43.000I mean, this is, I'm just thinking from somebody from Seattle.
00:27:46.000He doesn't feel comfortable carrying a weapon of war, as Tim Walz was saying.
00:27:51.000And maybe he's just like, I want some kind of self-defense measure.
00:27:54.000Not thinking about the fact if you pull that out and you're not intending to use it.
00:28:01.000Well, here's what this is also the point I was making.
00:28:02.000And Bill, as someone who has a lot of experience with different caliber handguns, I am of the belief because there's been so much made to be about the caliber wars.
00:28:11.000Remember, it was like, everyone was like, you need at least a 40 Smith and Weston.
00:28:14.000And then it turns out there's no real difference between that and modern nine millimeter ammunition.
00:28:18.000That if this was an actual threat, meaning if this was a life or death scenario, people go, I use 45 because it's the only number, I only need one shot.
00:28:27.000I think you'd be better off with two or three shots of 32 than one of 45.
00:28:31.000I think people who think they're going to stop it with one shot are deluding themselves.
00:28:35.000And what's most important is to carry something that you can shoot well.
00:28:38.000Because if you can get one shot and not get a follow-up shot, we see how it doesn't necessarily, in many scenarios, doesn't even come close to stopping people.
00:28:45.000The guy in the wheelchair was just, he carries that in hopes that if something happens, he can intimidate somebody into because I don't think he's an aggressor.
00:28:52.000I don't think he's ever had any intention of being an aggressor.
00:28:55.000So I think he's like, well, if something happens to me because I'm in a wheelchair and I'm old, hopefully this will help stop somebody.
00:29:04.000And by the way, you guys are making great points.
00:29:05.000I just want to say, I'm arguing over practical reality is people, people carry BB guns and airsoft guns legitimately who are saying, I couldn't fire a real gun.
00:29:56.000The guy shouldn't have brandished that firearm, real or not.
00:29:59.000Shouldn't have brandished a knife, shouldn't have kept charging after the guy.
00:30:02.000He should have just done what you have to do and just let yourself get robbed and hope that people are going to be able to get away from it.
00:31:39.000So prior bad acts is a rule of evidence that says that there are limitations on why you could bring in a prior bad act to prove another bad act.
00:31:49.000So just because you were a fighter when you were in your 20s, does that mean you actually stole something in your 40s, right?
00:32:05.000You can use it to show they had knowledge of how to fight.
00:32:07.000If they're like, I've never used a lockpick in my entire life, I wouldn't even know what to do with this.
00:32:12.000And it's like, you've done 97 cat burglaries in your teenage years, right?
00:32:16.000So there's some exceptions there that would allow this to come in.
00:32:19.000So for example, here, having an act of violence being used to show that you have a propensity for violence or what your mindset was or what your intent was.
00:32:45.000I would almost say that's more relevant where he said, you know, it was his duty, allegedly, to take action against the Trump administration.
00:32:51.000If I'm a lawyer, I argue like that shows this man is deluded and is willing to take law, the law into his own hands.
00:32:56.000I mean, he's done it twice now, right?
00:32:57.000So would you abuse violence in that instance?
00:33:01.000Maybe you know, but did he get arraigned yet?
00:35:05.000For half Asian Bill, can someone be held legally responsible if they give a firearm to a law-abiding trans person and they then use it in a mass shooting?
00:35:43.000All the way from manufacturers to gun dealers and other things like that.
00:35:47.000There is precedent around if you know that someone is going to go do something or has a propensity for violence that you have now, from a civil standpoint, known or should have known that this was going to lead to harm.
00:35:58.000So maybe negligence, Something along those lines.
00:36:01.000The problem is a lot of this is state by state, and it really comes down to how much did you know or should you have known as a reasonable person in that circumstance?
00:36:08.000If someone has been sitting around joking about doing bad things and shooting people, et cetera, and you're like, Yeah, here, why don't you just take my Browning M50, whatever, right?
00:36:17.000Like, just not like, don't, don't, don't do that, right?
00:36:22.000But by the same token, you know, for example, some folks have tried to hold people who do firearms training liable.
00:36:27.000So, oh, I did my concealed carry training.
00:36:30.000Well, if they hadn't trained them how to do it and offered the license, and then they wouldn't have three years later been able to pull their gun and shoot a guy in a wheelchair, right?
00:36:37.000So, there are limits on what that is, and usually what it is is a proximate causation, what could have reasonably been anticipated.
00:36:44.000Just merely giving a gun to someone or selling them a gun, assuming it was all legal and all of it was above board, then that most likely would not lead to liability.
00:37:10.000And since they marketed it as something that is, you know, reliable and easy to conceal, they were sued in certain states saying, You marketed this as something that was easy to conceal, and that's why it's been used in a disproportionate amount of gang shootings.
00:37:23.000Well, it turns out the reason I was using a lot of gang shooting is because it was cheap.
00:37:45.000They were saying, like, you know, you're literally advertising this using military, you know, paraphernalia or imagery and whatnot.
00:37:52.000So like you're literally saying, bring the weapon of war to your local school district, right?
00:37:56.000But that's clearly not what the purpose is.
00:37:58.000If you want to take a little snapshot of something, you're going to make that argument in the same way that you could take anything out of context, right?
00:38:04.000You could, are we going to act on every single joke we hear someone say, right?
00:38:08.000Because they've made an offhand comment.
00:38:10.000I mean, that's where it really, like, letting that process go through and why the legal system is adversarial because you need to be able to attack those and let people really make the right decision.
00:38:31.000Can I be held legally responsible if I transfer ownership of a firearm to my non-criminal trans kid who then uses it to commit a mass shooting?
00:38:55.000This seems like it might be a trap question.
00:38:58.000Or you're disturbed anyway because also, let me just add, any kid who wants to shoot anyone, whether mass or otherwise, don't give it to them.
00:39:07.000If they want to shoot an animal with it that is not legal, don't do it.
00:39:09.000If they just want to go shoot it in the air, don't do it.
00:39:12.000The fact that you're concerned about this and asking questions means that this will likely end up in a case somewhere if anything ever happens and they'll be like, we're not your lawyers.
00:40:21.000What standing would Trump have to actually take over other cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, New York, et cetera?
00:40:26.000Well, I mean, we already answered that pretty much none.
00:40:29.000Yeah, there's very, Very, very, very, very little.
00:40:32.000So, you know, if Canada were to take over Detroit and we actually cared to recapture it, then there would be some opportunities to be able to have the federal government step in and do some action.
00:40:43.000But almost all of it involves, is there some kind of foreign power or a complete, like, for example, if certain states just said, hey, we don't care about North Dakota anymore, we just like everybody left.
00:41:49.000I understand, though, why it might bother someone, you know, the threat of doing something that is antithetical to representing the people of your state, right?
00:42:00.000In other words, there's a, and I agree, both sides do it, but I do think there is a difference in gerrymandering or redistricting, going, well, look at this district.
00:42:06.000There are a bunch of Republicans here and they don't have any reps, right?
00:42:10.000Or you could do the same thing and say, well, look at this district here.
00:42:13.000It's mostly Democrat and they don't have any reps.
00:42:15.000And we pointed you to many states where there were 30, 35, 40, 45% Republican with zero representatives.
00:42:22.000So I agree that both sides kind of play political football with it, but the reasoning behind the redistricting, I think, is the most relevant facet.
00:42:30.000And in this case, if he means it, assuming it's not tongue-in-cheek, threatening to gerrymander California more because you don't like somebody, which inevitably means, I would assume, means he's, of course, not going to gerrymander it.
00:42:44.000So it's more conservative representation.
00:42:45.000So there's going to be less Republican representation in a state where Republicans are woefully underrepresented in comparison to their percentage of the population.
00:42:54.000That is a man using the actual votes, using the actual will of his own citizens that he is supposed to govern as leverage, as leverage to score political points.
00:43:07.000And I think that's a whole lot worse than saying, hey, you know what?
00:43:10.000Temecula out here should probably have one Republican seat because it's a majority Republican.