jAZ said:
Yeah, simple trespassing doesn't give you premission to beat the crap out of someone. Sorry. We live in America, where EVERYONE is innocent until proven guilty.
Where beating the crap outa someone is a far more severe crime than trespassing.
And where just because you are trespassing on a 20,000 acre ranch doesn't mean you are a threat to the "family" who are 8 miles up the road inside a secured house filled with guns.... or whatever.
You people are going so far out on a limb to justify this nutjobs violent behavior inventing threats to family and just flat our ignoring the personal responsibility of the rancher.
If you don't like the laws, work to change them. Don't ignore them.
Oh, boy. In order:
1. "Innocent until proven guilty" is for a court of law, not for someone invading your property. A private citizen is not under a duty to "prove" that an intruder is... an intruder. Pretty much every state provides for SOME right of self-defense.
2. The right to defend yourself and your property is what the founders considered a paramount right. Can you think of a more basic American right?
3. The ranchers didn't "injure" anyone. The two Hispanics' claims of "personal injury" are about as credible as every other bogus trip-fall claim brought by everyone named Lopez, Sanchez and Martinez ever freakin' born. Reminds me of the joke about the bus that wrecked. There were two passengers on board. By the time the police arrive, there are 50 Mexicans all hobbling around complaining about their backs.
4. Trespassing can indeed be more serious than assault, if it is on a home or landowner's property. That can come with a legal presumption of malicious intent.
5. The armed status of the ranch is not relevant to the above.
6. "Personal responsiblity," that's rich coming from a liberal. There is no greater exercise of personal responsibility than to defend your property and your family from invaders. For you to call the ranchers' action a demonstration of LACK of personal responsibility is flat-out revolting. You liberals seem to be awfully selective about "personal responsibility" on the one day in a century you mention it. Blacks, Hispanics, illegals, criminals... none of them ever need exercise it.
7. The "law," more richness. Liberals don't give a crap about the law. Even if they support it mildly, they don't want it enforced. Take drug laws. Laws they're even slightly opposed to are illegitimate: miscegenation, segregation, contraception... you guys consider it your DUTY to VIOLATE laws YOU don't agree with... The only laws liberals like are "hate crimes" laws, when applied to whites, and the tax laws, the higher the better.
8. And here, the "law" was perverted in the extreme, turned on its head by a liberal shyster and given reign by a court system that loves him and hates the true law.