An invitation to an escalation

On a June night in 2021, Earley Romero Blevins of Minneapolis got into an altercation with a man and woman he knew on the light-rail platform near U.S. Bank Stadium. Words were exchanged between Blevins and the woman and an argument ensued. The other man had a knife and told Blevins to come into the platform shelter away from surveillance cameras so he could “slice Blevins’ throat.”

Blevins then pulled a machete out of his waistband and moved toward the man and woman while holding the machete. Another man attempted to intervene and Blevins began yelling and swinging the machete at them for about one minute, causing them to retreat.

Blevins asserted that he didn’t have to retreat — a fancy way of saying walk away — even though the trial court (the case was tried to a judge, not a jury; Blevins waived his right to a jury trial; he must be a swell fellow), after reviewing a video of the whole encounter, found that he could have walked away.

According to the Supreme Court, “Blevins [was found] guilty of the two counts of felony second-degree assault-fear with a dangerous weapon. At the sentencing hearing, the [trial] court sentenced Blevins to a presumptive 39-month prison sentence.”

The duty to retreat has been a condition in the assertion of self defense in Minnesota since 1865. The Court in Blevins said:

But when it is reasonably possible to retreat, escalating the situation to such a dangerous point does not serve public policy interests. [emphasis added]

Excusing someone for brandishing and swinging a machete on a light rail platform does seem contrary to public policy interests, doesn’t it? Blevins is lucky there wasn’t some member of the Gun Owners Caucus on the platform to pull out a piece and shoot him — and maybe a couple of bystanders on their way home from work. That would certainly have proven the Court’s concern about the danger of escalation.

In the earlier story, Shoot First makes another appearance in Minnesota, I linked to a recent article in the Minnesota Star Tribune about the defeat of a bill to enact Stand your Ground in the Minnesota House. The article collected some interesting quotes.

“This bill simply says that a reasonable amount of force may be taken,” Rep. Bliss, a Republican from Pennington and an author of the bill, said. But don’t be fooled: the bill authorizes you to kill somebody if you feel threatened without any duty to de-escalate the confrontation when you can. And that is just what happens in the states that have enacted Shoot First, as the statistics I discussed in the earlier story show.

From the Strib article:

Rob Doar, senior vice president of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, called the decision a “vast departure” from previous self-defense law. Doar argued brandishing a weapon could aid someone in deterring and retreating from an attacker. [emphasis added]

What it really does is encourage escalation and increases the risk of serious bodily harm or death to somebody. Doar’s claim of a “vast departure” belies a simple reading of the Blevins case, linked above. Perhaps Doar should poll the commuters trying to go home from work on the platform that evening and ask whether they felt safer with Blevins brandishing his machete.

I am glad that Senior V.P. Doar did make the remark, though, so that I can repost an old video of weapon-brandishing shenanigans by the Gun Owners Caucus at the Minnesota Capitol some years ago that took place in the large circular room below the Rotunda. There was a hearing on whether guns should continue to be permitted in the Capitol building. It was attended by a bunch of sorehead Caucus members in their pomegranate and puce (only readers over a certain age will get that reference) t-shirts.

The hearing also featured gun enthusiasts’ favorite pretty boy, standing in an archway, with a pistol jutting from his hip, wearing an insouciant smile. Well, he stood there until some other Caucus beetle scuttled around the back of the room and told the weapons model that it wasn’t a good look.

There were witnesses at the hearing who testified that people conspicuously packing heat in the halls of the Capitol was intimidating (the weapons model was Exhibit A); you can see them being mocked by hearing attendees. I thought the video was better as a silent film, with all the overacting, so I deleted the audio and replaced it with The Good Old Days from the Spanky and Our Gang series, performed by the Beauhunks. There are most extensive liner notes if you click on the “V” and see the video on Vimeo.)

And lastly, as God is my witness, is this quote from Justice Paul Thissen:

In a dissenting opinion [in Blevins], Justice Paul Thissen said the court’s ruling “flies in the face of human nature.”

One of the purposes of a legal system is to fly in the face of human nature. If we were to just let human nature be our only and continuing guide, we wouldn’t need a legal system.

We could just be the boys in Lord of the Flies.