“What this bill does is expand ‘Stand Your Ground’ to our campuses. We have a subconscious here in America to associate ‘criminal’ with ‘black.’ Even the way you walk can be ‘menacing.’ Under the Stand Your Ground law, you can kill somebody and get away with it for ‘looking threatening.'” – Florida A&M student Melanie Andrade in House panel approves concealed weapons on campus [at tallahassee.com]
Because (certain) members of the African American community don’t already attack you when you look at them wrong. I’ve been in a college classroom where a black girl went on a yelling and cussing spree because a white girl in class looked at her. She had to be kicked out by security.
Also, Florida A&M is a historically black university just in case anyone’s wondering. There’s a saying that if you see one of their rattle snake license plates, the driver of the car is guaranteed to be black.
Campus Carry has absolutely nothing to do with race. Why is it relevant if the college is majority white or majority black or majority Jewish?
This is about attacking the home of the enemy – in their own training grounds.
Not only do you sound ignorant and slightly racist but that is NOT a saying in florida. Not shit that the chance someone supporting a black college is black is high.
It seems to me that having a “historically-black” public college in this day and age is racist, against non-blacks.
I saw a similar thing happen on a commuter bus from Redmond to Seattle. A Microserf on his way home from work glanced over at a 20-ish black guy, who then went off on him cussing and threatening to beat him up. The productive fellow kept apologizing and saying he didn’t mean anything, the thug kept posturing.
After a few minutes of it, I interjected telling him that if he’s going to do something, he should do it, otherwise shut the f*** up, because nobody is impressed and I stared him down. It was pretty funny.
I can’t believe this. “Certain members of the white community will kick your &$$ if you look at them wrong.” I know this to be true. I play music in a lot of roadhouses.
The problem is you keep ignoring “your” people’s behavior and talking like only blacks act this way,
The phrase, “whatchoo lookin at boy?” sound familiar? All white where I come from.
How are we going to heal if you can’t see that it’s not just the others but us? Our enemy is telling you to blame others. Wizard of OZ. Pay no attention to the man behind the mirror.
Curtain. And I have never in my lifetime heard a white guy utter that phrase. Guess what ethnic group I have heard use it? I am sick of an entire race of people (that I am not a member of) getting continually blamed for the crimes committed by dead people. How many descendants of slave owners still run plantations?
Wow. I got nothing.
Every time I read one of these all I see is the stoner from super troopers licking the window and saying “the snozberries taste like snozberries”
I think I’d have better luck trying to reason with my 2 year old.
Exactly. And kind of incredible, when you think of how many denizens of our “institutions of higher learning” are just like this one.
They are “institutions” , but not of higher learning. Institutionalized, as in mental institution. Trained to deny reality, trained to accept wishful thinking, because if it “Feels” right, it must be valid, it must be true and therefore, there is no need to use logic, fact, experience or history to check as to the validity of ones belief.
The definition of insanity.
“I think I’d have better luck trying to reason with my 2 year old.”
Pfffffpt.
Wait until the 2 year old gets to be a teenager…
Ya because a high percentage of blacks are criminals. It’s not subconscious. It’s called empirical data…
Craig, I hope you meant “… high percentage of criminals are black…” because the other way around is a tad more disingenuous… not to mention racist.
Per this 2010 study, about 25% of adult black males have felonies. I would consider that to be a “high percentage”, and pointing it out as such is not “racist”.
http://paa2011.princeton.edu/papers/111687
(I have seen this reported elsewhere as “1 in 5”, and similar, but I don’t have the time to find all the sources to cite.)
The root cause of that number however, is racism. Black individuals are far more likely to be prosecuted for a number of crimes (the primary one being drug crimes) than whites. The two issues here are laws that don’t make much sense to begin with, and inconsistent application of the law within the legal system.
We do still have racism in this country, but that does not negate anybody’s right to effective self-defense. Including hers, assuming she can use that expensive education to do some actual research to form a more informed opinion rather than regurgitating the garbage MDA puts out.
Sorry, but that still makes no sense – if you are conceding that the convictions are legitimate; i.e. that black people are duly convicted for crimes that they have committed. That white people are convicted less frequently than black people for those same crimes doesn’t mean that the percentage of black people with felony convictions is artificially or incorrectly inflated. It merely means that the percentage of white people with felony convictions is artificially reduced.
Saying “25% of adult black males have felony convictions” is not an inherently racist statement. One can certainly draw racist conclusions from that statement, or from the underlying facts; but the statement itself is merely a statement of fact.
If, for example, someone wanted to assert that it is racist to believe that every black person one encounters is dangerous, because 1 in 4 adult black males has a felony conviction, then that would certainly be a valid, arguable point.
The other part of that equation is that better than 80% of criminal blacks live among their prey, and commit their crimes among and towards the black community. Which means that most of the juries would be primarily black, since they would be pulled from the community being preyed upon. Which means, if the black criminal goes to trial, it will be a majority black jury voting for a conviction.
So is it racism that drives the black conviction rate, or is it the law abiding black juries voting to convict one of their own?
I’m not a racist, I’m a realist. Some people can’t figure out what that means….
Good point. I’m thinking I wouldn’t have caught that.
The same percentage of the lower class white and black are incarcerated. If you really cared you would make sure that all whites had equal job opportunities and access to education. So in a way you aren’t racist except that you point out only one race. More whites are on food stamps and welfare than blacks. Meanwhile you keep believing the politicians and radio hosts who benefit from focusing your attention on someone else.
The saddest thing in America is that the poor white thinks he’s part of the whites. He votes for officials who ignore him. He supports companies that send work offshore. Then he believes the Jewish banker is taking his farm, the Chinese and Mexicans are taking his job. When actually a white man signed these deals and sold out his people to poverty. A white man moved the GM plant to Mexico where the assemblers make extremely poor wages measured by the month. GM assembles the car in Mexico and puts the name on it on this side of the border. Your white CEO pockets the profit.
If you do the research you will see. It was on NBC as well.
Whether you believe it or not it’s still happening. You saw no Mexicans lift the Chev plant and carry it from Detroit to below the border.
You have no place at the table because you are white because you are poor and of poor birth. Has been so since you were a serf in Europe. Learn your history.
Show the statistics for that statement…
Sorry, for the statement about some percentage of poor whites as blacks are incarcerated..
“So, think about this, if you attend college, you will be raped, beaten, and shot within the first three days, statistically. Then you graduate into the post hydraulic fracking apocalypse, unable to breathe the toxic air but it doesn’t matter since you can never survive on the substandard pay offered by your corporate overlords anyway. And all because some hicks don’t want gays to get married.”
I think that pretty well sums it up. Our future leaders at their intellectual best.
Brilliant. That might be the best thing I’ve read all morning.
Maybe blacks shouldn’t embrace the thug culture. If you dress like a criminal and walk like a criminal and talk like a criminal people might think you’re a criminal.
kind of like a movie I saw the other day on youtube, part of the story was a black undercover cop getting fed up with the way he saw the cops treating him and his “brothers” in the drug gang he was infiltrating. Why, they were treating them like they were criminals–which, of course, they were, when you think about it.
It’s not just the criminals. It seems to me that a very large portion of the younger male black law abiding community try their best to look like criminal thugs. Cut the dredlocks, pull up your pants and learn how to speak proper English and you’ll find that you get a lot more respect, at least from white people. They’re the ones that are supposedly holding you down.
No different with white people. If you wear a scraggly beard and long unkempt hair and worn and dirty jeans and t-shirts and people might get the idea that you’re a pot smoking hippie. Which is fine if you are a pot smoking hippie, but don’t complain that people think you’re a hippie if you present yourself like that.
“Under the Stand Your Ground law, you can kill somebody and get away with it for ‘looking threatening.’”
If we could only kill someone for being stupid….
[ED: that’s a joke.]
Yes Sir of course it’s a joke.
If I went around killing people for being stupid I would have died myself long ago…from exhaustion.
Welcome to how students are taught today — Feelings > logic and facts in an argument. Your feelings > empirical evidence if the evidence or facts do not match your feelings. It is okay to make stuff up if it makes you feel good. Your feelings are more important than the truth.
Progressive politics, the new religion with its own priests and places of worship that has put its faith an a utopia that will never exist.
Impressionable youngsters sure are good at mimicking the rhetoric about guns and race of those they choose to worship, particularly when they have absolutely no firsthand grasp of the realities of the world outside their little inexperienced bubble.
I know, I was like that once; young and stupid trying to sound…informed, in tune with the latest…trend, and anti-establishment.
Easy for young students to embrace the anti-gun race victim dogma and try to intellectualize it…up until reality hits them in the face…hopefully not in the form of a brick, or a fist, or other disabling instrument of predation by some already armed thug. An attack is an attack, no matter who the predator is. CCW holders won’t be among that crowd.
Andrade and her like-minded friends probably won’t even see it coming…lack of a developed sense of S/A; that plus uncritically accepting the hyperbole of progressive utopian anti-gunners and opportunistic divisive race baiters and their brainwashed followers. She’ll just fall in line and echo her chosen group’s mantra and platitudes. And if Gray comes from a family that ‘loves’ and ‘owns’ guns, then there was something wrong with her experience and teaching about those firearms. Otherwise, I call BS on her statement.
Andrade and Gray really have nothing new to add; just more inexperienced, uneducated, logic defying voices seeking to be heard. It would be nice if someone was able to open their eyes to reality since they have shown the willingness to speak up.
If only more people of the gun were like that.
Under the stand your ground law, you can kill somebody and get away with it who MAKES A BLANTANT, REAL AND IMMINENT THREAT OF SEVERE BODY INJURY OR DEATH AGAINST YOUR PERSON OR OTHERS IN YOUR VICINITY WITHOUT FIRST HAVING TO TRY TO RUN AWAY SCREAMING LIKE A FLIPPING NINNY.
Good morning TTAG, it’s gonna be one of those Mondays
All i can hear is michael jackson saying “thats ignorant” over and over again, just because this girl is ignorant in every sense of the word. These are the kind of people who when informed of their errors stick their fingrrs in their ears and yell “LaLaLaLaLaLaLaLa”.
Kaitlyn Hamby . . . “You may be arming the victims,” she added, “But you’ll also be arming the perpetrators.” Kaitlyn has a good point here. Before supplying arms to perpetrators the University should require documentation that the applicant for a supplied gun has at least one violent felony on his rap sheet. Without such a documentation requirement, the University might be raising tuition on all students to fund supplying guns to non-violent, law-abiding, victims. The supply subsidy should be available exclusively to perpetrators; all others must buy their own guns.
Free guns for everyone who lies about gun laws and hates human rights?
“You may be arming the victims,” she added, “But you’ll also be arming the perpetrators.”
That was my favorite line from the article as well. It just amazes me how the anti-gun people can make the jump to making it legal to carry means that criminals are suddenly going to appear. It is almost as if they think these criminals are now committing crimes without firearms, and once the law passes they will think to themselves, “Damn, now that it is legal to carry a gun my criminal activities are going to be SO much easier!”
Now, if you more distinctly described it in a manner that the criminals might feel the need to commit crimes while armed because there might be armed resistance, that might at least be a plausible argument. One that isn’t likely to hold up under statistical scrutiny since we know that criminals like easy targets and those violent enough to arm themselves are going to be armed in any case.
Wow. If this kind of brain can get an college degree, that solidly negates the idea that it’s a qualification… Just plain fabricating a racial quality to a completely non-racial issue, and lying about how the thing works in the first place. This agitator belongs in a padded room.
RACE CARD! I love the legal advice from a sociology or art major. But at least she has self esteem so the education system is a success.
Intent, ablity, and opportunity… The deadly force triangle is still in play with SYG law.
These people don’t care to even look up what SYG actually means.. They’d rather not know! Rev. Al Sharpton told them that SYG allowed a white wannabe-cop to murder an angelic little boy who never hurt no one because he was scared of the tea and skittles the child had in his hoodie, and that’s all they need or want to know.
I don’t criticize you for the color of your skin; rather, I criticize you for the specious, idiotic things you have said.
Stand Your Ground doesn’t change the statutory justification for the use of deadly force in self-defense; it merely removes the requirement to retreat before attempting to defend yourself. The statutory standard for use of deadly force in self-defense remains the same: deadly force may only be used in self-defense in order to prevent a forcible felony, or when one has reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm.
Merely “feeling threatened” by someone’s appearance does not constitute reasonable fear, and would not justify the use of deadly force in self-defense, whether one has a duty to retreat or may stand his ground.
Agreed on all points. Further, I am disheartened by the vast amount of these type of morons populating my hometown. It’s only worse due to the fact that the population isn’t very large here, and well, there’s plenty of politicians as well. Not to mention Tallahassee’s PD is absolutely stuffed with jackboots (boy do I have some interesting stories to tell about that).
Additionally, check out the DHS 2014 congressional oversight report with respect to the testimony concerning the distribution of military equipment. My county ranks 2nd on the list, even though the population is relatively small.
Oh right, I almost forgot, our mayor is a Bloombergian scvmbag to boot, part of MAIG. Go figure.
If I had it all to do over again, I certainly wouldn’t have moved back. The ray of hope in the all consuming darkness is the Campus Carry bill. You might be able to guess what I’m pushing my rep for…
When losing an argument, they quickly transition to playing with definitions, blur categories, insert scare quotes, and project their own fears about a group of people onto their opponent.
A few months ago, a family of unspecified skin color moved in down the street from me. Three or four youths, either members of, or associated with that family started strutting around the neighborhood, walking real slow, glaring at everything and bouncing a basketball. This went on for a week.
Until, that is, I was seen mowing my front lawn with a .357 on my hip. Not as a reaction to them. I always do it that way. No words exchanged, but after a look of shock and a quick discussion amongst themselves, there hasn’t been a thug walk since. What’s the point of this? The way you walk can indeed be menacing, and some people know damn well what they’re doing.
How do you know they saw your gun? Did you see them see it? Were you GLARING at them?
I wonder how they would describe your body language in this non-incident. You describe their slow walk and basketball dribble and “glare” as if you were threatened by their presence, which frankly, confirms the non-legal portion of our quote of the day.
Did you even notice that he really carefully did not mention skin color? Aren’t you making a racist assumption?
My body language was that of someone mowing his lawn, sort of walking at a steady pace while pushing a lawn mower. The same way I did before and after this particular mowing of the lawn.
I didn’t feel threatened one bit. Why would I? Even if they were acting in a way the might have been intended to intimidate, that in no way means I have to actually be intimidated by it.
“Don’t confuse me with the facts”, my father used to say. Sorry, but I can’t resist. Last November a deranged lawyer, and former FSU alumnus, shot three people at the nearby FSU library before being killed by campus police. Using this lass’s logic, that kind of situation is preferable to one where you are able to defend yourself. FAMU was the butt of many derisive jokes when I was a kid. With reasoning like hers, I now see why. How can one hope to educate a mind that knows not how to think both rationally and logically? The school of hard knocks awaits those who fail to learn otherwise.
Aren’t we supposed to be protected against the school of hard knocks? You know, by the right to feel safe and all?
Blame her school, not her. Minds younger than 25 do not have ideas of their own. They are merely vessels filled by family, friends, educators, mentors, etc.
It is only in our mid to late 20’s that human beings actually start to process all the data and create our own viewpoints. The problem is that, just like nutrition, if you put crap in you get crap out. This young lady has most likely existed from cradle to present day in a progressive vacuum with very little access to other world views. In that sense, she has my sympathies. Just one of many victims of the political left which has replaced truth with statism and demagoguery.
I had lots of ideas by the time I was 18. My mind could process facts, and if I didn’t know about something (say, a particular criminal law), I could look it up. I had those intellectual tools at my disposal. I could sort out the stuff some of my teachers were trying to feed me and the stuff my parents were trying to feed me, and I went with the one sometimes and with the other sometimes. I am perfectly comfortable blaming a 20-something-year old for continuously spouting off on a subject she knows nothing about. But like I said, I am in fact more irritated by the so-called news outlets” that insist on going out of their way to give her a megaphone.
Campus Carry has nothing to do with “SYG.” Currently, if you get attacked or attempted abduction you can stand your ground. That has happened at least 3 times to coeds at FSU in the past 3 weeks.
And just think, folks … If you’re ever in a DGU and wind up standing trial, she might wind up being one of your 12 (depending upon jurisdiction) “peers.” Or the person on the high chair with the black robes.
I wonder if, if convicted, a good lawyer could appeal based on her postings as evidence of bias?
The most annoying thing to me is not Melanie’s terminal ignorance and stupidity, or even the fact that such ignorance and stupidity has no trouble getting into and graduating from what is supposed to be a center of advanced knowledge. “Melanies” are a dime a dozen on just about any college campus. The thing that is really chapping me just now is how the allegedly “responsible” news outlets always see fit to single out someone who is flagrantly, stunningly ignorant of the law and how it works, to get a featured quote on that very subject–the law and how it works.
“We have a subconscious here in America to associate ‘criminal’ with ‘black.’”
Is that true, Mel? Because I don’t. I have to wonder what group “here in America” you belong to which is so thoroughly and openly racist. Please explain this “we ” which you are a member of.
Ah yes, lets keep conjuring up fear and emotion because we anti’s don’t have the facts to back up are disagreement when it comes to campus carry.
Note that this same Melanie Andrade is/was president of that Dream Defenders organization that had their little (and useless) sit-in at the capitol bldg in Tallahassee protesting the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman verdict. She’s also appeared on Rachel Madcow’s show on MSNBC. It’s amazing how little she’s learned about SYG (which, again, had nothing to do with the Zimmerman trial) or self-defense. It’s almost as if the ignorance is…willful.
You’re right. Her ignorance is willful.
“I have to worry about my black counterparts, my brothers. When we receive FSU alerts – ‘Male, 20 years old, African-American, with a hoodie’ – that’s almost every single black male at our school.”
And this is precisely the problem. That was the general alert where my daughter went to school as well. Solution — don’t dress like a hoodlum.
So… Mark Zuckerberg dresses like a hoodlum?
I think the solution is just not to send out alerts if they don’t have any meaningful/actionable information. Unless being black, male, 20 and/or wearing a hoodie is uncommon in the environment where the alert is raised, then there is no use in raising that alert.
Melanin, I mean Melanie, if you aren’t a criminal (are you?), then you have nothing to fear from law abiding concealed carriers. You have been enlightened, you black privileged snow flake. Contemplate that.
No, what we have is an UNconcious indoctrinite associating self defense with crime and looking to play the victim once again. If you look threatening, you can be sure I will be on guard, ready but not drawing unless you actually are threatening. Maybe she should ask why the need to walk or look intimidating on a college campus in the first place?
ALL the SYG laws do is remove the duty to retreat and give you an AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE if you HAVE to defend yourself with deadly force in any place you are legally entitled to be. It does NOT mean “shoot first, ask questions later’.
But…. Hand Up Don’t Shoot fits so much better on the poster board we’re going to wave in front of some cameras latter. All that stuff you said, we don’t have that much paint nor enough poster boards to fit it all and people will get tired trying to read so many words.
Amazing how much this young lady resembles my daughter.
Resemblance notwithstanding, I am happy my kid knows better.
At 14, my daughter is more knowledgeable of firearms and corresponding legislation in Florida than a college student.
My teenager is one sharp shooting cutie, not a hoplophobe.
Ms. Andrade,
To begin I suggest you fully embrace the idea of skepticism which, I assure you, is uttered only as a platitude at your university.
I encourage you to look beyond race for solutions to problems. People do not associate African Americans with criminality. People associate criminality with criminality. Period. Career criminals will be rightly discarded by society as the detriment they are, regardless of their race or creed. There are very few second chances for scoundrels of all colors.
By seeking an education you are already part of the solution for the African American community. People will gravitate to like-minded peers. That means middle-class America as a whole will embrace anyone who works hard, fulfills their obligations and conducts themselves in a relatively civil manner. Race in this context is irrelevant. When you remove the self-interested and divisive rhetoric of pundits and race profiteers, behavior is the only thing that matters in 21st century America.
So please cease in your attempts to race-shame the current adult generation of Caucasian Americans because, frankly, we have very little to be collectively ashamed of. Disgraceful past mistakes have been learned from. Most of the racists from the civil-rights era are either dead or entombed in nursing homes. We have moved on. Attempts to apply the weight of collective guilt on the current generation of Caucasian Americans are therefore entirely inappropriate. Equally as inappropriate, I might add, as suggesting that the African American community is nefarious due to the criminal actions of its individual members. No one would dare suggest the latter, yet the former is openly propagated. This is hate speech. I strongly urge you to reflect upon that hypocrisy and to ask your peers to do the same.
Ms. Andrade unfortunately students of history are familiar with this tactic. This is merely the most recent in a long train of historically similar examples. It far easier to scapegoat and vilify a group of people than it is to develop real solutions to complex problems. See Nazi Germany for an excellent example. Caucasian and conservative Americans are merely the most recent in a long line of groups which become systematically dehumanized whenever the blame line needs to be filled.
So if you are really serious about improving the African American community I strongly suggest abandoning simplistic, fanciful and unrealistic solutions to problems such as “make Caucasians abandon their secret, passive, subconscious, unspoken conspiracy of racial discrimination.” Good starting points for real change include gang culture and a justice system with utterly broken priorities. America has a justice system and a sub-culture problem, Ms. Andrade, not a race problem.
As for your statement regarding use of force, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the applicable laws and should study them further for clarification.
Under the Stand Your Ground law, you can kill somebody and get away with it for ‘looking threatening.’”
Sadly and alarmingly, this is the “message” that is being regurgitated ad infinitum (and ad nauseum – pun intended). AND, it’s what the people BELIEVE. I’ve explained SYG and the “triad” of lethal force to many people. But, they believe this ***t, instead.
Well duh…I have been attacked(physically and verbally) by BLACK men. Nobody asked if I had a black wife or light brown sons. If you don’t want to be profiled don’t look or act like a lowlife thug.
This woman is flat out stupud. Why? Because she’s speaking authoritatively on a topic which is fact-based, but of which she has not prepared herself for with even a rudimentary understanding.
All that Stand Your Ground laws do is remove the defender’s duty to retreat before exercising one’s right to lawful self defense. That is, if you have a legal right
in this instance to shoot to defend yourself, then the law won’t impose an arbitrary standard and compel you to prove that you couldn’t escape first.
There is no change whatsoever is the legal standard of what constitutes legal self defense itself.
Shooting someone for being black or for “looking menacing” is a felony. SYG doesn’t change that.
At FL A&M, the most dangerous thing is band practice.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nn-famu-percussionist-prison-time-20150109-story.html
However, Mensa meeting are very safe.
She fine tho.
Check out her facebook page…she’s on a “MISSION”…
Just a hood rat advocating for a responsibility free existence for other hood rats.
Actually blaming all blacks for black trash’s behavior is easy but weak sauce. White trash behaves the same way but you ignore it and consider it trash.
Statistics show no black moved your job off shore. All majorities think minorities are larger than they are. Statistic – black on black crime 99%. White on white crime 99%. The news doesn’t need to report it. I have visited prisons as a chaplain. Fix your opinion. There are dangerous white people that if you are white are more likely to invade your home than the 12% who are black whose 2% are likely to do you harm.
About American history. You weren’t a slave master. You didn’t hold slaves. Your masters did. Why do I say this? Are you brave? You were a serf in Europe. Admit it. The Man isn’t taking care of you. Without Blacks & Mexicans who would you complain about? Be honest.
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