The Newsom Nightmare continues, as California’s collectivist class targets one of the most easily understandable, longest-recognized, God-given rights: the right to defend oneself at home.
Introduced February 21, Assembly Bill 1333 would strip away key provisions in California’s penal code that currently justify homicide in defense of “habitation, property, or person.”
Straight Arrow News reporter Lauren Taylor writes that the bill, introduced by a Newsom ally, Assemblyman Rick Chavez Zbur (D), would:
“…limit justifiable homicide, including in defense of habitation or property. The bill also clarifies that homicide is not justifiable when excessive force is used.”
All of which is rife with linguistic, logical, and moral ambiguities.
Who defines "excessive force"? This has been a long-standing problem in government jurisprudence concerning self-defense. Obviously, the state defines that term, and the state (i.e. the tax-parasites populating its offices), and history teaches that the state always defines words to facilitate expansion of the state.
In this game of definitions, government doesn’t just deal the cards, government makes new cards to slide up its proverbial sleeve – in a game it forces you to play.
As Taylor observes, Zbur perfectly walks this political path, offering a rather dark, evidently ignorance-based, rationale for his excursion into extreme tyranny.
She notes:
“Zbur stated the bill’s goal is to prevent vigilante actions like Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of self-defense charges in 2021.”
Careful readers, and competent thinkers, will notice and remember Taylor’s valid inclusion of the fact that Rittenhouse was acquitted, but they also will recall that he was not “acquitted of self-defense charges.”
He was charged with, and acquitted of, five criminal violations: First-Degree Intentional Homicide, First-Degree Reckless Homicide, Attempted First-Degree Intentional Homicide, First-Degree Recklessly Endangering Safety (the safety of one of two people), and First-Degree Recklessly Endangering Safety (the safety of the second alleged victim).
And he was acquitted, because he was found to have acted in justified self-defense.
In other words, Zbur wants to prohibit what Kyle Rittenhouse was found by a jury to have done to protect his own life. Had Rittenhouse complied with this kind of political mendaciousness, he would have been killed.
If the Assembly passes AB1333, the same could happen to California residents in their own homes.
Even without the title, the principle of the “Castle Doctrine” is as ancient as mankind. The idea is that, should you be threatened by an attacker, you have no duty to flee – you have a God-given right to engage in self-defense.
And California Penal Code translates the principle into statute in this way:
“Any person using force intended or likely to cause death or great bodily injury within his or her residence shall be presumed to have held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily injury to self, family, or a member of the household when that force is used against another person, not a member of the family or household, who unlawfully and forcibly enters or has unlawfully and forcibly entered the residence and the person using the force knew or had reason to believe that an unlawful and forcible entry occurred. As used in this section, great bodily injury means a significant or substantial physical injury.”
This code sees the state define "reasonable" within the clause “a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily injury to self, family, or a member of the household,” according to a very simple threshold, which is triggered if the invader forcibly or unlawfully entered and the household occupant had “reason to believe that an unlawful or forcible entry occurred.”
Thus, if the occupant using deadly force can show a jury that he or she had reason to believe an invader entered unlawfully (say, by deceit) or forcibly, deadly self-defense is deemed justified under current California statute.
But Zbur’s bill would strip away that easily understandable standard, and, in part, target an occupant:
“When the person used more force than was reasonably necessary to defend against a danger.”
This allows the state to define “reasonably necessary” and even what is a “danger” for a victim trying to respond to illegal entry and to his or her subjective fears, and it stands in utter contradistinction to the ancient Common Law principle of the Castle Doctrine, going back in history to the 1600s.
But, in a way, it jibes with the government mentality, the statist mindset that always assumes you to be a cog in the government machine, that assumes your earnings are not your own, and that assumes that it can take your physical property just as easily as it takes your time, money, and opportunities away from you – all for the so-called “greater good.”
Thankfully, not everyone involved in the California government apparatus is marching in line.Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea recently sounded the alarm, warning this could turn homeowners into sitting ducks and calling it “a solution looking for a problem."
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And he’s dead-on. The problem in California is the government – a government that for 10 years has appeared to accommodate criminals, even treating as a mere misdemeanor shoplifting up to $950.
In fact, the California policing and criminal court systems have inspired such a tremendous sense of dissatisfaction that journalist Michael Shellenberger recently posted on X:
“The increase in California’s violent crime rate to 31% higher than the US as a whole generated so much negative publicity that state lawmakers hope to pass legislation that would criminalize self-defense by homeowners during a home invasion. Gavin Newsom would likely to sign it.”
In a state where residents are suffering such depredation, it seems the height of arrogance and insensitivity for politicians to throw them into the dangerous legal waters created by AB 1333.
It remains to be seen whether the government-occupying marauders like Zbur will pass this bill and create an even more dangerous environment for homeowners in California. But one thing is certain, the agency that always claims the “legal” power to occupy your life is the government, and Assemblyman Zbur seems to think that is perfectly fine.