Guns and the Aloha State

Finally discussing American Nightmare.

By and
120

Do people have a right to gun ownership even if it conflicts the “spirit of Aloha”? Sarah and David dig into a 53-page opinion from the Supreme Court of Hawaii that teeters on the edge of defiance.

The Agenda:
—Clarifying public accommodation and the anti-Zionist bookstore
—Carrying a gun without a permit v. the Second Amendment
—The Law of the Splintered Paddle
—Bruen makes an appearance
—Trump’s briefs (to the Supreme Court)

Show Notes:

Today’s episode is supported by Burford Capital. Follow the link to learn more: http://burfordcapital.com/ao

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Comments (120)
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  1. Brab608

    Just listened to this today (finally).
    Sarah, I had to memorize prepositions in 7th grade (about 50 years ago) and we sang them to pop his the weasel. I still can, pretty much.

    Also, I love diagramming sentences!

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  2. Chris

    Re: American nightmare

    I watched the three-part documentary at your recommendation. Thank you.

    While I agree that 90+ percent of “boyfriend”/husband our reasonably suspects, the minute she emerged as “not dead “should cause the police to reconsider their basic premise and return to Square one. In science, we talk about confidence intervals. 95% is somewhat of a standard cut off. Once she emerged alive, how could they have anywhere close to a 95% confidence interval.
    However, that means 5% are outliers. I suspect that is less in the law pertinent to this case. However, it is not zero. This smacks of selection bias and tunnel vision, not reconsidering you’re basic premise.

    If this had happened to you, what would you do that they did incorrectly? Not call the police? There are exceptions to all rules. Especially given human inconsistency and fallacy.

    Chris Thompson, MD

    PS: LOVE this podcast. It’s my first dispatch pod I go to. Please tell Steve Hayes that!

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    Bheald01

    Sarah missed a few key details on why the cops screwed up so big. She stated that Vallejo and Dublin are 100s of miles apart. That is a key detail that is not true. Palo Alto, Dublin, Vallejo, and Mountain View are all part of the relatively small Bay Area area. It is possible to get to Vallejo and Dublin in less than an hour (with good traffic). It surprised me that nobody searched across their small county and city lines. It was simple Google searches to see if anyone had the same MO. It is wild to think that serial criminals can get away with a crime by just hopping on the freeway for 20 to 30 minutes.
    Also, when I was a child, I was a victim of a crime, a home break-in. I only knew to follow the rules of authority, and if someone held a knife to my throat, that made them an authority.
    Today, after many, many years of learning through friends who grew up "on the wrong side of the tracks" of the power of saying "no," am I able to do something differently than I did as a child. I agree with Sarah we need to teach our children when to misbehave, rebel, and fight. I don't blame these victims, but I also see where it fell apart for them.
    I wish the police had done better.
    By the way, in 2020 Vallejo filed for bankruptcy. Don't know if the couple got all their money or what happened to the police department.

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  4. M L

    Sarah’s thoughts and additions on American Nightmare were so compelling and her humility in introduction so seemingly sincere, I’m kind of shocked. First she managed to give a voice to my inchoate discomfort with the boyfriend. Then blew my mind with her story (I won’t spoil it).

    I think it says something about masculine ideals in our current culture that boyfriend didn’t move to counter his captor physically but he also didn’t crack under interrogation. I’m not sure what thoigh.

    I was watching for a minute when I realized I had already listened to a podcast episode about the same incident. The podcast was much more critical of the local and federal officers and their missteps and malfeasance. The show seemed to downplay that in favor of another narrative: they wanted to connect these assaults to her former assaults. The Nightmare starts as the kidnapping, proceeds to the police interrogation, then to the public excoriation, then the suspense of whether the perp from the later assault will be connected to it (but of course he will otherwise there wouldn’t be a story). But as it ends, they try to expand the Nightmare to not just this particular incident, but being a woman in America and always subject to potential assault.

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    1. MathewA

      "but being a woman in America and always subject to potential assault."

      I don't think that's something specific to America. Sadly that's a worldwide phenomenon

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  5. Bradgreenwald

    My reading of the Hawaii court's opinion (in reverse):

    1) Federal 2A does not apply via Bruen because he didn't even try to get a permit. (I'm not a lawyer but this seems a sensible holding)

    2) JUST IN CASE Federal controlling law ever changes, we don't want to set a precedent that the Hawaii right is as extensive as Bruen, so we are going to talk about how it is not, even though it doesn't matter at all.

    Am *I*" all wet?

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    Thewalks

    Sarah's comments about the reliability of eyewitnesses reminded me of when I thought I saw Patty Hearst and her captors outside a small motel in rural Virginia in the Summer of 1974. Nothing I've read since supports that they were ever anywhere close to where my "sighting" occurred. Just another group of black men with a young, attractive white woman - unusual in that time and area but proof of nothing. Thank goodness my better judgment caused me not to involve the authorities. The epilogue is that the motel, years later, did become well-known for illegal activities.

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  7. C.J.C.B.

    In regards to Sarah's point about the need for mothers to discuss such dangers with their daughters in contrast to fathers and sons I would like to add the impolitic point that if you are a middle or upper middle class suburbanite the danger your daughter faces in her day-to-day life is not substantially greater then your son.

    This is not to say that such talks are unwarranted. I'm all for prudence, but we should not confuse real danger which is experienced mostly by people on the fringe of society with the exaggerated danger and I might add paranoia that these true crime documentaries foster. It is a mistake comparable to that of the 'stranger danger' scare.

    Which is all to say if you are going to have a talk with your daughter about the low chance risks that are absolutely devastating when they do occur you should also give a similar warning to your son.

    Helpful little article on the history mass paranoid delusions.
    https://www.vox.com/culture/22358153/satanic-panic-ritual-abuse-history-conspiracy-theories-explained

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    This comment has been deleted

  9. Avatar photo
    Patterico

    I skipped ahead to the discussion of American Nightmare. Sarah's story certainly more than met expectations.

    Her story aside, I found myself surprised at how violently I disagreed with her on much of what she said.

    First of all, the police behaved atrociously in this case. A-trociously. I speak here in my personal capacity and not on behalf of my office, but for context, I am a Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney and so is my wife, who has years of experience with prosecuting sex crimes. I watched this documentary purely on Sarah's recommendation, and told my wife she had to watch it, then I watched it again with her. We were both gobsmacked at the incredibly sloppy and unprofessional behavior of the police. I would have personally awarded this couple millions at trial.

    First of all, sure, suspect the boyfriend. Of course. It's natural to be suspicious. You'd have to be an idiot not to suspect him. I did too, in my initial viewing. But I also kept thinking that you can't get tunnel vision, and you have to take basic steps to investigate *regardless of what your suspicion is*. And that begins with the phone! The boyfriend has been saying he has been communicating with the ostensible kidnapper. Great. Get the phone records on an emergency basis and start pinging that phone number. This should have been done immediately. I kept wondering: what about the phone??? Come to find out, these morons actually turned the boyfriend's phone off! The ostensible kidnapper says he will communicate further with the boyfriend on his phone; the cops know this; and they *turn the phone off*. Again, unless the documentary is simply lying about this, then those cops, and Mat Mustard in particular (love that name!), ought to have been fired, in my opinion. They could have caught the guy and possibly prevented the second rape, a later assault in another town, and God only knows what else.

    Look at what the cops who actually solved the case did. They followed up on the phone. Sure, they had the physical phone, but the initial cops didn't need it. They could have and should have gotten the phone records. The fact that they did not do this is inexcusable.

    Next point of disagreement: the quality of the show. Sarah said it was "not that good." I generally hate true crime documentaries because they are usually one-sided and absurdly so. The typical documentary is either a Dateline-style paean to the cops, or a "let's exonerate this prisoner" defense-oriented smear campaign on cops that minimizes all evidence of guilt.

    But here, I thought the storytelling was expertly done. The show *seemed* fair (you never know for sure with a documentary) and they way they kept you guessing was brilliant. I thoroughly enjoyed it both times I saw it; perhaps more on a second watching, once I knew what the truth was. And I was looking forward to thanking Sarah for the recommendation, only to find she thought it wasn't that great. I really liked it. So did my wife, and our (grown) kids.

    As for Sarah's views about the unlikelihood of surviving this if you go along with it, I have mixed feelings. I agree that it seems like the better course, for all of us sitting in our armchairs second-guessing the responses of the couple, would be to fight from the get-go. But that's easier said than done, and I think we'd all want to be careful to express that opinion in a way that doesn't blame the woman in the documentary for being raped. I know that wasn't the intent, but I would encourage a little more sensitivity to the feelings of someone who sincerely believed she was going to be shot if she did not comply. It's easy to say "why did you drink the sedative? Why didn't you fight?" but harder to actually act in the face of (supposedly) multiple armed men. I've interviewed countless people who have had guns pointed at them, and I'd be very reluctant to judge anyone for how they react in that situation. Keep in mind that these folks believed they were facing *three* armed men. I'm just not sure how realistic it would seem to simply fight in that scenario.

    All that said, I agree that the best general advice for people in that situation is probably to fight rather than allowing yourself to be kidnapped, which is a situation from which few people return. Just realize that you never know how you are going to behave until you are actually staring down the barrel of that gun.

    Great story, though. Makes you realize that you can't have been the only one. This guy must have had countless victims. Amazing.

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    1. MathewA

      You raise an excellent point on how hard it is to be put in that situation, which is why I think you have to make your decision before hand.

      Know in your heart that if you get in that car or take that drink you are almost certainly facing torture and death.

      Even better take self defense classes where the reflex's are trained into you.

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    2. Michael M

      Thank you so much for the thoughtfulness and balance you bring to this comments section (and more broadly across your writings).

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  10. Jstevenson85

    I think you guys might have underplayed how ridiculous the cops were in the American Nightmare story. Yes, it was reasonable to assume it was the boyfriend at first. As soon as the girlfriend resurfaced 2 days later they should have opened their minds to the possibility that they were telling the truth. It was insane to defame them publicly and not check on the MO of the unidentified suspect in this case. Law enforcement agencies though-out the area had the connections they needed.

    Also, great point on the two of them winding up together. I am not going to let somebody take my family out my door without fighting to the death. My family expects me to come back with my shield or on it, it’s appropriate for all men.

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