LOL

This is Southend last night where a bunch of dual wielding "British" youth with all points in Frenzy went at each other.

Police were calmly looking on so I guess this is nothing unusual

Those are security guards junior.

Go hire some competent ones then lmao. How many seconds would those thugs last if this had happened in the US?

Love that you show no intentions to condemn what happened there btw

....this is a supreme court precedent dealing with this kind of case, it is this case. Person {A} drew a knife and screamed he was going to slice person {B}'s throat. Person {B} brandished a machete to scare him off. Person {B} was convicted of felony assault and the charge upheld on appeal to the supreme court. There was no dispute in the facts of the case, person {A} was clearly the aggressor, person {B} clearly felt justifiably in fear for his own life. It solely came down to the fact that the court decided person {B} could have performed a diagonal shuffle walk to escape the scene but keep {A} in his sight at all time. I am not making this up, the court actually argued that he wouldn't have to put his back to person {A} because he could have turned a bit and kept putting distance while seeing both to the side for movement and keeping his attacker in vision, and because he didn't do the crabwalk away he committed a felony.

Interesting, have you got a link or so?

Aside from that, I mean. Is it legal to carry around a machete? Come on, really?

When you're facing machete wielding gangs then you can always ban machetes like they did in the UK

-->

Published 25 January 2024

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-law-to-ban-zombie-style-knives-and-machetes

I mean the link to the story is right in the op. He wasn't charged with illegal weapon possession, and that's no material to a question of self-defense or assault anyway.
IANAL but I'm pretty sure there's no law in Minnesota against carrying a machete anyway, the knife laws are under 609.66(1)(4) which prohibits switchblades with automatic opening functions, there's nothing about static blades of any length.

Got it

"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"

Sounds pretty cut and dry. He had an opportunity to retreat. The guy was gesturing for him to come away from surveillance cameras.
Instead of retreating, homey pulled out a machete and moved towards the man and woman.
Then started swinging a machete for about a minute.

While I disagree with the precedence of prosecuting people defending themselves, this sounds like dude could have avoided escalating but decided to draw a machete and approach people. He fucked up.

I would ask you, what level of threat warrants me pulling a machete and waving it around for a minute? Like how low is the threshold.

This post was edited by Prox1m1ty on Aug 1 2024 03:01am

If I were deciding the law, or leaving it up to the precedent set by millenia of human lawmaking, I'd say that intent and aggression are the deciding factors. One person in the conflict both intended harm and was the aggressor. The other did not intend harm, nor was the aggressor. Its Mens Rea and the Non-Aggression Principle. Blevins had every opportunity to do actual harm to the couple, but instead stopped short and purposefully didn't swing into them or pursue them, just menaced them until they retreated.
In a life and death situation where someone has broken the peace as the aggressor, draws a deadly weapon and declares he's going to murder you- you should have the right to use any tools at your disposal to save lives. The threshold for a threat should be the reasonable perception of imminent serious bodily harm, the allowance for self-defense should be whatever it takes. That's how most of America finds it, how most societies throughout history find it, and its just logical

How do they square their ruling with our right to openly carry?