THE TICKING-BOMB SCENARIO, DOMESTIC VERSION

America's gun culture encourages constant fear, and this is the result:

An 84-year-old White Kansas City man was charged with two felonies after opening fire on a Black teenager who rang his doorbell after showing up to the wrong home to pick up his siblings.

Authorities issued an arrest warrant for Andrew D. Lester, who was charged with felony assault and armed criminal action.... Lester shot 16-year-old Ralph Yarl twice — once in the head — late Thursday, according to the Clay County prosecutor’s office....

Lester is not in custody. He told police that “it was the last thing he wanted to do, but he was ‘scared to death’” because of the teenager’s size and his own age and inability to defend himself, according to the criminal complaint.

“He believed he was protecting himself from a physical confrontation and could not take the chance of the male coming in,” the complaint said of Lester.

Fox News reports:

Lester told police that he had just gone to bed when he heard his doorbell ring, so he picked up his gun and went to the door, according to the probable cause statement. He saw a Black male pulling at the exterior door handle and shot twice through the glass door because he thought his house was being broke into, the statement said.

All of which persuades quite a few Fox commenters that Lester's actions were perfectly understandable:

Horrible situation to be placed in for anyone much less someone his age. Today’s climate is fostering fear and no doubt he was in fear for his life.

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All he needed to do was pull the handle and open the door to make this justified. Imagine that...............kid didn't have ill intentions but the owner had no way to know. If you open my door and start to come in I will shoot you dead to protect myself and my family.

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Pulling on someone's door handle at 10pm is going to cause serious problems. If you can't understand that, you yourself have problems.

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Castle doctrine allows you to shoot threw your door if you feel your life is in danger.

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kid was trying to open the door at night and guy probably thought home invasion. not uncommon in dem led cities. no bill.

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You wait for them to be inside, it is too long.

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You see a Kenyan ring the bell at your door, what else are you supposed to do? The Kenyan’s major fault was not having an AK, AR, or sawed off 12 with birdshot to stand his ground when he rung the bell.

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NEVER ANSWER YOUR DOOR AT NIGHT! Take up a secure position, call 9-1-1. This is to confirm that there are no police at your door by mistake (as recently happened). You open that door and your gun will do you no good when four to six home invaders knock you down and take your gun, and proceed to shoot you about the head and chest with same. Don't Be Simple! Don't Be Dead!

Not long ago, when right-wingers lost sleep worrying about being killed in their beds by jihadists, they justified their support of torture by pointing to "the ticking-bomb scenario":

The ticking bomb premise is frequently cited as a ‘what if?’ situation which appears to lend itself to the application of torture. The ticking bomb is a hypothetical situation. It supposes that if you knew a bomb was going to go off in the next few hours and you had someone in custody who you believed had information which would allow it to be stopped, would you permit the torture of the suspect in order to gain this vital intelligence. [Alan] Dershowitz is the academic most commonly associated with having a supportive stance towards the torture of a ticking bomb terrorist....

In 2014, when a Senate committee released a report on torture by the Bush administration, Senator Dianne Feinstein said:

At no time did the C.I.A.’s coercive interrogation techniques lead to the collection of intelligence on an imminent threat that many believe was the justification for the use of these techniques. The Committee never found an example of this hypothetical ticking time bomb scenario.

But the myth of the potential ticking bomb had led to a lot of torture.

Andrew Lester believed the domestic version of the myth. So do supporters of Daniel Perry, who was convicted of murdering Garrett Foster at a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Texas. Perry drove into the demonstration, nearly striking Foster's quadruple-amputee fiancee, who was in a wheelchair. He was then was surrounded by protesters, including Foster, who was open-carrying a firearm (as was his legal right in the pro-gun state of Texas).

Radley Balko writes:

Foster stood next to the car, holding his rifle. Multiple witnesses say Foster never pointed his rifle at Perry....

Perry himself initially said Foster never pointed the rifle at him. During his police interrogation, Perry said, “I believe he was going to aim at me. I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me.” ...

According to multiple witnesses, Foster also gestured for Perry to move on. He also instructed Perry to stay in his car to avoid any further confrontation. Neither is consistent with someone who presented an immediate threat to kill or harm Perry.

Perry's defenders, including Governor Greg Abbott, reject the notion that he set out to kill or hurt protesters, despite the many messages he'd posted in which he made clear that killing left-wing protesters was very much on his bucket list. The defenders' narrative is that Perry was set upon by a raging mob and had to make the split-second decision to use deadly force.

A jury didn't believe that, but right-wingers do. If a situation scares them, it's probably a ticking bomb. There's no time for a non-lethal response. Which is awfully convenient if being violent and getting away with it is one of your life goals.