11/23   How do you prove who shot the gun first, and if you can't prove it,
        how do you convince an all white jury to believe Vang? My guess is
        that this is going to be a he-says-she-says court and Vang is going
        to lose, easy as that.
        \_ http://latimes.com now has a good article.  Vang speaks excellent English
           and waived his right to a lawyer in making his http://twincities.com
           remarks.  I believe it will become clear who fired first, but ALL
           the shootings will still be at least 2nd degree or manslaughter.
           Vang never said he felt in danger for his life; he was probably
           pissed as hell.  The legal reaction would have been to not do
           anything in response to the guy trying to scare you by firing a
           bullet near you, and file a complaint which would be subsequently
           ignored.
           anything in response to the guy trying to put the fear of God into
           you by firing a bullet near you, and file a complaint which would be
           subsequently ignored.
           \_ Uhm, no. If you get shot at, you have a right to fire back.
              In fact, you don't even have to be shot at to have a have
              a justification to shoot first if your life is in danger.
              Vang's problem is that he shot and killed half a dozen people.
              I don't know if anybody can reconcile that with reasonable
              force. The best he can hope for is manslaughter, as he may
              be able to prove he lacked the mens rea for first degree and
              he was provoked to such an extent that he had a reasonable
              heat of passion response. If he lacks mens rea and cannot
              reasonably prove heat of passion killing then he'll get
              2nd degree. 2nd degree is like 25 years, so he'll be in
              prison a long, long, long time.
              \_ We are arguing about the guy he shot first, right, because
                 it sounds like you are repeating my position for everything
                 else.  Anyways, the jury will be talking about
                 how Vang had the time, after he was shot at, to take the
                 scope off his rifle, aim, and shoot.  I do not see him
                 talking about how he felt his life was in danger at all
                 in the http://twincities.com statement; actually, I think the jury
                 will think he was pissed as hell with his first shot and
                 subsequent ones.  C'mon, Vang was talking about how
                 one guy was calling him "gook, chink, fucking Asian", not
                 how he was in mortal fear.  He even managed a taunt of,
                 "You're not dead yet?" to one guy and shot at him again.
        \_ I bet most of the white men are more surprised that a slanty
           four eye Oriental chink can actually see and shoot his targets
           more so than the fact that 6 men got killed.
        \_ look, it's just like the OJ case. Most of the Mid-west
           white ppl think Vang is guilty regardless of evidence, and
           most of the Asians think he may or may not be guilty,
           regardless of evidence. It is as easy as that.
           \_ I think Bernhard Goetz is the better comparison here.
              I'm interested to see how various pundits (read partisan hacks)
              handle this and compare with the Subway Vigilante.
        \_ I have to say Vang reminds me of tpc. The guy has quite a gun
           collection and is not the most mentally stable guy I know
                        -guy who knew tpc when he was still kind of sane