Mugme Street news

Via email from Ry we have this story:

Police have increased patrols around 3rd Avenue and Pine Street this week after three tourists from Rhode Island were attacked and robbed outside the downtown bus tunnel.

Jonah Spangenthal-Lee of the Seattle police said the incident unfolded Sunday at around 11 p.m. as the tourists were walking to the tunnel’s entrance and passed by a group of men and women on the street.

One of the women in the group confronted the tourists and accused them of bumping into her. When one of the tourists apologized, a woman in the group responded by burning one of the tourists, a 29-year-old man, with a lit cigarette.

The group of suspects then stole a cellphone from the victims and struck the 29-year-old man in the head with a broken bottle when he began shouting for help, Spangenthal-Lee said.

The suspects also attacked the two female tourists – who are 23 and 24 years old – punching them both in the face.

When police arrived at the scene, the group of suspects had fled. However, officers did arrest one man at the scene after he interfered with medics’ efforts to treat the victims and told the victims they “deserved” to be beaten and robbed.

There is a reason Barb calls this street “Mugme Street”. I wish the tourists had guns with them and had encouraged these thugs to reconsider their life choices.

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14 thoughts on “Mugme Street news

  1. Just give them what they want, we are told. Criminals don’t want to hurt you, they just want what’s yours, they say.

    • Sometimes they want your dignity and your life. I prefer to keep my dignity and my life but I’m willing to share multiple jacketed hollow points delivering as much momentum and energy as it takes to satiate their taste for violence.

  2. Some years ago, there was a spree of robberies in Florida targeting tourists. When the bad guys were caught, a reporter went to interview them in jail, and asked them why they picked on tourists. The answer: “because they are usually unarmed”.

    • That’s an excellent point, but then I’d want to know how a robber in Seattle can identify a tourist from Vermont. Were they carrying signs saying “Hello; we’re visiting from Vermont”?

      There’s public transportation again. A bus terminal. Are tourists more likely to use the bus? Or was the tunnel just a convenient place to rob anyone who came by looking like sheep?

      • Some bus users are tourists, certainly. I wonder if bus companies prohibit guns on the bus. If so, that could be a factor.

        The Florida case I referred to applied to airports, I think, where the assumption of defenselessness is more likely to be valid.

        • The Seattle area buses are government run. State firearm preemption laws prohibit them from banning guns. They did it for a while anyway but backed down when sued.

  3. WA doesn’t recognize my AK license, so last visit I walked over and got my WA permit. I won’t be unarmed next trip.

      • We do. But that’s not helpful for reciprocity so, like all but VT, we kept our permit system.

      • Until the bad guys arrest you and throw you in jail for years, of course.
        When I first came to NH, Massachusetts had “Mandatory 1 year jail term” signs at the border. We used to joke that they were for entering the state — they were announcements of their gun laws. Yes, MA is one of those states where they take banning self defense so seriously that they announce it at the state line. Which is why the violent crime rate is rather high there.

      • Yet if you pull it and it is reported you better hope you get a necessity exemption to the crime of possession or carry. Absent a ruling of justified use of force such an exemption is a pipe dream in an anti-gun jurisdiction.

        While I agree with the philosophy that “The 2nd Amendment is my carry permit” it is puerile nonsense to rely on it in the really real grown-up world. Unless you think you’ll enjoy prison.

        • I think violation of permit rules is a violation in any jurisdiction, and justified use of force is irrelevant. If I carry concealed in NH (a Must Issue state but not yet Constitutional Carry) without a permit, I’m liable to a misdemeanor charge (1st offense). And the state has what seem to be decent laws about justified use of force — but there is no connection between those and the carry permit laws.
          In other words, if I were in such a situation and defended myself from a would-be armed robber, the law says I’m clean on justified use of force, but I’d nevertheless be liable to a “carrying without permit” charge if I didn’t have the permit.

          • The necessity defense to unlawful possession is used reasonably frequently (I’d have to dig for cites if you really want me to back that), even by prohibited persons after justified use of force situations. Necessity defense in those cases claim the harm to be avoided, death or serious bodily injury, outweighs the harm committed, (temporary) unlawful possession.

            Even in Chicago when an otherwise law-abiding person has used justified force with an “illegal” (unregistered, unlawfully carried, no FOID card) prosecutors have regularly declined to charge on the possession to avoid jury nullification or the use of a probably successful necessity defense.

            The fact the use of force is found justified is prima facie evidence of both the greater harm being real and the reasonableness of the defender’s necessary action to avoid it.

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