It’s a frustratingly familiar story of American crime. Following an incident last July, Michigan resident Dayton Knapton was charged with manslaughter and faces up to 15 years in prison for the death of teenager Sivan Wilson.
Wilson and six friends were attempting to break into Knapton’s garage when Knapton fired two shots from outside. As the group tried to flee, he reportedly fired five more rounds, returned home to reload, and stepped back outside.
Knapton argues he was acting in self-defense, the shooting took place on his property, and he is clearly protected under Michigan’s Self-Defense Act of 2006.
Prosecutors counter that Knapton crossed the line when he fired at the seemingly fleeing teens, and he “potentially endangered the surrounding community by firing his weapon into the night.”
Knapton had reason to suspect the thieves would return. His garage had been robbed twice before, allegedly by some of the same teens. One of the suspects had previously appeared in a police report involving a stolen dirt bike, and Knapton stored several dirt bikes in the same garage.
In an earlier era, this would have remained a local story. Burglary gone wrong, thief dead, details at 11. In today’s hyper-national and hyper-partisan environment, cases like this quickly become emblems of national dysfunction.
This case highlights the tension between order and societal breakdown, and raises the basic question of whether a man may defend himself and his property from bad actors without ending up in prison.
Knapton appears to be a responsible citizen and gun owner. He had never been arrested, seemingly owned his firearm legally, and instructed his girlfriend to call police when the garage alarm went off. All things law-abiding people do.
Wilson, by contrast, was confirmed to have been shot inside the garage. At a minimum, he was trespassing. More likely, he was participating in a planned burglary, given the presence of a repeat offender among the group.
Yet some claim Knapton is the villain for defending his home and loved ones. State prosecutors clearly reached that conclusion by charging him, and some leftist commentators demanded that he be jailed.
Self-proclaimed communist Evan Loves Worf posted a meme featuring Norman Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech, captioned, “I think you should go to prison for blindly gunning down a teenager.”
But savvy Internet sleuths noted that, in addition to self-ascribing as a communist, Evan also identifies as a prison-abolitionist. Which is a bit strange, given a quick search of his X feed shows he’s more than willing to jail people who disagree with his political agenda. When people pointed out this incongruence, Evan changed his X bio to an ad hominem attack on The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh.
Very classy.
Rational people can disagree on whether Knapton’s actions were completely justified, as some on the Right even do. But it’s become wildly apparent that the Left’s calculus for whether or not someone should face consequences is entirely reliant on factors entirely disconnected from the crime.
Indeed, critics argue Knapton fired as the thieves fled and thus he’s guilty, but the thieves had already been inside his garage, some for the third time. This pattern repeats: leftists will endlessly go to bat for criminals while consigning law-abiding citizens to second-class status.
Cities dominated by progressive prosecutors cycle criminals in and out within days, sometimes hours, only for them to commit the same crimes again. The steep cost is felt by ordinary people living with a justice system excusing agents of chaos.
It is baffling that the Left continuously dies on this hill. There can be legal argumentation all day long, but it is surreal that a serious political alignment seems hellbent on defending the scum of society over honest Americans.
Daniel Penny very nearly suffered a similar fate as Knapton after he witnessed a mentally ill man menacing a woman on the New York subway and acted. He was also summarily dragged through the courts by leftists and smeared as evil for serving society.
It would be better if government enforced public order so consistently that the aforementioned cases became outliers. But currently, law-abiding citizens are left with no other choice but to defend themselves and their communities and to resist those who profit from disorder.
A society that scorns a man protecting his castle and mourns thugs returning to burglarize his home is a broken one. Knapton’s case is yet another example of a deeply disturbing reality whereby the just are punished for the sins of the unworthy.
Knapton and Penny serve the forces of order. Leftist prosecutors, activists, and criminals serve chaos. It’s that simple.
Pick a side.