One of the great things about America is that a person accused of a crime is presumed innocent until proved guilty.  No matter how many witnesses saw Francisco Sanchez gun down 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle on Pier 14 in San Francisco, he still has the presumption of innocence.

That's why I'm pleased that Mr. Sanchez's side of the story has finally gotten out.  And, I believe, in the interest of fairness, we should present it:

1) The sea lions are to blame.

Sanchez reportedly first told police he was shooting at sea lions.

In the law, there is a concept known as "attractive nuisance," a hazardous but attractive condition that causes people to injure themselves.  Imagine sea lions lying there on the docks, expecting thousands of people to walk by, without shooting them.  How unrealistic is that?  So then Sanchez does the natural thing and shoots a sea lion, only his vision isn't so good, and Ms. Steinle kind of looks like a sea lion to him.  Case closed!

2) Self-aware gun acted on its own.  Mr. Sanchez changed his story later, however.  He claimed that his gun achieved sentience, became wholly self-aware, and started firing of its own accord.  I admit that this sounds a little implausible, but if you've seen the Terminator movies, it doesn't sound too far-fetched:

[Sanchez] said... he found a gun wrapped inside a shirt while he was sitting on a bench... "So I picked it up and ... it started to fire on its own," Sanchez said, adding that he heard three shots go off.

Note the passive presentation.  Sanchez was as much a passive observer to these events as Kathryn Steinle was!  He talks about it like a witnessing bystander!

Now, as for his claim: you know, evolution and sentience usually take millions of years.  But perhaps in this special case, the gun, formerly a piece of non-sentient metal, became self-aware entirely coincidentally when Sanchez grabbed it.  If the gun truly achieved self-awareness when Sanchez grabbed it, he clearly is not to blame.  If anything, we have to examine what grievances the gun might have had to go off like that.

3) Lack of gun and shirt control are to blame.

Since Sanchez was not in the country legally, chances are the gun was not obtained legally; however, he really got it.  Still, if we removed guns from the hands of law-abiding citizens, a future shooting involving a legally owned gun (not this incident) could have been avoided (unless someone else, also legally owning a gun, was able to defend himself with it).

But we also need to talk about shirt control.  If that shirt hadn't been there, the gun would not have been able to hide from Sanchez, just waiting to strike out.  The fact that there are extra shirts lying around is a hazard and shows the need for shirts to be registered.  There should be a three-day waiting period for T-shirts (and five days for tank tops).

4) Sleeping pills are to blame.

He [Sanchez] appeared confused and sometimes spoke incoherently during the interview, and said he has poor vision and was under the influence of sleeping pills at the time of the shooting.

The sleeping pills are to blame!  You know, in the elaborate warning for sleeping pills, they warn about all kinds of things, but never in their warnings do they talk about the dangers of firing weapons while using them.  Do you see a class action lawsuit in the offing?

(By the way, Sanchez was arrested for "drug crimes," which in all likelihood were unrelated to his state of mind.  Whatever these drugs were, I'm sure they involved multivitamins or something equally innocuous.)

Sanchez had one final thought in his interview (which, by the way, was not with Jorge Ramos on Univison – I wonder why!):

"All I want to say is that in the courts, I want them to give me the punishment I deserve and get it over with as soon as possible," Sanchez said during the roughly 45-minute interview.

What is that all about?  Do you think he's asking for the death penalty?  Sorry, pal, you came to Sanctuary City, not Escape from New York!

I will close by being serious, just for this last paragraph: technically, this violent, drug-addicted, crazy man killed this poor young girl.  But really, it was Obama, and the Democrats, and most of the Republicans (yes, I mean you, Jeb, and Marco, and pre-2015 Scott Walker) who allowed her to die, by consciously and deliberately pushing a policy to leave us wide open to this kind of death and destruction.

This article was produced by NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.