http://www.fbi.gov/publications/leb/2009/april2009/law_enforcement.htm

Why is the prosecutor an idiot? “She argued McTigue resorted to deadly force unnecessarily – without firing a warning shot or displaying the gun to ward Palmer off.”

Warning shots:
No self-defense trainer advocates these. Many police departments forbid them as a matter of policy. Why, you ask?

(1) The bullet goes somewhere — and can travel for a very long ways, thru objects, with enough force to injure or kill. You can’t just fire it into the air — it may come back down with enough force to injure or kill, or riochet off a branch or pole you didn’t see, or otherwise cause harm. That’s irresponsible and dangerous — the prosecutor shouldn’t be suggesting unaimed fire is a good idea, never mind legally required.

(2) To safely fire a warning shot, the defender would have to look around for a safe backstop that could absorb the bullet without risk to others. That means looking away from the aggressor (with the risk that he’s going to do something while the defender is looking around)

(3) The defender is wasting one of a very limited number of shots the defender may have. Remember that bullets aren’t one-shot killing devices — I’ve defended cases where the victim was shot 5 or 6 times in the torso with a medium caliber bullet and lived to testify against the client. (And had they been so minded, was physically capable of shooting or stabbing or fighting with the client after those shots.)

That was a stupid argument. The prosecutor deserves to be mocked for it.

As described in the article, the shots were fired when the men were still at fist-fighting range. That makes the second argument about displaying the firearm stupid.

(1) Threatening someone with a firearm is usually a felony. Self-defense may apply, but usually under the same rules for actually using it — _imminent_ danger of death or serious bodily harm.

(2) If you are actually in imminent danger, you don’t have time to fool around with displays and threats. Self-defense trainers often do demos talking about reaction speed and how fast an aggressor can cross even 20 feet to wrestle with you over the gun if you display and hesitate to see what they are going to do.

(3) These guys aren’t at that kind of range — they are at fist-fight range, where the aggressor can grab and wrestle for the gun if it is merely displayed, putting both men at risk, as well as anyone in the area who might get hit with a stray bullet in the melee.

Police act under different rules and have different tools when they say “Stop or I’ll shoot!” Generally, they are at range to do it safely. Many wear body armor, making the risk a bit less. They have training in avoiding gun grabs. They have training in how to hold a person at gunpoint. They carry handcuffs to secure the person afterwards. And usually they have called for backup. The average person doesn’t have those tools.

Typical self-defense trainer advice would be (1) Avoid the fight, even if you are legally entitled to stand your ground, get out of there if you can do so safely and call the cops. (2) If you can’t get out and you find yourself in that imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm, then draw and fire — you probably don’t have time to do anything else.

The prosecutor may have a point about retreat, the story is not clear. It is not clear what she means about “arming himself”. (The story implies that the defender was lawfully carrying when the fight broke out, not that he specifically armed himself in anticipation of this fight.) But to the extent that she did have a point, she lost too much credibility with the preceding stupid points.

[Which I did have a Danbury prosecutor make in a self-defense case years back that lost at trial and on appeal. I'm still irked about the result in that case.]

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/boynton-beach-man-found-not-guilty-of-second-702252.html?printArticle=y

“Free for all” is not an inaccurate description.

This is because some of the people they deluded themselves and everyone else into believing were hardened criminals were really just acting in self defense. You can be sitting somewhere minding your own business and someone can run or drive up to you and scare the crap out of you in a threatening (but afterwards concealable) manner with aggressive behavior, and then if you yell at them “Hey cut it out or else” the DA can charge you with assault or a felony version and try to convince someone that you were being some terrorist ahole to yell back at the person.

The whole point of the stand your ground laws is to inject minor elements of anarchy into our society such that people cannot with immunity threaten people or property in ways that cannot be prevented or detected by the police.

I don’t believe the police should ever not look carefully at a claim of self defense, and between this and the progression to trial if the person actions are suspect are a deterrent against abusing the law. But this law couldn’t be more just in my opinion.

Add to this the problems of reaction time, and that waiting to be sure of the opponent’s intentions may mean that it is too late and one has been stabbed, shot, or otherwise disabled. Today, there is a funeral in the Boston area for Surendra Dangol, a clerk who complied with every request of an armed robber, and was shot and killed anyway. There are times one may be able to avoid force, and others when it is not possible — and it is very hard to figure out which is which with hindsight.

This is a tough area — and for the normal person, the psychological impact of harming or killing another person, even when perfectly justified, are extreme. I would hope that no one takes the possiblity of self-defense lightly, regardless of the heated rhetoric one may encounter.