I won't respond like a lot of gunners did on the Zimmerman's shooting and say "we don't have enough information to know what really happened". We all know we can't believe anything that is reported by newspapers.

And basically, all you're accusing "gunners" of is being rational and responsible in not wishing to immediately pass judgement on a case with so much apparently contradictory information floating about. There was a time when this sort of attitude was something to be praised.

I'm pretty much in favor of homeowners being able to legally defend themselves with firearms so long as reasonable criteria are met. But your silly invocation of "37 times more likely" (isn't it typically 43?) in this case is about as silly as spouting stats about the relative safety of air travel to someone whose plane just stalled. I would imagine that something approaching 100% of planes that come within a meter of crashing do in fact crash. So, if you're hurtling from the sky, if you hit that last meter you're probably a goner. Too bad you won't be able to tell anyone you personally invalidated all previous air travel safety statistics.

http://xkcd.com/795/

Condition A. It is reported that Zimmerman was punched in the nose and his nose was broken and he was then held down and punched again and again by Martin.
Condition B. Zimmerman is on video a short time later and and there appears to be no blood or contusions
therefore..................

That's something most of us have suspected from the beginning, and not the SYG laws. I'm glad to see you agree with us!

But I believe we're getting a bit off topic here.

he only had one bullet.

...named Reichert who made this shot with a Raufoss Mk 211...

Well, you're probably not interested, but you'd have to see the report to understand.

I'd have him checked for suicidal tendencies.

Unless he was Barney Fife, of course, who was only allowed one bullet, to keep in his shirt pocket.

if the bullet is not stopped by a wall, it will keep going until it drops. Sometimes they land and kill innocent people.

Shooting to kill is the more responsible thing to do?

I learn so much about ethics from you people!

Last edited Thu Mar 29, 2012, 12:07 PM - Edit history (1)

risking the chance of killing an innocent person or their pet a couple miles away instead of shooting the sociopath who is attacking you says more about your ethics an a warped definition of civilized.

There's a pretty big damn difference. Not all people that are shot in a manner to incapacitate them are killed, and ones intention when defending ones self is generally going to be to stop the threat, which may or may not lead to the death of the threat. And really, if you think you have enough time to shoot some kind of "warning shot" then you'd probably have a hard time arguing you felt your life was in immediate danger.

As far as the ethics, do you really suggest that sending a bullet into a random direction that may hit a totally innocent person is somehow more ethical than shooting the criminal that is directly threatening your safety?

rifle bullets penetrate walls with ease - that warning short could easily kill some innocent bystander.

It is more responsible to potentially kill a violent assailant than to risk killing an innocent person. If you had to learn that here, I really wonder what kind of life you have lived. I think you already knew, though, and are being intentionally obtuse to make a flawed ideological point.

...so long as you who make the suggestion will accept the consequences of where that rifle round goes....

in an urban area like Detroit.

How about farting loudly (no pun intended) to repel the intruder?

The burglar is likely to think that you were shooting AT him and missed. He will then think his life is in danger and may shoot at you and not miss.

I understand that you are looking for a way to avoid shooting another person but using a gun to bluff with is a very good way to end up very dead.

If things have gone downhill to the point that you need to shoot then they are bad enough for you to aim for center-mass of the person. If they aren't that bad, then don't even point the gun at them, or let them know that you have a gun.

To anyone who thinks that's a neato idea: please don't buy a gun for defense.

wannabe cop that thinks he is a tuff guy would wear. Then after he shoots some unarmed man, he cries like a baby for weeks.

I just look at it as part of the dark side.

...if you're drinking your coffee the next.

Stay safe.

I teach it sometimes. Its harder than it looks. Takes discipline and practice. More a requirement for lesser calibers like 9mm.

Its highly effective, but then you get second guessed sometimes about why didn't you shoot them just once.

Screw that. Rule #3: "Anything worth shooting is worth shooting at least twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive."

Mozambique; yeah, the ones with the AK on their flag. I get it.

Thanks for the link.

Like, "BANG!" Oh, shit, he's still coming... NOW what?

If you shoot them only once, that might only piss them off and make them come at you faster... Maybe not with a .45.

retreat when no retreat is possible. That's the case here. &quot give them what they want / call the police / fight them off by hand / run the other way / go to his room)" is nothing more than sarcasm, not a serious analysis of the question. But taking an extreme example to try and prove the ostensible point that it's silly to ask people not to engage in deadly force unless there is no reasonable alternative only proves its validity.

...but let's examine this one a little closer. The homeowner heard his door being forced open, assessed the threat at that moment, then retrieved his rifle. Now, did he have the gun shouldered and aimed at the door so that he would catch the invader by surprise? Sounds like it. Good tactic too. In a not-so-self-defense-friendly state, a prosecutor could question why the homeowner didn't give a verbal warning that he was armed or gave the intruder the option to leave the property after seeing he was about to be on the receiving end of a 7.62x39mm body piercing. The homeowner would have to prove he felt his life was still at risk even though he had a gun and was getting the drop on the BG.

Do you really believe, even based on your scenario that the homeowner would be convicted?

on the jury. If the jury is made of some of the gun control advocates here, yes. One here thinks it is better to risk a bullet killing an innocent miles away than the person attacking you. That is what he or she said.

depends on the jury. Try as we like to examine the jury pool and disqualify people who probably should not serve on a given case (for a multiplicity of reasons) you can get a jury that sways one way or the other. But as you noted when you served on a jury, most juries tend to do their duty as instructed, not based on some personal agenda. We try to avoid this by having Proescution and Defense fight it out as to who goes on the jury. Usually we get a decent balance.

...that the homeowner could be convicted. Small or not it would very much exist and so would the threat of a civil suit brought by the next of kin. You think that a homeowner should bear the financial burden of defending himself twice? "Reasonable" is very much an arbitrary term and a perfect example is found in many of laws gun-control extremists would like to see passed. A 10rd limit on magazine capacity is considered "reasonable" even though it is a purely arbitrary number that has no scientific basis for support.

"Reasonableness", in the eyes of the law, is a construct which asks the jury to determine what a reasonable person in the position of the shooter would have or should have done. It does not depend on what the shooter thought. It's been in our law since the beginnings of the Republic.

Calling a 10 round limit on a magazine 'reasonable' has no legal validity. It's merely someone's definition of what they thought.

Two entirely different animals.

I'm just making the example that "reasonableness" has degrees. In the legal term follows that a jury has to factor in the foreseeable events and consequences of a given action and then discern if there was an option that could have been (again, entirely up to the jury) taken with lesser risk from a global standpoint. Two juries, two different decisions depending on the makeup. A person should never have to worry about defending themselves from both their attacker and a jury if they indeed acted righteously.

Hard to see how that makes for good law.

... there was a healthy dose of gratuitous sarcasm in my post.

I'm so constantly amazed by the parrot-like replies of some gun control supporters here that I'm often unable to come up with a more cogent response. Instead, I simply use sarcasm to illustrate the points I would have people take note of.


Having said that, I do agree with your sentence that, "it's silly to ask people not to engage in deadly force unless there is no reasonable alternative." I suspect we would only differ on what is "reasonable." (Retreating from any part of one's home or vehicle, for example, is not reasonable to me.)

seems to occur 1) outside the home (or vehicle) or 2) when the only real reason for using deadly force was in defense of property.

when the only real reason for using deadly force was in defense of property.

use of deadly force just to protect property.

I mean, one could argue that most home invasions happen with the intent to steal personal property yet DTR and SYG laws have always left room for deadly force in those situations. Home invasion and armed robberies have always left strong cases for the use of violent force in response. I don't see it as much as a homeowner killing someone to protect "stuff" as much as I see it as a person risking their life to steal "stuff".

English common law which decided a long, long time ago that a human life was too dear a price to pay for 'things'. The principle that you can't exact a human life in defense of objects has been a cornerstone of our law in the country since before the Revolution. I don't see where 'altriusm' plays any part in it.

....specifically states defense of property with reasonable force is permissible. Armed robbery or burglary can be met with lethal force. Even the military has specific ROE to defend assets, even using lethal force to prevent theft or damage by non-combatants.

or at least one state in it.

point you're trying to make here.

Last edited Fri Mar 30, 2012, 02:30 AM - Edit history (2)

I tend to see irony where most do not. There was not an actual point beyond the pot shot at "wild west mentality". I could say that since Wyoming's 2008 law is less vague and causes you less concern, it makes the hinterland more civilized than the gated community/strip mall jungle.
But then, since you are either in the wilderness or Mayberry, the chances of finding yourself in a situation is as close to non existent as you can get without moving to Palau.

Someone's been watching too many stupid movies. Bad reporter, no whisky!

The intruder may have ended up in the driveway, but he wasn't blown there by the force of the bullet alone.

More likely, shot, stumbled and fell.

I'm sure the bullet itself made him step back a little, but the stumble and fall played a much larger part in it. The way the reporter put it makes it sound like the bullet fired out of the SKS imparted enough energy into the criminal to send him flying back 10-20ft! Maybe he had just watched "Last Man Standing" before writing the article?

A standard 8 gm bullet from a 7.62x39 round fired from an SKS has a momentum of about 6.5 kg-m/s. Assuming a completely inelastic collision and negligible losses (friction...) conservation of momentum tells us that a 160 lb human stuck by this bullet will move at about 9 cm/s or about 0.2 mph.

So what's to really be learned here is: never trust Bruce Willis.

For one, the bullet probably came out the other side of him, so not all of the momentum was imparted in the body (dwell time in the body), and the shooter probably didn't get pushed 9cm the other way.

He stated an idealized situation which keeps the calculus to a minimum.

...were based upon assumptions making the impact entirely inelastic, the bullet remaining within the subject and 100% of the momentum transferred to the subject, a "worst case". In the real world, less than 1/3 of the people shot by a rifle have the bullet remain within their body. That number drops for fully or partially metal jacketed rounds.

... from the muzzle blast of an SKS, not to mention hellacious noise. It's bad enough when wearing ear protection and shooting from a pavilion-type position. Add four walls, the element of surprise, and the fact that the muzzle is pointed right at the person, and it's quite capable of making somebody flinch backwards violently, even before he knows he's hit. Fear and wound trauma would only intensify the effect. You can see how he would end up in the street.

I doubt that it was only due to the kinetic energy imparted into the criminal from the firearm that landed him there. I find your explanation of how he got there perfectly acceptable, and was only making fun of the reporter in this case.

Pretty much just fell down.

"The point-blank blast hurled the intruder backward through the doorway and onto White's driveway. He later died from the single bullet wound."

Sir Issac Newton would like a word with the dipshit that wrote this article.

Obviously most newspaper reporters have little knowledge of guns or physics.

I prefer a .357 Mag hollow point. But, whatever works.

Good on Mr White!