Posted on 12/14/2013 5:41:53 AM PST by marktwain
BTW I like your screen name.
Signed..
Major Havoc
NNNN
Heck we fire off-the-tree-bark warning shots at city slickers trespassing on our properties here for 250 years, especially revenooers, but they get rocksalt.
I like Major Havoc. If I needed another name, I’d riff on that one. I love the little .40 cal. I’ve avoided buying .40 cal anything and I’ve had several opportunities to pick them up cheaply. I don’t want to stock ammo for yet another caliber. I’ll stick with .380 and 9mm. (Oh, and a Taurus Judge .410 and a few odd-ball antiques.)
So, in answer to my question, you would have waited in my first two situations for the attackers to rush you or pull weapons, and in the last situation you would have waited for the hammer to be swung?
If I had done that in the first two situations, there is a fair chance I'd be dead right now, and if I had shot the strange man approaching me with a hammer inside my property, I'd likely be in prison. So, forgive me for rather liking this notion of producing a firearm to check what a reasonable person would conclude is a threatening behavior, but which a prudent person would be unwilling to conclude was a threatening act worthy of deadly force.
Thus, I'm very much in favor of such a law.
If you flash your piece to discourage an attack, who is going to know except you and the would-be perp? Who is going to call the cops to report it? Of course this assumes you are not waving a gun around wildly in a crowd and yelling “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
Warning shots are idiotic.
Umm, if your carry piece is going for years unfired you should not be carrying.
Let’s consider the following situation under the “wait until you are certain and only pull if you are going to fire” doctrine:
A young woman leaves a restaurant by herself at 11 pm and heads to the far, dark end of the parking lot, where she had to park when she arrived. As she approaches her car she hears fast steps and turns around to see a large man 20 feet away coming at her at a jog, with what appears to be a pipe in his hand. She has a pistol in a waistband holster under her jacket. She shouts “Stop”, but he keeps coming. What should she do? Please answer that in your own mind.
A second after she sees the man one two things happen:
1. She gets clubbed in the head before she can pull her pistol.
2. The deaf bus boy comes to a stop and holds out her umbrella and cell phone that she forgot at the table.
It would be good to have a law that states she would not be charged if she pulled out her pistol, but didn’t fire when the bus boy came to a stop and she saw what the situation was. It would not be a perfect law that didn’t require a cop or DA to make a decision on “reasonable response”, it would just provide more leeway in the gray area and takeaway more slack on vindictive prosecution.
“Who is going to call the cops to report it?”
The Perps. They call the cops and claim that you threatened to shoot them for no reason.
We had it happen in Arizona, it is what triggered our defensive display law. The victim was going into the court house for the trial (he was accused of aggravated assault) when the prosecutor let the defense know that they had a third 911 call that showed that the victim was telling the truth. (Both the victim and the aggressors had called 911) Then the case was dropped, but the aggressors were never prosecuted.
The bad guys know quite a bit about the “justice” system and how to manipulate it. They often try to use it to take “revenge” on the victims who are unwilling to play the role.
“Umm, if your carry piece is going for years unfired you should not be carrying. “
I fire 50 rounds a month from my S&W .380. I’m really good with it. But the .380 Glaser rounds are $2 each. I don’t fire those. I’m a big believer in keeping in practice as a 3.5 inch barrel gun requires it.
When I had the .22 magnum as my carry piece, which was briefly, I had .22 magnum hollow points and I fired regular lead rounds for practice. When I went to fire the .22 hollow points two of five misfired. (I hadn’t carried it for years, but it had remained loaded.)
i would be on red alert and ready to stop him.
What does red alert mean? That you are setting your draw speed to ludicrous fast? If it takes 2 seconds to respond, you can't wait until you've got 1 second left to see if you are in danger.
Touche.
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