Posted on 07/12/2014 7:16:57 AM PDT by marktwain
A bystander who witnessed one man stabbing another in Lake Worth fired a warning shot and then held the two at gunpoint until deputies arrived, according to an arrest report.
Had the man not intervened, other witnesses said, the stabbing victim likely would've been killed, a Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office arrest report said.
The Florida bill is similar to, but goes beyond the provisions of the Arizona "Defensive Display" law. That law was created because criminals were using the criminal justice system to harass people who were defending themselves without firing a shot.
If someone is in the process of stabbing another I’m going to shoot the guy with the knife and not fire a warning shot.
Still it’s good of the man to step in.
Last year a child was killed in FL from an airborne shot. Odds are against it, but thats why they’re called odds. Better to put the bullet into the knife wielding perp.
For brevity, I did not include this information. It appears the shooter was some distance from the men when he fired; at the shot, both immediately stopped fighting and put their hands in the air.
The two had been involved in numerous altercations in the past. The one with the knife said that the guy he was attacking had tried to kill him less than an hour before.
That does not make it a justified attack on his part, but what was happening is clearly two members of the criminal class at odds with each other.
“Last year a child was killed in FL from an airborne shot. Odds are against it, but thats why they’re called odds. Better to put the bullet into the knife wielding perp.”
Shooting at the person allows for a chance to miss and hit someone else as well. If the shot went out into the ocean, I would guess that shooting at the person with the knife in the middle of a dynamic attack would give better odds of hitting the wrong person than shooting toward the ocean on a steep trajectory.
I am *not* saying that warning shots are generally a good idea, just that it is a complicated world, and that every policy has exceptions.
It is hard to argue with success.
That law is not really necessary. The shooter could just say he fired at the bad guy, but missed.
You shouldn’t fire into the air, so a warning shot would have to be fired at that ground. If I have to fire to fire a warning shot, it’s going to be that spot where his foot is.
The reason for the law is that Florida has a 10-20-Life mandatory sentencing law for use of a gun in the commission of a crime.
Anti-gun prosecutors were using the mandatory sentencing law to pressure people who believed they were defending themselves into plea bargaining to other charges instead of taking the case to trial. If you are looking at a minimum 10 year jail sentence, with a hostile prosecutor vs. pleading to a misdemeanor “assault” charge or some such, many will not want to take the chance or have the resources to go to a jury trial.
The new law takes away the threat of the mandatory sentences from the prosecutors.
In the case mentioned, before the law was passed, the prosecutor might have been able to threaten “negligent discharge of a firearm” or perhaps “aggravated assault” with a firearm and the mandatory 10-20 year sentence.
The ground isn’t necessarily a good option, either. Some pavements are hard enough to deflect a bullet, leaving you in the same position as firing into the air. Even if they’re standing on grass, there’s still the possibility of hitting a rock or something and having it deflect. The challenge with a warning shot is knowing what you’re aiming at and that it is actually going to stop the bullet.
As far as this situation is concerned, it seems like firing a warning shot was the best option, since the citizen couldn’t know the circumstances behind the incident. If you don’t know how the incident started, you have no way of knowing whether the guy with the knife is an innocent man defending himself from an unprovoked attack, or the actual aggressor (in this case it sounds like neither of them was really innocent). I remember in my CCL class our instructor gave us a hypothetical incident:
You’re at the mall and you hear gunshots. You run toward the sound and find a man with a gun kneeling over another man. Would you shoot the man with the gun to protect the man on the ground?
If you said “yes”, you just shot an undercover police officer who was in the process of subduing the real perpetrator.
Exactly...like what GOP St Atty Angela Corey was doing in Jax...and failed to do in Seminole Cty vs George Zimmerman
Surprised Rick Scott signed this law...he was the one who backed down from Black Racists to persecute Zimmerman. Scott, AG Bondi, and Corey are all anti 2d Amendment
Good point. I am all for the law — just felt it was unnecessary, tho now I see not.
True.
As my grandpa used to say “I’m agin it” generally, but I think changing the law was a good thing.
If I can't know it was the perp, how can you know it was a police officer?
That’s the point. You don’t know until it’s too late.
“The chance of the bullet hitting anything out on the ocean are extremely tiny”
Heck, the chance of a bullet fired in a city coming down and hurting someone badly is also very small...maybe one in a thousand...at most. Should it be legal in all cases...of course not. EXCEPT when it serves a greater purpose, such as preventing a near-certain death.
The other part of the story is the effect if he had tried to shoot the stabber (as most CCW people are trained) - it is much more likely that he would have hit the victim by accident (or both people) than that one bullet coming down in the wrong place.
Do you keep an attorney on retainer? Shooting people can get to be very expensive so unless you have buckets of extra cash I would advise warning shots when appropriate.
Did some math. There is a slum in India with a population of 770,000 people per square mile. That is roughly 35 square feet per person. Have a bullet come down randomly there and there is a 1 in 35 chance of hitting a person in a bad way (if you assume that each person is a target of 1 square foot - rather generous).
In the densest part of New York city, during a work day, you’re looking at 1 in 260. However, at least 90% of the people are under some roof and the roof will likely take most, if not all of the energy of the bullet - so now we’re well into the 1 in a thousands, even in New York.
For higher odds, you’d have to be shooting so the bullet comes down in a crowd, but we’re not talking about that here.
Its legal to use deadly force to stop an assault against someone. Even if that someone turns out to be a dirt bag.
I guess that’s about the best reason for a warning shot I’ve heard.
Glad it worked out for him.
I know that but don’t think you’ll get by without an attorney if the prosecutor doesn’t like your looks.
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