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He let him off to prey upon someone else. If you need to pull it, you need to use it.

Any single rule on something like that is going to be a lot like 'zero tolerance' and be completely inappropriate at some point.

I prefer not to lock myself into an action that may not be appropriate or adult.

/johnny

I disagree. There are many scenarios where brandishing a weapon could end the threat. If, for example, they turned and ran away, your recommendation would be to shoot them in the bacK? No thanks. I don’t want to go to prison.

That is probably what will happen.

He let him off to prey upon someone else. If you need to pull it, you need to use it.

Let me give you the situation I was in, during one of the situations when I pulled out my weapon, and you tell me if you would have killed the two people or not have pulled.

I was flipping houses, a young black man knocked and wanted to talk see the house for his mother. I let him in to see the house, but I kept him at about 10 ft and he didn't know that I had a center-back holstered pistol. I kept my right hand on my hip, inches from the pistol, as I talked to him.

Soon after letting him in, he stopped making sense and it was clear that he had no interest in the house. Then the door (which I had failed to lock behind him) opened and #2 came in. They were exchanging looks and sizing me up. It was clear to me that they were on the verge of rushing me, or pulling weapons. I didn't want to be the second to pull, so I pulled and held the muzzle 45 degrees down with them at about 12 ft.

I told them to get the hell out and they ran like hell, without a word.

I could have waited and probably killed them both, but if I had waited, they may have shot me. If they rushed me, I could have shot them both, but then if they weren't armed, I would have been faced with having shot two unarmed, young black men that hadn't laid a finger on me.

My house that I was trying to sell would have been a crime scene, with the likelihood of it being trashed by the friends of the deceased quite high.

I pulled early to prevent getting behind the response curve, but in doing so created two fleeing criminals who had not yet produced a verbal or physical threat, and may not have been armed. Shooting them at that point would have resulted in prosecution for murder.