Under the law, you can’t just THINK you were being threatened.
You have to BE threatened before you threaten the other party.
You had better be sure of your situation, because trouble is sure to follow even if you are justified.
“Under the law, you can’t just THINK you were being threatened.
You have to BE threatened before you threaten the other party.
You had better be sure of your situation, because trouble is sure to follow even if you are justified.”
Close, but there is a bit more to it. You have to believe, as a reasonable person, that you are under threat of life or bodily integrity. Just because you are not is not nearly as important as reasonably believing that you were.
This is why it is justified to shoot people with realistic replicas that act as if they are threatening to shoot you. A reasonable person could not tell the difference, so a reasonable person would assume the “gun” was real, and act accordingly.
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.
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.