Posted on 12/13/2014 12:35:19 AM PST by marktwain
In a small percentage of cases, a victim disarms an attacker. The attacker usually runs off. In one case, they even asked for the gun back! My experience is that disarms by victims are considerably more common than disarms by attackers. It is not hard to understand why. The victim has a lot more to gain from a disarm; the attacker a lot more to lose if he continues the fight. Sometimes the victim turns the gun on the attacker, as happen in this case in Chicago. It happened in the 6600 block of South State Street, one of the most dangerous areas of the city. From DNAinfo.com:
After the victim handed over an undisclosed item, he made a move for the gun, Antonietti said. During a brief struggle, the gun went off and Esper was shot in his back, court records show.In a science fiction novel, the Probability Broach, people who disarm their attackers get to keep the weapons. It seems a reasonable idea, once it is determined that the weapon is not legitimately claimed by another person. There is no reason to destroy a finely crafted self defense tool like the little Taurus shown. The victim took a serious risk in obtaining it. He accomplished a significant amount of societal good by preventing numerous future crimes to be committed by the attacker. It only seems just that he should have it, after due process, of course.
Esper ran off, and the victim gave the gun, a .22-caliber Taurus Ultralight, to police. Antonietti said officers recovered six live rounds and two spent rounds.
I have that gun.
It has a pink grip and is really cute.
Because so many guns used in crime are either defective, or “tainted”, by being associated with other crimes, in most cases it would be more appropriate to provide the citizen with a new, replacement gun. Assuming of course, that they and their family are legally allowed to be armed, and that they want it.
This being said, I am all for charity that would purchase and provide both guns and ammunition to some of the people who live in high crime areas.
1) Solely because of cost, inexpensive .22 pistols, about $125 each, and a small box of ammo, say $10.
2) Each gun would be engraved, about $15 a gun, that the gun is the property of the charity, is not for resale, nor can it be legally transferred to another person or outside of the state without permission of the charity.
3) Each gun would be ballistic tested, and those rounds preserved by the charity in case they were needed for a criminal investigation.
4) Distribution of the guns would only be to households where no one living there was legally forbidden to own a gun, and who wanted a gun. Perhaps one in four would fit those limits.
5) For just $10000, the charity could purchase 65 guns and ammo, and have them engraved. This would cover an area in the high crime neighborhood of about 260 homes, with random distribution. At half the cost of one full time rookie police officer for just one year.
Works under Klingon law. I believe you also get to keep his wife.
The idea that individual guns can be matched to crimes with ballistics, is mostly mythology from the media.
If you have a gun that you *think* matches a bullet from a crime, the ballistics can give a good idea that it was the gun used.
But ballistics are not gun fingerprints. A gun does not leave a history to be traced to individual crimes. If you have good sample of bullets and brass, you can often match a model. Far more often, no match is possible.
In the whole history of the New York ballistic data base system, where they kept a data base of cases from the guns sold in New York, my understanding is that they did not solve a single case using it.
Modern firearms are even less susceptible to ballistic matches.
Even with several known examples of Glock pistols in a police shooting, it was impossible to determine which one fired a fatal bullet in a case that I recall.
“I would think that the crime with the gun is a felony. How can a felon make a claim for a gun?”
The criminal attacker asked for the gun back from the victim that had disarmed him, while they were fighting!
I wouldn’t want to keep a criminal’s gun. No telling what other crimes it is linked to and it may be listed as a stolen weapon. I’d dump it it deep water or a trash bin ASAP.
It is not physical taking, merely by itself; that would be theft or robbery. In this case, the act of taking is also associated with the act of defending oneself against a potentially deadly attack, i.e. stealing the gun from a would-be murderer, while in the middle of the act of attempted murder, of the person in question who is taking the gun. Your answer misses a very important part of the question.
I have never considered the question before, but my answer is yes, one should be allowed to keep the gun.
A separate question is whether the police should have any right to attempt to connect that gun to past crimes (as by taking ballistic evidence in the form of test-fires) or anything else.
Yet another question is what should the citizen’s rights be, if the gun is prohibited, as by having a defaced serial number. If that is the case, should the citizen have a right to win a suit against the criminal for the value of a comparable, legal gun plus lawsuit costs, if he wasn’t allowed to keep the actual one as a result of its illegality? (Yes.)
Agreed.
“if they themselves are not a violent criminal, yes.”
IMO, if they manage to take the weapon and kill the attacker, they should get to keep the weapon, and put the attacker’s head on a pike in their front yard as a warning to others.
That goes for any weapon. Everyone makes lemons from time to time.
i mean if the victim isn’t a violent criminal, he or she can keep the attacker’s gun.
no, not if thgey too are a violent criminal. this is why criminals can’t claim self-defense if they are involved in criminal activity and somehow try to claim self-defense. doesn’t work if you’re a thug.
and if you sit for five minutes and think about all the potential problems this will cause amateurs, given all the problems professional insured and licensed bounty hunters go through?
there is already crimestoppers that victims and others can leave tips on and get rewards.
“Physical taking, merely by itself, is no basis for ownership.”
Are you able to read?
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