jmorris
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Not sure if that is grounds for omission on its own. Did they ever release any surveillance video of the greed wood mall shooting?
Assess this recent in-the-news defensive shooting incident (Houston)
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Not sure if that is grounds for omission on its own. Did they ever release any surveillance video of the greed wood mall shooting?
rabid wombat
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In this circumstance - there does not seem to be a ‘clean’ direction to shoot. The best shot I can see is when the robber is in front of the glass - even then we do not know what is behind the glass…or as you stated earlier - no telling what direction a pass through goes….
As for ‘directly’ at the robber, and the customer behind - we are seeing only two dimensions. Any luck the initial shots were angled up, and potentially over the other customer (not ideal by any sense) as the rounds were fired as rising from a seated position. Once again, pass throughs could go anywhere…
luzyfuerza
Member
I just don't see "good guys" being punished more harshly very often. More often, I see those in the real legal system try to balance the good the defender does versus the consequences of any steps he might have taken over a legal line. And I often see them apply a reasonableness standard to every-day defenders that is broader than what is reasonable for those who are expected to be highly trained (e.g. cops).
But I suppose that this might be because of my particular legal environment. For example, this is Sim Gill, the District Attorney in the largest, most urban county in my state. Sim is no saint, but it would appear that he does understand the value of armed self-defense.
Maybe if I was subject to the legal systems in St Louis, Chicago, San Francisco, or Washington, D.C., I might have a different opinion.
A note: you hear voices here that are full of legalistic certainty. Warnings about taking baby steps past the limits of the law. That sort of thing. There are reasons for that kind of absolutism, but discussing them is best left for another day.
Good point, no one knows the outcome of the 'good shoot' until no charges are filed, there is no civil suit or in the case of criminal and civil cases, they are found for the defendant.
The mother of the dead guy is being interviewed on how he tried to turn it around. Will some lawyer try to come up with a civil suit? Who knows?
The mother of the dead guy is being interviewed on how he tried to turn it around. Will some lawyer try to come up with a civil suit? Who knows?
Scrapiron45
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Would it make any legal difference if the medical examiner determined that the robber died from one of the first eight shots fired and not the last?
WTBguns10kOK
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Another side note, this shooting illustrates that leaving the scene post shooting didn't really do much other than give the armed hero some time to relax for a few days and speak with a lawyer. He was going to be subjected to a grand jury regardless of the fact he didn't do anything wrong.
It cannot be said that "he didn't do anything wrong", but legally, flight is an indication of guilt.
bdickens
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The Night Rider
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The whole point of that Parable went completely over your head.
Jesus said the greatest commandment of the laws that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul and with all your strength.
He said the second commandment was like the first you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The levite and the priest who should have known the law ignored the wounded man. They did not love their neighbor as themselves.
The Samaritan, who wasn't t even a Jew and was actually a member of a people group who was despised by the Jews and who probably didn't even know the law fulfills it by giving aid to the wounded man.
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One of the primary functions of this subforum of THR is to "armchair quarterback"--to analyze real-world scenarios and see what was done right, what was done wrong, what could have been done better and why. Since humans are imperfect, there's something in almost every situation that could be improved upon and that's actually one of the main points of this subforum.
Ideally, the people participating here are learning lessons NOW that they won't have to learn while they are in deadly danger. That involves identifying the positives and the negatives from a scenario and learning from those actions instead of having to learn things in the middle of a gunfight.
People who can't tolerate that kind of analysis/discussion would probably feel better if they avoid the ST&T subforum of THR.
I mentioned it earlier in the thread. We aren't here to try to convict or exonerate the participants, we are trying to learn lessons.
230RN
2A was "political" when it was first adopted.
Once again, I ask if a Moderator is speaking as a Moderator or as a Member?
May I tenderly suggest that no lessons are actually validated until this case is finally resolved. In the meantime, speculation as to possible outcomes and alternate strategies and questions as to various viewpoints (debate) is perfectly acceptable, as well as a healthy smidgen of lightheartedness...
...as one can tell from the number of pages in this topic.
Respectfully submitted,
Terry, 230RN
May I tenderly suggest that no lessons are actually validated until this case is finally resolved. In the meantime, speculation as to possible outcomes and alternate strategies and questions as to various viewpoints (debate) is perfectly acceptable, as well as a healthy smidgen of lightheartedness...
...as one can tell from the number of pages in this topic.
Respectfully submitted,
Terry, 230RN
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I’m sorry Terry but you are incorrect. Every case is different. There are many factors that go into a decision to prosecute someone (like I pointed out several pages back). Many of those factors are not tangible. They include public opinion, if the prosecutor wants to send a message to the public and other factors. No one can know in advance which if any of those factors will be in play if you are unfortunate enough to have to use deadly force to defend yourself. If you are placed in that position the best way to mitigate those factors is to know the law and to make sure that your actions are within the law.
Do you remember the example I posted about the guy who shot the three people fleeing after stealing anhydrous ammonia? He wasn’t charged for a couple reasons. The thieves weren’t local so they had no people in the community who would be upset if the shooter wasn’t charged and who might make problems come re-election. No one was killed. And no charges would send a message to the local meth cooks that stealing anhydrous might get you shot with no consequences for the person who shot you.
The outcome for the businessman who shot them would have been completely different if all of those factors hadn’t been in play. By the way, when I talked to the states attorney about it he said; “don’t think you’d get a pass, you’re supposed to know better.”
So if our shooter here isn’t charged it will likely be because factors like those were in play. Do you want to count on those same factors being in play if you have to use deadly force?
It works the other way too. Factors like I just described, especially public opinion can get someone charged or overcharged.
The lesson to take from this shooting is to know the law pertaining to the use of deadly force and stay within the law. It’s the best thing you can do to stay out of court or get out of court with your freedom.
If the shooter here isn’t charged no one should take it to mean that making sure the person they had to shoot is dead after the engagement id over is now legal.
As the legal case progresses, to the extent that we are informed of the progress, there will likely be additional lessons learned. But there are some to be learned now, as well as some already well known that need to be reviewed.
As far as pure strategy/tactics, nearly all lessons are already there to be observed and analyzed. We might get some additional insight if one of the robbery victims chooses to provide additional data that's not obvious from the video, but mostly we can see what happened, what was done well, what could have been done better, what wasn't a good idea, even if it worked out ok, what was a good idea.
For example, when I first watched the video, I noticed that one of the customers was fidgeting and moving around much more than the others. I surmised that he was the one who had the gun. Most of the other customers were very still. There's a good lesson to be learned there--had the robber actually had a gun and been a bit more observant/suspicious, things could have gone very badly for the CCW.
I posted in response to someone complaining about armchair quarterbacking because that kind of attitude is problematic in this section of THR. There are no lessons to be learned if we look at every scenario and are forced to conclude (for fear of upsetting someone) that the defender/CCW did everything exactly right, no room for improvement, no errors. In fact, we would be learning bad lessons in many cases.
That said, the discussion needs to be more than just pure speculation. We have facts from the scenario (video), facts from the law, facts from how previous cases have been handled, facts about firearms and bullets, etc.
For example, it's not merely a matter of opinion that bullets can miss their targets or go through targets and hit what's beyond the target. So we can look at the video and draw conclusions from that known fact and from the apparent trajectory of the bullets in the video.
Another example: We can see that the CCW, from point blank range, fired a shot into the back of the head of an unmoving person on the ground who he had previously disarmed. We don't need to speculate about that, we can watch it happen. And watch it again if we aren't sure what we saw the first time. We can view those actions in light of legality and also in terms of pure strategy and tactics and draw conclusions that are far more than just speculation.
Phaedrus/69
Member
Yeah, the customer with the concealed gun looked for all the world like he probably doesn't carry all the time. Way too much "managing the gun" while sitting there; patting it, fishing for it, fumbling. He's lucky the robber either didn't know the signs, wasn't paying attention or was too high to notice.
Yeah. So? I was not discussing theology--only that the man did not do violence.
"Validated"? The criminal justice system can do just about anything, and whatever it does will teach us no more than the flip of a coin.
Yes, there are lessons here. Some people may need to pay attention to the discussion. Telegraphing that he was armed by fidgeting with the gun...firing from a seated position without regard to what was behind the target...that eight shot...touching the robber's gun....
Those would be pointed out in good FoF training, and we would learn not to do them.
jmorris
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I suppose the counter to that would be if factors were in play and you did it all right, you could still be charged in certain parts of the Country that are more pro criminal/anti 2A/self defense.
jmorris
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I think firing from the seated position at first was better than if he stood up. Seated, the muzzle is raised up to the standing robber, at the ceiling before you get to the guy in the back, from a shot angle perspective.
Had he stood up on the first shot where the robber closest to lined up with the guy in the back corner, his muzzle would have been pointed even closer the guy, as it would be level, or below level, if he wasn’t going for the head.
I said exactly that:
In fact I can give an example in a non-gun related case in Springfield, IL where the Sangamon County States Attorney charged 2 paramedics with FIRST DEGREE MURDER for transporting a black patient on his stomach who died from positional asphyxiation. This was to cater to BLM. Without the political pressure there probably wouldn't have been any charges or maybe criminal negligence or manslaughter. I don't want to get into that case here, I post it as an example of how political pressure groups and public sentiment can effect things negatively.
Well, those are two alternatives. How about moving? That's a basic tactic covered in many training courses.
The Night Rider
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Is a moderator ever not speaking as a moderator
The Night Rider
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Darren Wilson, George Zimmerman
RetiredUSNChief
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I haven't watched this link in this thread, but it looks like the same incident I saw in another forum.
Leaving aside the fact that the bad guy was leaving, back turned, having not fired a shot at that point in time, the patron shot him four times.
The bad guy went down HARD at that point. Then the patron approaches the bad guy, who is face down at this point, and shoots him another four times. Then, after a VERY noticible period of time in which the patron apparently is still very deliberately observing the bad guy who is still face down, shoots him one more time.
THIS. DOES. NOT. LOOK. GOOD.
While there are all kinds of people out there cheering the patron on for what he did, the plain fact of the matter is that this kind of application of deadly force is NOT ANYWHERE NEAR A "GOOD" SHOOT.
While an argument MIGHT be made for the initial four shots (and that would be a hard sell in court), the following 4 shots would not be, and most certainly not the final shot.
I'm not really "armchair quarterbacking" this shooting, as it's actually a scenario I've asked myself many times as either thought experiments about the legality of various scenarios, or as pre-emptive "what-ifs" in various settings, such as sitting at a restaurant with my family and an armed hold-up goes down.
This is gonna suck bad for this guy. And quite honestly, I'm not feeling all that up tight about the potential consequences for him.
Maybe the grand jury will go his way. He better hope so.
He better also hope the DA actually decides not to take him to court anyway, even if the grand jury does not indict. Because the DA most certainly could...and likely stands a good chance of a conviction.
Leaving aside the fact that the bad guy was leaving, back turned, having not fired a shot at that point in time, the patron shot him four times.
The bad guy went down HARD at that point. Then the patron approaches the bad guy, who is face down at this point, and shoots him another four times. Then, after a VERY noticible period of time in which the patron apparently is still very deliberately observing the bad guy who is still face down, shoots him one more time.
THIS. DOES. NOT. LOOK. GOOD.
While there are all kinds of people out there cheering the patron on for what he did, the plain fact of the matter is that this kind of application of deadly force is NOT ANYWHERE NEAR A "GOOD" SHOOT.
While an argument MIGHT be made for the initial four shots (and that would be a hard sell in court), the following 4 shots would not be, and most certainly not the final shot.
I'm not really "armchair quarterbacking" this shooting, as it's actually a scenario I've asked myself many times as either thought experiments about the legality of various scenarios, or as pre-emptive "what-ifs" in various settings, such as sitting at a restaurant with my family and an armed hold-up goes down.
This is gonna suck bad for this guy. And quite honestly, I'm not feeling all that up tight about the potential consequences for him.
Maybe the grand jury will go his way. He better hope so.
He better also hope the DA actually decides not to take him to court anyway, even if the grand jury does not indict. Because the DA most certainly could...and likely stands a good chance of a conviction.
That is pure speculation as nobody genuinely knows the robber's subsequent plans.
We now know the robber had murdered a person before, so he was unpredictable.
luzyfuerza
Member
"Factors" are always in play.
"Reasonableness" varies from mind to mind, and jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Statutory and common law also help define what is "reasonable".
And "reasonableness" changes over time. Examples of these changes include the acceptability of wearing masks in banks before and during COVID, and the acceptability of various post-arrest restraints pre- and post-George Floyd.
No self-defense incident can simplistically be called a "good shoot" or a "bad shoot". Almost every incident includes elements that support a self-defense justification, and elements that don't. I wish that the law could provide a logical formula that we could plug facts into like number of shots, nature of the threat, angles, distances, calibers, discrepancies in age, numbers of participants, and physical conditions, etc., that would kick out a reliable, repeatable result. But this will never exist.
In the meantime, the law forces us to trust the experience, opinions, and judgements of those around us regarding the "reasonableness" of our actions.
Some good advice: have as many factors in your favor as possible.
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