You make valid points, but this is where online posting has limits of understanding.
Ok, but if you can't explain it in text, what good with face-to-face or voice communications on the matter be?
Knowing that rubber rounds will do minimal penetration in gel is valuable – but not useful with existing laws in many places.
Well, agreed. Or actually, I think I'd say it this way: Knowing that rubber rounds penetrate minimally in gel IS useful to the citizen because understanding the only lawful instances where one may employ a firearm against someone else, that helps the citizen understand why they aren't a very useful option.
2 things came to mind for rubber projectiles. 4 dogs have been attached with 2 killed by coyotes in the past few days. This is dogs being walked by their owners or in their own backyard.
Being able to “shoo” the coyote off with a rubber bullet would probably more effective than what the police are advocating. “make noise with rocks in a can or shout”.
And if you have justification to "shoo" the coyote with a rubber bullet, in defense of life, you have the justification to stop its attack with a lead bullet, too.
There are laws against discharging a firearm within most city limits. However, self-defense is an affirmative defense against those charges -- just as it is an affirmative defense against the much more serious charge of homicide.
Now, getting into how the law actually covers acts committed while protecting pets is all going to boil down to individual jurisdictions and won't probably be as universal as the laws on self (human) defense tend to be in practice, so this might be too variable an issue to unpick here.
I'll simply put forth that there would likely be no legal reason why someone who must shoot to defend himself/herself (and the dog in their care) from an attacking wild animal would find themselves in any trouble for using a rubber bullet load, if for some reason they happened to have one loaded in their carry gun at the time.
A local man is in prison for murder. He shot a teen who was in the process of stealing his girlfriends car. The teen had a screwdriver. The man shot and killed the teen.
I'll bet the man would have liked the option of shooting with a rubber round instead of a JHP.
Boy, that's gonna need a LOT more information before anyone could make a claim based on the bare bones of the story. For one, if someone's attacking you with a screwdriver, and you have an articulable, reasonable fear for your life, rubber bullet or lead bullet doesn't make any difference. You'll present your self-defense case to the jury and plead "self-defense." If a jury decides that your fear was reasonable, your act was appropriate and you'll be acquitted of guilt. (In theory.)
If the kid simply "had a screwdriver," as someone breaking into a car very well may have, and he didn't actually threaten the man with any harm, there would be no justification to shoot him WITH ANYTHING.
The fact that the jury convicted the guy of murder, which is a pretty specific charge, suggests that this is what they felt happened: The kid didn't present a threat but the guy shot him anyway, simply for the attempted property crime.
Shooting him with a rubber bullet would not be any more justifiable than with a lead bullet if there was no immediate threat to life.
