A prison guard told me they explained the warning shot to inmates to deter escapes. The first shot is a kill shot as the guard yells “stop or I’ll shoot.” The second shot is fired into the air.
An average man can run 30ft/scd. Most people, who launch attacks do not run the length of a football field to do it. That warning shot may be the only time you get to fire that gun before the assailant knocks you dow.
This legislation is going to get somebody killed.
Never fire a warning shot!
For some of us, this is great, I hope it spreads.
My lawyer of 40 years who is now departed, told me a long time ago that the first shot is into the intruder. The second shot is into your ceiling or floor. When the police come, you can point to the warning shot you fired. He added, make sure the intruder is dead.
Joe Biden is happy. Firing into the air can kill someone and people should be prosecuted if that happens
So, if this new bill is signed into law, is her re-trial cancelled?
This is a bad idea!
‘Warning shots’ are stupid and dangerous. That bullet is coming down somewhere or it could ricochet if fired at the ground.
If you are legally and morally justified in using deadly force, then use it decisively. Your aim is to plant every bullet you fire into a vital organ of the person or persons who pose the threat to whomever you are defending. Wasting your limited ammo on this is pretty poor tactics. You think you’re going to have a chance to reload? You’d better have some pretty good distance and cover between you and the bad guys. Ever try reloading after running a hundred yard dash and falling blindfolded off the end of a diving board into ice water? Because that is what a sudden deadly force encounter is going to do to your fine motor skills.
Warning shots ‘permitted’ will almost immediately become warning shots ‘required’. One more legal defense hurdle you will need to overcome. “Only one warning shot? Why didn’t you fire two? Why didnt you empty your whole cylinder ‘warning’ him? You seemed awfully eager to shoot, weren’t you?”
Good idea —
If Curtis Reeves had fired a warning shot his victim would probably still be alive and he wouldn’t be spending the rest of his life in jail for murder.
I don’t care how many laws they pass, if I am attacked the first (of many) shots aimed center mass can be considered the “warning shot”.
I suppose there could be a scenario where a warning shot would be appropriate, but it escapes me.
Florida news ping.
I can tell you this has been ALL but IGNORED by the Miami news media...it would, after all, make the Republican legislature look good in the eyes of many Miami citizens AND it would redound to the benefit of the Republican party governor Rick Scott.
The Miami media is ALL IN for Charlie Crist, the pro-sodomite Democrat for governor.
Not true.
PING
I fired a shot into the air, it came to Earth I know not where...bad idea, waste of ammo.
The law doesn’t allow warning shots. It allows someone to threaten the use of force in the same situation where the actual use of force would have been legal. In other words, if it would have been self-defense to shoot someone, it will now also be self-defense to threaten to shoot someone. It wasn’t before, and because Florida has strict mandatory laws involving the use of a gun, people would get serious prison time for threatening to do something that would have been legal if they’d done it.
But it also requires that any threat of force must not pose a risk to public safety, which pretty much rules out any wild warning shots. The exact opposite of what people are saying about this law.
Note that none of this applies to the Marissa Alexander case because she wasn’t acting in self defense.