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When can you legally use a gun against an unarmed person?
Legal Insurrection ^ | August 31, 2014 | Andrew Branca

Posted on 08/31/2014 9:19:21 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

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1 posted on 08/31/2014 9:19:22 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Did you know that John Kerry was in Viet... oops, I mean Mike Brown was unarmed ?


2 posted on 08/31/2014 9:34:14 PM PDT by UCANSEE2 (Lost my tagline on Flight MH370. Sorry for the inconvenience.)
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To: UCANSEE2

“Unarmed” does not mean “not dangerous”.


3 posted on 08/31/2014 9:41:53 PM PDT by Bob
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

To save my life or the life of another...

Or if he is wearing a striped tie with a striped shirt. ..


4 posted on 08/31/2014 9:47:05 PM PDT by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously-you won't live through it anyway-Enjoy Yourself ala Louis Prima)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

The ultimate crime is a striped tie with a checkered shirt..just had to be done...


5 posted on 08/31/2014 9:48:22 PM PDT by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously-you won't live through it anyway-Enjoy Yourself ala Louis Prima)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Answer:
When I feel my life may be in danger.
When that person is in my home.
When I feel my wife or children are in danger of bodily harm.
When I can’t see his/her hands and think the person is armed...


6 posted on 08/31/2014 10:04:08 PM PDT by Hambone02
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To: Vendome

In the state of Washington one can legally shoot someone to stop a felony against you, or anyone else. A shop-owner shot an 18-year old that had just broken into his shop at night and was escaping with a handful of leather belts and buckles. Shot in the back from 100 feet and killed.

Legal shoot.

Now - not saying that is what I would do, but the store owner was found not guilty. As was a more recent guy in Spokane after killing the guy that stole his truck as the thief was driving away in it. (The owner thought he saw a gun, shot the guy in the back of the head from his driveway as the thief drove down the street).

Another instance where the stranger did not respond to the man of the house (out in the garage) and walked towards the house. The owner kept telling him to stop but he didn’t. When the stranger reached for the front door (wife and child inside), the owner shot him in the back and killed him. Perhaps more obvious that was a legal shoot, but I suppose in some states perhaps not.

Several years ago with home break-ins on the rise, along with a rise in the intruders being shot and/or killed, one of the sheriffs quipped something like “It is open-season on intruders in Washington state”.


7 posted on 08/31/2014 10:04:18 PM PDT by 21twelve (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2185147/posts 2013 is 1933 REBORN)
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To: 21twelve

comment withheld on account it may cause more grief than letting it go.


8 posted on 08/31/2014 10:26:53 PM PDT by going hot (Happiness is a momma deuce)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
If a woman shot and killed a man who attempted to rape her, would the MSM endlessly repeat that he was unarmed?

It is always good to read Andrew Branca.

9 posted on 08/31/2014 11:20:49 PM PDT by TChad (The Obamacare motto: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

disparity of force actually covers all the examples they subcategorized underneath it. disparity of numbers is disparity of force. disparity of size is disparity of force. disparity of all the things they noted are disparity of force.

disparity of force also covers ambush/surprise attack.


10 posted on 08/31/2014 11:39:45 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man ( Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: 21twelve
“In the state of Washington one can legally shoot someone to stop a felony against you, or anyone else”

Know your state laws. When I lived in Maryland, I could use deadly force to protect my property.

Now I live in Virginia, and I can use deadly force only if I fear death or grievous injury to myself or others. If I shoot a thief, I will go to prison.

11 posted on 09/01/2014 12:00:25 AM PDT by VanShuyten ("a shadow...draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence.")
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

In uber lib Ca we can defend ourselves, others, our property and dare I say it- put down riots through the use of deadly force.

http://law.onecle.com/california/penal/197.html

197. Homicide is also justifiable when committed by any person in
any of the following cases:
1. When resisting any attempt to murder any person, or to commit a
felony, or to do some great bodily injury upon any person; or,
2. When committed in defense of habitation, property, or person,
against one who manifestly intends or endeavors, by violence or
surprise, to commit a felony, or against one who manifestly intends
and endeavors, in a violent, riotous or tumultuous manner, to enter
the habitation of another for the purpose of offering violence to any
person therein; or,
3. When committed in the lawful defense of such person, or of a
wife or husband, parent, child, master, mistress, or servant of such
person, when there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design to
commit a felony or to do some great bodily injury, and imminent
danger of such design being accomplished; but such person, or the
person in whose behalf the defense was made, if he was the assailant
or engaged in mutual combat, must really and in good faith have
endeavored to decline any further struggle before the homicide was
committed; or,
4. When necessarily committed in attempting, by lawful ways and
means, to apprehend any person for any felony committed, or in
lawfully suppressing any riot, or in lawfully keeping and preserving
the peace.


12 posted on 09/01/2014 12:41:00 AM PDT by NoLibZone (The bad news: Hillary Clinton will be the next President. The Good news: Our principles are intact.)
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To: NoLibZone

Unfortunately, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the District Attorney somehow managed to disregard those California laws in the case of a friend who was defending his mother and himself against some home invaders.

Previously, his mother, who suffered from age related dementia, was threatened with repeated home invasions and burglaries on occasions when he was absent at work. when reported, the LAPD refused to take any actions. Finally, there came a day when his automobile was in the repair shop for maintenance and he was at home asleep in the daytime when the home invaders struck again. Unlike the previous robberies, the door had been heavily reinforced with stronger deadbolt locks and chains. It took the home invaders a considerably greater effort for them to kick and batter the locked front door open, succeeding only by shattering the wooden door frame into great shards and splinters of wood.

The tremendous noise of the front door being splintered and wrecked awoke my friend. He picked up his large caliber pistol and dashed out of his bedroom and into the front room, where he found his elderly mother frozen and shivering in fright and the robbers dropping the loot and dashing out the wrecked front door. The friend pursued the robbers outdoors with his pistol in hand. The robbers retreated into the front yards of the neighboring houses, where they were staying or living. The robbers stopped there as if they were children playing tag and their front yards were supposed to somehow represent a home base where they were safe from being tagged by IT. There they stood and taunted my friend. My friend stopped in his front yard at the property line and responded to the taunts of the robbers by simply holding his pistol up to where it could be seen and the robbers could understand how close they came to being shot.

To add insult to injury, the robbers called the LAPD to report a man with a gun. The LAPD arrived, arrested my friend, refused to arrest the robbers, and left his elderly mother sitting in the home with a wide open front door with no way of closing or locking the door alone with the robbery suspects unmolested. While my friend was under arrest in police custody at a police station only a half block away in Hollywood, the robbery suspects went back into his home and robbed some more of their property as his elderly mother sat there frightened to death.

She telephoned me and asked for my help to come and help her to bail her son out of jail. He eventually found it necessary to accept the prosecutor’s plea deal to a lesser charge to avoid a felony firearms conviction, which then left him with an arrest record and a criminal record. So much for the reliability of California law and the California justice system.


13 posted on 09/01/2014 1:42:54 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Citizens shoot unarmed attackers all the time and its a good thing they do.


14 posted on 09/01/2014 4:25:51 AM PDT by cripplecreek ("Moderates" are lying manipulative bottom feeding scum.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Here’s how my concealed carry course put it: in Texas, if you are in an altercation and use deadly force in the form of a gun, you will most likely be vindicated (although he pointed out several examples where that wasn’t the case). It’s just very difficult to get a conviction in Texas against someone using a firearm to drop someone else engaged in thuggish behavior.

That said, you almost certainly will have to spend extravagantly to defend that shoot. Your justified use of a firearm as lethal force is a FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLAR event. And. Given the ensuing disruption to your life, that’s not nearly the only cost. Now, add back in the unpredictability of the legal system, and using a firearm, legally, is more disruptive than anything that can happen in your life just short of being exposed to lethal force against you.

You had better be facing lethal force when you shoot, or you have just made a costly choice by comparison...


15 posted on 09/01/2014 5:12:01 AM PDT by ziravan (Choose Sides.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Only when a Grand Jury and or a District/Federal Attorney says its OK?

sarcasm

16 posted on 09/01/2014 5:52:17 AM PDT by buckalfa (Long time caller --- first time listener.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

What percentage of rape victims were attacked by an “unarmed” rapist?

The entire point of carrying a firearm is to even the odds against attackers who are better prepared to assault you physically. If all the perps in the world were 5 year old girls, we wouldn’t need to carry firearms.


17 posted on 09/01/2014 5:55:12 AM PDT by SampleMan (Feral Humans are the refuse of socialism.)
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To: SampleMan

Brings a smile to my face:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZE-EDGw2vo


18 posted on 09/01/2014 5:57:19 AM PDT by mad_as_he$$
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Good exposition of the law(s) pertaining to deadly force.

I do think, however, that cops have it easier in some ways, but harder in others. Cops are supposed to, through use of command presence and tactical smarts, avoid situations where shooting a civilian might become justified.I imagine this is much harder than most stories about poor officer Wilson let on.


19 posted on 09/01/2014 5:59:42 AM PDT by Jim Noble (When strong, avoid them. Attack their weaknesses. Emerge to their surprise.)
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To: 21twelve
The owner thought he saw a gun, shot the guy in the back of the head from his driveway as the thief drove down the street

Wow. Head shot, moving target? Some kinda distance?

Wow.

20 posted on 09/01/2014 6:01:24 AM PDT by Jim Noble (When strong, avoid them. Attack their weaknesses. Emerge to their surprise.)
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