Legally shooting people

The anti-Second Amendment people will frequently claim that all you have to do is say, “I felt threatened” and you can get away with murder in “Stand Your Ground” states. Of course this isn’t true. But they believe it and of course, in their world view, their beliefs trump facts.

Larry Correia used to teach self-defense classes professionally and wrote up in great detail the legal criteria for legally shooting someone in self-defense. It should go in your list of links to send to those who think a license to carry is a license to murder.

The short version is someone must have the Ability, Opportunity, and Immediacy to inflict great bodily harm or death upon an innocent person before you can use lethal force to defend against them. I used teach Means, Opportunity, and Intent. But it amounts to the same thing.

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17 thoughts on “Legally shooting people

  1. I learned it as “Ability”, “Opportunity” and “Jeopardy”.

    Mr. Correia’s article is excellent. As one of the commenters did. I’ve bookmarked it.

  2. I am willing to bet some real money that every state, that has this objectionable law the anti liberty people cite for their theory that merely feeling threatened permits murder also contains the word “reasonably”, which I swear has no objective meaning to Leftists, but which means that the belief is subject to review by a judge and jury. The judge decides if the claim of self defense should even go to the jury, and the jury is the finder of fact in the court case. The jury’s basis for deciding is what is called the “reasonable person standard”, what would a reasonable person do under the circumstances. Not a superman, not an extra cautious man, not what the Jury would have done, but what an ordinary, reasonable person.

  3. You got it all wrong. Vice President Joe Biden said so. He said any time you get to feeling uncomfortable, just grab your shotgun and put a couple blasts through your front door. Now I presume that if you also have a back door, you’d then have to reload and torch off two more rounds through that, for good measure.

    Biden did not, however, address any proposals for federal door replacement subsidy programs. Maybe that’s already in the ACA.

    So enough talk about means and intent and other such obscurities. Self Defense Expert Joe Biden has shown us the way. If you’re nervous, just start shooting into the air, or through the nearest door, and everything will right itself. Joe Biden=The Way=Truth= Salvation. What more is there to discuss?

  4. Massad Ayoob tells all of his readers and listeners that bare fear will not support the use of lethal force.

    I have a friend who is a trial court judge in Alaska. I and my wife recently had dinner with her and her husband and they both expressed the false notion about stand your ground laws, that they mean you can shoot someone any time you find them to be scary. I wanted to say, but didn’t, that if such were true someone would have shot them both a long time ago.

    The truth of stand your ground laws is that what they really mean is that criminals do not have the right to go around threatening people and making them run away. People have the right to stand their ground so long as the “grounds” they’re standing on are reasonable grounds to believe they are facing an imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death.

    • I tried to explain to my judge friend that fear alone does not satisfy stand your ground laws, that in such a case the shooter would be prosecuted and probably convicted. I also tried to explain that it’s highly unlikely, based on empirical data, that any law-abiding citizen would shoot someone on such flimsy grounds. Most people take the act of shooting another person seriously and wouldn’t do it without reasonable fear for their own life.

      That was a totally wasted effort. I got absolutely nowhere with her or her husband. They think a whole lot of people who can legally buy a gun are itching to shoot somebody, and stand your ground laws opens the door for them.

      • Perhaps they feel that way because, if given a gun, they would indeed act like that.

        • Paul,
          you are correct. EVERY Progressive I’ve ever talked to admits to this way of thinking. I suspect that this sort of mindset is required to actually BE a Progressive/socialist.
          One of the variations on this mode of thinking is that they may be ok with the idea of long guns, and may even own one, but the thought of a handgun just gets them very uncomfortable. Their thinking is that it is portable, and so if they had it to hand, they would go all Rambo when they get angry.

          That thinking seems to be a big part of why they hate carry laws. They think everyone thinks the same way they do. That’s probably why they think that those who approve of handguns and ccw are mental cases. Anyone who thinks differently than them obviously is mentally unbalanced, as they can’t comprehend that people are different.

          My observation is that those who believe there is only one way to think are the obvious mental cases. When facts/history clearly show them to be wrong about this, there can be no question that they have a mental problem.

        • There’s some research by a female psychologist that suggests that might be true, they think they might do something stupid with a gun and so they think others would also.

    • And you consider these mentally unstable leftist loon tyrant wannabes “friends” because ?
      I would never willingly associate with such despicable beings.

      • Nobody’s perfect. They aren’t stupid, they’re just ignorant. Fortunately, that isn’t necessarily a permanent condition. We’re all ignorant, just on different subjects.

        • “The difference between stupidity and ignorance is that ignorance is curable” (Robert A. Heinlein).
          Do you think it’s curable in this case?

          • Political viewpoints do change, but it may be difficult because people stubbornly resist. The fact so many conservatives were once liberals testifies that political beliefs can change. Read a little about the psychological phenomena called “cognitive dissonance” to see how healthy people change their thinking, sometimes only after much agony over it. The problem is that liberal compassion [which is really false compassion but still feels good] is so much easier than the intolerable labor of thinking hard about anything. But in the face of contrary facts healthy people eventually change their minds.

          • Yes, I agree. My wife is a case in point. Unfortunately, not everyone is that healthy.

          • Yes, there are a lot of stubbornly unhealthy people who will cling to their foolish notions all the way to the grave. Someone tell Obama that is who the real “bitter clingers” are.

  5. Carl, have you ever helped someone push back the frontiers of their ignorance? It’s a satisfying thing to do, to actually convert someone and bring them out of darkness and into the light. I can’t say I’ve been successful more than once or twice, but I’m thankful for those. I’m working on my friends and I have hope for them.

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