I agree with Sflav.
The gun could after the fact be found to be an Airsoft or CO2 powered BB gun...If it's wielded as in a threatening manner by a person acting in a threatening manner making threats then well open and shut.
Exclusions being the gun is _clearly_ a toy in build/construction from the distance as seen by the person thinking to make contact (i.e. Nerf guns)...But then as such there is no question and thus no hypothetical scenario.
Also I very much agree with retsupt99.
How many times through the years have we seen video of liquor store, ATM, bank, grocery store, gas station, convenience mart and pharmacy stores in specific here the robber runs in himself FOCUSED on the cashier leaving people around him in the immediate including on his six to do what they will...Which is most often to stand there frozen, take real time cell phone pics (!),or to on rare occasion attempt to intervene by hitting the guy with found objects at hand (Recall summer 2010 the man that tried to clock a guy in the head with a wine bottle only to have no net effect and himself stand there looking stunned like huh this works in the movies!).
How many times in those threads have people said; SHOOT HIM...As in the back or back of the head.
Personally Ii have no problem at all with shooting, stabbing or punching a person in the back.
I long ago lost that sense of street fight 'fairness' the hard way, upon being jumped at a buss stop and fighting my through it with two friends (5 on 3) so as to _survive_...Only to succeed in fighting them back and beating one to the ground, but I made a fatal mistake I'd been told not to ever do and turned my back to him. That ba***** had no issue in retaliating by pulling a #2 pencil and stabbing me in the lower back with it on the sneak. A life lesson learned, the hard and painful way.
If some threat is attacking me and is stupid enough to turn his back to me; I'd think to take advantage of this tactical error.
If he or she is being a threat to another by way of _lethal force_ AND is within J.A.M./A.O.I. (this is key!) then to my mind within allowance of state laws, there is no question.
I would not though act to save or stop taking of property, including but not exclusive to printed paper or pressed/shaped metals...Because I personally believe that all human life, even that of a crook, are more valuable than that of an Ipod or XBox.
IMHO the better question, as touched on by another here, is not so much whether to shoot or not but rather where to shoot as when 'center of mass' is a persons back and or back of the skull.
I have never once seen any trainer, aside from myself with my own students, discuss or feature this among their training....And yet it is a very real possibility for police and civilians alike.
Image source -
http://www.human-body-facts.com/human-body-muscle-diagram.html
Image source -
http://www.kappamedical.com/wall.htm#The_Human_Skeleton_
Image source -
http://www.genetherapyreview.com/gene-therapy-education/29-human-body.html
In my world a 'threat' has a three dimensional body with a 360 degree view; Front, back, sides, top (head and shoulders) and bottom (feet and groin).
We are made of muscle, bone and organs covered in a one piece organ sheath of very easy to damage skin.
To defend against a threat that defense is not exclusively dependent on directionality of the threat nor positional view of the threatened.
See the recent FL school board shooting for an absolutely perfect example of how this real world does occur.
People who get burned for shooting folk in the back, and front too!, are those who shoot _past_ threats who in the immediate of a trigger pull were no longer an active imminent threat to past tense threatened/aggrieved persons.
For a notable and recent example of this see the pharmacist Jerome Ersland unlawful and immoral shooting of in the immediate unconscious and thus neutralized no longer a threat Atwone Parker.
Folks need to know and understand that this is not simple math of 1+1=2.
But rather geometry.
If pressed to shoot; I would shoot an _imminent threat_, anywhere that might be functional to cause the threat to STOP...Regardless of his direction of presentation to my view.
- Janq
"A branch of mathematics that deals with the measurement, properties, and relationships of points, lines, angles, surfaces, and solids; broadly. : The study of properties of given elements that remain invariant under specified transformations." -
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/geometry