Gun brandishing for self defense

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Originally Posted by Eagleks

Just to pass this on for everyone to consider ....
Most gun laws , such as Castle Doctrines, say ... "you can SHOOT someone if your life is in immediate danger... blah blah blah". However, what occurs when you pull your gun, and because of that fact..... the threat ceases ?

In Kansas, a man with a knife threatened to kill and was trying to attack a man with CC, and he pulled his gun, at which point the man with the knife ceased his attack and left in a hurry. The CC holder was arrested for "making a threat with a weapon" and "brandishing". Both are crimes. The JUDGE ruled, this is NOT covered by the law which says "you can shoot" , but it does not protect someone from "showing or brandishing" their weapon. He also ruled..... he COULD NOT use self-defense in his defense or even bring it up in front of the jury.

He was found guilty and sentenced to several years in prison.

It was "appealed", and the Supreme Court ruled.... the Judge had ruled the case properly and upheld the conviction.

The Legislature, in their wisdom (which I applaud them) , quickly passed an amendment to the law.... stating that if "by displaying a gun the threat ceases.... this is NOT a crime " , and ..... "this act would be retroactive to ANYONE ever charged or found guilty of such ". So, they included anyone previously to the law becoming effective, who had been convicted, the crime be erased and them to be set free. And, he was.

Be sure not to make "assumptions" about laws and what they DON'T say, and what they DO say. If the Castle Doctrine in your state says ... "You can shoot to protect yourself" , it may be thats literaly ALL IT MEANS. Common sense, has nothing to do with the law.

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Glad the legislature set the courts straight. You are right, the law, at times, appears devoid of common sense. I bet every pocket in KS was fixing to have a snubbie in it so you did not have to pull the gun to shoot it. Must have taken a good bit of mental gymnastics for the court to agree that you were allowed to shoot the perp, but the act of pulling the gun out preparing to use it in the act of shooting is verboten. Sounds like the courts are plagued with antis that got their knickers in a knot over the CCW law and figured out a way to show the CCW public.

You're likely not going to see any repercussions by drawing on a BG and letting them run away. I'm not going to hold a guy at gun point until police arrive, in my home or in a parking lot. I'll fire if I feel my life is in danger. Easy to say NOW anyway.

A friend of mine while he lived in in FL was reaching in his car to grab groceries as he pulled up to his apartment. He heard a guy say... "you better make sure you pull the faceplate off your Cd player, there have been a lot of break-ins". He turns around to see a guy standing there in a hoodie. He says "uhh, huh?" The next part is fuzzy from what he told me, but it turned out, the guy pulled out a knife and started walking towards him. My buddy drew his Kimber and told him to stop. The guy dropped the knife and ran. My buddy picked up the knife, threw it away and went about his normal life never calling the police. A neighbor of his witnessed the entire thing apparently. IMO, I don't see a problem with that. Sure he could have called the police, what would they have really done? Be on the look out for a robbery suspect? When AREN'T they?

I'd likely call the police after an attempted robbery, say in a parking lot, even if the bad guy runs away. If you don't call the police, you'll probably be fine, as most situations such as this are NEVER reported to the police. I guess the BG could try and turn the story on you, but what FACTS is he going to give the police to find you? Chances are, the BG will NOT call the police.

Now.... If this were to happen INSIDE my HOME I would 100%, certainly call the police and report the break-in.

One thing is for sure, I will not shoot unless I need to. Things get complicated when you shoot. PRAY the BG runs away. Report to the police if needed. Like I said, there is a chance that reporting an incident where shooting did NOT take place, outside of the home may cause further harm. It could go either way. Use your best judgment.

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Originally Posted by RKM

You're likely not going to see any repercussions by drawing on a BG and letting them run away. I'm not going to hold a guy at gun point until police arrive, in my home or in a parking lot. I'll fire if I feel my life is in danger. Easy to say NOW anyway.

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Best to read above, and check your laws.... good luck with that, because the BG's story can be quite different than yours and the LAW may not support you at all. That's what the one guy thought, .... until he was sentenced to several years in prison. That's what we ALL thought, until he was sentenced to prison.

IMHO,Brandishing is a display of a weapon in a threatening manner,when you are not justified to use that weapon in Self Defense.
In other words if you get in a heated verbal argument and decide your gonna shut the other guy up by displaying your gun

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Originally Posted by ksholder

So, in KS, if you are justified in pulling it you have to shoot it? I wonder how they will deal with the first case where the CCW pulls and shoots immediately, but the perp turns to run and is shot in the back. Sounds FUBAR to me.

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That was the law there until last year I believe when the Legislature corrected it to say you did not have to shot.

Michael

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Originally Posted by dukalmighty

IMHO,Brandishing is a display of a weapon in a threatening manner,when you are not justified to use that weapon in Self Defense.
In other words if you get in a heated verbal argument and decide your gonna shut the other guy up by displaying your gun

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That's the way I would define it, too. But there's no way the researcher could have determined the "not justified" part when pouring over data. So I assumed that his definition of brandishing for the purpose of his data analysis is probably closer to "a situation when a gun was drawn in self defense and no shots were fired".

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Originally Posted by dukalmighty

IMHO,Brandishing is a display of a weapon in a threatening manner,when you are not justified to use that weapon in Self Defense.
In other words if you get in a heated verbal argument and decide your gonna shut the other guy up by displaying your gun

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Unfortunately the Government is free to define words in any way they desire to fit what they want to achieve. They are not restricted by the common definition of a word. They are free to redefine any word to mean something other than what it means in common English dictionaries.

Michael

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Originally Posted by mlr1m

That was the law there until last year I believe when the Legislature corrected it to say you did not have to shot.

Michael

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Correct, but the point is...... some people are saying or thinking.... if they are justified to pull their gun and shoot someone and then the threat ceases, they are covered and OK.... but like that case, they may not be.

Brandishing in all states does NOT state "if justified to do so " .... many brandishing laws just say "displaying a gun in a threatening manner" period. Which , by not shooting, you may have just show it WAS NOT needed, in their minds. And if the BG says .. he pulled this gun out and was threatening me, it all depends upon who they believe. We all know there are Depts that "if in doubt" , arrest them, charge them, and let the court sort it out.

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Originally Posted by OldVet

78% of people make up 83% of their statistics 98% of the time.

If you draw your firearm to protect yourself, it's not brandishing--it's self-defense. No law requires your firearm to be fired to be used in defense.

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^^^^^I agree^^^^^^^^^^^^

Lott probably should have used the term, "produced a firearm" instead of saying "brandished a firearm"


Otherwise he is a very intelligent, straight-forward and logical thinking individual.

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That's one of the things I love about this site, I'm always learning something here. Thanks for the tip-off to John Lott's work.

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Originally Posted by OldVet

If you draw your firearm to protect yourself, it's not brandishing--it's self-defense. No law requires your firearm to be fired to be used in defense.

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Best post I have seen amongst all of this jabber. :smile:

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Originally Posted by dukalmighty

IMHO,Brandishing is a display of a weapon in a threatening manner,when you are not justified to use that weapon in Self Defense.

In other words if you get in a heated verbal argument and decide your gonna shut the other guy up by displaying your gun

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. . . . or just being a belligerent idiot flashing your gun around at no one in particular.

Having been through such an encounter for real, I can say that yes, I was absolutely prepared to do what was necessary to defend life, family and home. Luckily, reason prevailed with the BGs and they ran away. The incident in question happened to me back in 1994, prior to the Concealed Handgun Licensing program, the Castle Doctrine laws and all the changes that lethal force statutes have currently evolved into as we know them today in Texas; back then the attorney I had on retainer in case something like that had happened told me in no uncertain terms that if I drew that weapon and fired it there was, on average a price tag attached to those bullets that struck a BG to the tune of about $10,000 per round by the time you passed criminal defense and got through any civil litigation, so he told me to think long and hard about drawing that gun in anger on another........

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Originally Posted by Eagleks

Best to read above, and check your laws.... good luck with that, because the BG's story can be quite different than yours and the LAW may not support you at all. That's what the one guy thought, .... until he was sentenced to several years in prison. That's what we ALL thought, until he was sentenced to prison.

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There is now "brandishing" law in PA. You can be cited with terroristic threats if you are to....... "communicates, either directly or indirectly, a threat to: commit any crime of violence with intent to terrorize another; cause evacuation of a building, place of assembly, or facility of public transportation; or otherwise cause serious public inconvenience, or cause terror or serious public inconvenience with reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror or inconvenience."

So if you can convince the judge or jury that you had a reasonable belief that they were about to kill or cripple you, then your scaring them was justified, since it prevented a murder or serious injuries. It shouldn't be too hard when you can prove the BG had a weapon.

You can also be charged with, and would more likely be charged with disorderly conduct rather than terroristic threats. To be charged with disorderly conduct, you must:
1: engage in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior;
2: makes unreasonable noise;
3: uses obscene language, or makes an obscene gesture; or
4: creates a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose of the actor.

Other than "engage in fighting", I don't see how any others would apply. With a good lawyer, you can easy defend that you were acting in a defensive manner, and not engaging in a fight. With the "stand your ground law", we have no duty to retreat in order to defend ourselves. That wouldn't (shouldn't) apply to "engage in fighting". That's different than self defense. How can there be a "stand you ground law", yet, have a law that states you cannot engage in a fight? Because standing your ground is defensive, not offensive. I won't lie though, if I can by all means leave the situation, I'm getting out of there, whether or not I can legally stand and fight. I'd rather not go through the pain and suffering in court.

Of course, there is a story of this going in the wrong direction for somebody. There always will be. ANYthing can happen. Plenty of people have gone to prison for justifiably defending themselves whether they had to shoot, or just scare a BG away. I can't give any statistics to back this up, but I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of self defense shootings or "brandishing's" mostly fall into the victims favor. I can say though, if I'm ever taken to court for defending myself in any manor, I'll be expecting the worst, and hoping for the best.

I still think you're better off being in a situation where your weapon scares away a BG rather than having to shoot them. I really hope I never have to find out.

I think it's a shame that we must FEAR defending ourselves while criminals just laugh at our justice system.

Here in Ohio, if I’m not mistaken, we have a problem with “brandishing” a gun when faced with what we might perceive as a threat. In Ohio, I believe if you were to be threatened by someone, and you pulled your sidearm in an attempt to persuade the attacker to stop threatening, you have a good chance of taking a ride in the backseat of your friendly, neighborhood, PD’s cruiser. Here’s why: Ohio has a “duty to retreat” law, and a requirement to “not escalate” the encounter.

There are obvious problems with the “duty to retreat” issue, but the duty to not escalate is really insidious and it directly comes into play when in a situation where you might be able to expose your sidearm, or actually deploy it, with enough distance between yourself and a threatening person, and not be at risk of being overtaken before being able to discharge the weapon if necessary.

An off the top of my head example of a situation where “brandishing” your weapon in order to discourage what appears to be a threatening situation could be as follows: You are walking down the sidewalk, sidearm concealed under your jacket. Coming the opposite direction and across the street is a group of late-teens. As soon as it appears that they have noticed you, they quiet down and begin talking quietly amongst themselves. You become alarmed at this sudden change of behavior and decide to turn around and head back in the direction you had come from. At this point, one or two of the teens begins to cross the street and head towards you. When they get to within 60 feet, they begin demanding you give them some money. You keep walking and tell them you don’t have any money for them. The teens become belligerent and start closing the gap between you. As is the case with me, I cannot outrun teenagers anymore. The first option that comes to my mind in this scenario is to turn around, face them and repeat that I don’t have any money, get away from me and either open my jacket and expose my sidearm, or option number two, outright deploy it and hold it initially at low-ready and demand that they back off and leave me alone.

In Ohio, my understanding is that there is a real possibility that I may be charged with failure to retreat, escalating the level of threat, and brandishing a firearm and quite possibly, threatening deadly force. Now, I may be wrong, but my current understanding of Ohio gun law suggests I could be in a lot of serious trouble should I simply expose my sidearm in order to spare myself from what I perceive to be a threat.

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Originally Posted by Glock23c

:SNIP:
In Ohio, my understanding is that there is a real possibility that I may be charged with failure to retreat, escalating the level of threat, and brandishing a firearm and quite possibly, threatening deadly force. Now, I may be wrong, but my current understanding of Ohio gun law suggests I could be in a lot of serious trouble should I simply expose my sidearm in order to spare myself from what I perceive to be a threat.

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WOW! It sounds like you might face fewer charges if you were to claim that you were the attacker rather than claiming self-defense.

Michael