'Shoot first law' in Florida

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I have to admit that I don't know too much about this law, except for information from www.shootfirstlaw.org, which was created by anti-gun peoples, so this website may be somewhat biased, but what disturbed me was:

and

Hopefully these are blown out of context, but it seems a little extreme to me, as it would be easy to justify killing someone.

I support the right to defend one's self, but why on earth would someone need to carry a gun in public?

To finish off, an old saying gaelic saying translated for you all:

"Who needs bravery, when you have a sword"

 

Is this not more like AoDA material? Well anyway I think that sort of laws sucks. The way we have it in Finland is good enough for me. You are allowed to respond only with equal force as the one who assults you. Meaning that if you are shooting someone in a fistfight you're committing a crime. As for the need to carry a gun I've allways felt that people who carry guns around for protection are paranoid but I suppose it's their right as long as they don't actually use them.

 

It is sort of taken out of context. Generally speaking when your life is in danger you are allowed to use deadly force to stop it. So if you are being attacked by a mugger, you could shoot the bastard.

However, the right to use deadly force ends when your life is no longer in peril. For example, if the mugger sees you pull the gun out, and runs off into a crowd of people, you can't indiscriminately fire into the crowd of people hoping to kill the mugger, because when the mugger flees, your life is no longer in peril.

The problem I have here is that it doesn't seem right that a person who shoots to defend himself is free from any civil action if he harms someone other than the attacker. I can understand that he would not be criminally liable to someone, but if you seriously injure or kill an innocent bystander, even if it was inadvertent, you may still be on the hook. This law may have to be reviewed.

Secondly, I think it is my American duty to point out that not all Americans are gun-totting freaks who walk around with hand guns strapped to their waists. While I know many people who own rifles for hunting purposes, hardly anyone I know owns a handgun that he actually carries with him.

I know a few who own a handgun for self defense, but it is always in their home. For those people that do take handguns out with them, all except one person out of dozens of people I know are police officers, and thus are permitted to carry a concealed handgun in public even when they aren't on duty. The one person I know who regularly carries a handgun on his person is because his job includes the responsibility for collecting and dropping off money at convenience stores, and sometimes he has to do this late at night. Because of the potential danger in his occupation, he was able to obtain a permit to carry a concealed handgun.

I guess that's the last point I have to bring up. Not everyone can go and get a permit to carry a concealed handgun in public. There has to be some reason for it. You either have a job that could reasonably put you in greater than normal danger of being attacked, or you could have a civil duty to protect the public (as is the case of a police officer) even if you aren't on duty. You can't get such a permit just because "You want to carry a handgun".

 

I believe the decision to shoot to kill should only be taken in danger of death, rape or severe bodily harm or perhaps a valuable mass of property is danger that can't be averted otherwise. But not a fist fight, come on. I firmly believe that any citizen should be allowed to incapacitate the assailant rather than accept a beating (in short, you should never be legally required to undergo a beating and you should be allowed to shoot the bastard in the legs rather than allow him to throw a punch at you, so long as you haven't provoked him), but firing away in the crowd is something that should get you in psychward, not jail. And surely not in a crowd with a firearm.

Personally, I would gladly shoot dead a murderer or rapist before taking the risk that he could succeed. I would have no problem placing a thug before the choice between leaving me alone and earning a bullet. But firing in the crowd? Using a deadly gun on a loud agressive idiot? That's too much.

 

Here, here! Oh, how it warms the heart so to see other do in fact view the world in similar ways as my own.

This thread reminded me a news story about 7 years back. I was shocked that this (1) happened a few miles from where I have family, (2) happened on an off ramp I frequent while visiting said family, and (3) happened at all! Its that amazing!

Road rage leads to paint being trading on the interstate. Happens sometimes, its crazy, but it happens. Both vechiles pull off the the side of the road. Both are middle class/upper-middle class citizens. A woman was driving the lead car and a man was driving behind her.

When they pulled over, they both parked and turned off their cars. The man exited his vehicle, went to the trunk and produced a tire iron. He then walked, not ran, walked to the woman's car and began to beat on her trunk. I don't believe that he broke any winds, thus making threat to her person, but I may be wrong.

The woman simply sat in her car waiting for the man to finish beating the hell out of her car. She did not exit. Call the police, call her husband or friends. She just sat there.

When he turned to go back to his car, either because he was finished or to go get something else (hearsay) the woman exited her vehicle armed with a handgun and fire, get this, 13 times at the man!

He was hit 4 times, none immidiately lethal. She THEN called the police and paramedics.

She was arrested for attempted murder in the first degree based on the fact that she had ample time to decide and plan how to kill this man while he was damaging her car.

Here's what I thought after seeing this on the news. She could have done one thing to make this self defense and perhaps have it stand up in court.

She could have gotten out of her car and said, "Hey, buddy." wait for him to turn fully around and then shoot. It was obvious that she tried to kill this guy for a number of reasons, all of which are dumber than hell. Shooting him in the back made it anything but self-defense. Shooting him from the front may have made it self-defense in Kansas.

Any thoughts?

 

Sure. Shooting a fleeing enemy is not self-defence. Any form of vengeance is not self-defence. If he's decided to go away and you shout "hey, buddy" and shoot him when he's done turning, it's obvious that your motive is vengeance rather than defence. Of course, there may be the motive of apprehending the criminal and bringing him to justice or an aftershock vindictive reflex (there might have been a reason why she sat still in her car -- perhaps she was terrified), but using potentially lethal force on a retreating man is by no means self-defence. Firing a lethal shot at someone whose intent is to cause property damage but no immediate injury, let alone mortal danger, is excessive. A further analysis of the event could reveal if the woman, in her mind, was fighting or striking back. It's possible that her mind was still locked in the "combat mode" and in that case, it wouldn't be appropriate to charge with a plain attempted murder. Still, it seems that the prosecution's case is strong and the explanation that she planned the assault or killing in her car when he was damaging it is quite probable. This doesn't answer the question if a woman shut in a car being damaged by a thug is capable of thinking straight and making rational decisions or if that ability is reduced.

 

Damn. 13 shots? Most hand guns don't even have the capability of holding 13 rounds. Some military and police issued firearms do, but not too many regular handguns a civilian would have access to. That makes it even worse, because it suggests that in order to fire 13 times, she had to stop and reload, or at least replace the clip. I suppose she could have modified the gun to accept a 15-round clip, but that's illegal too. Then again, if you're up on attempted 1st degree murder, the fact that you have a modified handgun charge against you is probably the least of your concern.

 

Yeah, but it can mess things up in your big charge. You can't pretend to be a good girl if you have an illegal gun. You can't claim self-defence if you pepper the guy with the whole clip, reload, repeat, as you already said. Someone was playing a cowboy here...

 

The stangest thing is I've never heard of a handgun holding 13 rounds. It's not like 13 is a multiple of anything either, so it's not even a combination of multiple loadings. I know of handguns that hold 6, 9, 12, and 15 rounds. (And no, I have no idea why they are all multiples of three. To my knowledge there's no such thing as a handgun that holds 10 rounds either.) There's no easy way to get to 13 doing the math. Even if she modified the handgun to accept a 15 round clip, why would you stop with two rounds left in the gun?

 

With some Sigs and Glocks it could be a 12 round clip with a round chambered.

 

? Because she was practising the day before and already shot those two rounds ? And the whole incident happend as she was on her way to get herself some new clothes and new ammo.

 

Ah yes, Hack has hit upon it. If you have a 12 round clip, once you get one of the 12 rounds into the chamber, you can then place an additional round into the bottom of the clip. Of course, as far as I'm aware, THAT'S ILLEGAL AS WELL.

 

I'm not a gun owner (nor do I ever plan to be), but I believe if you look at the statistics the places with the most restrictive gun laws also have the highest crime rates. It is the old saying "An armed society is a polite society."

Most if not all of the anti-gun lobby works on emotion as opposed to facts. Remember when Bush didn't resign the assault rifle ban? People were screaming that we would all die from machine gun totting maniacs. Instead the crime rate went down, according to the FBI.

I personally like the "shoot first laws". That crazyness of people responding with equal force is lunacy. Does that mean a 110 pound women is supposed to respond bare-handed when attacked by a 275 pound man? If someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night, are you supposed to interrogate them to find out if they are just there to rob you or rape and kill you? I have never understood the logic. If I caught someone in my house in the middle of the night, I can guarantee that they will get at least a few swings of my bat at their head.

 

I believe that the high capacity magazine ban expired late last year or early this year, so high capacity mags are legal again unless individual states have their own laws.

Additionally magazines that were manufactured prior to (IIRC) 1994 are not subject to this law, and the law only impacts magazines, not guns. It should be noted there is nothing in the design of most pistols manufactured during the high cap ban to prevent them form using preban and "for law enforcement use only (LEO)" high capacity magazines as the law did not impact the pistol, it only applied to the magazine. Magazines manufactured during the ban were almost always identical in outer dimensions to their pre ban and LEO high capacity counterparts, but were structurally different internally.

Finally there was nothing in the Federal Law that prohibited loading a gun manufactured during the ban with a pre-ban high cap magazine, though this can impact the outcome of trials for other alleged crimes committed with the gun and can make civil suits more likely, with the logic being that the person with the high cap mag was "bloodthirsty", "overaggressive" or was "looking for trouble instead of looking for safety".

 

No. When your life is in threat you hardly think about law anyway now do you? Excessive force however is unacceptable. Shooting a burglar in the head when he's stealing your tv is simply wrong and usage of excessive force. If you can prove that you were in a self defence situation it's unlikely that you spend even a day in prison.

No, but you're not supposed to shoot them in the back either. When you wake up the first step is to call the police. If he attacks you then you respond with all available force, you don't go and whack the guy with a baseball bat when he's walking out with your television. It's very very rare for someone to break into your house with the intention of rape and murder. I can't remember a single such case happening in this country.

 

That's not a problem Taluntain. What you do is shoot him first. No warnings, just open fire. If the idiot is in your house late at night, they deserve nothing but the lead you send his way.

 

Gun control has never done anything to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals. All it has ever done is make a nice steady supply of victims.

As to should someone be shot and killed for stealing a t.v. my answer is yes. Criminals may not fear the law or the death penalty, but they sure as hell fear being shot.

 

Sometimes perhaps it's preferrable to leave the common folks unarmed so that they will obey the bad guy with the gun until it's over instead of playing heroes (often with a genuine heroic spirit) and getting killed. Especially if they are young, they may not realise what they are doing and lie down their lives in a meaningless gunnery over a relatively trivial matter. If you're the mother or father of a young man in early twenties, do you prefer him to hand the mobile phone, watch or wallet to the criminal and walk away uninjured or to pull the gun out and get crippled or kill on a random chance? Probably the former, but he will probably prefer the latter...