Florida, where murder is legal

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I've always thought the rule was a double tap to the chest (with a decently powerful handgun or almost any rifle, that WILL stop damn near any human alive)

Well, this goes back to my old drum beat.

There will be law. Whether it is by civilized government or otherwise is all that varies. If you take away the government, debt collectors would have no compunction with taking what you owe them by force and intimidation. If you take away the government, you will pay "protection money" to local thugs instead of the government. If you live around other people, you will be governed. Whether you are governed in a civilized manner or an utterly barbaric manner are your alternatives.

If the government is not inclined to charge Zimmerman with a crime and take him to trial, someone else will. However, angry mobs don't usually give you a fair hearing. Angry mobs do not allow you to be tried by a jury of your peers. Angry mobs do not offer a minimum sentence. Without the government, you live under mob law, and mob law is not compassionate or civilized. Mob law is nothing but an endless string of miserable blood feuds.

If you are lucky, you get to live under the law of an organized mafia or a group of maniacal (yet sometimes compassionate and helpful) religious zealots. Those are your only realistic alternatives to either civilized government or mob rule.

But there will be law.

A tap! Talk about euphimism! A bullet ripping through the body is NOT a tap. What would you call an arrow into the the chest cavity? Making nice?

You gun fetishists have a strange view of the world. It is a sad thing to be forced to kill another human by any means - firearms or other.

ruveyn

One. God can't help America. Two, murder is not -legal- in Florida. Self defense by deadly force is. The problem is distinguishing honest to goodness self defense from a cover up disguised as self defense.

ruveyn

Double tap is an expression, meaning "two shots delivered in close succession". It refers to tapping *the trigger*, and has nothing to do with hitting anything.

Now that the hysteria is cleared up. Self-defense training trains you to shoot only until the threat ends. The reason for this is that shooting any more than strictly necessary is excessive force, and opens you up to charges. Double-tap is police/military training - which is seldom aplicable to self-defense situations.

In short, shoot twice to make sure. If shooting is really necessary that makes perfectly good sense. The question is: when is shooting necessary. I am convinced that half the gunshot deaths and injuries are really not necessary to self defense which is the only excuse for human A shooting and injuring human B. I am not convinced that everyone who has a firearm at his disposal has the good sense to use it properly. There are crazies out there who let their guns go to their heads and displace what little good sense they have.

I wold prefer to have a phasor set to stun. If one is mistaken in its use, one does not have to bury the mistake.

ruveyn

Ok, now I see where you're coming from



The same FL Supreme Court found that the jury instruction was *improper* specifically because that statute of law was irrelevant to the crime at hand. Their conclusion was to interpret the "felony exception" law as an *independant* felony exception - meaning one would have to commit a forcible felony other than the one committed in self-defense. This is a rather logical conclusion to reach.



The quote you reference from the Colorado Supreme Court is in reference to the "immunity from prosecution" law - which is separate from the "Castle Doctrine/Stand Your Ground" laws. Just because they may have been passed from the legislature at the same time doesn't group them together. They are entirely separate statutes - and where I agree with the principle that someone acting in self-defense does not have the duty to retreat - I wholeheartedly disagree with the notion that using force in self-defense is somehow a legally protected status. On it's own, the "stand your ground" law provides an affirmative defense, which is good enough for me.

ever been hit by a taser?

im not particularly muscular (more muscle more pain, less chance of the victim moving) yet i had no chance of moving at all(fractured memories as well), if one needs to escalate from tazers after a succesfull hit chances are you do so of malice more than anything,

dont think its physcially possible to "evade" the effects of pumping voltage into the nerves, electricity dont care that much for drugs (also it is not the pain that incapacitates but the relatively low voltage "load phase" tuned to disrupt the human nervous system directly, in essence your brain is barely involved,)

anyway does anyone have some actual credible research to suggest otherwise?
if not i would suggest any officer that fires a gun at a person after succesfully hitting with a tazer does so only to harm, tazers have 12-16 ft. of traling wire in the fired form(only one that leaves prongs)
meaning he would have been able to stand about that far away and determine excactly when to keep the person incapacitated and when not to.

As someone in the somewhat nannied - but considerably gun-safe - UK, I must say I'm finding the breadth and depth of the legal discussions all extremely interesting and it shines a whole new light onto something which is, as it turns out, much more regulated than I'd believed - which is at least a small consolation.

But I'm finding it very difficult to deal with the cheapness of life.
I do understand ruveyn's concern with "tap" - I understood it in the same way and with the same revulsion at using "safe" words to describe major trauma and probable death - and while I can now see how the intended definition, WRT trigger action, makes sense - I can still only see potentially innocent people being killed and families wrecked by the over-hasty actions of someone carrying a gun.

Is there really no training suggesting that stopping someone is (I'm assuming) likely to be just as effective by shooting their legs - if guns are really the only option? It seems rather too much like blasting out the windshield of a car and taking the driver with it, when shooting out the tyres would be enough.
I understand that a leg wound could still result in death - but it's considerably less likely than having most of your chest converted to pulp.

I get asked that question a lot - and every time it's by someone who has never held/shot a gun before. I welcome you to look me up, Cornflake, if you're ever in my neck of the woods and I'll gladly take you out to the range.

Shooting a gun accurately is definitely a lot harder than the movies make it out to be. Even under ideal circumstances - it's remarkably difficult to hit a target as small as a leg. Now - when you're involved in a self-defense situation, your adrenaline rushes, and blood rushes away from your hands, arms, and head - to go down to your feet. As a result, your fine motor skills deteriorate (I've heard numbers between 50% and 70% - either way, it's a big number) - so even a perfect marksman wouldn't be able to land a shot on someone's leg.

The center mass is the target because it's the largest target available, not because it's more likely to kill the target. Missing your target in a situation like that is a very bad situation to be in - because the bullet doesn't stop just because you miss, it keeps going until it hits *something*.

"Double-tap" is the term very commonly used to describe 2 quick hits, usually delivered using a handgun, carbine, or sub-machine gun, usually to the chest area or center of mass. The idea behind it is quick neutralization of a threat.

It's also used to indicate trying to be certain of a kill, like shooting evidently-dead folks just to make sure they're dead (or, in zombie movies, using a second bullet to destroy the brain).

@sliqua-jcooter: Heh yep, "guilty as charged". I've only ever handled an air rifle and shot near wildlife (geese crapping over a lawn) to scare it away.

Thanks - if I'm ever out your way then I'd love to check out a gun range. I can already appreciate the mechanical beauty and precision of guns, but mostly everything I know about them is through films (ie. fantasy bordering on a bad joke) and nothing through actual use.
They don't scare me; it's how they appear - or more accurately, are represented as appearing - in society at large which does that.

Well Ok; the choice of target certainly makes sense now I have a better idea of the effects of adrenaline and coordination - things I'd simply not considered, I have to admit.
Thanks.

Not!
Have your fantasy anyway, though.....

You make my point: "neutralization of a threat" (safe words) as oppose to blowing holes in the other fellow's thorax and ripping his heart and lungs to shreds (unsafe words).

I am perfectly fine with deadly force used in genuine self defense. What I am not fine with is verbal bullsh*t which disguises things in fine words.

ruveyn

It's not as easy as it sounds, takes a huge amount of training, effectiveness would vary depending on lots of factors in each situation, and really, if you are SWAT qualified, are you going to spend your time walking around on neighborhood watch or are you going to go for the big bucks?

Most people are shot while moving. The torso is the biggest part of the body and easiest to hit and it's where most people learn to aim when learning to shoot. Legs are much more difficult. There are two of them, they are going in different directions, and they are much thinner than the torso.

If someone is being cooperative enough to stand stock still with their hands in the air, in a well lit area, at a distance where you can take good aim, then shooting them in the leg to shoot to stop would be easy. It would also be a crime to shoot them at all because they are standing still.

Shooting to stop the threat doesn't mean shooting to kill. It means shooting until the person stops coming, shooting himself, etc. A torso shot on a moving target could end up through the heart or through the very outside portion of the shoulder, flesh wound only. Even by a marksman, a shot isn't gauranteed because the target can move.

Also, if you are shooting somebody in self defense, your last thought as you pull the trigger is probably something along the lines of "HOLY s**t!" so there's not much time for analytical thinking or slower tracking and aiming like hunters do to deer who are moving targets. Sometimes that target is moving toward you and you know if it gets to you that you are either gonna be dead or missed a damn good chance to be.

The leg shot by the guy who goes to the range a lot and takes down the criminal who ends up laying on the ground holding his leg and yelling in pan and anger is a good movie device, but probably doesn't happen on purpose very often. Sure there are leg shots, but they are probably accidental hits and a result of multiple shots in that area at a running target, emptying your own weapon in the process so you are hoping to God that you hit him so you can at least out run him.

If it was possible to just "shoot to slow" or "shoot to injure" with very much of a success rate, cops probably wouldn't have as many fatal shootings of suspects. They are much higer trained than the average Joe or Jane with their weapons, and as much as I dislike cops I doubt they use deadly force more than they should, at least too often, because they do know that if they kill somebody it's going to be a huge problem for them. They probably would love to be able to shoot in the leg with any accuracy, but it just doesn't happen that way too often.

The "shoot them in the leg" idea is a lot like the "kick them in the balls" idea, but for a different reason. Many times a girls knee jerk reaction (no pun intended) when in a confrontation with a guy is to kick him in the balls. This usually doesn't work. You are a guy, you know why. You automatically protect that area in that kind of a controntation and can usually see that one coming a mile off. It has to be done just right to be effective and not blocked and turned to a kick in the thigh. I've been just playing around with my husband and both of us laughing and I was only moving my arms in a wildly lightly slapping in the shoulders range way, and only in a joking way and he knew that, and yet he still turned slightly to the side from the waist down and brought one thigh in front of his weiner. It's instinct, even in fun. Like running is instinct when you are being shot at. Both of those make executing that particular potentially disabeling manouver pretty ineffective. About as ineffective is as that last sentence was with the spelling errors that I'm too sleepy to check.