I can’t believe that any person would take his statement to be anything but a threat that they would be shot if they took another couple steps.
The idea that a deadly threat like that “de-escalated” the situation is laughable. The truth is the opposite: it escalated an argument into a life-or-death situation.
OK, you were wrong on at least two counts.
There are plenty of others who may consider the vagueness of the lone home owners statement to be a basis for reasonable doubt.
There was no life-or-death situation except for the one you imagined.
Geez, maybe I’ll start posting my flippant comments in purple text so people don’t actually think I’m linking to a picture of a Glock pistol chambered for a 40 millimeter grenade.
If there were such a juror, I imagine that person would be unable to distinguish the difference between a misbehaving child saying, “My dad is going to kill me when he sees me doing this!” and a disloyal drug dealer saying, “My boss is going to kill me when he sees me doing this!”
Because surely in this juror’s mind, the misbehaving child could actually be threatened with murder, whereas the conniving drug dealer might just get a stern talking-to from the kingpin.
ETA: Are you contending that the four men retreated because they were scared of the homeowner firing a warning shot in a safe direction?
There was no life-threatening situation. The 4 angry men chose not to trespass. Whatever plan(s) the 4 angry men might have had was never carried out. Any physical confrontation that might have taken place did not take place. The situation was defused.
The presence of an open-carry firearm may have shocked the 4 angry men into seeking a better course of action than the one they may have had. Or not.
No matter what your ardent beliefs are, you can’t argue with that. Nothing changes the mood like seeing a loaded gun, and becoming aware somebody might shoot you.
It really is a game changer.
Ok, so far he’s been charged with First Degree Criminal Mischief and First Degree Reckless Endangerment, based, iiuc, on his having shot the drone down. Any word on whether anyone has seen fit to charge him with uttering threats? NAL, but it seems to me that if you tell a group of people “if you cross my sidewalk (i.e. trespass on my property) there’s going to be another shooting” - that is not a threat to commit murder. The fact that anybody finds it impossible to believe it’s anything other than a threat to commit murder does not make a threat to commit murder, imho.
It sounds like some people have a problem with a lone human defending his property from a group of other humans.
Leaving the legality of it aside for now, do you have another scenario you want to have happen? I mean, are you wishing a group of men should be allowed to trespass after being warned? Do you want the situation to be such that a home owner has to retreat into his house, on his own property, if threatened? That nobody should have the right to defend themselves?
Is that really what you wish it to be? Because that’s what it sounds like.
You retreat in fear, and cower inside your house, until somebody else with a gun shows up to protect you? Is that how you want the world to be?
Serious question.
He hasn’t been charged with anything based on his interaction with the drone operators, as far as I can tell.
ETA: He wasn’t “defending his property.” He threatened to shoot someone if they crossed a sidewalk. He wasn’t threatened.
Are you wishing he was prohibited from threatening trespassers with violence? Is that what you wish the world to be like? A group of strangers have the right to enter your property, and nobody can do anything to stop them?
Is that the world you want?
I’m happy to answer a serious question. The general situation you’ve laid out is that the homeowner can either choose to threaten to shoot four men who are angry but haven’t actually done anything wrong, or the homeowner can cower like a frightened little girl in his house. Obviously, there’s a lot of options between those two extremes.
Let’s start with recognizing that the law does not allow someone to use deadly force against another simply because the other party is angry and on your property. The other person has to do something that makes one afraid of great bodily harm or death. Simply hypothesizing that someone could escalate an encounter to such a level is not sufficient. Agreed?
In my mind, if you can’t shoot someone for being angry and on your property, it is also clear that one cannot threaten to harm someone in an illegal manner. A lot of places, those kinds of threats are known as menacing, or terroristic threats, and are crimes.
The homeowner could have said a lot of things that I would have no problem with. “Stop right there!” “Don’t come any closer!” “I’m going to call the police and you better not follow me!” “I’m prepared to defend myself!” “Cool down and let’s talk about this!” etc. Instead, he jumped right to a threat to shoot if someone took another step. That threat isn’t about de-escalating the situation, it is escalating it.
Another poster suggested that the men with the drone could have called the police. That’s true, and they ultimately did. I think the homeowner could have called the police. He could have told the men that they should stay where they were until the police arrived. What’s wrong with that?
But since you asked a kind of loaded question, in which you thought there were only two extreme options open to the homeowner, I could pose a similar question. Are disputes between neighbors, even heated ones, only to be solved by either getting the police involved or threats (or god forbid, acts) of violence? Why can’t people just… talk, or even argue, before going to either of those lengths?
How do you know that he wasn’t threatened?
It doesn’t seem that far fetched that the group of folks could have made threatening remarks or gestures, though none of that is reported. If one of the four said “you messed up my drone! I’m going to beat the shit out of you old man!” then the guy would be in the clear right? Alternatively, if the group said “we’d like to apologize - we lost control of our drone and it accidentally went over your house, thanks for helping us out!” then the shooter would be acting like a real dick.
Would anyone be opposed to the homeowner destroying the drone with a broom handle, or maybe a “net like gun” (think planet of the apes), or maybe even a type of signal jammer, instead of shooting it, or do you think he’d still be on the hook for property damage?
If that was an intentional pun, good one.
I’m just seeing what is on the page. Certainly there are many options, but it was an already heated situation. Somebody had their property shot down, somebody else felt they were being spied on, enough that they fired a gun three times, it was already a very tense scene.
I’m just asking if you want it be such that “you are not ever allowed to threaten somebody who trespasses with violence”? It’s a direct question. Do you want the world to be such that a home owner is never allowed to threaten a group of angry men? Of course there are better options.
I’m just wondering about what I am seeing. It sounds like some people do not want an American homeowner to be able to threaten strangers, hostile strangers, to prevent them from trespassing. Am I reading you correctly or not?
That’s a legal question of great interest. How high above your own property are you legally allowed to defend? If you can spray a drone over your property with a hose, disabling it, is that a crime? And is it a crime to hover a drone ten feet off the ground over somebodies property? There seems to be almost no law about these things.
None of the reporting suggests that he was. We’re all debating based on the facts we have available.
No, it doesn’t. But he hasn’t alleged that they did, as far as we know. For the record, I don’t think he should face charges for threatening the owners. It’s just ridiculous that people like FXMastermind are pretending his actions were totally justified and that anyone who disagrees wants the world to be a crime-ridden hellscape.
He still destroyed someone else’s property. It doesn’t matter if he used a fly swatter or a home made mortar. So, yes. I don’t think he’d have been charged as severely if he used a less dangerous method. For the record, he says the drone was at 10 feet, and the owners say otherwise. If he was able to destroy it with a broom handle then we’d know that it was low enough to pose a danger. If somebody drove a remote controlled car onto your driveway and you blew it away, nobody would even be suggesting that your actions were reasonable.
Yes, you are correctly reading all the people who believe that. The standard for threatening use of deadly force is not whether “hostile strangers might trespass.” It’s whether you have a reasonable fear of bodily injury.
So in your mind, if a group of men are trespassing, you can’t threaten them with violence to stop them, unless they act in a manner that creates great fear.
So if they were all nice and smiling, you just do what? What do you do if you find a group of angry strangers advancing upon you? I really want to know how you view the world.
Is this a serious question? You call the police.
I think generally, the force used to repel trespass must be reasonable. Reasonable force should be proportionate to the harm that is trying to be prevented. A person trying to kill you, yes, lethal force is justified. A person trampling your flower garden - lethal force not justified.
A citizens arrest can be made - using only force that is reasonably necessary. You wouldn’t have qualified immunity so you’d open yourself up to criminal and civil penalties if things go south. The laws in CA is, if you find someone breaking into your car on your driveway and they do nothing to threaten you in any way, you are pretty much out of luck in trying to stop them.
Well, that’s not quite true. You can remove them using physical force if necessary. You just can’t use deadly force.
What if your kids are in the car?