This may have a factual answer, but I think legal questions go here.
This concerns a scene in a detective story I am reading. A man with a gun has broken into a house and is threatening the occupants with his gun. Our heroine secretly follows him in carrying a hammer (don’t ask why she is carrying a hammer), secretly comes up behind him, briefly considers clubbing him in the head, but finally hitting him as hard as she can in the hand with the gun. This smashes his hand and causes him to drop the gun. She then kicks him in the nuts and eventually subdues him with the help of occupants of the house. My question is, can she be charged with assault and battery? There was no way she was threatened. She observed the breaking from the street and followed him into the house where he was threatening the occupants (whom she knew).
The applicable legal doctrine seems to be “defense of others”:
Some jurisdictions require that the person has a special relationship with the third party as a condition of using “defense of others”, such as a parental relationship or a marital relationship. However, most jurisdictions do not require a special relationship, just require the reasonable belief that it was necessary to defend the third party.
Presumably because she has read Ed McBain’s 87th precinct novel ,Fuzz, in which Steve Carella suggests that women should carry a hammer for self defense.
I believe anyone breaking into your home, especially but not necessarily holding a gun in their hand, is definitely a threat, whether they are facing you or not.
There is probably a question about how far a Samaritan can go in pursuit of a developing situation. Here are some scenarios:
I’m walking along and someone jumps out of the bushes and attacks my companion walking alongside me. I intervene to defeat the attack.
I’m walking along and see some random somebody 20 feet ahead be attacked by somebody who jumped out of the bushes. I intervene to defeat the attack.
I see somebody who makes me suspicious for … reasons. I follow them down the sidewalk until they attack somebody. I intervene to defeat the attack.
I see somebody who makes me suspicious for … reasons. I follow them down the sidewalk, around the corner off my intended route, and eventually into a building where they attack somebody. I intervene to defeat the attack.
I see somebody who makes me suspicious for … reasons. I follow them down the sidewalk, around the corner off my intended route, and eventually into a building where they are pre-emptively attacked by me before they attack somebody else.
Somewhere along the way the Samaritan turns into a self-appointed vigilante. A la the George Zimmerman who fatally shot Trayvon Martin case.
Even 5 could be warranted if a reasonable person would conclude the person being followed really was about to attack someone. The “reasons” you chose to follow someone really cannot be hand-waved away in that scenario because they may be integral to determining whether a reasonable person would have believed there was an imminent enough threat to others to justify the use of force.
Defense of others doesn’t hinge on how long you follow someone or even waiting for them to strike the first blow against someone else. In general, it depends on the reasonableness of (1) the determination that the other party’s action constituted a threat to use force against another and (2) the force used to stop them.
Ironically, the argument against the lawful use of force in defense (of anyone) is much stronger if you follow them and they attack you, because, as was argued in the Zimmerman-Martin case, their attack could be seen as their own attempt to exercise self-defense against a persistent stalker who was threatening them. But if they go on to attack someone else as you’re following them, what’s their conceivable justification for that? That they felt they had to attack someone else to throw off you, their stalker? Self-defense and defense of others can be tricky, but it’s not that tricky. It doesn’t give someone license to (purposefully) attack innocent bystanders (through it might excuse you from mistakenly injuring or even killing an innocent bystander in the fray if your intervention and use of force was reasonable).
I left the “reasons” vague in my example exactly to point up the difference between e.g. “He was waving a gun, staggering about drunkenly, and shouting incoherently about wreaking Zeus’s vengeance upon anyone wearing denim.” versus “He was black”.
The reasons to follow matter.
in the OP’s story, once the Samaritan is in the house seeing the gunman and the residents and watching the immediately threatening behavior, then yes, as @TriPolar says just above we have “clear threat” justifying “proactive defense of self and others”.
But how did this Samaritan happen to place themselves into this definitely not in public, not a mere passerby, situation? Does that matter? IANA legal scholar, but I think it does.
The defense of others doctrine has already been covered.
Despite the “don’t ask” restriction in the OP, the reason why the heroine was carrying a hammer in the first place might be a really big factor if this ever went to trial.
So we do agree on that, but I should note that they may not be dispositive. Which is to say that while they may be relevant (eg: I was following him because he was had a gun and was walking towards the supermarket, albeit in an open carry state where that may be perfectly legal), the reasons will not necessarily decide the issue—good or bad, one way or the other.
You might follow someone for a terrible reason, but then in following them you might actually see them threaten or use force against someone else. If that happens, the fact you were following them for a terrible reason doesn’t otherwise deprive you of the ability to exercise defense of others if it actually gets to the point where a reasonable person would feel your use of force was appropriate/necessary.
Alternatively, you might think someone suspicious and follow them for a very good reason (the proverbial walking with a gun towards a supermarket in an open carry state), but then they never actually do anything to justify the use of force. Such as if they never move to unholster their pistol or unsling or raise their rifle (one reason I think tactical slings should be illegal in open carry states: there is no time at all to observe the transition from lawful to unlawful arms carrying).
She was actually headed toward that house for her own purposes. One of which was to make some repairs, whence the hammer. It was a battered women shelter and men not permitted inside. As she was coming down the street she saw two men outside the gate, one holding the pistol and the other a shotgun. She hid in some bushes and watched them break down the gate and then saw that they had also broken down the door of the house. The one with the shotgun (whom I omitted to simplify the narrative) was inside while the pistol was outside. So she had ample reason to follow them. In the confusion after her attack, someone managed to bash the shotgun over the head with a fry pan, putting him temporarily. Oh and our heroine had had the forethought to call 911 and describe the situation before going in, so police were soon to arrive to haul the miscreants away.
I would have assumed carrying a long gun in a tactical sling in public would amount to brandishing. Which is generally a crime as applied to a pistol. It might not be spelled out as such in the criminal code, but that’s sure how I’d rule from the bench unless brandishing was formally defined to exclude that particular dangerous provocative behavior.
People have faced charges after using an illegally possessed gun to stop a crime. It tends not to result in serious punishment, charges may even be dropped altogether since it’s not a great case to bring before jury, the circumstances may beg for nullification. Also, using more force than necessary in self defense or defense of others may create another crime though it faces the same difficulty in gaining a conviction.
See, I would think that’s appropriate too (make it illegal), but recall that piece of shit Kyle Rittenhouse had a tactical sling and that wasn’t even a topic of discussion. It also seems to be a common method of carry for AR-15-toting “protesters” at rallies. Of course laws may vary by jurisdiction, this is not legal advice, and I am not a (much less your) criminal defense attorney.