What’s the opposite of a Mexican Standoff called ? When everyone draws in seconds and there’s no survivor.
That wisdom is pretty much the basis for all self-defense laws that allow lethal force.
Right. And the reason you think someone might be about to kill you is because if you’re waving a gun around they’ll think you’re a dangerous maniac about to use deadly force against them, and so they will be justified in used deadly force against you, so that entitles you to use deadly force against them.
But when you combine that rule with a rule affirming the right to keep and bear arms, the term you’re looking for is no longer “wisdom”. It’s “monumental stupidity”. You’ve designed a system which will tend to maximise the avoidable deaths of frequently innocent people.
It’s the system that’s been in place for most of the history of our country. I’ll note that “friendly fire” incidents like this one are a minuscule fraction of deaths, so as a system that’s supposed to tend to “maximise” the avoidable deaths, it’s either not very good at it, or the maximum is actually quite low.
ETA: It strikes me about the same as a complaint against plainclothes / undercover police officers. A few of them occasionally get shot in cases of mistaken identity. One could say that allowing them, especially in environments where there will be other cops rushing in with guns, prepared to shoot any threat, is a mistake, perhaps even a “monumentally stupid” system designed to maximise the avoidable deaths of frequently innocent people. Society at large seemed to have judged that the utility / value / benefit of plainclothes & undercover police officers outweighs the risks (and frankly, the occasional tragic death), so we keep them around.
Yep, not a problem. If a bystander or toddler occasionally catches a bullet in the face, it’s a small price to pay.
In your “miniscule fraction” are you also counting the cases where somebody pulls a gun and shoots somebody he mistakenly perceives as a threat, or who presents a threat which could have been dealt with by non-lethal means, had no gun been present?
Yup, and occasionally a toddler drowns in a pool, or falls out of a treehouse, but we haven’t banned those either yet. “small price to pay” sounds a bit callous, but that’s basically the value judgement of the society we live in.
No, but mostly because it’s basically entirely subjective / impossible to know if the supposed threat could have successfully been dealt with by non-lethal means. Could the guy in Arizona that saved the cop have “dealt with” the bad guy by some less-lethal means? Perhaps, but there’s no way to know. Perhaps in attempting to do so, both he and the cop end up dead.
So we observe a law which affords a right to carry gunds, a law which protects people who use guns in circumstances where it may not have been necessary, a very high rate of gun fatalities in the US. I don’t think this is a coincidence.
I respectfully suggest that if you have a law affirming a right to carry guns, you need to balance that with a law which puts the on the gun carrier to show that use of the gun is objectively justified.
I respectfully disagree, and further note that the “very high rate of gun fatalities” has precious little to do with lawful defensive gun use.
What you think is irrelevant. If the majority of gun deaths were due to people lawfully “protected” in using them during those homicides you’d have a point, but they aren’t so you don’t. Look at this 2012 report using FBI stats:
http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable15.pdf (PDF warning)
In that year, 259 justified homicides with firearms compared to 8,342 criminal homicides. But clearly it’s those shooters protected by law driving up the deaths. :smack:
Interesting detail: 1/3 of victims in justifiable homicides were “known to shooter”
I’m not sure how interesting that detail is.
In general, in the majority of *criminal *homicides or attempts the victim knew the assailant. I don’t have citable stats handy, but 1/3rd is probably not far off and I vaguely recall a much larger number, like 2/3rds.
Given that fact, it’s also reasonable that a broadly similar fraction of defensive homicides would involve folks who know each other.
Which demonstrates a big point often ignored by the gotta-carry-for-my-safety crowd. A hefty slice of your national statistical average of homicide risk is automatically avoided by not having friends and family who are criminals or the kind of hot-headed dumbasses that shoot people after drunken arguments.
Frankly, another hefty fraction can be avoided by not being in the wrong SES demographic. And by being over about 30.
If you can manage those three things, you’ve already cut your homicide risk to about 5% of the national “average”.
And if you can’t manage those three things, then maybe carrying is a good idea because your personal risk is much higher than the national “average”.
Ah interesting. I didn’t realize there was that sort of variability in state laws.
Yes, for another (possibly relevant to this incident) example, some states have “duty to retreat” laws, while most others have (now-infamous) “stand your ground” laws. Utah is a stand your ground state.