That was a really nice try at a set-up and a gotcha; sorry to have spoiled your fun.
Maybe you didn’t notice that I listed manslaughter as one of the possible criminal charges in my OP?
Thanks for playing; do come again.
You’re speaking as though he was at peak control of his faculties, and had perfect information of the situation.
But this is a reality of the gun-for-home-defense issue: People ARE fallible. Their senses and judgment are OFTEN impaired. And they OFTEN lack complete information of their situation.
Every time someone wakes up, they are LIKELY to be disoriented. What’s more, there seems to be a hardwired human tendency to at first perceive any noises in the night as a threat. (A very useful thing if you’re a hominid on the African savannah; but complicated if you live in the modern world, and are armed with a gun.) Gun owners (and gun laws) should take this reality into account.
Just like with traffic safety: Yes, if you KNEW a pedestrian was going to be crossing that dark street up ahead, you wouldn’t have intentionally run into them; it’s just that you couldn’t see them in the dark. That’s why you tell drivers to go slowly enough under poor visibility that they will be able to stop within the distance delineated by their headlights. Likewise, if you KNEW that there were wet leaves ahead on that rainy day, you would have slowed down. But that’s why you tell drivers to slow down in the rain—because wet leaves are OFTEN a hazard they will encounter in such situations.
My firearms instructor had one lesson for us that I never forget: Always keep your gun at least 3 minutes away from you. Why? Because that gives you enough time to wake up enough to know what you might be shooting at.
I think this guy, as much as he’s torturing himself anyway over what he did, should still be charged with involuntary manslaughter. The sentencing, as it generally does, could take into account his state of mind at the time and his EXTREME remorse after the fact, and perhaps waive the most severe penalties.
Frylock, let me point out that this guy acted on belief, without evidence, several times in this brief incident.
He believed there was an intruder. He had no evidence of this other than hearing a noise or noises. Since he lived with someone, there was a possibility, at least equal to (and in estimation clearly greater than) the possibility of an intruder that it was the other person who lived in the home. But Mr. Tabutt acted on his belief, instead of ascertaining facts.
He believed his fiance was still in bed. He could have looked at the bed, to see if she was there, but he didn’t.
He believed that the intruder posed a deadly threat. He saw no weapon, he heard no threats made, in fact he didn’t even clearly see the target he was shooting at. He saw motion, saw a target, and discharged his firearm.
To me, none of that is reasonable. And it’s only understandable if you can accept that living in fear is understandable, even though, as far as we know, there is no justification for the fear other than the fear itself.
Back when I lived in a house if I heard noises, I’d just assume it was another member of the household, but then I did have the luxury of living in a really safe neighborhood that pretty much had a zero crime rate.
Unless, of course, you live with someone. As this guy did.
If “I thought it was an intruder” is a valid excuse in this situation, anyone can shoot their spouse and simply trot this line out as a legal defense.
So why is this particular case of potential manslaughter interesting out of the tens of thousands of cases every year?
Which is a pretty good description of Winter Springs, where this happened.
Yes, he should be charged with manslaughter or negligent homicide if the investigation reveals this wasn’t actually a murder by someone trying to then play on public sympathy. This kind of reckless gunplay, resulting in a death, is a serious matter, and he shouldn’t get a pass (although if things happened as he described, I think his guilt pangs will be worse than anything the State of Florida can dish out).
It’s essentially an impossible to validate or invalidate data point with current data. We have a pretty accurate count of the number of accidental shootings per year. However the number of defensive gun uses is extremely politicized, there are several famous studies in the field. Most of these studies were done by guys like Florida State University criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, those studies show an enormous number of defensive gun uses per year. If you dig deeper you’ll find guys from other universities pointing out all the problems with those studies. If you dig deeper you’ll find the original guys pointing out problems with the problems being pointed out about their studies… and on and on. Essentially it’s too political to have a cut and dried answer.
To me it’s mostly irrelevant, I’m not a utilitarian so to me the moral validity of gun ownership is totally unrelated to society-level statistics games.
Just out of curiosity (I really don’t know much about the question I am about to ask…), would the lesser included be criminal negligence, or something else? I don’t know what the elements of such a lesser included crime would be. Intuitively it seems easier to me to understand a lesser included offense as applicable in a case where you shoot someone but don’t actually kill them (e.g., you deliberately shot to wound in the lower leg rather than to kill).
Also, are there any cases where a mens rea to kill can be transferred to another victim (i.e., you intended to kill person A but killed person B by accident, coupled with determination that mens rea for A is applied to B)? I’m not saying that should be the case in this example. I’m just wondering if that kind of mens rea could be found.
I agree with the OP. Lose the gun, charged with a crime seems appropriate
According to the Kellerman Study in the New England Journal of Medicine (New Engl J Med 1986. 314: 1557-60), Guns in the household are 43 times more likely to kill a family member, friend, or acquaintence, than to kill someone in self defense. The scenario of Joe Hero, gun owner blowing away an intruder is essentially a fantasy on a level with Penthouse Forum letters.
Just out of curiosity (I really don’t know much about the question I am about to ask…), would the lesser included be criminal negligence, or something else? I don’t know what the elements of such a lesser included crime would be. Intuitively it seems easier to me to understand a lesser included offense as applicable in a case where you shoot someone but don’t actually kill them (e.g., you deliberately shot to wound in the lower leg rather than to kill).
Also, are there any cases where a mens rea to kill can be transferred to another victim (i.e., you intended to kill person A but killed person B by accident, coupled with determination that mens rea for A is applied to B)? I’m not saying that should be the case in this example. I’m just wondering if that kind of mens rea could be found.
…
My edit window expired. Maybe the OP’s “lesser included” was referring to involuntary manslaughter, not something else lesser than involuntary?
What the 1986 Kellerman study actually stated is that a gun in your home is 43 times more likely to be used in an unjustifiable homicide against a friend, family member, or acquaintance than it is against a criminal. However, what got Kellerman a huge amount of flak at the time is he counted suicides in this bucket of “unjustifiable homicide.” People had a problem with that because many other studies have shown no correlation between suicide rate and gun control laws; and this makes “intrinsic sense”, people who are suicidal typically won’t be put off because they don’t own a gun. There are many different ways to skin a cat (or kill yourself) and thus many people objected to the study including suicides because it gave a very warped impression of the dangers of gun ownership.
At the same time, looking at a “purely numbers” thing, there was nothing invalid about including suicides. However when you start to look at suicides from a policy perspective then you get into sort of questionable logical territory–any number of normally innocuous household items are very dangerous if you factor in people who use them to commit suicide.
In response to these criticisms Kellerman did his study again in 1993 and it reduced his number from “43 times” to “2.7” times.
Anyway, Kellerman’s 1993 study has been equally dismissed by many other academics as well. (Not surprisingly most of these academics have released their own papers showing how it is much more common for people to defend themselves with a gun than it is to commit a gun crime. It’s because you can cite these contradictory studies back and forth that I initially responded you can’t really answer this question with any real authority, only with what you “believe.”)
Not only has the Kellerman study been widely vilified by criminologists, it also gets its high statistic of “household shootings” by removing context; it lumps accidental shootings and acts of aggressive domestic violence in with legitimate defensive use against home invasions by an associate or excluded family member and against domestic violence. None of the studies (most are actually metastudies in which the individual studies had different categories and parameters) are really definitive regarding hazard versus benefit, but it is clear that the Kellerman study, widely cited amongst the strict gun control crowd, is far from definitive.
You’ve just convinced me to revise my stance on arbitrary gun control laws. I think there should be a complete arbitrary law in all fifty states prohibiting Frylock from owning a gun, any form of edged or puncturing implement, heavy tools, sharp sticks, or indeed, anything more hazardous to someone else’s health than a bowl of Jello™.
To the o.p.: yes, the man should be charged with criminally negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter. He apparently violated all four rules of firearm safety and attacked when there was no clear threat to himself. I’m a strong proponent of private firearms ownership by responsible citizens, but the key word there is responsible, which this fellow clearly was not.
Stranger
Cite for the Kellerman study being debunkd. Mere whining by pro-gun websites will not count as cites.
I also don’t see why accidntal shootings shouldn’t count. That was my point. Guns in the house will result in accidental shootings far more often than shooting intruders. Defense against home invasions is basically a stroke fantasy that never happens.
That’s like saying home invasions are a stroke fantasy. They’re exceptionally rare but they do certainly happen. When the event itself (a home invasion type break in) is so extraordinarily rare then it sort of goes without saying that someone defending against one almost never happens. However you say it “never happens” which is easily falsified.
As for the Kellerman study, there’s a reason I said at the outset you aren’t going to get “real” data. It’s all politicized, you don’t see anyone but hard core gun control advocates citing the Kellerman study in the first place.
I should also say that despite being a strong supporter of gun rights I would probably lean towards thinking they are, in the aggregate, a greater cause of accidental death than they are the cause of a self-defense killing (by citizens.)
However since I’m not a utilitarian I don’t believe you can look at the morality or the policy based on things like that. ATVs cause many deaths each year, and I don’t think they should be banned either. Life is dangerous if you aren’t responsible, guns are just one microcosm of that truism. For that matter, life is relatively dangerous even if you are responsible, the people that think we can legislate that away are self-delusional. From a moral perspective it is totally irrelevant how dangerous it is to own guns in the aggregate, all that matters is how safely an individual chooses to exercise gun ownership. In the case of the man in the OP he acted immorally by not being a responsible gun owner.
But whining by gun-control websites, that will suit you, will it? Do your own bloody research. Kellerman actually withdrew his original study and resubmitted a modified study that revised his original estimate by an order of magnitude. As Martin Hyde has stated, none of the studies and metastudies cited by either side have really held up to statistical rigor and scrutiny.
Are you congenitally incapable of reading comprehension? I didn’t say that “accidental shootings shouldn’t count.” However, Kellerman conflated legitimate and justifiable uses of a firearm against intrusion or violence with the use of a firearm against a household member or “associate” (which, under the definition applied, could be one gang-banger plugging another one over a drug deal) by an aggressor or in a negligent or accidental context. And Kellerman ignores unreported uses of a firearm to deter crime–reasonable, as the survey documentation for such used by Keck, et al is suspect at best–but tends to undervalue the benefit of owning a firearm as a defensive weapon.
As for home invasion being “a stroke fantasy that never happens,” I guess I should be writing into Penthouse, 'cause not only did it happen to me one one occasion (in which I, as a 14 year old, used a handgun to drive back and out an adult male aggressor nearly twice my size) but I have several friends who have experienced some level of “home invasion” on multiple occasions. The full-on “armed thugs blowing in to rape and kill the wife, kids, and dog,” may be vanishingly rare, but an intruder who doesn’t realize that someone is home is a non-uncommon circumstance, and intrusion stemming from domestic situations is unfortunately common, as any peace officer can relate.
It is clear you have a very personal, emotional objection to firearms ownership, and that’s fine. You’re entitled to your own opinion. But don’t pretend that this is a rational position backed up by hard statistical data and peer-reviewed studies that are widely accepted by the forensic and criminology community.
Stranger
I would be interested in knowing if this is still true in countries like Switzerland where (most? all?) people are required to receive proper training in the use of their firearms as defensive and offensive tools. Being trained to call out and identify your target before shooting could substantially change this (probably trumped up) number.