Xan Krieger said:
There's been this discussion in the Religion and Politics section of the forum and it concerns this. Can you use a gun to defend yourself? At least one person claimed it's a myth and that it never happens.
My take on it? Yeah you can, to take it a bit further you can also defend your home with one. The person I argued with said it never ever happens, he also said that if someone breaks into your home that you can't shoot them. Where I live if someone breaks into your house that is your castle and they just breached the walls so you can defend your property.
It varies with where you are and how liberal your state is. In general the more left wing your area, and the longer it's been that way, the tighter the gun laws, and the less latitude that you have for self defense.
In a general sense though someone breaks into your house you have the right to stand your ground, and defend yourself.
In some states however there is actually legislation that says that both men in a confrontation are under an obligation to flee, and only defend themselves if chased down or cornered. So if someone breaks into your house you legally have to flee and call the police. This kind of legislation coming about mostly from domestic disputes, bar brawls, and other things, to render the entire question of "who threw the first punch" and things like that irrelevent, and enable the police to arrest both people. Like most well intentioned laws it simply changed due to precedence.
In most of the saner states and areas it all comes down to something called a "Continuum Of Force" or something with a similar name. While the specifics vary the basic tenet is to have violent behavior ranked in levels of severity. When attacked you can go one level higher than the person attacking you. "Equal Force" isn't usually the reality of the situation anymore, it's either usually "run" or "one step higher". The basic idea is that your able to do what is needed in order to protect yourself, meeting someone with equal force is rolling the dice and not effective defense. In most cases this "Continuum Of Force" includes things like facing multiple opponents, relative (visible) athletic abillity, combat abillity (or perceived combat abillity) and other factors. So basically if some guy attacks you bare handed you could go one step higher and for the sake of simplification let's say you could use a weapon like mace, a baton, or other low end self defense methods that are a bit better than "barehanded". If the situation increases like say multiple barehanded guys, you can use increasing levels of force like more generally lethal weapons like say baseball bats, tire irons, etc... When you get to cases with armed opponents or those you can perceive to be combat trained (ie claiming military or combat experience, or even wearing a martial-arts T-shirt or insignia) it can rapidly escalate. While it rarely happens (for obvious reasons) if say 10 muscular guys came walking out of a Kung-fu school wearing school T-shirts and attacked you, you'd probably be justified to let loose on them with a 12 gauge as they advanced.
This changes a bit for police officers and *sometimes* security, being expected to intervene and control situations as opposed to just defend themselves they can go 2 or sometimes more steps higher, but are also subjected to much higher standards of review, public backlash, etc. What's allowed by law (which might not matter in court depending on how a hearing goes) doesn't nessicarly match what is allowed by administrative policy. This can lead to cases where you might have a cop do something ultra-violent and get kicked off the force due to public backlash, but not go to jail because they technically didn't violate the law, but departmental policy. It can be highly situational. In some cases security operates on a similar level by acting as a "representitive of the property owner", which comes down to what rights a property owner has (through zoning, agreements, etc...) in a given area. There have been increasing efforts to regulate private security through "Guard Cards" in some areas for this reason. Back when Foxwoods first opened down here they required security to get a State Key (which later changed) by agreement with the state. But then again in theory (though not anywhere close to practice) Casino Security for the tribal casinos can pretty much do anything the tribe tells them they can.
More on the subject I will say that the media tends to be interested mostly in what's sensational and also has a definite political agenda. "Guy shoots attacker in self defense" generally isn't sensational enough to get national headlines, at best state and local. Not to mention people in situations like this generally don't want to broadcast it. Right now, the media seems to be in full left-wing furor in supporting Obama's gun control policy, they are generally only covering situations that would make people want to be anti-gun, as opposed to stories that might sway person in a pro-gun direction, which have always been few and far between. When something like that is covered it's rarely given much time or attention. If you go by the mainstream media I guess I can't blame people for thinking that self-defense with guns doesn't happen.
Truthfully if you want to hear some self-defense stories about guns, you'd need to go to the pro-gun sites and organizations which are under fire. The NRA is big on having members tell their true stories about how "if it wasn't for having a gun, I'd be dead right now" or how they protected their families or whatever. They also sell and distribute videos teaching tactics for practical home defense with a firearm (setting up ambush locations, how to shoot through a doorway, what works for cover and what doesn't) which have been compiled based on real incidents over a period of time. The guys talking about this stuff haven't been arrested for it, having been involved in "good shoots" so to speak. It all comes down to who you want to listen to. The NRA isn't such a powerful group because they are a bunch of redneck psychopaths on the fringes of society.
