Poll: Teen Shot dead after attempting to mug man

[AmrasCalmacil]

You know he could of just pistol whipped him, or shot him in the leg in self defence, rather than shoot him eight times with the intention of making him dead.

So no, I don't think he had a right to kill him (no one has the right to kill anybody no matter what they do).

You do know that being pistol whipped is potentially fatal, don't you?
Hollywood dramatically understates the damage it can do.

 

[MasterOfWorlds]

Let's see, being attacked, I have a gun, I fear for my life, I shoot the sorry SOB. End of story. Do I feel bad about the guy that was shot? Not really. Do I think that maybe a wounding shot would have been better? Sure, but how many people have the presence of mind to go for a wounding shot when someone's attacking you? Not many.

 

[Jedoro]

Dude did the right thing, all around. In my experience in Infantry Basic Training, we were told to shoot til the guy goes down. No double tap, no controlled pair- you put bullets in the enemy until he eats dirt.

 

[nothinghere]

Did he deserve to die? No.
But at the same time, I don't think the shooter should be punished for defending himself, especially if he had the license to carry the weapon.

And this is coming from someone who thinks America's right to bare arms is ridiculously outdated.

Are you me? Because these are my thoughts exactly.

One thing I do dislike about Australian and English law is that it blames the person defending themselves if they use an excessive or lethal amount of force. Someone explain to me how you're supposed to gauge the appropriate amount of force when you're being attacked, you think you might be killed and instinct and adrenaline are flooding your system? Makes no sense to me.

His gun was loaded with bullets made for maximum damage and lethal force and he had laser sightings attached. Why would you bring all that for a late run? If someone was going to jump you they'd be close so they could get your crap, you wouldn't need laser targeting, and he was training to join the military. If he can't keep his head cool facing a un-armed teenager, how is he going to handle the battle ground?

He brought 500$ with him when he only planned to go on a run. He was basically asking for it. He had a right to defend himself yes but doesn't it seem a tad fishy? Or is it just me?

 

[CCountZero]

You know he could of just pistol whipped him, or shot him in the leg in self defence, rather than shoot him eight times with the intention of making him dead.

So no, I don't think he had a right to kill him (no one has the right to kill anybody no matter what they do).

Have you actually read the article?

He was punched so hard he fell to the ground and suffered blurred vision, and you want him to PISTOL WHIP the guy?

Dude, cmon?

It sucks that he died, but when someone jumps you out of the blue, knocking you senseless, and comes back for more, he's asking for trouble.

In the situation, with blurred vision and possibly a mild concussion, you don't think that far ahead, and you certainly can't aim and hit a leg.

He discharged his weapon eight times, which is most likely equivalent to emptying his magazine plus the round already in the chamber, and that's a perfectly reasonable response in a panic-situation.

If he had reloaded in-between and kept on fireing, that would be crossing the line, 'cus it requires actual thought and deliberation on his part, but what he did was almost certainly a panic-reaction.

 

[MartialArc]

I like how people still post things like "shoot him in the leg" and "fire a warning shot." I guess people on the escapist forums can't/don't read. There is a half-ton fuckload of posts on this topic exquisitely detailing why it is impractical and foolish to attempt do to either.

Self-defense shooting is center of mass until the trigger goes click =p. Once you pull a gun you've escalated a conflict to lethal force, and that's pretty much the mentality of anyone who carries. You don't pull a gun to make a threat because that is a good way to get shot. You draw when you feel that it is an action necessary to save your life. It is not an intimidation tool, your weapon has no business being anywhere but the holster unless you are 100% certain you are going to fire. If you think otherwise, you don't carry and for your own safety that is probably a good thing.

If your in a position to actually take an aimed single leg-shot, you shouldn't have drawn in the first place. Seriously.

Go watch some youtube videos of shooters. Notice most of the rapid fire is at a large paper rectangle at roughly 10 feet. All competition style accurate shots are very slow and deliberate. If you have time to do that second one, you really really really had no business pulling a gun on the guy and should have ran or something. If your close enough to do the first one, you probably made the right choice.

 

[Ldude893]

He should've just taken out his gun and nothing more, the kid wouldn't dare to attack once he knows the man's armed. That's what I would do if I was in the man's shoes.
Shooting him to death multiple times is excessive force, especially considering the fact that the kid doesn't even have a weapon and the only thing that the man's going to lose is his wallet.

 

[Vryyk]

i hate to use the "slippery slope" fallacy, but well... it is. where do you draw the line? in Montana, where i live, a Wal-mart employee recently shot another when they got in an argument. the state had recently passed a law similar to Florida's "stand your ground" law, and he claimed he felt his life was in danger (even though they were both at work, in Wal-mart...). who's to say if he was right or wrong? all i know is someone got shot at Wal-mart over a stupid disagreement and a potentially dangerous law, setting an even more dangerous precedent.

granted, in Baker's case, his life was more clearly in danger, but shooting him 4 times seems excessive. idk... not gonna pass judgement here. on one hand the mugger deserved it, but i just see this leading to bad things.

*edit* relevant information i forgot to add: the case i cited in Montana? the "assailant" wasn't armed, or even threatening overt violence. he was angry, and he was physically larger than the shooter, and that was deemed sufficient cause for the shooter to fire in self defense.

As far as the number of shots go, people tend to use more than they need when they feel their lives are in danger. It's a panic thing, you don't have time to stop and think about how many you need, you just fire until you are damn sure they are dead. With a .45 hollow point though, two is the chest would almost certainly be fatal.

The number of bullets used is not really significant, what is up for question was should he have killed him at all? I'd say yes.

 

[BoogieManFL]

Apparently people who say shoot him in the leg have little knowledge of anatomy or how hard it can be even under good condition to carefully hit someone's leg.

There is a huge artery in the human leg than if damage can make you bleed out extremely fast. And I've heard if it gets severed the two pieces can retract in a sense and slide up your leg, making repairing the damage in time very hard.

 

[cryogeist]

he had the right of self defense but to shoot a kid dead 8 times?!? he should of shot a warning shot or shoot the leg

Yes! Let's discharge a firearm at no target thus injuring an innocent random civilian and/or causing property damage. Let's also go to jail afterwards because there was clearly no reason to discharge a firearm if you could fire a warning shot. Also, hitting a leg isn't easy, nor is it anything that people train for. Military and police don't train to shoot people in the legs. Do you think that a regular civilian should?

i guess your right...i feel stupid now...

 

[Vryyk]

I think he fired too many times, personally.
He should've shot the kid in the leg/arm and if the kid came at him after that, I think it would've been pretty reasonable to shoot him again.

Even trained soldiers often empty a magazine into an enemy if they get jumped or shot at. Sitting in a comfy chair, having never been in a situation where you don't know if you'll live to see your family again, it's easy to say what you are saying.

 

[MartialArc]

Apparently people who say shoot him in the leg have little knowledge of anatomy or how hard it can be even under good condition to carefully hit someone's leg.

There is a huge artery in the human leg than if damage can make you bleed out extremely fast. And I've heard if it gets severed the two pieces can retract in a sense and slide up your leg, making repairing the damage in time very hard.

That'd be the femoral artery. Severing it is very likely to be fatal unless a tourniquet is applied awful quick.

 

[CJ1145]

The jogger has a right to defend himself, but why 8 shots?

And why the hell does he have a laser sight on his gun? The laser sight really serves no purpose in self defence. He also didn't need to shoot 8 freaking times. He was punched in the face, and the first thing he thinks is to shoot the kid? I'm sorry but he crossed the line by jumping to the conclusion.

The mugger's buddy ran off but had enough time to look back and see his friend with a laser sight pointed at his chest. If he had enough time to notice that, the jogger must have had the teenage mugger in a position where shooting him wasn't needed. Something's not right there.

You didn't read closely enough. The guy's vision was blurred by the punch. That's what happens when you're punched in the face. He thought the guy had a gun, and thus pulled his out and fired. He was panicking; in video games, when I panic I tend to shoot a lot. It's what happens when people have a weapon and they genuinely feel they're in danger, they use the hell out of it to try and get rid of the danger.

Obviously, by the time he was aiming at the other kid, his vision had cleared back up.

I don't know why that's so hard for some people to grasp.

 

[Blue_vision]

Forgive me for not being an expert on guns and propulsion physics. Also a falling gun bullet shot upwards hardly sounds like a serious threat to your health.

Unless you just so happen to fire exactly straight up in the air(which will cause the bullet to fall back a much slower terminal velocity), a bullet will travel its trajectory and fall to Earth with lethal force. There are confirmed cases of this and thus why it's illegal to fire a gun into the air in many places.

Where is this information from? Just doing a bit of simple math, a freefalling bullet would have less than 1/100 of the kinetic energy that a freshly fired one would. I can't imagine that being enough to hurt someone.

I believe that the law against shooting the gun in the air is to prevent shots at angles like 45 degrees, which could maintain horizontal speeds to kill someone a hundred meters away. But straight up in the air? I don't think so. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'll trust the math first.


Also, I'll say this guy is quite unjustified. Okay, maybe he shouldn't go away for 2nd degree murder, but there should be some charge laid against him for shooting someone that punched him in the face. If I'm allowed to shoot someone "because I feel threatened", does that mean that I can open fire on a person who I think is following me down the street? Obviously not; and there was no indication whatsoever that the guy had any weapon. Dude got punched in the face, and opened fire. Yes, I'd probably freak out too, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't answer for the consequences; he knows that he's carrying a firearm.

And for everyone saying that the kid deserved to die? You're the real scum of the earth. Firstly, nobody deserves to die period. Secondly, there are people far higher on the list than kids who mug nighttime joggers. And I'm quite sorry that you didn't grow up in the kind of situation that would make you susceptible to leading such a life. It's not like they're born and decide halfway through their life that they're going to start mugging people. Read a social science textbook, for fuck's sake.

 

[Warped_Ghost]

Didn't see the reason to fire so many times but he probably panicked. Besides that I have no problem with the death of another criminal.

 

[Caliostro]

You know, I don't agree with the kid for trying to mug the guy.
I also think the guy was right to defend himself.

But to say that this kid deserved to die for trying to mug a guy is horrifically wrong. This kid didn't deserve to die for his crime. He certainly made poor choices, and, again, the guy had a right to defend himself, but the guy having that right and the kid deserving to die are extremely different things.

He didn't deserve to die. And the loss of his life is a tragic waste.
We don't know all the circumstances of this case, we weren't there. But I hope that the man who was mugged did what he could to avoid the shooting before he took it. Because that was a drastic, permanent reaction. He certainly was within his rights to protect himself, and I don't fault him for that at all. But a kid lost his life, and that's a pretty heavy price to pay.

Nobody deserves anything outside of legislative issues. "Deserving" implies some sort of credit system, where something is owed. It's applied to things like a purchase on a market system.

This kind of "moral" or "value" thing has no credit system.

Action and reaction, simple as that. You attack people, you can't expect them not to defend themselves.