At 12:15 AM -0500 5/28/04, Robert Woolley wrote:
> It is standard doctrine among every self-defense firearms instructor I know
> to say that, for a variety of reasons I needn't bother to list, firing a
> "warning shot" is both tactically and legally a bad decision in a
> self-defense situation. Same goes for trying for a peripheral hit (shooting
> the perp's arm or leg).
I can imagine a utility for warning shots when dealing with incipient
animal attacks, as opposed to human assailants (continue below).
> This came up on a local discussion group recently, and that I would even
> hold open those possibilities was roundly denounced. I wondered what, if
> anything, my state appellate courts had said about such matters.
>
> To my considerable surprise, Minnesota's appellate courts have a distinct
> tendency to approve of both warning shots and attempts to stop an attacker
> with a peripheral shot rather than a central torso shot.
> I wondered if this was a fluke, so I haphazardly selected a few other states
> and ran similar searches, for "warning shot." The same trend was evident
> everywhere.
> Assuming the pattern I've noted is both real and consistent, does it provide
> a basis for trying to persuade self-defense instructors to change what they
> tell students about the legal pros and cons of warning shots and deliberate
> peripheral shots? (I think generally not, but I'll let others speak.)
>
> PLEASE NOTE: This invitation does not extend to debating the tactical wisdom
> (or lack thereof) of warning shots. The questions here are legal ones, not
> tactical ones.
Depending on how precisely you searched the literature, we could have
another case of "the cost/benefit analysis that forgets to count the costs."
Specifically, do these various courts mysteriously change their tune when
wounded criminals show up in court suing on the theory that "the defendant
used deadly force against me by discharging a firearm in my direction, yet
must have felt that deadly force was not immediately justified since he
purposely shot to miss?"
--
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Take a Sanity Break at The Bunkhouse at Liberty Haven Ranch
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