Homeowner and potential intruder trade shots through front door

Kleanbore said:

"On your property" really does not affect the justification for using deadly force. In some jurisdictions, it would relieve you of a duty to retreat before using deadly force.

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On my property, with a gun in hand, trying to break down my door. Watch the video. The assailant has the ability, opportunity, and is putting me and my family in jeopardy. Therefore, justifiable use of deadly force. That's my understanding. Can you provide any other explanation? I am 100% willing to concede my point, but I need you to educate me.

NIGHTLORD40K said:

Depends on the state, Im sure.

Looked like the perp had a Beretta Neos? Interesting that it jammed so many times, people who own them seem to report that they are fairly reliable.

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Ive found it pretty telling that in a LOT of these type of shooting videos, the bad guy's guns seem to malfunction often. Maybe due to poor maintenance, bad ammo, or Devine intervention...who knows.

Definitely not something to be relied upon, just a bit of a trend that I've noticed.

Kleanbore said:

We were discussing a hypothetical scenario that you posed in which the perp retreated to his car. Right?

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Not exactly. I had mentioned that if the perp was retreating, which in the video he was not, how are you to know that he will not return with a more dangerous weapon? Also, in Ayoob's book he mentions that shooting someone in the back as they are running away is sometimes justified. Depending on the situation.
I understand where you are coming from now. Thank you.

Kleanbore said:

Your inability to divine that would not justify the use of force.

Got it?

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Yep.

I think that y’all are a bit harsh on the homeowner. In CA it’s a crime to store a loaded gun on your property where a child can get to it. If a kid does get to your gun, penalties range from misdemeanors to felonies depending on what the kid does with the gun. So all firearms in CA are supposed to be stored in a CA approved and locked container. In addition, the “wonderful” attorney general in CA states that not only should your gun be in a locked container in your home - it should also be stored unloaded and the ammo should be stored in a place away from the container. Remember, “if it saves just one child...” is the mantra and most of the CA politicians absolutely hate firearms. (Look up Gavin Newsome if you don’t believe me.). So in my opinion, the homeowner starts off behind the eight ball by living in CA.

Secondly, the homeowner was just woken up by a guy kicking at his door. He looks on his camera and he sees that the guy has a gun. He knows that behind him is his wife and at least one kid. While I am sure that we all think that we’d personally become cool, calm, and rational in that situation - I am not so convinced.

So the homeowner, already behind the eight ball by living in CA, fumbles loading his gun and has an AD (or ND, I’m not going to split hairs here). Not good, I agree. But I can understand that given the situation how it might happen.

The rest of the shots through the door by the homeowner - I completely agree that they are a bad idea. But once again, imagine someone is shooting at you through your front door, and you have a gun in your hand. I don’t think if you put 10000 people in that situation that we just saw the only one that would shoot back.

The homeowner did many things right: he was between the assailant and his family, he kept the door closed, he called the police, and he had a weapon if the guy got in. Could he have done a lot better - yes, very much so. And I completely agree that he could face consequences for not getting things 100% right. But I submit that the person that gets 100% on that particular test is more the rarity than the norm.

I personally spent way too many years in CA and I am so very happy that I was able to get out of there, but YMMV.

Jeff White said:

How do you know he will? When the perp retreats, the fight is over. If he does in fact come back with a more effective weapon the fight starts again. One could easily stretch your logic to say it would be justified to follow the perp home, kill him and his family to make sure he nor any of his clan comes back. Now I know that's not what yo9u are suggesting here, but that is exactly where your logic of shooting him for what he might do after he disengages takes us.

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I agree with everything you said here. My thoughts go something like this. I'm playing devil's advocate here. Homeowner shoots through the door, strikes the guy as he is "fleeing". A case can be made that the homeowner had no way of seeing that the assailant was fleeing, or knowing that he was fleeing or what exactly he was doing through the door. Media would go crazy with this, "man gets shot in the back while running away"...from a crime he was committing. I seem to remember this was something Ayoob discusses in his book and that he was successful defending someone who shot a criminal in the back as he was "fleeing". Seems we, as a society, worry so much about what happens to these criminals. This speaks to another thread on these forums recently where it was said that criminals trying to do what this one did don't expect to get shot or killed when committing a crime. My thing is, why not? Maybe that's kind of the problem. They want to come onto private property with a deadly weapon, to do something illegal, but expect no retaliation to their criminal behavior. And the Law seems to support them, not us. Terrible.

NuShootr said:

I am actually reading it very slowly and taking notes throughout. Did you read his book? How long ago? Are you an attorney?
Can you expand on your thoughts about this? I have a family. If someone were trying to knock down my door and had a gun in hand while doing it, I would certainly consider that reason enough to brandish a firearm.

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if you have a solid door, or even a glass door that is "frosted", how da heck would YOU KNOW, the person on the other side had a gun?

you got x-ray vision?

i was always told, you DO NOT shoot someone OUTSIDE your home, if you are SAFE INSIDE your home. sadly, they have to BE INSIDE your home for you to respond with a shot or two. in the meantime, dial 911.

no, i am NOT a lawyer, but i think i know well enough to NOT SHOOT thru a solid door....

what if you lived in an area where bears roam the area, and that bear was ramming your door, you got that x-ray vision to know for sure it is a bear, and not a man, or even a woman?

what if it was indeed a drunk female, thinking her husband locked her out, you gonna shoot thru that solid door. all because someone was TRYING to get in.???

by your way of thinking, should YOU even own a gun? sounds to me like you're a "shoot first, ask questions later", kind of guy, only the questions you will be getting are from the cops.

buddyd157 said:

if you have a solid door, or even a glass door that is "frosted", how da heck would YOU KNOW, the person on the other side had a gun?

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You clearly didn't watch the video of the incident. The homeowner had a camera and could see outside his front door. Please watch the video.

Jeff White said:

If he intended to use his firearm for self defense he should have been competent enough with it to make it ready under stress without having an ND. I would not have accepted that from one of my soldiers or from one of the police officers I worked with after I retired from the Army.

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And so you SHOULD hold soldiers and LEOs to a high standard of firearm use. However, we are talking about a private citizen legal gun owner. While we all in this forum really want every gun owner to have proper training and knowledge of both safety and legal issues, in general that training is not required. Nor, for those of us who see the 2A as absolute, should it be mandated. Highly encouraged, yes; made easy to obtain; yes; supported by both the community and the local and state governments, yes. But mandated in law? NO.

Craig

Jeff White said:

Please show me where I stated it should be mandatory?

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The way I read our statement, i interpreted that you felt the homeowner should be judged by the standards and expectations for soldiers and LEOs. I do not think we can or should do that.

Jeff White said:

The fact remains that had his ND went through the door and injured or killed a bystander there would have been legal consequences.

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I fully agree with you.

Jeff White said:

So when we discuss an incident like this on an open forum we have an obligation not to excuse an ND lest some lurker reading this takes it to mean that it’s no big deal.

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i had not thought of that aspect of protecting the forum and subtle education of newbs, but good thought.

Jeff White said:

An ND is a big deal and maybe this discussion will encourage someone to seek out proper training.

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Gawd, I can only hope so.

Craig

Jeff White said:

Irrelevant and immaterial. If he intended to use his firearm for self defense he should have been competent enough with it to make it ready under stress without having an ND. I would not have accepted that from one of my soldiers or from one of the police officers I worked with after I retired from the Army. Had his ND went through his door and a window in a house across the street and hit an innocent bystander he would be in serious trouble, so no I'm not about to cut him any slack because he lived in California. California storage laws and stress are not an excuse for an ND.

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I don't excuse the ND, although I do think that the CA storage laws could have been a contributing factor. But legally, morally - it doesn't matter what the laws are in CA for storing a firearm, the homeowner owns that ND.

I do have to ask though, in your years in the military and as a LEO, are you saying that you never saw a ND? I'm not saying you had one yourself, but someone around you or on the same base?

My point was twofold: first, that CA storage laws made it harder for the homeowner to react in a high stress environment. Can you agree that having to do more complex things under stress lessens the probability of getting everything right vs. doing a smaller set of things? The fact that he has to find a magazine and load it just gives him more chances to mess it up - not find the mag, or grab it upside down, or not fully insert the mag, or grab the wrong mag, or ...

And lastly, the storage laws slowed him down in his response. Had the guy at the door just kicked it in and started firing the homeowner could have still been trying to find the mag or to get the mag in.

Jeff White said:

Once again you have to think of where those rounds through the door are likely to end up. The guy lived in a subdivision with houses all around him. Can you predict the trajectory of a bullet after it's fired through a barrier?

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To use your words, this is irrelevant and immaterial to our disagreement. I have already stated that firing through the door was a very bad thing that could have very serious consequences to both the homeowner or a bystander, so there is no disagreement there.

Where we seem to disagree is I think that if you put 10000 people in that situation, more than one of them is going to fire back through the door because it is very hard to be shot at, you yourself are armed, and yet you do not shoot back. My impression from your statements is that you expect that the answer is zero. Personally, I would never fire through an opaque door (for many of the reasons that you and other have given), but I am pragmatic enough to realize that many people would. In fact in our very small sample size here, we have already found two...

Other folks have pointed out the LEO/former military comparison is not relevant, and I agree with them. I'll also note that even for former military the level of training varies wildly. Even if one served as a Marine, the level of training and practice is vastly different between someone that has an infantry MOS vs. someone that has a cook or driver MOS.

Jeff White said:

Getting things as close to 100% right is one of the reasons this forum exists, it's why we have these discussions and it's why we train. We aren't going to get the number of people who get close to 100% right to be the norm if we excuse getting things wrong.

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I agree that it's important to strive for 100%. I did not say that the homeowner did everything right or that he was a role model. And I can pick on him too, as I would never have given any form of media the video from my camera. But I stand by my original point that the group here was too hard on him, and that the homeowner also did a lot of things right. It's _striving_ for 100% correct, not _demanding_ 100% correct. And besides noting the things the homeowner did poorly, you also need to note what he did right. Giving positive feedback on things done right is just as important as giving negative feedback on things done wrong.[/QUOTE]

Wow! What a soup sandwich! Everyone in that house and everyone that lives on that block are all lucky to be alive! I'll leave the legal intricacies to those with more knowledge of it but from a standpoint of tactics, ethics and common damn sense this was an epic fail!

• The guy seemed not to have seen the camera footage at all until the battle had concluded. So he came to answer bashing and screamed obscenities in the middle of the night, in his underwear, unarmed!
• According to his words he started the gunfight by accident! If I understand him correctly he inadvertently put a round through his door while trying to load/charge his pistol (!). Obviously the guy wasn't there to sell him Girl Scout cookies but it wasn't a shooting war til this dim bulb put one through his own front door! Who knows that the BG intended to do with that gun but once he was taking fire it kind of made up his mind for him.
• I've read from attorneys/mods here that firing through a door is legal in many situations. Fair enough! But since he had no idea what was on the other side it seems unwise to conduct a gunfight blind, through the front door! He could have killed the perp but he also could have killed the milkman or paperboy, or the guy that lives across the street. He apparently didn't intend to fire (!) so maybe he can be cut some slack. But WOW!

• He seems to have learned all the wrong lessons! Yeah, pro-gun is great...but is he pro-training? If not training with a good trainer, how about at least learning to load his firearm without putting one through the door? If you're not going to train on a range at least familiarize yourself with the manual-of-arms for your own personal weapons. I see he had an amazing camera system; I bet you a dollar it was capable of being monitored from his cell phone. Maybe take a quick glance out the door before you 1) answer it or 2) shoot through it?

This also shows why you don't CCW with an empty chamber. I'll just rack the slide quick as the rapist tries to knock me down. Yeah, good luck with that. The most dangerous times with your sidearm are when performing administrative actions- loading, unloading, holstering, etc. Each one of those things is like an onside kick in football...it usually goes to the receiving team but sometimes it gets interesting.

The kicker for me is that this guy presumably knew his own house and grounds, so how long did he expect to trade rounds with this guy before the BG took cover? Pretty much within a second of the first shot the BG ducked behind the column, pretty much like anyone that doesn't wanna get shot would. So the "good guy" was pumping throwing lead out into the street!

All in all, a cluster-frack!

Kawamax said:

Where we seem to disagree is I think that if you put 10000 people in that situation, more than one of them is going to fire back through the door because it is very hard to be shot at, you yourself are armed, and yet you do not shoot back

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At his point I think it's critical to note that the homeowner didn't shoot back, he shot first! Hell, if I was standing in front of my door and someone shot through it into my place I'd be tempted to shoot back as welll! But to be honest I think you did a good job of articulating why the bad guy shot back; whether or not he went to the house with the intention of shooting I think the decision was made for him when rounds started flying through the door towards him.

NuShootr said:

You clearly didn't watch the video of the incident. The homeowner had a camera and could see outside his front door. Please watch the video.

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i DID watch the video. but not everyone HAS a camera or cameras around thier home. case in point, I DON'T have any cameras.

so he had a camera and shoots, all the while before that, he was fumbling around trying to load his gun, and the "perp" leaves, and "what if" it was a cop or his neighbor now at the door???

First of all, I also think it generally unwise to shoot through a glass door.

I would also caution that it is unwise to use definitive blanket statements like it WAS or WAS NOT justified. Do we know the state this occurred in? Every state's law is different regarding the use of deadly force.