Anyone see the defensive shooting on Dateline tonight?

[whm1974]

Personally the only issue the jury should have looked at is was the guy justifyed in shooting? What gun(or weapon) he use or what it was loaded with is a non issue.

For that matter wither or not the weapon itself is legal is a seprate issue....

-Bill

 

[lacoochee]

Why are we re-hashing this again? He shot a guy in the woods, a guy who never actually struck him, he says he was scared of the dogs but was not bitten nor did he shoot any of them. He spent way to long talking to the police. These reasons are why he was convicted, the rest is just fluff.

Oh and for the guy in Florida who said he is glad he lives here, ditto.

 

[DougW]

I don't watch Dateline, 20/20, or 60 Minutes. I don't read Newsweek or Time, the New York Times, the LA Times, the Boston Globe, or the Dallas Morning News. I refuse to listen to the same old song and dance replayed year after year, to NO gain for anyone. Why subject yourself to this type of abuse? Ignoring this bilge will diminish it's relevancy to preaching to the choir.

I'm sorry, rant off.

I personally prefer a .357 Magnum for trail/back packing defense. (Trying to keep my post gun related.)

 

[ptmmatssc]

Saw some comments made by hikers of that particular trail and had to wonder what a few were thinking.

Although I haven't and pray I'm never in the situation I think it's different with a human coming at you. I hold human life more important than a dogs life and I wouldn't be aiming for the chest... well unless you are so close and you know it's your only shot. Aiming for running feet may be the right thing to do but if we're talking it's coming at you and it's only ten feet away and perhaps it's telling you it's going to kill you... then I'd shoot to kill.

So that brings me to guns. The hiker makes a possibly flawed assessment of his risk, and the dog owner makes a possibly flawed judgment of the hiker's response to the dogs. There is some possibility of a bad outcome, but the likelihood and severity increase when guns are involved, even more so once shots have been fired. What did the hiker do before the first shot? Hopefully using a gun was not his initial defensive action. Why would the other guy do anything that could possibly be interpreted as threatening toward someone who had already drawn and fired a gun? They would both have been better off if this confrontation involved older technology. I know there are some decent folks on this forum who carry guns on the trail, and responsible gun owners are unlikely to get into such situations, but the less responsible people are out there. Unarmed, I'm more likely to back down from a threat, more likely to survive, and more likely to avoid legal costs. Of course, a sufficiently bad person could kill me, but the odds of that seem pretty low.

emphasis mine


Then there was this guy

Yeah I saw the same show. It was a real eye opener as to how little training or information the public has about firearms.

Some of the comments made by the jurors on that show were so off the mark that it’s not a surprise that he was convicted.

Most notable was the comment that one juror made about the bullets used. Apparently Fish used Hydroshock cartridges. If I remember correctly the juror was just taken back by how horrible these bullets were as in they might actually kill something if fired.

Last time I checked the vast majority of the cartridges manufactured are designed to kill. That’s the purpose of the tool. It’s not nice, it’s not pleasant to think about, but it’s exactly what the tool in question was designed to do.

If your intentions are to harm but not kill, then a firearm is not a good choice. Shooting a target once and even in an extremity can still kill that target. Tasers or sprays are also not a good choice seeing how many people could have bad reactions to those weapons. Less than lethal does not mean non-lethal.

But somehow the prosecutor was able to convince the jury (or at least this juror) that these bullets were worse and since he was using bullets designed to kill, then the defendant must be guilty of murder.

Something I was also surprised about, that never came up, was the “police defense” issue. If you choose to carry, and someone aggressively advances on you, you basically have no choice but to draw and possibly shoot them if they do not stop advancing.

Why? Because if the attacker reaches you and intends to harm you, they can and probably will take your firearm and use it against you.

When you carry, this is your burden. Your “safety bubble” is greatly extended. But with the average knowledge of the general public with respect to firearm training/safety/info, I guess this kind of argument would fall on deaf ears.