"Shoot to kill" misconception

[Trebor]

I'm sorry if that upsets folks who have grown up with the belief that subjective intent determines whether or not a self defense shooting is justified.

I never said that "subjective intent determines whether or not a self defense shooting is justified." I don't know that anyone else here did either. You do me a disservice if you try to caterogize my argument as such.

If you really think that WE BELIEVE that "subjective intent" is what determines whether a self defense shooting is justified, then you don't understand our position. We must not be speaking the same language.

 

[AndyC]

IIRC, I first read about this in a Mas Ayoob column years ago - late 80's, early 90's.

Apparently the term "shoot to stop" was in response to prosecutors who were asking defendants (who were claiming self-defence) if they "shot to kill" in hopes of showing a jury that the shooter was obviously bloodthirsty and should be jailed.

I've used the term "shoot to stop" since then as it makes logical sense to me. Sure, using a firearm is considered lethal force, but my take on that is that it's not always lethal and I really do just want the attack stopped. If the perp dies as a result of a COM bullet, that's unfortunate but it's the choice he made.

I think Mas also mentioned something else in the same article, or perhaps another - don't use the word "sorry" as in "I'm sorry the criminal died" - because being sorry implies that you know you've done wrong. "Sad" is a more accurate term - "I'm sad he died". I also recall that Mas mentioned that one feller was asked if he was sorry and he went overboard and said "Sorry? I'm not sorry that SOB is dead!" - and he went to jail, IIRC.

At the end of the day, this is about lawyers, prosecutors, etc - they're master with words and the most innocent word can be twisted to show an evil intent you never had. Remember Bill Clinton, twisting like a snake over the issue of whether oral sex was sexual intercourse? Now that's a typical lawyer!

 

[Cosmoline]

YOU may be trying to kill him, but that doesn't mean I am.

You get your firearm
You chamber a round
You aim the firearm at the man
You fire a supersonic projectile at the point on the man's body most likely to contain a vital organ
And then you tell me you weren't trying to kill him?



I don't know if this came from Mas or not. If he comes on here we can debate the point and I have no doubt he'll agree with me. The "shoot to stop" mantra is not supposed to be anything more than an easy way for non-lawyers to get their head around the basic principle that force must match force and not exceed force. It has morphed into a strange notion that you can't intend to kill a man when you fire a bullet into him in self defense. I don't think Mas would ever support this notion.

To recap. The central question in the justification of self defense is whether or not you used deadly force in the objectively reasonable belief that you or a third party faced the unjustified and imminent threat of deadly force. Note those key concepts. IMMINENT and UNJUSTIFIED. So you can't ordinarily kill an LEO who's about to shoot a fleeing suspect. And you can't kill a man after he no longer poses an imminent threat. And you can't use deadly force at all unless you're facing deadly force (with some exceptions we're not addressing here). Your PERSONAL INTENT has nothing to do with it. You might like the guy or hate him. You might want him to die or want the bullets to bounce off him. The law will infer your intent to use lethal force from your actions.

 

[AndyC]

Same reason we don't put arsenic in our carry-loads - no.

 

[asiparks]

I certainly wasn't putting any effort into being insulting, but "note" away.

"As I've pointed out over and over and over and now OVER again, THREAT MUST MATCH THREAT. So once the target is no longer presenting an imminent threat of deadly force, you are no longer justified in using deadly force. Your personal intent is not the issue."

maybe it's your tone but that seems at odds with:

"Yes, I suspect the "shoot to stop" mantra was cooked up to try to convey the notion that you can't keep shooting after the threat is gone. But it's taken on a life of its own and a lot of folks have decided it means you must not "intend to kill" when you use lethal force. This is of course nonsense."

It's not a fanciful "notion" that was "cooked up" it's the principal that seperates justifiable homicide from homicide.
So as an attorney, you are either incapable of clearly articulating what you mean, or your interpretation of the law is at best dubious, at worst liable to do harm. Your references to blowing holes in men's chests is a bit off, too.

If I shoot it is to stop. Whether or not the perp is dead matters not one jot to me as long as he has neither the ability or opportunity to carry out his threat
"Note" yourself giddy.

 

[M2 Carbine]

Cosmoline,
"shoot to stop" is so ingrained in Texas law that it's even a question on the Texas CHL written test, which is under the control of the DPS (TX state troopers) and is emphasized in the CHL class.

You say, "THREAT MUST MATCH THREAT". Not necessarily true.
Deadly force can be used to protect property in Texas. For instance shooting a car thief even though you aren't physically in any danger.

So the notion that a person can only use deadly force if they are in grave danger of being killed is not a universal notion.

"THREAT MUST MATCH THREAT". No again.
For instance a person can use deadly force to stop an aggravated kidnapping of a stranger or to stop (that Stop word again ) deadly force against a stranger. In such cases you may only be in little danger or none at all.
(of course you the shooter would have to be knowledgeable of the facts somehow).

State laws are different and in Texas Stop means Stop.
Deadly force is used to Stop, if they die it just wasn't their day.

 

[rbernie]

This isn't really open to debate. My position is the correct one.

LOL. You go, Cosmo.... Wait until you get old enough to find out (by slowly watching the majority of your youthful confidences proven false due to unforseen data points) that the first line in my sig really is true...

Deadly force" means force that is intended or known by the actor to cause, or in the manner of its use or intended use is capable of causing, death or serious bodily injury.

No. WRONG. You do not understand how to read the code. It defines deadly force TO INCLUDE BOTH AND EITHER.

I see lots of 'or' in the sentence and not a single 'and'. And while I may be more schooled in English than law, I have to believe that the use of the word 'or' between the two definitions of deadly force is not an error. After all, you cannot have serious bodily injury AND death - they are mutually incompatible states. So why would the Texas State Legislature create a lower bar for the definition of 'deadly force' if both standards were synonymous and indistinguishable?

Common sense would argue that they did this to allow an act that did NOT result in the death of an individual to be classified as 'deadly force'. What does that mean to our intrepid CHL holder? My read on this (as a layperson) is that either defintion of deadly force can be met in kind - by either definition of deadly force. HOWEVER, if the threat was of 'serious bodily injury' and was answered by 'death', conventional wisdom would hold that a zealous prosecutor and/or civil attorney can use the apparent disparity of force to no good end relative to our poor CHLer. And while our intrepid CHLer may be exonerated in the end based upon the facts of the law, he's probably just spent $75,000 in legal fees doing so.

This is why I've been led to believe that STATING the intent and desire to 'shoot to kill' is tactically unsound. Of course, if you have case law that establishes your position as an ironclad civil and/or criminal protection from such prosecutorial misconduct, I'm sure the group could all benefit from that.

I'm sorry if that upsets folks who have grown up with the belief that subjective intent determines whether or not a self defense shooting is justified.

I'm not sure that this is actually the case, but I do believe that quite few folks have tried to make the point that legal justification and criminal and legal prosecution are dichotomous concepts.

 

[JohnKSa]

Ok, you be the prosecutor, I'll be the defendant.

And then you tell me you weren't trying to kill him?

ME: Exactly.

ME: Self-Defense experts say the best way to use a gun to stop a person from attacking is to aim a loaded gun at the attacker's chest and shoot until he stops attacking. Since he left me no other option, that is exactly what I did.

ME: And I can prove I wasn't trying to kill him. As soon as he stopped attacking, I:

1. Stopped shooting him.

2. Summoned medical experts to care for him.

The law will infer your intent to use lethal force from your actions.

ME: Of course it will--BUT intending to use lethal force is not identical to trying to kill someone. I certainly meant to shoot my attacker in the chest. But his death is a consequence of his regrettable decision to attack me--not a result of my desire to end his life since I never had any such desire.

 

[Cosmoline]

The notion that you must stop using lethal force when the theat is gone or sufficiently reduced is not absurd. But the notion that you can't intend to kill a man when you do shoot him in self defense IS absurd.

So "shoot to stop" is a way of understanding that you can't keep using lethal force after the imminent threat is gone. But as this thread reveals it's NOT a good way of understanding the mens rea of self defense shooting.

Let me put it in a hypothetical. Jack is walking in the park at night and Tom stops him to ask for the time. Tom pulls a revolver out of his pocket and threatens to kill Jack. In response, Jack draws and fires his own handgun, aiming for Tom's chest. Tom dies instantly and is not able to get a shot off at Jack. Jack's legal intent when he fired at Tom's chest was to use lethal force. It was not merely to "stop" Tom, but to stop him by trying to kill him or cause so much physical trauma he could no longer pose an imminent deadly threat. GOOD SHOOTING

Let's change the hypo so that Jack draws and blocks Tom's arm. Tom gets a shot off and is trying to bring his revolver around to shoot Jack as they grapple. In the mean time Jack gets his firearm into position directly under Tom's chin, pointing at his brain stem through the bottom of his mouth. Jack fires, killing Tom instantly. In that case the force was almost guaranteed to be completely lethal and kill him, not merely "stop" him. But it's still a good shooting even though Jack could have adjusted his aim to blow part of Jack's jaw and face off and probably not kill him.

Same situation, if Tom drops his revolver and gives up, Jack cannot follow through and shoot him in the head because the conditions for the justification are gone. There is no longer an imminent threat of lethal force.

 

[JohnKSa]

Jack's legal intent when he fired at Tom's chest was to use lethal force. It was not merely to "stop" Tom, but to stop him by trying to kill him or cause so much physical trauma he could no longer pose an imminent deadly threat.

And there we have it in your own words.

STOP = "cause so much physical trauma he could no longer pose an imminent deadly threat"

That's EXACTLY what I want.

 

[M2 Carbine]

"Let me put it in a hypothetical. Jack is walking in the park at night and Tom stops him to ask for the time. Tom pulls a revolver out of his pocket and threatens to kill Jack. In response, Jack draws and fires his own handgun, aiming for Tom's chest. Tom dies instantly and is not able to get a shot off at Jack. Jack's legal intent when he fired at Tom's chest was to use lethal force. It was not merely to "stop" Tom, but to stop him by trying to kill him or cause so much physical trauma he could no longer pose an imminent deadly threat. GOOD SHOOTING"
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Unless you are the Man that walks on water you have absolutely no way to know that Jack's intent was to kill and not stop.

Personally if I shot Tom it WOULD NOT BE TO KILL HIM but to STOP him. I could care less whether he died or not.

Shooting Tom was the only way to stop him but shooting him WAS NOT necessarily to kill him. Only to stop him.

You keep trying to read intent in the action that's not necessarily there.

 

[Cosmoline]

So your goal is to cause him trauma without killing him? Shooting him in the chest is not a good way of accomplishing that end.

Let me ask this, since it may clarify matters. Do you believe that if I shoot a man in the chest with the intent of killing him, and the man was at that moment presenting me with an imminent and unjustified threat of lethal force, is my defense legitimate?

Personally if I shot Tom it WOULD NOT BE TO KILL HIM but to STOP him. I could care less whether he died or not.

It DOES NOT MATTER. As you rightly point out, we'll never know. Which is why you are deemed to have intended the natural consequences of your actions. It's not even something you will be allowed to dispute. Nor will you have to dispute it to preserve your justification defense. Your personal intent to stop or kill or cause him to become a monkey is irrelevant. Your legal intent was to use lethal force on him. Period. The question is whether it was justified, not whether your heart was hard at the time of the shooting.

 

[JohnKSa]

So your goal is to cause him trauma without killing him?

I fully realize that causing this level of trauma may result in his death. That's not what I want, but I accept it.

Do you believe that if I shoot a man in the chest with the intent of killing him, and the man was at that moment presenting me with an imminent and unjustified threat of lethal force, is my defense legitimate?

As long as your ACTIONS are justified by the law AND you keep quiet, then your INTENT is moot.

If you start saying you wanting to kill someone, it's way too easy for people to get the idea that you were either looking for an excuse to have a new experience, or were angry at the guy and wanted to get back at him for attacking you.

Your mindset at the time of the attack is important because most deadly force statutes require that you see no other reasonable option. When you start telling people that you meant to kill him, then suddenly, the question becomes--Did you kill him because you wanted to or because there was no other option?

But that's something for you to worry about. I don't really need to bother with that level of analysis since my intent wouldn't be to kill the attacker, but only to "cause so much physical trauma he could no longer pose an imminent deadly threat."

 

[NineseveN]

I see Cosmoline's point, and in legal terms, I think his point is gonna come down on the side of what really happens. You can say what your intent was, but it doesn't matter if your actions are legally codified or defined with a certain intent.

If I am having sex with a girl, and she, at any point says 'no' or protests, I cannot simply claim that I did not intend to rape her and get off scott free; the legal decision will be based on whether or not I ceased the action of having sexual intercourse when the protest was made regardless of whether or not I intended to rape her or not (this does not take into account extenuating circumstances, but I would submit that they are rare in such incidents).

In this case, the action defines intent since intent cannot be established by any other means. No lawyer, judge or jury can get inside of your mind to hear what you were thinking or intending to do at a specific moment, thus intent must be established either by actions at the time of the incident (as in not stopping the act of sexual penetration or conduct at the time of the protest) or at some point before it such as something you said, did or communicated by action or word (sans a confession of what your intent was that would render a guilty plea). If a statement of your own intent was enough, there would not need to be any trial in the first place.

I understand why "shoot to stop" was standardized some time ago, and it makes sense on the surface but I do not think that such a thing in and of itself is going to sway your chances for conviction or indictment one way or the other.

IANAL by the way, I don’t even play one on TV.

 

[JohnKSa]

No lawyer, judge or jury can get inside of your mind to hear what you were thinking or intending to do at a specific moment

Exactly why it is important that you, as the defendant, not provide them with fuel for speculation when you already have a clear legal justification for your actions.

Intent is a legal principle, and it can definitely change the outcome of a trial if it can be established.

Assuming that your actions fall clearly within the law, then it would be foolish to make comments about wanting or intending to kill the attacker. It can definitely hurt you and it certainly can't help your case. Even if you aren't prosecuted criminally (or are acquitted), statements like that will haunt you in the event of civil prosecution.

 

[PlayboyPenguin]

I agree with Cos that shooting someone is definately "deadly force" by definition of law. As far as the term you want to put on it "shoot to kill" or "shoot to stop", that is just a legal game of defusing liability.

The real world reality of it is that if someone is posing enough of a threat to you or a loved one for you to pull that trigger you had better be okay with shooting to kill. Nothing else would make sense. You have to be completely willing to take another life to protect your own or you should not bother firing.

All the rest of this debate is just semantics. If you ever find yourself in court it is good to use the right term but in real life you have to deal with the fact that shooting someone is very likely to kill them. If you are not okay with this then get yourself a stun gun or some mace and hope for the best.

This all said, once again, the point of this thread was to say how we should stress that when we brandish our weapon we are hoping that it will not need to be fired at all. That is the true way to convey that we are not bloodthirsty. I do believe that most handgun defense never involves firing the weapon and I feel this is not stressed enough.

 

[Cosmoline]

Assuming that your actions fall clearly within the law, then it would be foolish to make comments about wanting or intending to kill the attacker. It can definitely hurt you and it certainly can't help your case. Even if you aren't prosecuted criminally (or are acquitted), statements like that will haunt you in the event of civil prosecution.

ANY statement can potentially come back to haunt you. I think it's a big mistake to assume that by speaking in terms of "stopping" you are shielding yourself from liability later on. The bottom line is, get a lawyer to do your talking for you. Among other things, the lawyer's spin on the facts can't really be used against you later on as statements against interest.

 

[ctdonath]

Shoot to stop. When he stops attacking you, you stop shooting.

If he stopped attacking because he's dead, acceptable given the situation.

The problem with "shoot to kill" is that it sets up a very simple directive which your mind will tend to act on. If he's still breathing - but has stopped attacking you - your mind may very well decide that the directive is not fulfilled, and proceed to fulfill it when inappropriate. It also blocks out other effective acts which are not lethal.

Remember, your mind will go to a very simple, very basic state when in a fast-moving life-or-death situation. You will revert to trained basics, and simple settled goals. Make sure those basics & goals are where you really want to go.

Yes, Cosmo, blowing a hole in his chest will kill him. That is coincidental to the goal of stopping the attack RIGHT NOW. If I have to kill him to stop him, so be it. If something else will stop him without killing him, that is OK too, and I don't want to, in the automatic response of the moment, pass up those options just because they don't fulfill the "shoot to kill" directive.

I just want him to stop. That's the goal. Killing to achieve that goal is an option, but not a requirement.

 

[Igloodude]

If a door-to-door evangelist knocks on my door, I open the door, tell them I'm not even remotely interested and don't knock on my door ever again, and I close the door. My intent is to end their occupation of my porch as quickly as possible. It will very probably annoy them. In fact, the annoyance may even hasten their exit from my front porch. Am I sad that they're annoyed? Yes. Am I sorry that they're annoyed? No.

Such is as I see it with shooting to stop, and the probability of the target dying. I want instantaneous stopping, but since there's no effective reliable way to cause that without causing death too, I'll err on the side of causing their death rather than letting them causing mine.

 

[Cosmoline]

If something else will stop him without killing him, that is OK too.... Killing to achieve that goal is an option, but not a requirement.

Please try to understand. This is where you get into some VERY dangerous ground. If non-lethal force would suffice to stop him, then chances are you're not justified in using lethal force. If killing is not required, then lethal force is not justified.

 

[DragonFire]

The real world reality of it is that if someone is posing enough of a threat to you or a loved one for you to pull that trigger you had better be okay with shooting to kill. Nothing else would make sense. You have to be completely willing to take another life to protect your own or you should not bother firing.

All the rest of this debate is just semantics.

No one is saying that they aren't WILLING to kill.

And you're partially right. If the attacker dies, from his view point it is semantics whether my intent was to kill him or not.

I know several people who have survived gunshots. So while death may be a possible result, it is not the only result, nor the most likely. The FBI learned from the Miami shoot-out that even a fatal wound does not always stop the threat in time to prevent more injuries.

So, my goal is to cause as much bodily harm as I can it the shortest amount of time. That is my goal, because my training and experience has shown that to do anything else makes it more likely that I (or those I'm trying to protect) will suffer harm.

The unlikely-ness of an attacker dying from gunshot wounds is the reason why we're trained to put multiple shots on target. It is the unlikely-ness of hitting our targets (regardless of our intent) during a life-threatening moment, that causes us to train to aim at the largest target, the COM.


I think the rape example is not really correct. If you did not stop, it may not change the legal results of your actions, but those results do not change your intent.

A better example would be: only after having sex with a female do you discover she's under age for consent. Did you commit rape? yes. But that fact that you committed rape does not change your intent. Nor does your intent change the legality of what you did.


Cosmo: You seem to keep interchanging intent with justification. You want people to "admit" that they really were trying to kill the attacker by saying it doesn't affect the justification for the actions. Why don't you believe any of us when we say that killing is our intent? You disregard everyone's reasonings, and continue to come back to the single point that since it's possible to kill someone with our actions it must be our intent.

I haven't read a single thing that would prove that other than you assertion that you say so.

 

[Cosmoline]

So while death may be a possible result, it is not the only result, nor the most likely.

So what? This has nothing to do with the question of whether or not it is lethal force, and nothing to do with whether or not lethal force was justified. As I tried to point out with my hypos, the justification is the same whether or not death is POSSIBLE or death is CERTAIN.

You are confusing PERSONAL intent with LEGAL intent. I think this may be part of our failure to communicate. To me, the word "intent" is a legal term. So claiming you didn't really intend to kill when you shot a man is laughable. The intent is presumed from your actions. To you, apparently, "intent" is what you are personally thinking when you pull the trigger, and what your personal desires are for the target. In the context of self defense shootings, your PERSONAL INTENT has no bearing. What matters is your LEGAL intent, and that was clearly to use lethal force. Whether that force was going to be 100% lethal or 40% lethal isn't important.

If you were correct, then self defense shootings would only be justified when there was still a small chance your target would survive. This is a very dangerous misinterpretation of the code and the "shoot to stop" mantra.

 

[Igloodude]

Legally, my intent is to use lethal force. I thought this was obvious - #1, I'm pulling the trigger, and #2 I understand that guns are lethal weapons.

 

[Cosmoline]

And that's all that matters as far as the justification is concerned.

 

[AndyC]

So why shouldn't you put, say, arsenic or some other substance of toxic quantities into your carry-rounds? If your intent is to kill, surely it wouldn't be a problem to justify poisoned bullets to a jury?

I'm not being sarcastic - I really want to find out the difference, if there's one.