Shoot to kill or to stop?

My response in a lethal force encounter is to...

  • shoot to kill.

    Votes: 126 28.3%

  • shoot to stop.

    Votes: 319 71.7%
  • Total voters
    445
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I would have to vote for "shoot to stop". My biggest fear for this sort of situation is the legal nightmare *after*. I would much rather be able to say, with truth, that I used force to neutralize a threat, than to say that my intent was to kill. I expect a judge and jury would be more sympathetic to such an argument, also.
 
What part of "lethal force" are we or am I missing here in this thread? If someone is intending to take my or my families life I am shooting to kill to neutralize that threat in the least amount of time possible. JMO

This is taken from Florida's CCW website.

Q. When can I use my handgun to protect myself?

A. Florida law justifies use of deadly force when you are:

Trying to protect yourself or another person from death or serious bodily harm;
Trying to prevent a forcible felony, such as rape, robbery, burglary or kidnapping.
 
Hopefully none of us will be put into that situation. Being a veteran in a combat zone, having to shot somebody isn't a nice thing but it is something I could do easily if my family was in danger.

Legally some things have changed to help homeowners. In ky you don't have the duty to retreat. You don't have to try to go out the back door if they come in the front door. If you have to defend yourself then you will be better off to kill the person. If you didn't you would probably end up in civil court also paying for his doctor bills and any pain and suffering plus the threat of them coming back for revenge which still could be an issue from their family members.

You could make sure you have the right gun that will make the decision for you. If somebody broke in and came down my hallway they would get a very hot 3" 12 gauge with 4 shot,45-70 or a 30-30 in the chest. All of which would probably have the same outcome.

Lets just hope we don't have to deal with this.
 
I'll say it again, you shoot to remain alive. It is not about what you are going to do to an assailant, it's about what you are going to prevent an assailant from doing to you. Anything else makes you the aggressor. Aim center of mass, and leave dying up to the assailant!
 
to stop of course,

killing doesn't have any kind of time-line associated with it.... Shooting to kill could be a femoral artery shot or a double lung shot... in which case the aggressor will still have time enough to cause harm, but wont be lasting a real long time without medical attention.

then again shooting to stop may involve way more shots than is necesary to kill...
 
Those that said "shoot to live" are wise, IMHO. That, of course means shooting to stop the threat...

Sometimes, folks that are shot and stopped, live. Sometimes, folks that didn't really stop in a manner that we would all consider satisfactory die after the fact (an argument for both proper ammo and placement).

Cessation of immediate threat to innocents is all that I think I'd be concerned with in the horrible moment, but then, I'm no expert on the subject. Just an opinion.
-MM
 
All my training has been LE and military. You always shoot to stop the threat. It used to be you would double tap the BG but the last time I went to the range we we had a new protocol. You still double tap but you immediately follow it up with a head shot. That should put the BG down while you look around and make sure the world is a safe place. If the BG is still in the fight, you shoot again to try and stop the threat. But you never shoot to kill. If you say that to the police, the DA will hang you out to dry. For those whose policy is to empty their weapon into the BG, that also looks bad because you obviously did not have much self control. Besides, you don't want to find out the BG has some good friends with him who now want to play, and you're standing there with an empty gun.
 
The most efficient manner of stopping an attacker also happens to be the most efficient way to kill someone. Death is a byproduct of an attempt to stop an attacker. "Shooting to kill" would be dropping a few rounds in them afterwards.

If there were an easy to hit spot that produced an instant, reliable stop... wouldn't you shoot it? What if it never killed anyone? Shooting anything else would be stupid. Shooting to kill, in such a scenario, would be foolhardy and bloodthirsty. A vote for Shooting to Stop here.
 
Shooting to stop is planning on getting good hits which will stop him from doing what he is doing. If he dies as a result, so be it. If he doesn't, and then you go over to him while he's lying on the floor helpless and cap him again, THAT is shooting to kill. Shooting to stop is correct. Shooting to kill, in legalese, means there are other motivations and intents than simply getting the bad guy to stop whatever he is doing.
 
You know, I've been over and over this in threads for years now. There is an enormous amount of misinformation and confusion spread by firearms instructors who never went to law school. I think the bottom line is this, if confronted with IMMINENT and UNLAWFUL DEADLY FORCE:

JUST SHOOT

and leave the rhetorical bravo sierra to the lawyers. You can think of it as shooting to stop if you want, I don't care. Just make sure you only shoot so long as confronted with imminent deadly peril and that you stop shooting the moment the threat reduces or ceases. And make sure you don't yammer to the cops about your inner feelings on the subject, whether you wanted to kill him or were "just shooting to stop" him. Keep your lips together and your lawyer's number handy.
 
Intent in courts is a funny thing. If you shoot the bad guy in the stomach and the threat stops and in court you say "Well I didn't want to kill him so my intent was to injure him until he stopped." But it turned out your shot hit him in the spine. So it gets all spun around until they're trying to say it was your intent to shoot his spine, put him in a wheelchair and ruin the rest of his now disabled life.

So no matter what is going on in your brain, when your mouth opens you "Shoot because you were fearful of your life." If you end up with headshots, twelve in the chest, or just one in the buttocks, you shot because you thought he was going to hurt or kill you. Other than that, you shouldn't say much.

Hopefully it won't even go to trial, and if it does, you don't have to speak, your lawyer can present your case. You were frightened, you believed he was going to harm you/others, so you fired your weapon at him until you felt safe.

If someone shoots a badguy 15 times, oh well he was a bad guy. As long as the evidence doesn't shot you shot him, stood over him, and shot him 12 more times, then whatever. I do recommend keeping a few in the mag in case of a bad friend nearby!

This whole discussion reminds me of Albert Camus' The Stranger. A novella where at one point a character shoots another man after he was cut by a knife. The man dies and then the Stranger shoots him 4 more times. At trial there is a huge deal made about the 1 + 4 shots meaning he is a horrible and unrepentant person as the first shot was at least somewhat understandable, but the other 4, fired after delay, make him a criminal. A pretty good book and that's not the end, so it hasn't been spoiled for you.
 
"Intent" in this context can mean many different things. It's a tricky legal concept. But the good news is you don't really need to worry about it. So don't. Worry about whether you are facing an imminent and unlawful threat of deadly force. If you are, fight for your life. If the threat ceases, your attack should also cease. Very easy to understand.
 
I am a bit dismayed by the number of "shoot to kill" responses

am intrigued that some here believe that they understand the reality of using deadly force, but in the next breath, demonstrate that they have no grasp of the reality of the aftermath of using deadly force.

I'd have to bet those of you in the "shoot to kill" camp have never been employed in a field where you were authorized to use deadly force, nor have ever had any formal training in use of force/deadly force doctrine. And if you're a civilian, and still believe in "shoot to kill," well, good luck with that.
Click to expand...

Well said. These are not just semantics, there are very real differences. Answer this question. Can a threat ever be stopped without killing the person threatening? The answer, of course, is yes. If you intend to kill, and you keep shooting no matter what, even when there is no longer a threat, you may in fact be committing murder. Think about it.

I cannot believe this is even a debate. :uhoh::confused:

Shooter429
 
If you draw your weapon and fire you are using deadly force.

It only matters to the prosecutor what you say, stop or kill.

It is your actions - deadly force.

Center mass until threat stops or the entry, exit, and hole in the ground line up.

Anygun
 
It always depends on situation.
However, normally, I don't want to shoot anyone. If i am forced to shoot, it means my or another being's life is in danger. Stopping the person i am shooting might not be enough in most of cases. Shooting a person in a knee will not stop him/her from shooting back at me or hurting anyone else. Only thing that will stop is if person is no longer breathing. But like i said before, depends on situation. If I know i can avoid killing someone with out putting anyone else in danger, I will. However i have to KNOW it. If I THINK that i can i will never risk it. Plus chest makes for a harder target to miss then say leg is...

Whoever said that everyone is created equal is full if it. I certainly value life of a decent human being much more then one of scum. That been said, I hope i won't ever have to make this decision.
 
if you shoot a person enough to stop them, realistically, they're probably dead or gravely wounded. Not always, but quite frequently.

If someone is alive enough to breathe and blink an eye, they're alive enough to point and click with their own gun, if they have one. So you can't ever consider an armed assailant neutralized unless they are either dead or totally disarmed.

I would never want to kill a person, in principle. But I would also never shoot a person with the expectation that I was just going to rough them up a bit, from a comfortable distance. That's not how it's done.
 
Not trying to justify the killing of people that are not an imminent threat at all, but to show how sometimes, in certain (rare) cases, it could be justified, yet without an imminent threat: someones past record, and to halt it so it would not be a record of the future. Here is a story to make it more clear: (just bear with it, it is only for illustrative purposes only...)

Say you are carrying in a small park of a small town with a few people here and there, and you see bin laden (positive identification, you know it is him) peacefully sitting under a tree eating an apple, no one else right around him. He would not be doing anything to you, so no imminent threat to your life. And you see no others that would seem to be with him anywhere around. I know, bad example, there would be others around and would make it such, but that isn't my point. Just an exception to the rule of only shooting if there is a imminent threat of life - in this case, it would be a past record, and a presumed 'forerecord' rather than being an imminent threat. (Not to mention the bounty on his head.)
 
Last time I checked firearms don't shoot daisies out the barrel nor do they have a 'stun' threshold feature. It seems to me that a lot of the 'shoot to stop' crowd love to nitpick the 'shoot to kill' people over how that makes it murder since it implies malicously standing over a guy and emptying a mag on him. That's a bunch of doo-doo. If you have to bring a gun into a situation and pull the trigger, the firearm is now lethal. I am simply not going to buy the argument that "I was simply trying to stop him" when bringing out something with lethal force. Guns are used as tools primarily to kill, but stopping can also get the job done too. You are not 'shooting to stop' unless you are aiming for the limbs and attempting to miss major arteries. A better phrase for this thread would be aim (or shooting) to kill [initially], but stopping is enough.
 
A Good Scenario to Imagine.

You are in a local mall/store.

A large shady looking guy walks in and starts methodically shooting people at random.
You duck behind some cover and ready your Firearm.
The BG is moving your way, You peak out and put 2 (Hollow Point) rounds Center Mass.
The BG shakes it off, and keeps advancing.

Your Reaction = ?

Also to the "Shoot to Wound" People, Ever seen someone on LSD?
There is only one way to safely stop the threat that someone on that poses, and it's not a leg or arm shot.
 
Shooting to stop is not shooting to wound. Using a firearm is LETHAL FORCE. That means if the BG dies as a result of you shooting him, that is expected. But if he is incapacitated and does not die, then you have still accomplished what you set out to do; prevent his further action. Your intention should be using a firearm to stop; if he dies as a result, so what? If you tell a police officer or a prosecutor or a jury that you "shot to kill" you are likely going to lose your self defense case in court.
 
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