Shoot to wound legality?

[pax]

Buncha issues all mixed up together here.

Legally, shooting someone is lethal force. It doesn't matter if you shoot at their heart, their eyeball, or their left big toe -- you've still used lethal force and you will need to be able to justify using it.

If you need to shoot someone, after realizing you're going to have to shoot, probably the first question you'll ask yourself is, "Where do I aim?" The most often given answer is that you should aim at the center of the biggest part of the bad guy you can see. That's generally his chest, sometimes his pelvis, and sometimes the center of his noggin. Or maybe all you can see is his hand and his gun. If so, you could shoot for the center of that and let the newsies go on and on about how you "shot the gun out of his hand." Whatever it takes.

When you aim, you might prefer to only wound the guy, for whatever reason, or you might prefer that he never draws another breath. That's a vital question when you're aiming the gun, but legally it doesn't matter a bit. By shooting him, you are using deadly force: that degree of force a reasonable and prudent person would consider likely to cause death or grave bodily harm. Shooting someone, anywhere on their body, is likely to kill them or cripple them, and every reasonable person knows this.

The police will show up and ask you why you shot the guy. "I shot to save my own life" is a great answer (yeah, yeah, you've got your lawyer involved but sooner or later you're going to have to answer that question even if you don't do it at the scene. Don't get sidetracked here!). "I shot to stop what he was doing" is another good answer. Both explain why you used deadly force.

If you answer, "I shot to kill him," or "I shot to wound him," you haven't said anything except, "I used deadly force because I used deadly force." Deadly force, after all, is by definition an attempt to maim or kill another person. They already know you did that!

So this kind of non-answer not only sounds bloodthirsty, it also exasperates people who are trying to get the whole story. They want to know why you shot the guy. They aren't asking where you aimed. They want to know what motivated you to shoot him at all. If the only answer you have is that you were trying to use deadly force, you have not answered the question they were asking. All you've done is tick them off and make yourself look like a bloodthirsty fool.

pax

 

[Glock 31]

Crack shot

Well, in the heat of the moment, if your good enough to hit a target that will probably be moving in the toe, more power to you. Me, one to the chest is good enough for me.

 

[XavierBreath]

I don't want this guy to get in a shooting and tell the jury "Let me off because I spared his life; I was only shooting to wound."

First, realize there are some people who you will never convince of anything. If you tell them the sky is blue, they will argue it's just a reflection from the ocean.

What you are stating, Foxy, is sound thinking.

FWIW I'll toss in my argument. Always shoot to stop the threat. Not to kill, not to wound, but to remove the threat. Stopping the threat is the goal. It is a nonjudgemental response that refocuses the mode of legal thinking on the fact that you were defending against an attack.

When you employ lethal force, the results are never certain If anyone believes they can control whether someone lives or dies, they should spend just one night in the CCU of a hospital. If you shoot to stop a threat, the threat may not stop. If you shoot to kill, they may not die...
If you shoot to WOUND, they may DIE. If you state you shot to wound, and they die from the injuries two days later..........guess what........ you are open for a negligent homicide charge if the cards don't land right. If you stated you shot to stop the threat, then your butt is a lot less exposed.

Don't argue with rocks. They will still be rocks, and you will become frustrated. My two pesos.

 

[BIGJACK]

It is my understanding that one must prove that every effort was made to avoid the shooting AFTER it was determined that ones own life was at stake. In other words you could not run, close the door or etc. Other wise you are accused of some degree of homocide. Unless the conferntation were in ones enclosed personal property such as a house and in some cases a vehicle. In other words it is risky to defend your self until after you have been killed.

 

[Eghad]

If deadly force, life threatening assualt with a weapon occurs or any other incedent that requires the use of deadly force occurs.

"I was in fear for my life"

"I was in fear for X's life"

thats my story and im stickin to it.......

 

[AndrewTB]

Shooting to wound is a very bad practice.

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

There is the tendency for gun folks to speak in yes, no - 0,1 black/white terms on the Internet.

More useful is really understand what it means to shoot to stop and that one has to realize that shooting a firearm into someone is the use of a lethal instrument that may well have a lethal result.

Given that, can one conceive of a circumstance, like the diabetic described where one might try to wound the person? - well, you can.

Could you justify a shoot to wound placement to the police rather than a deliberately placed round in a more lethal place, you probably could.

It's not hard to come up with a scenario. A relative who flees suicidal is waving a knife. One really doesn't want to kill such relative but they challenge
you to take the knife and may threaten to approach. Thus, you shoot them in knee and when they fall, folks pile on. Sure you take a risk that you will miss or they will still get to you. They may bleed out of the wound. There are no certain outcomes in life.

Chest pounding that you should COM or Mozambique a beloved brother or cousin really doesn't get you much.

 

[XavierBreath]

Glenn,
You have a point. However, as soon as we accept the "shoot to wound" philosophy, it becomes a dangerous albatross around our neck when we are before a jury after having to shoot to stop a threat.
The accepted standard of shooting to stop a threat, not to kill, not to wound, is there because it is needed at trial in self defense cases.

Plaintiff attorneys will always try to pull this "couldn't he have just winged 'em" malarkey out of their sleeve of tricks in self defense cases so they can win nice settlements for themselves and the victim's families. The "shooting to wound" concept blurs the legality of who is the victim, and thus cannot be tolerated by anyone who may someday have to use a gun in self defense.

I hope I've explained this succinctly.
Best regards,
XB

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

XavierBreath - I heartly agree with you on the doctrine for self-defense and police use of force cases. The legal standard should be shooting to stop and that DOES NOT mean shooting to incapacitate in a most likely nonlethal fashion.

I, moving into curmudgeon land, just don't like people stating absolutes like some law of physics.

If one chooses to shoot to wound, that is a choice which you make inside the clear parameters of shooting to stop and not a necessity. No law should require that.

About shooting the gun out of someone's hand, just some thoughts. On one of those endless police video shows, there is a clip of some mentally ill guy sitting on a chair, waving a gun and threatening people and to kill himself. The law was behind cover and a snipe shot the gun and he was piled on. Why not in that case?

Personally, while this is trivial, I was in a FOF and helping to train folks and what to I see but the front end of a rifle coming around the side of the door, bad pieing - thus I shot it. Seems to me, my opponent not having a gun was good and it was a training moment. Wish I would learn it, as later I was chastized for leading with the gun. Duh.

 

[Rivers]

As Professor Meyer pointed out, there are scenarios where somebody, l.e. or otherwise, might choose to wound somebody on purpose. I believe the heart of these discussions, however, are the cases where one is attacked, generally by a stranger, (but not necessarily so) and one has to make the decision of whether to shoot to wound or shoot to kill. Unless you're saying that you'd be shooting at limbs or attachments to limbs, then you're shooting to kill. If you fire at a person, the law assumes that you intended to kill. (Unless you were obviously trying to shoot a toe off, for example)

If you're shooting to kill and the threat is stopped, but the perp survives, then maybe you should work on your shot placement.

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Since I am in absolutist mode - I will throw out another scenario where one takes a shot where the action is most likely to be wounding. Good post, Rivers, BTW.

Sometimes all you see of your opponent is a probably nonlethal part. You are in a lethal force situation but in class, we were told that sometimes folks wait for a COM head shot and that wait may lead to a bad outcome as the opponent can shoot you or do something else.

Thus, COM is the center of what you can see! I think I heard this in an OPS class by Steve Moses. In any case, at the NTI, we had a rousing after action discussion about lots of us shooting at a difficult target of an opponent's head while his knee was sticking out. We should have nailed the latter first.

This lesson stuck with me in a later FOF when I was a terrorist and an officers leg and thigh appear around a door edge. I put two rounds into his upper thigh. That would be a bad wound.

However, this isn't really relevant to the issue of legality. More tactical. In the North Hollywood shootout, one of the BGs was taken out by being shot under a car which led to his death.

 

[Bowman28]

Shoot to the ground

I was always taught "shoot to the ground". You apply enough force to stop the threat, whether that be 1 round or 15, you shoot until the threat has been neutralized. After all the first shot is expensive, the rest are free.


"It may not be time to feed the hogs, But it may be time to start raising them."

 

[XavierBreath]

I, moving into curmudgeon land, just don't like people stating absolutes like some law of physics.If one chooses to shoot to wound, that is a choice which you make inside the clear parameters of shooting to stop and not a necessity. No law should require that.

Agreed, and there is no law that requires this. What people are trying to accomplish though, is the fastest possible effective response to a lethal threat. If the threat is not a lethal threat, then a gun is not warranted. If it is a lethal threat, the gun is almost a necessity. Allowing oneself to make other distinctions wastes precious time that will get one killed. The decision to employ lethal force should be made before the gun is drawn. Lethal force is employed as soon as the pistol clears leather, not when the target takes his last dying breath.

But for the sake of the argument......... I'll go into curmudgeon land.
To increase the survivability risk of a "non-lethal" shot, you must aim for an extremity. This increases the chance of a miss, and a hit where you do not want to hit, ie a bystander. You are so focused on your moving target to make the precision hit that you fail to see the person who has moved into place behind it. This also makes you the new foci for the threat. It also makes your legal risk exactly the same as it would be if you made a COM shot. If the threat is a family member you do not wish to kill, then there are many ways of subduing them without gunplay. One of the best ways is to leave, and call professionals. Many, many times the presence of the family member who will not leave is what charges the scene with emotions and prods the person suffering mental turmoil. The best way to defuse a situation is to remove the percieved threat, not up the ante by shooting. Remove the threat, allow the person to become complacent, tired, hungery,sleepy. Negotiate. Time is on your side. There is no need to rush into a situation like this with guns blazing. Cordone off the scene, send out for pizza and wait them out.

On one of those endless police video shows, there is a clip of some mentally ill guy sitting on a chair, waving a gun and threatening people and to kill himself. The law was behind cover and a snipe shot the gun and he was piled on. Why not in that case?

Perhaps because they had a trained sniper with a scoped rifle at hand? Compare this to the many many cases that LEOs do not have the sniper available, and they do COM shots to stop the same type threat.

If you're shooting to kill and the threat is stopped, but the perp survives, then maybe you should work on your shot placement.

After he arrives at the ICU or after he is discharged? What are you suggesting here?

Thus, COM is the center of what you can see!

No argument there.