Friday, July 09, 2010

Ok, cops and legal types:

Read this and tell me what you think; good ideas after a self-defense shooting?

Found at RNS, who also wants your opinion.

1 comment:

OldTexan said...

I took my concealed carry class here in Dallas and instructor spent a good deal of time on the 'after the necessary shooting situation'.

First he told us to do every thing possible to avoid using our gun so that the shooting is truly the only thing a reasonable person could do in the situation to stop th bad person from doing serious deadly harm to the good guys.

The next thing was to make sure our gun was not threatening to police answering the 911 call. If the bad guy was still somewhat active and possibly mobile we might have to keep our gun in our hand but then it is important to allow the police to assess the situation as soon as possible.

This means not pointing or waving the gun around and letting the 911 operator know that the bad guy is being covered by a gun in the hand of the good guy who is reporting the shooting.

We were told to expect to have our gun taken by the police and that we might be taken into custody and that if that is the case we should always be polite and keep quiet. The key words that our instructor told us to use were that we had to stop a life threatening situation.

We were told that we should not say we had to kill the guy, or that the jerk deserved it or that we were glad we had the old .45 and a chance to use it or any other dumb, open mouth stuff.

We were instructed to limit our words to a simple phrase that the situation was such that we were in extreme danger and we used our gun to stop the person who was putting us in mortal danger. If the police wanted further details we were told to say that "I will co-operate in every way, I respectfully decline to talk further at this time and I wish to have our attorney present before I go any further with the discussion." I have my attorney on speed dial on my cell phone and he will get the next call after 911. At the scene some police might try to bully and push to get more information but since they have control of the area there is no need for speed at this point and talking will not help you.

We were told that we could expect a long drawn out situation post shooting that would be a gut-wrenching, life-changing ordeal and it would take a lot of time and money but that is a better alternative to being maimed or dead.

Of course here in Texas we might have a little bit more sympathy from the law but I know one man who lives in a town south of Dallas who did have to defend his farm home from an ex-con who was trying to kill his son, he shot the man, killed him and was charged by a goofy DA and it took about a year and a half and almost all of the money he had to end up getting the charges dropped.

I spoke to him about two years after the event and I asked if he would do it again in that situation and he told me that of course he would because he had not choice.

That seems to be the main point when it is all said. 'A reasonable man in a bad guy shooting situation has no choice but to stop the bad guy.'