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WI Statutes and Use of Force...

bmwguy11

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The actor also has 2 hands, 2 feet (best used to evade with), a head, etc.
You illustrate an excellent point regarding those who carry a handgun and are not prepared to use anything else. Not a wise idea.
It is not a reasonable belief that you must use a gun if that is the only weapon you possess and the use of deadly force would not otherwise be necessary.

You have to be able to articulate reasonable explanation, which would include that you exhausted other options (if any were available, and if they were not, then you must be able to articulate why). You can kill someone or cause great bodily harm with a single punch or kick to the right place. What if your attacker is well trained in hand to hand combat? Are you supposed to guess? So if anything is going to escalate to physical confrontation, you better have your gun drawn before they land any blows.
 

bmwguy11

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If the actor had the opportunity to punch the attacker in the head but did not, they should be able to articulate why they believed this would have not stopped the "attack".
A single blow to the head can kill or permanently injure someone. In fact, an intentional blow to the head can be (and has been) considered as intent to use deadly force.

Unless the person is actively physically attacking you or has already attacked you and is coming back to do you further harm, when exactly is it reasonable to shoot an unarmed person? To hit an unarmed person with a baseball bat?
Do you see why I am a proponent of having other use of force options and having the mind set to do so?
And again, you have no idea what kind of physical or hand to hand combat training the other person has had. If you wait until the point that physical contact has been made, it may already be too late.
 

bmwguy11

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If you are judged by 12 and those 12 do not believe it was reasonable to shoot an unarmed person in the scenario presented to them by the case at hand, it is not going to go in your favor.

Which is why it is up to you to reasonably articulate why you did what you did. That doesn't mean you had to include considering options of "lesser force".
 

Brass Magnet

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Look,
We started out talking about your comment in the other thread that if lesser force would have sufficed, self defense with deadly force is a crime. I stated that I believe that to be untrue because of the reasonableness standard. Then we got into what goes into the reasonableness standard as far as the law is concerned which is fine. But now you are going of on tangents. The jury is informed of the law and the case law relevant to the topic at hand. They are instructed as to what is privileged or unprivileged conduct. What they decide has no bearing on the standard. THAT is the law, that is what I wanted to discuss; right or wrong.

Discussing this with you is like trying to hit a hummingbird with a lawn dart.
 
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Interceptor_Knight

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.. You can kill someone or cause great bodily harm with a single punch or kick to the right place. What if your attacker is well trained in hand to hand combat? Are you supposed to guess? So if anything is going to escalate to physical confrontation, you better have your gun drawn before they land any blows.

You are going to have an extreme uphill battle trying to convince a jury to see as reasonable your belief in an imminent threat to your life was based on the remote possibility that your attacker was Chuck Norris...:lol:
Seriously, it is not reasonable to pull a gun in a fist fight unless you are an unwilling participant and they have caused or are likely to cause great bodily harm. If you are standing toe to toe with someone to defend your honor or that of another, you are screwed...
It is not reasonable to stick around and swap blows with someone when they threaten a fist fight. You should be running in the other direction as your first course of action.
There would be a metric ton of bodies piled up if every time someone shoved me, punched me, etc and/or threatened to kick my butt during my life I simply drew a handgun and shot them. It simply is not a reasonable response.
 

bmwguy11

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We are back to this being a reasonable fear of an imminent threat to their life when discussing deadly force. You are privileged to use force to defend your property just not deadly force. You are privileged to use force to defend your person just not deadly force in the absence of an imminent threat to your life. In the absence of being threatened with a weapon or what you reasonably believe to be a weapon it is difficult to articulate and justify what the imminent threat to your life was.

They don't need a weapon or for you to believe they had a weapon for it to be a case where deadly force was reasonable. And it's not necessarily any more difficult to articulate that vs if the perpetrator had been armed. You're trying to paint a very wide brush with your statements.
 

bmwguy11

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Seriously, it is not reasonable to pull a gun in a fist fight unless you are an unwilling participant and they have caused or are likely to cause great bodily harm.
It is absolutely reasonable. Disparity of force ring a bell?
If you are standing toe to toe with someone to defend your honor or that of another, you are screwed...
No one is talking about a fist fight you willingly participate in cuz some dude at a bar called your girlfriend fat.
It is not reasonable to stick around and swap blows with someone when they threaten a fist fight. You should be running in the other direction as your first course of action.
And as I mentioned, if that's not an option, then deadly force could be warranted. Again you are trying to paint a wide brush saying that deadly force is never warranted when the other person(people) are "unarmed".

There would be a metric ton of bodies piled up if every time someone shoved me, punched me, etc and/or threatened to kick my butt during my life I simply drew a handgun and shot them. It simply is not a reasonable response.
Your anecdotes don't mean much. We're talking about plausible scenarios here, and you're only looking at one aspect of it, in which deadly force was not warranted. I'm looking at the other side of the "unarmed perpetrator" coin. The point here, again, is that you are trying to make this blanket statement.
 
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Interceptor_Knight

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Look,
We started out talking about your comment in the other thread that if lesser force would have sufficed, self defense with deadly force is a crime. I stated that I believe that to be untrue because of the reasonableness standard...

I believe that the reasonableness standard prohibits you from shooting someone on a dark sidewalk simply because they are trying to pick a fight with you, rob you, argue over a parking space with you, etc in the absence of a weapon or some other articulable imminent threat to your life. If the person is shouting from a car and is not pointing a firearm out the window or even trying to run your down it is even less reasonable to use deadly force. You can not shoot someone as they drive by if they previously were driving towards you either.
If the actor reasonably believes that a lesser force would prevent or terminate the attack then they are not privileged to use deadly force. You seem to dismiss this critical component. If you do not try to evade then how is it reasonable for you to believe that a lesser force will not terminate the attack?
 

Interceptor_Knight

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No one is talking about a fist fight you willingly participate in cuz some dude at a bar called your girlfriend fat..

Are you saying that my girlfriend is fat??:lol:

It is absolutely reasonable. Disparity of force ring a bell?

And as I mentioned, if that's not an option, then deadly force could be warranted. Again you are trying to paint a wide brush saying that deadly force is never warranted when the other person(people) are "unarmed".
. I'm looking at the other side of the "unarmed perpetrator" coin. .
If the unarmed perpetrator is not an imminent threat to your life then deadly force is not warranted. There is no disparity of force when a single person (or 2 people, etc) has not even landed a single blow or if they are simply swinging wildly and obviously not Bruce Lee like.
You had better have a cut, bruise, broken nail, stubbed toe, etc to show that the unarmed person was an imminent threat if you pull out a handgun and kill them.
 
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Interceptor_Knight

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They don't need a weapon or for you to believe they had a weapon for it to be a case where deadly force was reasonable. And it's not necessarily any more difficult to articulate that vs if the perpetrator had been armed. You're trying to paint a very wide brush with your statements.

The big picture is that there are very narrow circumstances in WI where you are justified in shooting an unarmed individual. The circumstances where you are unjustified ARE very wide.
This discussion supports training for those who carry. If you have never trained in use of force scenarios you can not expect to make ideal decisions in an actual attack. If you have never trained to use alternatives from your handgun you are asking for trouble.
 
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Brass Magnet

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I believe that the reasonableness standard prohibits you from shooting someone on a dark sidewalk simply because they are trying to pick a fight with you, rob you, argue over a parking space with you, etc in the absence of a weapon or some other articulable imminent threat to your life. If the person is shouting from a car and is not pointing a firearm out the window or even trying to run your down it is even less reasonable to use deadly force. You can not shoot someone as they drive by if they previously were driving towards you either.
If the actor reasonably believes that a lesser force would prevent or terminate the attack then they are not privileged to use deadly force. You seem to dismiss this critical component. If you do not try to evade then how is it reasonable for you to believe that a lesser force will not terminate the attack?

If you can articulate why you thought; at that time, you were fear for your life or in fear of great bodily harm and a reasonable person could have thought the same thing under those circumstances, it's self defense. If a jury decides otherwise then you didn't articulate it well enough or it wasn't reasonable. Saying that deadly force is never justified when lesser force could suffice, is patently untrue. Also, your arguments are in hindsight; an actor may well have; upon reflection, done things differently if given the opportunity and may have found out later that his attacker was just picking a fight, but what happened and how he felt at that time is what matters.
 
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H

Herr Heckler Koch

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During the Act 35 debates I commented to the legislature and AG on the error of having unqualified instructors trying to teach the law without detailed scripts, written by attorneys, to be read aloud verbatim to applicants. Here's why, above.
 

bmwguy11

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I believe that the reasonableness standard prohibits you from shooting someone on a dark sidewalk simply because they are trying to pick a fight with you, rob you, argue over a parking space with you, etc in the absence of a weapon or some other articulable imminent threat to your life. If the person is shouting from a car and is not pointing a firearm out the window or even trying to run your down it is even less reasonable to use deadly force. You can not shoot someone as they drive by if they previously were driving towards you either.
If the actor reasonably believes that a lesser force would prevent or terminate the attack then they are not privileged to use deadly force. You seem to dismiss this critical component. If you do not try to evade then how is it reasonable for you to believe that a lesser force will not terminate the attack?

Now you are putting words into my mouth. I am not talking about the above scenarios you laid out in which deadly force was not reasonable. I'm talking about when deadly force is reasonable against an unarmed assailant because of things like disparity of force. Once again you seem to be implying that someone has to fight back physically against an unarmed attacker BEFORE they can then use their gun, and that simply isn't the case in all scenarios. Once again you are trying to paint with an awfully wide brush, where as I have merely stated that is not always the case, and that there can be times where deadly force is reasonable against an unarmed attacker (or attackers).
 
M

McX

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there are a couple of non-lethal options one can use based on the evaluation of the circumstances:

hand on gun, still in holster, order assailant to stop!

draw and go to ready, low position. (gun in low position, near body, pointed at ground)

draw, but do not fire, and hope like hell they get the hint, and retreat.
 

Interceptor_Knight

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... Saying that deadly force is never justified when lesser force could suffice, is patently untrue. Also, your arguments are in hindsight; an actor may well; upon reflection, done things differently if given the opportunity but what happened at that time is what matters.

You will be held accountable if a reasonable person would have first tried a lesser force. You should always have the mind set to be prepared to execute a lesser level of force if you can or you are deliberately and necessarily risking a charge for excessive force.
 

bmwguy11

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Are you saying that my girlfriend is fat??:lol:


If the unarmed perpetrator is not an imminent threat to your life then deadly force is not warranted. There is no disparity of force when a single person (or 2 people, etc) has not even landed a single blow or if they are simply swinging wildly and obviously not Bruce Lee like.
You had better have a cut, bruise, broken nail, stubbed toe, etc to show that the unarmed person was an imminent threat if you pull out a handgun and kill them.

Like the guy at the gas station in Ohio who shot to stop a threat from 2 unarmed and untrained physical attackers who up until they shot him hadn't "landed any blows" but were trying to pull him from his vehicle? And you're saying that my pregnant wife could be cornered and threatened by 2 large men, and she is not able to use her gun until AFTER they have "landed a single blow"?

Again, please stop making this broad generalizations when there are cases where you are CLEARLY wrong. That's my whole point here. There are cases where what you are saying is proven completely wrong.
 

bmwguy11

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The big picture is that there are very narrow circumstances in WI where you are justified in shooting an unarmed individual. The circumstances where you are unjustified ARE very wide.
This discussion supports training for those who carry. If you have never trained in use of force scenarios you can not expect to make ideal decisions in an actual attack. If you have never trained to use alternatives from your handgun you are asking for trouble.

I have had training in both, and this is why I'm showing you that you are very wrong in your assumptions and generalizations. I could name plenty of scenarios that could and have played out in real life in which deadly force against an unarmed attacker would have been warranted.
 
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bmwguy11

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If you can articulate why you thought; at that time, you were fear for your life or in fear of great bodily harm and a reasonable person could have thought the same thing under those circumstances, it's self defense. If a jury decides otherwise then you didn't articulate it well enough or it wasn't reasonable. Saying that deadly force is never justified when lesser force could suffice, is patently untrue. Also, your arguments are in hindsight; an actor may well have; upon reflection, done things differently if given the opportunity and may have found out later that his attacker was just picking a fight, but what happened and how he felt at that time is what matters.
Exactly.
 
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