Finally Vigilante Justice!

[Deepak]

I disagree - living in a society where we watch someone get murdered when there is an opportunity to intervene is abhorrent to me.

Way to shift the goalposts. The shooter was not watching Gildersleeve murder anyone when he killed Gildersleeve.

And your hypothetical misses the mark - any competent police officer would have shot Gildersleeve.

Assertion without evidence. Discarded.

Moreover, if the person shooting Gildersleeve by definition was breaking the law then he'd be incarcerated and awaiting trial - not released after the police conducted an interview. If you think there are other factors involved in this case beyond your implication that this is prima facie a violation of law then you should cite some corroborating evidence.

I stand corrected. In Illinoise you can use use up to lethal force to stop a forcible felony.

I think you're wrong about at least one of your definitions.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts
http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004927

So which is it? If we must witness a capital offence, then ipso fatso we must witness someone being murdered by the very definition of capital offence.

My 'assertion without evidence' is as plain as the nose on my face. Even a half-assed attempt at finding what happens in cases of armed gunmen committing a robbery when the police are on the scene mirror this case: http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_27763788/santa-clara-officers-kill-suspect-they-see-rob

 

[Bacillus anthracis]

What in this specific case was wrong? I haven't a fucking clue. An investigation would need to look into the specific circumstances of bystanders, threat assessment, etc... Are we wrong for asking?

Exactly.

Maybe the robber pointed the gun at the CC guy.
Maybe he pointed it only at the cashier.
Maybe he was waving it around making threats to everyone in the store.
Maybe he'd put the paintball gun away and was no longer a deadly threat in the moment he was shot.
Maybe he was walking out with his back turned and the CC guy shot him.

Did the CC guy fear for his life? Under the conditions existing would a reasonable person have feared for their life and/or the lives of others? Can the CC guy explain with some articulation as to why he did what he did and what he felt in that moment? How long did he think about shooting the robber before he shot him?

Trying to evaluate these things from a news article is almost completely hopeless, and rarely is anything cut and dried.

As a general rule, does a person have the right to sue deadly force when they reasonably believe their life or the lives of others are in danger? Yes.
Is that what happened here?
We don't know.

 

[Deepak]

You're responsible for your bullets - full stop. Actually - I think this should apply to police as well.

What you'll find is that police aren't really much better than the average individual who spend some free time at the range. http://www.forcescience.org/articles/naiveshooter.pdf

As far as I'm aware, most agencies only require a cop to certify yearly at a range - and outside of specific agencies like SWAT, FBI, and DEA they don't really take part in any sort of stressful situation training for average police officers. The only real stressor is the fact that their qualifications require a degree of accuracy within a specific time.

They're certainly no better, and I'd say that avid shooters i.e. people who spend a lot of time at the range are better shots. Occasionally these people are also cops. Ditto individuals who actually train in stressful situations http://blog.beretta.com/incorporating-stress-in-gun-training

Right, so it sounds like you agree with me that allowing people with conceled carry permits to fire at armed robbers should be illegal because it increases the risk of harm to innocent bystanders. The way I see it is that while cops need guns in order to do their jobs, increasing the number of people who are firing their guns in populated areas while they are under stress is a horrible idea that leads to unecessary loss of innocent life.

Things happened to go well for the guy in the OP. If that sort of thing becomes an acceptable way to act, however, increasing the number of times it happens is going to increase the number of innocent deaths and the more people you have drawing their guns on robbers, the more of them you're going to have who didn't receive sufficient training to be able to handle this type of situation, making things even worse. It's the same way as how it's illegal to close your eyes and speed through a red light, regardless of whether or not you get into an accident when you do so. The charges you face are a lot worse if you do cause an accident, of course, but your decision to increase the risk of harm to innocents around you makes the act itself illegal even when no innocents are harmed by a specific occurance of it.

No I disagree with it. If innocent people are hurt then that needs to be dealt with as a legal matter based on the circumstances of the situation - and I would trust a jury to find fact correctly in these cases. If no bystander is harmed, and the CC holder exercised reasonable care to ensure that bystanders wouldn't be harmed (that is to say the lack of harm wasn't simply a matter of dumb luck) then no foul in my opinion. The circumstances need to be weighed in each situation and I'm not prepared to require inaction as a rule.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

No I disagree with it. If innocent people are hurt then that needs to be dealt with as a legal matter based on the circumstances of the situation - and I would trust a jury to find fact correctly in these cases. If no bystander is harmed, and the CC holder exercised reasonable care to that bystanders wouldn't be harmed (that is to say the lack of harm wasn't simply a matter of dumb luck) then no foul in my opinion. The circumstances need to be weighed in each situation and I'm not prepared to require inaction as a rule.

I'm not following your logic here. If their shooting is more than likely to be inaccurate in these types of situations (and it seems like you agree with me that this is the case), then "exercising reasonable care" wouldn't seem to me to be a viable way to reduce the risk of harm to bystanders. Do you mean that the CC holder needs to have completed over 40 hours of training in firing during stressful situations during the past or your opinion would be that it's a foul on his part? Otherwise, I'm not seeing how you're ascribing the lack of harm to something other than dumb luck.

The way I see to reduce the risk of harm to innocents would be to not start firing a gun in a situation where there are no guns being fired.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The problem with this and any vigilante case

Gonna go ahead and stop you right there. Despite the characterization in the OP title, which was apparently just worded that way to get people to click on it, this is not a vigilante case. This is a case of self defense, or defense of another.

A vigilante is a person who takes law enforcement in their own hands, without legal authority. It would be typified by attempting to bring someone to justice after the fact of the commission of their supposed crimes. In a case where someone is under imminent threat from a crime being committed at that time, the term to use is defense.

Please adjust your rhetoric, and continue.

I can appreciate the term may be mistakenly used here. However, he wasn't the target of the robbery. But he was the executioner of the suspect. If the shooter is the store clerk, there is little in the way of questioning the legality of the shooting. His life is in implied risk.

The shooter in this case wasn't. He made no attempt to disarm the robber, nor would that really have been wise. However, he did just go straight for the kill. Is there no vigilantism in this?

 

[KeepTalking]

Gonna go ahead and stop you right there. Despite the characterization in the OP title, which was apparently just worded that way to get people to click on it, this is not a vigilante case. This is a case of self defense, or defense of another.

A vigilante is a person who takes law enforcement in their own hands, without legal authority. It would be typified by attempting to bring someone to justice after the fact of the commission of their supposed crimes. In a case where someone is under imminent threat from a crime being committed at that time, the term to use is defense.

Please adjust your rhetoric, and continue.

I can appreciate the term may be mistakenly used here. However, he wasn't the target of the robbery. But he was the executioner of the suspect. If the shooter is the store clerk, there is little in the way of questioning the legality of the shooting. His life is in implied risk.

The shooter in this case wasn't. He made no attempt to disarm the robber, nor would that really have been wise. However, he did just go straight for the kill. Is there no vigilantism in this?

No, there is no vigilantism. The shooter was defending the life of the store clerk as the crime was being committed. Had the shooter waited for the robber to finish robbing the store, and then shot him as he was leaving, that would have an aspect of vigilantism to it.

 

[ksen]

Way to shift the goalposts. The shooter was not watching Gildersleeve murder anyone when he killed Gildersleeve.

And your hypothetical misses the mark - any competent police officer would have shot Gildersleeve.

Assertion without evidence. Discarded.

Moreover, if the person shooting Gildersleeve by definition was breaking the law then he'd be incarcerated and awaiting trial - not released after the police conducted an interview. If you think there are other factors involved in this case beyond your implication that this is prima facie a violation of law then you should cite some corroborating evidence.

I stand corrected. In Illinoise you can use use up to lethal force to stop a forcible felony.

I think you're wrong about at least one of your definitions.

The definitions I linked to came directly from the Illinois legal code.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts

Meh. Going from "watching guy get robbed at [paintball]gunpoint" to "watching guy get murdered" seems like moving the goalposts to me. Maybe it's over the top hyperbole. Either way it's not that convincing.

 

[fromderinside]

The way I see to reduce the risk of harm to innocents would be to not start firing a gun in a situation where there are no guns being fired.

This whole thread seems to have a case of the sucks. People letting themselves be robbed b y a guy with a paint ball gun? Seems to me most of them should have resisted, being sane citizens risked being hit by a yellow or red paint ball rather than being robbed. As for the jerk with the no penis big gun problem, he should have already been in therapy. The officer spokesman misspoke since most states and communities have laws against vigilantism. Other than that, carry on.

 

[Deepak]

No I disagree with it. If innocent people are hurt then that needs to be dealt with as a legal matter based on the circumstances of the situation - and I would trust a jury to find fact correctly in these cases. If no bystander is harmed, and the CC holder exercised reasonable care to that bystanders wouldn't be harmed (that is to say the lack of harm wasn't simply a matter of dumb luck) then no foul in my opinion. The circumstances need to be weighed in each situation and I'm not prepared to require inaction as a rule.

I'm not following your logic here. If their shooting is more than likely to be inaccurate in these types of situations (and it seems like you agree with me that this is the case), then "exercising reasonable care" wouldn't seem to me to be a viable way to reduce the risk of harm to bystanders. Do you mean that the CC holder needs to have completed over 40 hours of training in firing during stressful situations during the past or your opinion would be that it's a foul on his part? Otherwise, I'm not seeing how you're ascribing the lack of harm to something other than dumb luck.

The way I see to reduce the risk of harm to innocents would be to not start firing a gun in a situation where there are no guns being fired.

Dumb luck would be shooting at a gunman in a crowd at 20 yards distance and managing through chance to not hit any innocents.

Reasonable care would be ensuring that there is no one between you and the gunman, nor is there someone behind, the shot is made at 3-5 yards, and there is a barrier behind the gunman.

For example.

 

[Deepak]

Way to shift the goalposts. The shooter was not watching Gildersleeve murder anyone when he killed Gildersleeve.

And your hypothetical misses the mark - any competent police officer would have shot Gildersleeve.

Assertion without evidence. Discarded.

Moreover, if the person shooting Gildersleeve by definition was breaking the law then he'd be incarcerated and awaiting trial - not released after the police conducted an interview. If you think there are other factors involved in this case beyond your implication that this is prima facie a violation of law then you should cite some corroborating evidence.

I stand corrected. In Illinoise you can use use up to lethal force to stop a forcible felony.

I think you're wrong about at least one of your definitions.

The definitions I linked to came directly from the Illinois legal code.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts

Meh. Going from "watching guy get robbed at [paintball]gunpoint" to "watching guy get murdered" seems like moving the goalposts to me. Maybe it's over the top hyperbole. Either way it's not that convincing.

I think one of us has lost the thread in this discussion so allow me to recap.

I stated that a CC holder is within the auspices of the social contract if he witnesses someone being threatened at gunpoint and shoots the gunman. (A stance, as far as I'm aware, which has been consistent).
You contended that non-capital crimes (that is to say not one of these crimes http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004927) should not allow for armed responses.
I stated that I disagree, based on my contention above, and that letting a capital crime happen is not good if one has the opportunity to intervene.
You accuse me of shifting the goalposts because I disagree.

So either you don't understand the implication of your statement that no capital crime had occurred, or you don't understand the term moving the goalposts.

To clarify - do you understand that the act of 'waiting for a capital offence to occur' is another way of saying 'waiting to witness someone being murdered'? If you don't then can you clarify what exactly is meant by that statement?

The likelihood is a separate matter - if I cannot act until the capital crime, then by standard logic I must wait until I witness a murder.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

guy wields non-lethal weapon, gets gunned down.

seems proportional

It doesn't matter what the reality of the situation is, but rather the perception.

Since he was using the "gun" in a robbery it obviously looked realistic enough the clerk didn't laugh at it. Thus why should the bystander be expected to know it wasn't real?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Paintball markers that look like guns tend to be cheap, and the ones that are good for tournaments and don't look like guns are expensive.

Ex: http://www.paintball-online.com/Tippmann-Paintball-Guns-0Y.aspx versus http://www.paintball-online.com/Empire-Paintball-Guns-0Y.aspx

Generally the legal system doesn't grant leniency to robbery with fake guns.

it generally doesn't kill them either

What he was saying is that fake guns are treated as real guns in a situation like this.

If it would have been legal to shoot him if the gun was real then it's also legal to shoot him if it's simply a realistic fake. The guy felt the robber was a threat, he had the advantageous position and removed the threat. Bad luck for the robber but not a crime.

- - - Updated - - -

it generally doesn't kill them either

Sorry but that's not true except in the most facile way. The robbery is treated exactly like a robbery with a real gun would be. If there is a cop on the scene you will be shot, and if your victim jumps in front of a bus trying to get away you will be facing a trial for a capital offence.

If you want to live after an armed robbery make sure there's no one who can shoot you and don't shoot anyone during the commission of the crime, and keep in mind you're rolling the dice.

I wouldn't say "you will be shot"--the cop very well might demand his surrender instead.

 

[Bronzeage]

What bothers me is this part of the article:

Guglielmi told AP the police department takes no position on whether legally armed bystanders should take action in such situations.

Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that police departments, and the justice system as a whole, should be taking a position on? It seems a relevant question for their line of work which they should provide an answer for.

No, that wouldn't work at all.

If a civilian is going to take the responsibility to kill another citizen, it needs to be their decision alone, with no support from anyone else.

It's the old problem of the "I was following orders," defense. If a person heeds bad advice and things go wrong, they can't put blame with their adviser.

It's hard enough for a policeman to decide when to shoot someone, much less create a rule that covers all possible situations.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What bothers me is this part of the article:

Guglielmi told AP the police department takes no position on whether legally armed bystanders should take action in such situations.

Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that police departments, and the justice system as a whole, should be taking a position on? It seems a relevant question for their line of work which they should provide an answer for.

They say something like that when they don't want to say "good job!"

 

[ksen]

Man, small government types sure do seem to get hardons when someone gets gunned down.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Man, small government types sure do seem to get hardons when someone gets gunned down.

I don't see anyone being happy about the situation. It's just we aren't going to make an issue about it. The idiot took a big risk, he lost. Too bad.