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While this would certainly qualify as a defensive gun use, this is the kind of use that makes me highly suspect of the actual utility of it. Yes, from the story you tell it sounds like you would have had a clear case of self-defense, but I (and presumably anyone else reading this) is going to be biased toward your side of the story. The police, however, are not necessarily going to share this natural bias. Suppose you shoot and kill the guy; what then? Your story makes a good case for self-defense: The guy had already assaulted the housmeate's date and was brandishing a dangerous implement, which he was already using to vandalize the house. He refused to leave when asked to, and approached you with the hatchet in a presumably threatening manner.
There's another side to this, though. You were drunk. The guy didn't enter the house. You didn't know the guy and weren't involved in the initial altercation. You deliberately left the safety of the house and went outside with a gun looking to confront the man. I'm not trying to say that your actions were unreasonable given the circumstances, just that the cops don't know what happened and they aren't going to just take the word of the guy in basketball shorts and dress socks who has a pretty good reason to tell stories.
Unless you're incredibly stupid, you aren't saying anything without a lawyer present, and given that it's 2 am on a Sunday morning and you're drunk, you can pretty much guarantee that you'll be spending the rest of the night in a police holding cell. Best case scenario you can raise a lawyer the next morning, the police buy your story, and they let you go right away without pressing charges. All it cost you was at least $500 in attorney's fees (put probably more like a thousand) and the worst night of your life.
More likely, though is that the police do an investigation that lasts months. This is a homicide, after all, and it isn't a clear-cut case of self-defense like a home invasion or attempted robbery. the victim's family could pressure the police. The story you give might not match up with ballistics. The investigators could simply not believe you. The police are going to interview everyone who was in the house last night, and who there can corroborate your story? Your girlfriend was upstairs the whole time and probably can't do anything but testify to the banging and yelling. The housemate might be able to provide a little more detail about the altercation, but probably not too much. The date can provide the most information, but given that he didn't want to press charges against the guy (and he presumably looks to him for spiritual support) there's a good chance he downplays the whole incident and makes it look like your actions were unjustified. Now you're looking at months of hell and thousands in attorney's fees, even if it all ends with the DA declining to press charges.
There was a case in Western PA last winter where a guy at a hunting camp was shot after erratically firing an AK-47 and forcing the other people at the camp to stay at gunpoint. The incident happened in December but the investigation dragged on until the middle of March before the DA announced that they couldn't overcome their burden of proof in a self-defense case. This was in a rural area that is generally pro-gun. Alternatively, had you stayed inside, ordered the others upstairs, and waited with the gun in case the shit hit the fan, the police probably would have arrived before he was able to break in (if that was even his intention), and if you had to shoot him, the self-defense case in much clearer.
Would that be this case? It's a little interesting, but this summary seems to be skipping over a couple details, especially given that the out-of-state interest in the matter driven by reporting certain it was a hate crime, which was so severe and widespread that today, months after the conclusion of the investigation, the Venango DA's website still has a brightly-highlighted statement emphasizing that he's taking a "complete and thorough investigation".
If this is the case you're referencing, "couldn't overcome their burden of proof" does not seem an accurate summary where the DA explicitly called it justified self-defense.
And, yes, more broadly, this seems like a central example of the_nybbler's "Anti-self-defense people have managed to rig the system so completely against self-defense that even someone who shoots someone dead for good reasons will be made to seriously regret it". This says a lot about a lot, but not about self-defense itself.
I actually deliberately left that information out in the hope that an enterprising individual such as yourself would track down the story and find out that there was a bit more to it than a straightforward case of self-defense. The point I'm trying to make is that the way I presented it is the way it looked to the shooter at the time: Guy on shrooms waving a gun around, acting crazy and refusing to let them leave. Then once the deed is done more complications come out of the woodwork. There's a bias investigation because the guy was black. There's the fact that the guy never made any direct threats. There's the fact that he was shot nine times in all parts of his body. When you're the one in fear of your life all these things seem like pointless details that you don't even remember. But the police aren't in your shoes. The victim's family isn't in your shoes. The police can't just take your word for what happened, no matter how reasonable it may seem to you. That's why statements like "Anti-self-defense people have managed to rig the system so completely against self-defense that even someone who shoots someone dead for good reasons will be made to seriously regret it" don't quite make sense to me. I mean, yeah, it's certainly possible that that's true at least in some places, but it doesn't really say much about what I'm getting at. If someone is shot dead the police have to investigate. If they were simply to take every self-defense claim at face value then we'd effectively have legalized murder, especially in gangland situations. Unless you can prove that the other guy didn't shoot first, you can't arrest anyone. And if you're taking the guy at his word that the victim did shoot first, then there's not much else to do. As soon as you agree that an investigation needs to be completed, and it's not going to be some half-assed investigation meant to corroborate the shooter's claim of self-defense, then the shooter needs to get an attorney. And the more inconsistencies and complications that investigation uncovers, the worse it's going to be. It's not a question of whether the legal system is unfairly biased against self-defense claims, it's a question of what needs to occur to have a functioning legal system at all.
uh:
I think that's kinda gonna count.
uh:
The family's attorneys have found a forensic pathologist who disputed the self-defense claims, but that focused on which direction the shots went, with Wecht holding that most of the wounds on Spencer's back were entry wounds, and the state's forensics department saying they were exit wounds. There are professionalism arguments in favor of not magdumping. This shot list does not, on its own, raise serious questions about the self-defense claim. It is, charitably, a bit of a stretch to call the head, torso, and buttocks "all parts of his body".
There's been people making similar arguments over the Rittenhouse, and the Gardner cases, and a good few others.
In one sense, it's true! Someone claiming "they were coming right for us!" alone isn't reason for the police to pack it up and go home! In one sense, yes, there's a reason self-defense experts like Masaad Ayoob recommend having a lawyer on retainer.
((I mean, not actually, descriptively true, but that's more because there's a number of police departments that are garbage.))
But for this specific case, day one had every witness at the scene says that the shot guy was threatening to shoot up the place and was trying to block their escape, his pockets are filled with their keys and one of their cell phones, and there's a bunch of recently-used shell cases matching the shot guy's gun, and tons of gunpowder residue up and down shot guy's arms. Nothing to contradict the self-defense claim comes up. And then on day two, the post-mortem tox report lights up like a Christmas tree in ways that support the suspect's claims, and completely unaffiliated witnesses from the camp owners -- who the suspect might not even have know were there -- give testimony about the shot pattern that matches. Still nothing to contradict the claim.
((And that's ignoring the stuff probably not admissible in court and shouldn't be considered by prosecutors but often is, like the rifle with an obliterated serial number and the already-active ATF investigation.))
Notably, unlike your hypothetical, no one was arrested or detained overnight. Now, this isn't the clearest-cut case of self-defense, since there was no video evidence. But I'm exceptionally skeptical that an honest and impartial prosecutor, not having the force of the state attorney general, the state police hate crimes side, national media coverage, international media coverage, so on, hits your parade of horribles.
And, what a coincidence! The same group is all, every single one, conveniently also opposed to civilian gun ownership and self-defense.
Yes, tradeoffs exist. But the opening framework was not whether an investigation could occur, but that "this is the kind of use that makes me highly suspect of the actual utility of it." The scale of the tradeoffs matter. 1K USD and a bad night is not actually that bad compared to axe wounds and/or tens of thousands of dollars in property damage. There's a lot of things people will deal with for even a moderate reduction in the chance them and three of their friends of getting shot in the head by someone hopped up on shrooms, demanding that they sprawl out and call him a good, and confiscating their keys and cellphone.
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What do you mean by "it" in:
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This is all true, and it's why I didn't make a statement to the police at all. I'm fairly sure I was on firm self-defense territory, but I'm glad we never got to find out. You never know when you're going to fall into a media scandal, or an overzealous prosecutor, or just a bad cop. At the time, my thought was that with the hatchet, he could break the sliding glass door on the other side of the house and be inside in seconds. It is also the case that staying on the porch was on purpose, as it is legally part of the house (or curtilage).
Of all of it, the intoxication thing got to me the most. Prior to that night, it never occurred to me that just because I don't carry a gun to the bar doesn't mean I might not have to use a gun while drunk. There's no straightforward solution except to not have guns or not drink, and neither option appeals to me. I drink less now, and the lessons of that night are one reason.
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All this reads as "Anti-self-defense people have managed to rig the system so completely against self-defense that even someone who shoots someone dead for good reasons will be made to seriously regret it". Except, of course, there's that other counterfactual. The one where nobody has a gun and the "pastor" kills one or more people with that hatchet. That one still seems worse than months of hell and thousands in attorney's fees.
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