Aftermath of a shooting (my story)

Great story...glad to see it turned out the best way for you and your family.

Three questions...

First, next time you break up a story so suspenseful like that, let me know so I don't start reading it at work and then have to finish when I got home. J/K :D

Second, how long after the incident did you receive your guns back?

Oh and did the Don't Talk to the Police thread cause you to inform us of your story?
 
divemedic, while I understand your thread is in response to the Don't Talk To The Police! thread, it's actually more in line with Tactics and Training.

We're moving there, but I'll leave a redirection link for a couple of days, so everyone who wants, can find and read.

ETA: Yeah... What happened with your firearms?
 
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I maintain that if I had shot the bat-boy, the situation would have been over at that point.
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You would have had just as much trouble if not more from the rest of the gang had you killed a member. From what I hear they always try to avenge a shooting of one of their own. Your home would have been riddled with 762x39 in a drive by at the least.

The best thing you did was to move. Protecting yourself and family from people who want to kill you is nearly impossible. You can't protect 24/7 with work and sleep. They have many members and all the time in the world.

Great read thanks.
 
To be legally entitled to shoot, you must feel you are in IMMINENT danger of loss of life or grave bodily injury.

There are three criteria to be filled for this to be true.

The attacker must have:
1. Ability - Is he physically and mentally capable of carrying out his stated or assumed actions?
2. Opportunity - Is he close enough to carry out his stated or assumed actions?
3. Intent - Is he advancing in a threatening manner?

If all three of these are satisfied, shoot. Shoot until the threat is negated, then shop shooting.

For example: Man 30 feet away, advancing with a raised baseball bat in hand.
Draw your weapon. Aim. "Stop or I'll shoot!"
If the individual stops or turns back, reholster your weapon. Continue to observe.
If he continues to advance, shoot until he stops advancing.

For example: Man standing still 30 feet away with a baseball held down by his leg - NOT an imminent threat. In this case, you may not be legal to even draw your weapon. In some states, drawing your weapon is "use of deadly force". It can also be "brandishing" and/or a "menacing threat" or "assault".
 
divemedic,

I'm not saying that what you did (hiding in the street, armed, waiting on the gang-bangers to return) wasn't "tactically" smart. I'm simply saying that it was illegal. In this country, it is illegal to "lay in wait" for someone. And, by hiding in the cars on the street, armed, intent on shooting at the gang-bangers if they returned to shoot at you, you broke the law.

The old-world legal theory behind the "lay in wait" prohibition is that you should not go looking for a fight. If you know trouble is coming, you're supposed to leave the area, if you can, and alert the authorities.

I understand, it's your home, and you shouldn't have to leave. But, by going out into the street, armed, and hiding and waiting for the guys to come back, you went looking for trouble. And, when trouble came, you ran up to them and pointed a gun at them. In other words, you ran up to a parked car so that you could use deadly force against a car full of people. Although you may have feared that the people in the car might have "eventually" opened fire on you, resulting in "eventual" harm, you clearly were not in fear of "imminent" death or serious bodily injury, or you would have either run away, or shot them. Because you believed you could "take them alive," and you tried to do so, you were unjustified in doing what you did.

Sorry, that's just the facts. Having a CCL doesn't give you an outright license to "enforce" the law. It only gives you the right to shoot people who are presently trying to shoot you.
 
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Sd Is Not About Guns

We hid in the street armed, hiding among the parked cars, waiting for them.
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Would you have done this if you had no gun? Just your hands? Likely not, you wouldn't have wanted to put yourself in so much danger to start with by leaving your house.

Well, just because you have a tool - a gun - that can also be used offensively, doesn't change the requirements of SD : the action must be defensive. Forget the tool.

De-coupling guns from SD Law is necessary or the use of the particular tool we can carry -- its easy offensive as well as defensive capabilities and its association with police usage -- can distort the meaning of the law and who we are.

SD Law does not refer to guns. It's not for you as a CCW - its for anyone and everyone.

------------------------

SD Law and Guns do not exist together legally - and are not connected in law. You have only one allowance with a CCW: to carry a lethal weapon with a waiver from the usual Gun Law prohibiting that. Nothing else, no power, no rights, that are different from anyone else's.

CCW law does not refer to shooting people. SD Law does not refer to shooting people. SD Law's origins lie in the Middle Ages, centuries before common use of guns.

SD Law refers to the weird, unusual, once-in-many-life-times fluke emergency situation of an innocent victim, walking along in life, who suddenly finds they are about to be killed NOW and uses force that could result in lethality as a Last Possible Act to save their or another's life.

Everyone has the right. And no one has it for any other situation or for any internal mind-states they may have: personal angers, biases, righteous rages, opinions on crime or people's dress or the 2nd Amendment, nor feeling scared, happy, sad, manly, insulted - or anything else.
 
impossible situation

DiveMedic...I truly hate that you had to go through that situation. It seems that our justice system is set up in such a way that honest citizens must allow the safety of their families and themselves to be pushed to the edge of endangerment to accommodate the "rights" of law-breakers. Shame on society for allowing this to happen.

As for your handling the situation, your objective was to ensure the safety of your family and yourself...mission accomplished, good job.
 
Hard to Monday morning quaterback, but as others have said leaving the house with a shotgun and lieing in wait for them was the wrong move. It put you in danger and invites criminal charges which is exactly what happened to you. If you had stayed in the house and they tried to gain entry, different story entirely.
 
Divemedic,

Thanks for an extremely informative read. Truly terrifying:eek:.


I am curious; if the PD take away all your guns (I thought that they could only take the weapon used); can you demand 24/7 police protection? If they take away your method of protection they are, effectively, placing you at the mercy of your enemies. What kind of solutions to this are there?
 
Oh, yes. +1 on the threads above: I do NOT mean to be a Monday Morning Quarterback, or to second-guess how divemedic handled this. There is no way of knowing how we might react to similar circumstances.

I meant only to offer an explanation as to why the courts and the cops might have decided to arrest divemedic after the incident...

But, all that aside. Divemedic, you survived. You came home that night. Good for you.
 
WOW

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We hid in the street armed, hiding among the parked cars, waiting for them.

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Hard to Monday morning quaterback, but as others have said leaving the house with a shotgun and lieing in wait for them was the wrong move. It put you in danger and invites criminal charges which is exactly what happened to you. If you had stayed in the house and they tried to gain entry, different story entirely.

WOW.... I really gotto go along with Pilot on what he said... You hid in the street???? These are the kindof stories that give us a bad name.
 
: I do NOT mean to be a Monday Morning Quarterback, or to second-guess how divemedic handled this.
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I second that altho my earlier post was negative on the legal aspects.

But before others pile on the law: thinking it inhibits us, it's purpose is precisely due to the confusion and anger that visits anyone in such situations.
It's SUPPOSED to inhibit life and death choices only made on those feelings.
So, it's to demand an objective eye, and that demand ultimately protects many people - including us - who could otherwise be killed because of someone's mistake, due to their anger, fear or whatever.


Second, the tests for valid SD SHOULD be extremely stringent: in a split second judgment on which lives depend: we could be wrong, killing an innocent person - we could even err in fact but have a legitimate case that it was reasonable to believe otherwise. Still, an innocent person is dead.

This is not the kind of situation - human life dependent on split-second decisions- that should be loosely treated by law.
 
divemedic-the amazing part of your story is that you and your neighbors worked together to protect your family and property.

I take issue with the "I should have shot the teen with the ak part,though"

You and your neighbors showed amazing restraint in dealing with these criminals.

Make no mistake,it reads to me like these kids were not out to 'have a little fun'.they were out to kill you to send a message that they owned your neighborhood.

Had you killed that teen,the media would have undoubtedly branded you a wanton murderer and pumped out all kinds of excuses why a kid had an ak in the car that night.

You would have been jailed and also have been sued in a civil court if not assessed guilty in a criminal court for second degree if not first degree murder.

Your true story is a humbling tale of respondsible people acting respondsibly in the face of criminals that knew they have a decided advantage(being teens) with the law.

The only way to deal with these kinds of criminals is how you did it.

And,these days it never hurts for your own protection to have a video camera with a good microphone to record what happened as it happened and don't give your only copy to the police.

Amazing story and so glad to read that nobody had to die to end the threat.
 
Thanks for sharing. I, too, despise gangs. It looks like it's a multi-racial gang which for some reason makes me feel even more uneasy. Why? They "disarm" your sense of what a gang is (i.e., same race, usually).

At any rate, what you did violated the current laws in this nation. I'd not convict you if you shot hobgoblin 1, 2, 3 or 4 but that's just me. They don't have sh1t to lose and you've got everything to lose. Yep, we can critique your actions sitting in "Ann Arbor, Michigan" or "Ashville, North Carolina" but you were THERE and I empathize with you.

Now, the "police officers" weren't worth their weight in grass clippings. They were liars. I probably would not have dropped the charges but we all have financial limitations.

Good to see you made it through.
 
I did eventually get my guns back. I still own the 870, I can't ever seem to get rid of it. I honestly think that shotgun saved my life that night.

While my actions may or may not have been illegal, I did what I did in the interest of protecting my family. It does no good to say I was not breaking the law when some gang banger shoots through the windows of my house and kills my wife or kids. The shotgun portion of the incident had nothing to do with CCW. I was not carrying concealed at the time.

We spend a lot of time on firearm boards talking about shootings- real and hypothetical. The truth is, the vast majority of self defense shootings are not so cut and dried as to be obvious "good" or "bad" shootings.

All bluster aside, I feel like I did what anyone would do- when threatened, I drew my weapon and called the cops. The cops did nothing. The gang came looking to kill me, in greater numbers this time. Again, I called the cops and the cops did nothing. When they returned a third time in even greater numbers, I was waiting for them. The alternative (the way I saw it) was to wait for them inside my home until they eventually came in great enough numbers to succeed in killing me and my family.

Regardless of what you think of my actions that night, I would invite everyone to think about what you would do in such a situation. Leave your home? and go where? Wait inside for them, and thereby give the tactical advantage to the shooters, while hoping that the 10 minute response time of the cops is good enough? Something else? For those that suggest I should have run away, do you mean that I should have left my home that night? Or do you mean that when they pulled up, rifles in hand, that I should have tried to run from men in vehicles, armed with long guns, while my wife and I tried to carry a 14 month old and a two year old child?

It is easy to talk about the law and what makes gun owners look bad, but when there are critters in front of you with guns who outnumber you by a 4 to 1 margin, and they are looking to kill you and your family, those arguments become academic. These incidents are a good example of the real world, and not some "what if" scenario where everyone knows what is right. There are ALWAYS shades of gray, and this is what we need to think about and plan for.

I knew the myspace page that I linked to was not one of the actual people there. I googled the gang name, and that page was the first hit. I used that page to illustrate that the people involved were nasty characters who mean business, not just some wannabes that run their mouths. The threat was very real.

Edited to add- I am not some Rambo wanna be that was waiting for a fight. If I had been, I would have pulled the trigger when I got the chance. My attorney even told me that I had showed more restraint than many LEOs would have. After the cops blew me off three times, I knew I was on my own.
 
I look at it this way. If there was no 'law', ie cops/lawyers, lots of this armchair quarterbacking would get thrown out the window.

You did what you had to do to protect yourself and your family in the absence of LEO's. Bottom line.
 
Defending your home/neighborhood (Divemedic)

You know, I just read each and everyone of the responses to Divemedic's harrowing account. There were some pretty good responses and everyone gave us something to consider.

But, when you really look at this situation, none of us was there, only he was. Secondly, what would you really do if this actually happened to you personally? Your wife and/or kids are there on the street or in the house (depending on you to protect them 24/7)... Sounds like a really bad ass gang of dirt bags he was dealing with who kept coming back and back again. They called the police but obviously not much was really done about it. The proof was the gang kept returning to harass them, etc. What would each of you really do if this happened to you and your wife is scared as hell, etc.

Its easy to say just why don't you just move to another neighborhood or do this or that, etc., but until it actually happened to you, most of us just don't know EXACTLY what they would do. I sure as hell don't know for sure? I am thinking that I might do this, (I would have shot the first guy with a weapon who was a threat to myself and family). A bat is a horrilbe weapon to be struck with and could lead to permanent damage and/or death. This is Divemedic's front street, his neighborhood for Christ's sake! Don't we the citizens have any rights anymore? Do the gangs rule and we just have to take whatever they dish out. I'm sorry, but honor is something and we need to appreciate his stance. Yes, it was dangerous and could have had disasterous results, but you got to admire his standing up for his rights and protecting his family and neighbors.

Anyway, definitely gives us food for thought doesn't it? I know that it will get me to thinking about what I am going to do (ahead of time) if this or something similar was to happen to me and my family.
Thanks for lettting me vent. Good luck to everyone and I sure hope you never have to endure anything like this.
 
Wait inside for them, and thereby give the tactical advantage to the shooters, while hoping that the 10 minute response time of the cops is good enough?
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You can't take SD lethal actions based on suppositions. They weren't at your home - I think you said at that time they weren't even on the street - and yes, you should have called the cops. What would happen next? I don't know - no one does. You precluded all safe conclusions by choosing to act on what COULD have been the fatal one - including that the police had come very quickly and that the car would have kept on driving.

The problem isn't the human reaction you had - I might too do the same thing, anyone might. The problem is it's not based in what the law is and what would protect others in similar situations from you acting on suppositions - and you think because it was right it was OK. Anyone can think anything is right and frequently do. You can't kill people based on that - or anything but the reality of what is transpiring NOW. Otherwise we all can be dead.
 
Wait inside for them, and thereby give the tactical advantage to the shooters, while hoping that the 10 minute response time of the cops is good enough?
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You can't take SD lethal actions based on suppositions. They weren't at your home - I think you said at that time they weren't even on the street - and yes, you should have called the cops. What would happen next? I don't know - no one does. You precluded all safe conclusions by choosing to act on what COULD have been the fatal one - including that the police had come very quickly and that the car would have kept on driving.

The problem isn't the human reaction you had - I might too do the same thing, anyone might. The problem is it's not based in what the law is and what would protect others in similar situations from you acting on suppositions - and you think because it was right it was OK. Anyone can think anything is right and frequently do. You can't kill people based on that - or anything but the reality of what is transpiring NOW. Otherwise we all can be dead from all the people who are "right".
 
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