Posted by Brian Phlueger: If you wait until you have to shoot before you pull your gun you are in serious danger of being behind the proverbial curve.
You certainly do
not want to wait too long.
The issue is one of determining when and whether the threat is in fact imminent. For those who are not aware of the history, Dennis Tueller became famous through his conduct of experiments showing that, if one is faced by an assailant armed with a contact weapon, waiting to draw until the attacker was in close enough proximity to use the weapon would not work out well for the defender. The need for that demonstration arose from disputes over when a defender (a police officer, in that case) could lawfully present his weapon.
There are a great many instances where pulling a gun might be justified while pulling the trigger at that moment would not.
That's true in some jurisdictions, but not in others. In the latter, the distinction between the justification for drawing (or in some of them, pointing the gun) and for shooting is one of what is going on at the moment.
I have had to point a gun at violent criminal actors on three different occasions (all indoors) over the years, and in each the mere presentation of the weapon, plus some clear industrial strength coaching, saved the day. I did not present the weapon until I had been faced with an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm, and presenting the weapon took care of the threat.
Some states even have verbiage that specifically allows for the presentation of a firearm with the express purpose of preventing the situation from escalating to the point that deadly force is actually warranted.
Yes, and in some of those that resulted from appellate rulings, and in some, from legislative action.
Most of us would likely favor that provision, but not everyone does. In one state, a bill providing for the "defensive display of a firearm" was vetoed by the governor, who made dire predictions about the potential effects of such a law. The requirement that a defender be faced with an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm before even mentioning a firearm thus remained in effect. Fortunately her successor signed the bill the second time around.
In another state, the legislature reduced the threshold for lawful presentation from one in which deadly force had been necessary to one in which non-deadly physical force would be justified after an unusual set of circumstances. The use of force laws had been re-written, apparently hurriedly, and a high court ruling in an appellate case determined that under the new law, drawing a firearm in self defense was justified only if the defender actually shot the assailant (!). That obviously had not been intended, and the legislature redrafted the law, with many improvements.
In one state, and only one that I know of, pointing a gun at someone is legally the same as using deadly force.