Something happened yesterday to me

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I've had similar instances like this happen around my house (before I came to college) and my typical course of action is to have a gun either on me or within quick reach and watch the person(s) of interest from inside the house until they leave. If they don't leave but don't attempt to break in then you call the police. If they do attempt to break in that's what your shotgun is for.
 
Like others have said before, it depends where you live, but here in Washington state, if someone's on your property, everything you did was perfectly legal.
 
Xanatos, let me see if I get this right. You are saying that under the laws of the State of Washington you can commit assault with a deadly weapon because someone is on your property after dark? My brother, a retired Washington cop who lives on San Juan Island says you are wrong, as does my nephew who is currently carrying a badge in Tacoma. They say that if the cops arrive while one has the trespasser at gunpoint, it will cause the officers responding to first threaten you with lethal force until you relinquish the weapon and go prone, then they will arrest and transport you to a nice warm cell.

I'm simply amazed that more people don't get killed messing around with firearms in this manner. Coming outside with the shotgun could have put Wallabing in jail, but that's the lightest result if things went sideways. What if the two strange rangers were BGs, and armed, saw Wallabing with his Benelli Nova, and then decided to remove him as a threat? Then there is the chance that the cops arrive, Wallabing being young and excited, doesn't respond correctly and quickly enough, and we have tragic headlines; Young Washington State man killed by Local Police in late night prowler incident.

Get a noisy dog. Get an alarm system. If someone is in your backyard, call 911. Get everyone into one room that has a telephone, your cell phone, firearms, access to a bathroom, and wait for the cavalry. Do not go outside and try to resolve the situation yourself.

The thing about guns is that they make it real easy to kill people, and real easy for other people to kill you. Try not to kill, or get killed. :)


Dr. Raoul Duke
Gonzo Forever
 
Enough to get you arrested? No way, your house, you told them to leave, time for them to get the **** out.

Read it again. They were not in his house. They were in his yard, and he went outside with a gun. Enough to get him arrested? In some places yes siree, in others possibly not.

Generally I tend to disagree with most of the armchair celebrities on here that get so much respect from your population, who always try to say that the assailant has to threaten you a ridiculous amount before a gun can come into play.

Standards vary. Do you consider an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm to be ridiculous? That's the legal threshold in most jurisdictions.

Sometimes it is permitted when necessary to prevent a forcible felony--hardly the case here.

I honestly don't recall ever seeing a post on this forum about someone pulling a gun in self defense and nobody has a problem with it

I've seen many, but that's irrelevant. No one pulled a gun in self defense here.
 
We had a similar happening here on Long Island several years ago. The son of a homeowner felt he was in danger and rushed home from a party and told his father there were people after him. When a group of teens did arrive at his home, the father grabbed a pistol and went outside to confront the group. The confrontation, with the help of alcohol , escalated, a teen was shot and killed. The father was black, the teens white, the whole incident blew up into a racial thing. Bottom line, the shooter is doing time in prison--not enough for the victim's family and too much for his. Most cooler heads have agreed--he should never have left his house with the gun and the father's first move should have been to call the police. The cops ,too often, are cleaning up the mess, if we can get them to prevent the mess--go for it.
 
Read it again. They were not in his house. They were in his yard, and he went outside with a gun. Enough to get him arrested? In some places yes siree, in others possibly not.

Yes HIS yard. There are two things I am very adamant about. Nobody messes with my home, and nobody messes with my family. In my opinion, the type of people that will threaten the sanctity of an occupied residence and the type of people that threaten your family, without provocation, are the type of people that god never needed to give life to in the first place. I am also very defensive of my vehicles, but I understand the difference in the mindset of the car thief and the burglar.

And yes trespassing on an enclosed area, locked or not, especially after dark, would be enough to get you killed where I live, most people are not of the shoot first ask questions later, but you better be running.

And since when did pointing a gun at someone qualify as assault? But your probably the guy who gets molested when someone swears at you.
 
In most states, an assault/battery is committed when one person 1) tries to or does physically strike another, or 2) acts in a threatening manner to put another in fear of immediate harm. [emphasis added]

http://criminal.findlaw.com/crimes/a-z/assault_battery.html

Anyone can run out into their yard and threaten any visitor with firearms. But a thinking person realizes that by doing so they (1)give up the cover provided by their home, (2)are walking into an unknown situation, (3)are leaving any family members present inside to cope with accomplices or any assailants that get past you, and (4)may face legal consequences if their actions are found to be unjustified. On that last count (and it is not the most important, although you might give it greater weight after receiving a bill from your attorney) it is much easier to justify to authorities and the courts the use or threat of force inside the home and/or when serious physical harm is clearly feared than when the homeowner leaves a secure place to confront someone, especially in situations like this in which the most severe claim one would have to justify one's action is trespassing.
 
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Yes HIS yard. There are two things I am very adamant about. Nobody messes with my home, and nobody messes with my family. In my opinion, the type of people that will threaten the sanctity of an occupied residence and the type of people that threaten your family, without provocation, are the type of people that god never needed to give life to in the first place.

Yard and occupied residence are two entirely different things. In many jurisdictions one may use deadly force against someone who has entered an occupied residence unlawfully, or who is attempting to enter unlawfully and with force. Sometimes the law extends to the porch or maybe garage, sometimes it doesn't. The concept is that such entry provides reason to believe that imminent danger of death exists. The concept ("a man's home is his castle") goes back almost a thousand years to the English Common Law in terms of the original roots of state laws, and about four thousand in other places.

I am also very defensive of my vehicles, but I understand the difference in the mindset of the car thief and the burglar.

In some places, but not all, the above concept extends to the occupied vehicle--not to protect the car but to provide for the safety of the occupants.

And yes trespassing on an enclosed area, locked or not, especially after dark, would be enough to get you killed where I live, most people are not of the shoot first ask questions later, but you better be running.

And shooting a trespasser is enough to get you charged with murder almost everywhere. There are a few very limited exceptions here and there. In some places, reasonable, but not deadly, force may be employed. In most places the lawful thing to do is to inform a trespasser that he is uninvited and ask him to leave, or to ask the sheriff to do so. Heck, in many places all the sheriff can do is issue a citation. This also goes back hundreds of years.

And since when did pointing a gun at someone qualify as assault?

Varies by jurisdiction, but probably since the advent of the gun.

Perhaps people have been watching too much television. Yeah, Cisco, Gene and Hoppy and Roy and their side-kicks pointed guns at people in the movies and on television every Saturday, but that was fiction.

What were they going to do? Shoot? No, of course not, but the "bad guys' " scripts called for them to raise their hands.

Not always assault, but often constitutes other crimes. The threshold for producing a weapon varies somewhat from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but in all places, there must be a need. In most, it must involve self defense.

Know your state laws and what they mean.

But your probably the guy who gets molested when someone swears at you.

You lost me.
 
pockets:

Yes HIS yard. There are two things I am very adamant about. Nobody messes with my home, and nobody messes with my family. In my opinion, the type of people that will threaten the sanctity of an occupied residence and the type of people that threaten your family, without provocation, are the type of people that god never needed to give life to in the first place. I am also very defensive of my vehicles, but I understand the difference in the mindset of the car thief and the burglar.

And yes trespassing on an enclosed area, locked or not, especially after dark, would be enough to get you killed where I live, most people are not of the shoot first ask questions later, but you better be running.

And since when did pointing a gun at someone qualify as assault? But your probably the guy who gets molested when someone swears at you.

You really need to calm yourself down. You are far too eager to shoot and kill someone for a property crime than is rational or necessary.

Please tell me that place "Where you live" is not in Wisconsin. Because if it is your attitude is gonna buy you a lot of years in jail. The law is clear in Wisconsin, you can't use dealy force to protect property. You can't shoot someone simply for trespassing or theft. But hell they love tough guys in prison.

Seriously, you need to read the law regarding self defense, what defines assault, and when the use of deadly force is appropriate, before you end up wrongly killing someone and not only ruining your own life but your family's too.

Your attitude is not what we need in these gun grabber days. We need responsible and proper use of firearms in self defense situations. Not shoot out at the OK Corral type of incidents.

And by the way, this comment by you prooves you are an argumentative ass that when you run out of things to say on topic attack the poster.
But your probably the guy who gets molested when someone swears at you.
 
I know the smart thing to do is to stay in your house, but I'm sure I would have gone out there, too. Probably wouldn't have taken my mom with me, but some moms do what they want. I know mine did. As for pointing the shotgun, as long as it doesn't go off you're probably OK, but that's the problem isn't it? Four rules and so forth.
 
How about this for a middle ground...

Observe the guys outside as best you can. If your gut gives you the "oh snap, something is wrong" feeling, then call the cops. If you don't get that feeling, you can proceed outside (preferably armed, but certainly not showing or brandishing). This allows you (in certain situations) a better view and understanding of what is going on, and allows you to confront those people in your yard (which, chances are, are legitimate, if not innocent). Be sure to leave an avenue of retreat to your house open at all times, and never let those in your yard gain a position of advantage.
Does this make sense? Keep the situation dynamic, and allows you to stay safe when the BGs come knocking, but doesn't force you to call the cops when the local tweens hot rod their trikes through your yard... It makes sense to me anyway... Ive had people in my yard plenty of times, and since they never gave me the bad willies, I just went out to confront them. They were usually just small time contractors my mom would hire and forget to tell me about.

Applied to the OP, this would (theoretically) allow for the confrontation of the people in the first instance, and call the cops when the one returned (depending on the exact circumstances)
 
Come to think of it, when my mom was alive she probably wouldn't have come and gotten me at all...I would have heard her yelling and screaming and would have had to go out and protect the men...lol. She was a tough woman and was not the type to back down from a fight...lol.
 
Closed.

But your probably the guy who gets molested when someone swears at you.

And by the way, this comment by you prooves you are an argumentative ass that when you run out of things to say on topic attack the poster.

That's about enough of that.

pax
 
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