Think carefully about answering this please ... your answer may dictate whether I continue to participate here at the 24HCF or not, not that anyone gives a sh1t. And, truly, not that I personally give a sh1t.
Let's consider the scene. Milwaukie, Oregon has about a 1% black population and a 14 year-old black gang member is standing in my store with a shotgun pointed at my chest, demanding all of my money and all of my jewelry. And I am not supposed to kill the black sonofabitch if I can????
Surely, you must think I am a coward and I have not killed men before.
Consider the following; I have worked literally all of my life to accumulate a couple of thousand bucks and a little gold. Should I allow this 14-year old black puke take away thirty years of my hard work and sweat???
Right, wrong ... legal or not ... moral or immoral ... any right-thinking person is going to press the trigger and send the alleged felon sonofabitch straight to HELL.
And that's just the way it is.
Steve
Deadly force generally is authorized in self-defense by a person who has a reasonable belief that is it necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury. Armed robbery is generally considered a serious crime where there is a high risk of death or great bodily injury. A victim who reasonably believes he is facing an armed, deadly threat has a right to defend himself using deadly force whether the reasonable belief is based upon seeing a shotgun pointed at his chest or a hand in a pocket with the index finger poking through the cloth, commonly referred to as an implied weapon.
“Upgrading” facts after the event to obtain some perceived advantage in explaining the deal is wrong and illegal regardless of the justifiability of the shooting. It doesn’t matter if the shooter replaces the shotgun with an RPG or the implied weapon with a real one. It also makes the person look like he had no confidence in his position, i.e., that he has guilty knowledge, and it makes him a liar. Once credibility is gone, how does one decipher what parts of the story are true and which are not, such as the original justification.
By the way, I see no reason why race had to get interjected into this. What relevance does it have? Would it have mattered in a self-defense analysis if a purple person had been pointing the shotgun?
