priusron wrote:I find that a lot of people post without carefully reading the original post. I find that if I reread a posting, I no longer have a need to reply because I misunderstood what I read the first time. I did not present my weapon until he had come out of his vehicle and was approaching mine and was within 5-7 ft of my door. That is when I felt I was in danger, not at any other time. My weapon was on my lap because I am left handed and it is impossible to draw with your left hand and fire out the drivers door. For you right handed people, sit in the passenger seat and try it. I chose to be cautious. It all happened very fast. There was not time to think. The purpose of the post was to discuss what went through my mind as it was happening.
This incident has caused me to think a lot about "being a good witness". We live in a violence ridden society. Yes, there are worse than ours. I also recall that there were many, many witnesses to what happened to the Jews. They did nothing and look at the results. Many crimes are witnessed and a report taken, nothing else is ever done. If we all agree to be good witnesses, our country will decline. We will have our government pass laws that restrict our freedom and our right to purchase ammo and to bear arms. I want to live in a safe neighborhood and know the police cannot make it safe for use. Being a "good witness" will do nothing to make your neighborhood safer. What are we to do? The same old thing and latch the decline? I do not have the answer. I am just doing a lot of thinking.
Ron
If I may, priusron is absolutely correct. As I read through the thread, time and again opinions were given based erroneously on what they thought were in the OP. That said...
One thing that jumped out at me was, "I watched him in my rearview mirror and it
looked like he was dumping trash." He did not say that prior to investigation, he
knew what he was doing. Myself as well as several other neighbors have had occasion to investigate "suspicious" behavior around one another's residence, generally speaking this would be non-confrontational (distant observation) or polite challenge, I.E. "Can I help you?" Which brings me to the critique.
You are living in an isolated rural area and someone crosses onto yours or your neighbor's property and engages in suspicious behavior, you can not ignore it as you can not be certain what degree of no good is being enacted. I would, given the OP scenario, observe from a distance suitable to ascertain what he was doing , get vehicle, license number, etc.
IF I thought there may be reason to intervene I may close to within loud talking distance and politely inform the guy that he is on private property, that he needs to pick up his refuse and leave, if he does so then everybody wins, if he keeps doing it but is NOT confrontational, I (this is me acting on the information in the OP) may simply retreat to the vehicle and observe until LEOs arrive or the guy leaves. If he gets froggy
then firm but calm commands to stand down may be in order, if he continues to close going to a ready position and backing up, if he's got his hands in his pockets and is closing on me, I will be afraid and act accordingly. Keeping the family out of harm's way and immediate and continued communication with 911 is paramount. There are a lot of BIG ifs in this scenario and my speculation is based on the limited information from priusron.
What I would
not do given similar occurrences is ignore it or fail to mitigate the situation, priusron was in the right here. I also would
NOT block in a bad guy, place myself or family in close enough proximity where escalation may occur before I make the decision or am prepared for it; nor would I take an aggressor's stance in my initial contact. IMHO the latter is where priusron made a mistake. Once engaged, the actions of the BG would certainly inspire me to ready myself (have the weapon handy) if not present the weapon.
One final thing, a lot of posters have hung there hat on the non-justification by "in response to verbal provocation alone;" verbiage but the opening paragraph of this oft repeated statute says in paragraph (a), " Except as provided in Subsection (b), a person
is justified in using force against another when and to the degree he reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to protect himself against the other's use or attempted use of unlawful force."
I want to be clear, I do believe that priusron made multiple errors in aggressively approaching and blocking the egress of the BG creating an immediately hostile engagement, especially with family members there but "wherever you go, there you are" and he then had to respond to the BG's aggressive actions. He did alright and in the end, everyone went home.
and furthermore, this truism can not be over emphasized in CHL classes. It should be test question nos. 2, 31 and 47...IMO.