Of course that's only homicides, whereas GBH is sufficient to justify deadly force.
GBH is covered under aggravated.
The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program defines aggravated assault as an unlawful attack by one person upon another for the purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury
Interesting stuff: 10 percent of the personal force robberies in the study ended in a person going to the hospital but 40 percent had complaints of injury.
I'd like to tack on to @mcdermott personal experience pool and add that most people I've known outside of the military only end up in fights in the rarest of circumstances - and in my experience are more than justified in having defended themselves.
But god damn if PFC Snuffy doesn't get into a fight and break his teeth or shatter someone's ribs, and his own hand every other week in a drunken rage at the local dive.
Adult fights are dangerous shit. Bone on bone will always result in something being broken if people are actually landing hits. You're in even worse shape if the individuals have any history with grappling or submission.
I tore a guys ACL in a combatives level two course, shattered a dudes eye socket once, broke my nose, have broken peoples noses, have chocked individuals out, and have more than a few scarred knuckles. But I recognize that that is all anecdotal and may not reflect statistical data.
Shit gets real, very fast, when you don't know what the person across from you can do, or is capable of. You can't read a persons intent - only surmise or interpret from their actions - and if you don't head into a fight with the express purpose to win you may not come out alive.
Shit gets real, very fast, when you don't know what the person across from you can do, or is capable of. You can't read a persons intent - only surmise or interpret from their actions - and if you don't head into a fight with the express purpose to win you may not come out alive.
I think it's very easy to overstate the actual, for lack of better term, "expected value" of injury that can come from an unarmed fight with another adult (to include those in their late teens). Because others are correct, most of the time the actual injury is pretty minor. It's the variance that's the issue, and it's very difficult to estimate what the specific individual risk is going in to a given altercation, particularly if you are dealing with complete strangers, don't have friends to help you, etc. At that point it's mostly going to come down to your own ability to defend yourself, and how much damage the other person decides to do if you can't. And I'm willing to concede that myself and several of my friends over the years have been unlucky (and my injury wasn't necessarily intentional on the other dude's, it was just a bad fall when he hit me).
But it does seem, from what numbers we're seeing, that you can expect to get significantly injured (short of death obviously) several percent of the time.
Most of this, really, is irrelevant to the Dunn case though as far as I'm concerned (which is why I don't buy his defense, and think he should at least have been convicted of manslaughter). But to the more general question of "can you be justified shooting an unarmed person," it's quite relevant, because of course you can.
Shit gets real, very fast, when you don't know what the person across from you can do, or is capable of. You can't read a persons intent - only surmise or interpret from their actions - and if you don't head into a fight with the express purpose to win you may not come out alive.
Cause it was last page and I think it is worth repeating,
Homicides
Personal
weapons
(hands, fists,
feet, etc.)1
678 total
469 where the victim is over 18
Shit gets real, very fast, when you don't know what the person across from you can do, or is capable of. You can't read a persons intent - only surmise or interpret from their actions - and if you don't head into a fight with the express purpose to win you may not come out alive.
I think it's very easy to overstate the actual, for lack of better term, "expected value" of injury that can come from an unarmed fight with another adult (to include those in their late teens). Because others are correct, most of the time the actual injury is pretty minor. It's the variance that's the issue, and it's very difficult to estimate what the specific individual risk is going in to a given altercation, particularly if you are dealing with complete strangers, don't have friends to help you, etc. At that point it's mostly going to come down to your own ability to defend yourself, and how much damage the other person decides to do if you can't. And I'm willing to concede that myself and several of my friends over the years have been unlucky (and my injury wasn't necessarily intentional on the other dude's, it was just a bad fall when he hit me).
But it does seem, from what numbers we're seeing, that you can expect to get significantly injured (short of death obviously) several percent of the time.
Most of this, really, is irrelevant to the Dunn case though as far as I'm concerned (which is why I don't buy his defense, and think he should at least have been convicted of manslaughter). But to the more general question of "can you be justified shooting an unarmed person," it's quite relevant, because of course you can.
I guess the disconnect with me is that a reasonable person should expect that someone of the same size and age that can't be bothered to arm themselves in some way assualting you isn't trying (or able)to cause you GBH unless there is some reason to think that they are.
I guess the disconnect with me is that a reasonable person should expect that someone of the same size and age that can't be bothered to arm themselves in some way assualting you isn't trying (or able)to cause you GBH unless there is some reason to think that they are.
That's a fairly questionable assumption, yes. They may well be able (pretty much any grown man is), and it's arguable that they're "trying" whether they realize it or not. Trying to hit you is arguably trying to cause GBH, just as some jackhole who "shoots to wound" is actually using deadly force. That they don't understand the gravity of what they are doing is an issue, yes.
Also, two things. One, you're looking at homicides. But death is not the standard for the use of deadly force, GBH is. And not just actual GBH, but the imminent threat of it. So that number will be larger. Two, the "hands, fists, feet" number will not include those assaults that begin with hands, fists, and feet but during which the assailant picks something up (anything from a pool cue to beer bottle to tire iron to whatever). That's a thing that totally happens.
It's a gigantic, murky grey area because the point at which one can have a "reasonable fear" of imminent GBH, and where one can have a "reasonable necessity" to employ deadly force to prevent it, is a pretty wide area if we admit that GBH can easily result from what begin as unarmed assaults with no particular apparent intent to kill/maim. And that in many cases it may be "reasonably necessary" to employ deadly force prior to any injury, because by the time you are being injured it may be far too late to actually prevent GBH (or death). But at the same time, obviously, drawing the line for deadly force that far forward means you'll employ it in many, many cases where no GBH would have occurred. It's quite the conundrum.
Almost all the self defense things they tell women are dumb. Because no one will pay for a 3 hour class that says: someone 6 inches taller and 50+ pounds heavier than you can pretty much do to you what they want to.
The difference is much more massive than what this. If women knew exactly just how weak they are compared to men, self defense courses for women would begin and end with carry a gun.
Just how weak are women? The world record deadlift for women is 580 lbs by April Mathis, who weighed 259 lbs during her world record deadlift. So how does that compare to the men? The lightest power lifting class for men is 123 lbs, and the world record holder in that class, Lamar Gant, deadlifted 634 lbs.
Yeah, you read those numbers right. A 123 lb man deadlifted more than a 259 lb woman, the strongest woman in the world. Really, the strength difference between men and women is so huge that self defense courses for women should be firearms training courses.
Which is interesting from a difference in world class athletes perspective
It kinda has absolutely nothing to do with the vast, vast majority of people who are not world class athletes though :P
well in actuality, the average woman will have about 1/2 the upper body strength of the average man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_physiology#Strength.2C_power_and_muscle_mass
This is mostly because men are bigger, have less body fat (and therefore more lean body mass), and have more of their LBM in the upper body. There are some minor differences in muscle fiber size and such, but basically the strength per muscle fiber is the same between the sexes.
So yeah the strength difference between the sexes is pretty vast, see this article where grip strength in elite female athletes reaches only the 25th percentile of untrained men http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-006-0351-1
None of this has anything to do with the best self defense strategy for both men and women which is: 1. don't be dangerous places and 2. run/disengage from fights whenever possible
I guess the disconnect with me is that a reasonable person should expect that someone of the same size and age that can't be bothered to arm themselves in some way assualting you isn't trying (or able)to cause you GBH unless there is some reason to think that they are.
That's a fairly questionable assumption, yes. They may well be able (pretty much any grown man is), and it's arguable that they're "trying" whether they realize it or not. Trying to hit you is arguably trying to cause GBH, just as some jackhole who "shoots to wound" is actually using deadly force. That they don't understand the gravity of what they are doing is an issue, yes.
Two, the "hands, fists, feet" number will not include those assaults that begin with hands, fists, and feet but during which the assailant picks something up (anything from a pool cue to beer bottle to tire iron to whatever). That's a thing that totally happens.
1) Eh, I don't know. Most of the people I have seen that haven't trained (formally or just fighting all the time) couldn't do GBH if they tried. Punching is a skill just like anything else but then again adrenaline does strange stuff.
2) Hadnt thought of that. Using a weapon automatically pushes it to aggravated even without injuries (plus I don't think anyone would have a problem with using deadly force if someone is using a weapon.)
Homicides
Blunt
objects
(clubs,
hammers,
etc.)
Over 14
469
Aggravated assault
Other weapon (Basically not a knife or gun)
214,484
Aside: Man, some of these stats are depressing. Biggest age group for personal weapon homicides is under 4 with 166.
0
Options
SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
edited February 2014
I think a lot of where people stand on the issues is just what kind of culture they're used to; what exists around them, and what they've grown up in. I mentioned earlier I'm familiar with the MI self-defense statutes?
Detroit this week - three separate home invasions ended in justified self-defense shootings.
EDIT: And really, it's kind of sad / not a healthy mindset. It's a product of bad circumstances and knowing too many people and too much violence and seeing this shit every day on the news. I don't know.
SummaryJudgment on
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
I think a lot of where people stand on the issues is just what kind of culture they're used to; what exists around them, and what they've grown up in. I mentioned earlier I'm familiar with the MI self-defense statutes?
Detroit this week - three separate home invasions ended in justified self-defense shootings.
EDIT: And really, it's kind of sad / not a healthy mindset. It's a product of bad circumstances and knowing too many people and too much violence and seeing this shit every day on the news. I don't know.
Detroit is such a shit hole, you really can't compare it with the majority of the United States.
It has such intense extremes.
Also I am beyond glad that I no longer live there. I haven't even felt the need to carry concealed since I moved from there.
h3ndu on
Lo Que Sea, Cuando Sea, Donde Sea.
+2
Options
SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
I think a lot of where people stand on the issues is just what kind of culture they're used to; what exists around them, and what they've grown up in. I mentioned earlier I'm familiar with the MI self-defense statutes?
Detroit this week - three separate home invasions ended in justified self-defense shootings.
EDIT: And really, it's kind of sad / not a healthy mindset. It's a product of bad circumstances and knowing too many people and too much violence and seeing this shit every day on the news. I don't know.
Detroit is such a shit hole, you really can't compare it with the majority of the United States.
It has such intense extremes.
Also I am beyond glad that I no longer live there. I haven't even felt the need to carry concealed since I moved from there.
Yeah. I just mean, growing up in the area, and still listening to Detroit 2/4/7, and having family and friends live in the city and in surrounding area (read: not Birmingham/Rochester/Sterling Heights) it shapes you. I'm not there now but, thinking on it, I think a lot of how I framed my long-term beliefs comes from that.
Detroit/Metro Detroit, like you said, a really weird edge case of extremes. Nothing like old auto money mansions right next to / in the middle of the ghetto. Lot of interesting conversations to be had about that with classmates coming in from out-of-state, having never lived here.
It's also a weird bird because it really has changed a lot for the better, especially surrounding communities. But a lot of the older generation are scared / have no desire to head down there, outside of Comerica/Ford Field.
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
I guess the disconnect with me is that a reasonable person should expect that someone of the same size and age that can't be bothered to arm themselves in some way assualting you isn't trying (or able)to cause you GBH unless there is some reason to think that they are.
That's a fairly questionable assumption, yes. They may well be able (pretty much any grown man is), and it's arguable that they're "trying" whether they realize it or not. Trying to hit you is arguably trying to cause GBH, just as some jackhole who "shoots to wound" is actually using deadly force. That they don't understand the gravity of what they are doing is an issue, yes.
Also, two things. One, you're looking at homicides. But death is not the standard for the use of deadly force, GBH is. And not just actual GBH, but the imminent threat of it. So that number will be larger. Two, the "hands, fists, feet" number will not include those assaults that begin with hands, fists, and feet but during which the assailant picks something up (anything from a pool cue to beer bottle to tire iron to whatever). That's a thing that totally happens.
It's a gigantic, murky grey area because the point at which one can have a "reasonable fear" of imminent GBH, and where one can have a "reasonable necessity" to employ deadly force to prevent it, is a pretty wide area if we admit that GBH can easily result from what begin as unarmed assaults with no particular apparent intent to kill/maim. And that in many cases it may be "reasonably necessary" to employ deadly force prior to any injury, because by the time you are being injured it may be far too late to actually prevent GBH (or death). But at the same time, obviously, drawing the line for deadly force that far forward means you'll employ it in many, many cases where no GBH would have occurred. It's quite the conundrum.
Not quite sure if your intention is to argue the legality of self-defense or more the ethical justification.
If the latter, what you seem to be arguing is that a potential for GBH justifies the use of deadly force. Which means that, for example, if you think some guy might break your arm when he punches you, you're morally justified in killing him. More generally, since you're apparently arguing that just about any attack by any individual can potentially lead to GBH, and since even a chance of GBH means you get to kill the dude, that you can justifiably kill any person who ever indicated that they're about to hit you.
If there's a breakdown in my flow of logic there, please point it out.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
1) Eh, I don't know. Most of the people I have seen that haven't trained (formally or just fighting all the time) couldn't do GBH if they tried. Punching is a skill just like anything else but then again adrenaline does strange stuff.
Thing is, even somebody who couldn't do GBH if they tried may manage to do so without actively trying. That's the point. The guy who decided to beat me up probably didn't intend to do permanent harm, but I fell wrong, spent half year in a cast, almost needed surgery, and wound up with a moderate but real permanent disability. All because a guy decided he wanted to do me (at the least) minor physical harm, and (more then likely) overshot.
Not quite sure if your intention is to argue the legality of self-defense or more the ethical justification.
It's mostly to defend the legality by arguing the ethical justification.
If the latter, what you seem to be arguing is that a potential for GBH justifies the use of deadly force. Which means that, for example, if you think some guy might break your arm when he punches you, you're morally justified in killing him. More generally, since you're apparently arguing that just about any attack by any individual can potentially lead to GBH, and since even a chance of GBH means you get to kill the dude, that you can justifiably kill any person who ever indicated that they're about to hit you.
If there's a breakdown in my flow of logic there, please point it out.
No, that's pretty much the flow. I've indicated already that this is problematic. Right now we mostly depend on rolling the dice with juries to separate the "shoot anybody that yells at you" from the "a reasonable person might have feared significant harm." But yes, realistically, you have a non-negligible risk of GBH any time somebody indicates that they intend to assault you. How that works out into a "reasonable fear of great bodily harm," (combined with "reasonable necessity" of deadly force to prevent it) is how we wind up with this thread. But what I see a lot of is attempts to dismiss the very real risk of great bodily harm at the hands of (initially) unarmed assailants.
What we're really trying to decide is which is more problematic: the status quo (which is pretty common across the nation, not just Florida) or changing the law to place higher burdens of justification and/or proof on the accused in a self-defense shooting.
I'm more than willing to admit that my position (status quo is preferable) is probably colored by the fact that I see myself as being much more likely to be assaulted and suffer significant injury (again) than to get self-defensed to death, along with having no particular issue with arming myself to prevent it (though I don't bother). That, and I'm jaded enough that I take the "better a hundred guilty men go free" thing to heart. Yup, some of these guys are totally guilty, but unless/until this turns into some wider trend of murder-by-self-defense we really are just talking about (in the grand scheme of things) a handful of people getting away with it. I see no need to upend the system over that, tragic though it may be.
Posts
GBH is covered under aggravated.
The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program defines aggravated assault as an unlawful attack by one person upon another for the purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury
The percentage of aggravated assault victimizations reported to the police in 2010 was 60 percent, while the percent of reported simple assaults was 47 percent.
So not as big a difference as I would have thought.
Cool robbery statistics
Interesting stuff: 10 percent of the personal force robberies in the study ended in a person going to the hospital but 40 percent had complaints of injury.
But god damn if PFC Snuffy doesn't get into a fight and break his teeth or shatter someone's ribs, and his own hand every other week in a drunken rage at the local dive.
Adult fights are dangerous shit. Bone on bone will always result in something being broken if people are actually landing hits. You're in even worse shape if the individuals have any history with grappling or submission.
I tore a guys ACL in a combatives level two course, shattered a dudes eye socket once, broke my nose, have broken peoples noses, have chocked individuals out, and have more than a few scarred knuckles. But I recognize that that is all anecdotal and may not reflect statistical data.
Shit gets real, very fast, when you don't know what the person across from you can do, or is capable of. You can't read a persons intent - only surmise or interpret from their actions - and if you don't head into a fight with the express purpose to win you may not come out alive.
I think it's very easy to overstate the actual, for lack of better term, "expected value" of injury that can come from an unarmed fight with another adult (to include those in their late teens). Because others are correct, most of the time the actual injury is pretty minor. It's the variance that's the issue, and it's very difficult to estimate what the specific individual risk is going in to a given altercation, particularly if you are dealing with complete strangers, don't have friends to help you, etc. At that point it's mostly going to come down to your own ability to defend yourself, and how much damage the other person decides to do if you can't. And I'm willing to concede that myself and several of my friends over the years have been unlucky (and my injury wasn't necessarily intentional on the other dude's, it was just a bad fall when he hit me).
But it does seem, from what numbers we're seeing, that you can expect to get significantly injured (short of death obviously) several percent of the time.
Most of this, really, is irrelevant to the Dunn case though as far as I'm concerned (which is why I don't buy his defense, and think he should at least have been convicted of manslaughter). But to the more general question of "can you be justified shooting an unarmed person," it's quite relevant, because of course you can.
Cause it was last page and I think it is worth repeating,
Homicides
Personal
weapons
(hands, fists,
feet, etc.)1
678 total
469 where the victim is over 18
Out of about 5 million "fights"
, m I guess the disconnect with me is that a reasonable person should expect that someone of the same size and age that can't be bothered to arm themselves in some way assualting you isn't trying (or able)to cause you GBH unless there is some reason to think that they are.
That's a fairly questionable assumption, yes. They may well be able (pretty much any grown man is), and it's arguable that they're "trying" whether they realize it or not. Trying to hit you is arguably trying to cause GBH, just as some jackhole who "shoots to wound" is actually using deadly force. That they don't understand the gravity of what they are doing is an issue, yes.
Also, two things. One, you're looking at homicides. But death is not the standard for the use of deadly force, GBH is. And not just actual GBH, but the imminent threat of it. So that number will be larger. Two, the "hands, fists, feet" number will not include those assaults that begin with hands, fists, and feet but during which the assailant picks something up (anything from a pool cue to beer bottle to tire iron to whatever). That's a thing that totally happens.
It's a gigantic, murky grey area because the point at which one can have a "reasonable fear" of imminent GBH, and where one can have a "reasonable necessity" to employ deadly force to prevent it, is a pretty wide area if we admit that GBH can easily result from what begin as unarmed assaults with no particular apparent intent to kill/maim. And that in many cases it may be "reasonably necessary" to employ deadly force prior to any injury, because by the time you are being injured it may be far too late to actually prevent GBH (or death). But at the same time, obviously, drawing the line for deadly force that far forward means you'll employ it in many, many cases where no GBH would have occurred. It's quite the conundrum.
well in actuality, the average woman will have about 1/2 the upper body strength of the average man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_physiology#Strength.2C_power_and_muscle_mass
This is mostly because men are bigger, have less body fat (and therefore more lean body mass), and have more of their LBM in the upper body. There are some minor differences in muscle fiber size and such, but basically the strength per muscle fiber is the same between the sexes.
So yeah the strength difference between the sexes is pretty vast, see this article where grip strength in elite female athletes reaches only the 25th percentile of untrained men http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-006-0351-1
None of this has anything to do with the best self defense strategy for both men and women which is: 1. don't be dangerous places and 2. run/disengage from fights whenever possible
1) Eh, I don't know. Most of the people I have seen that haven't trained (formally or just fighting all the time) couldn't do GBH if they tried. Punching is a skill just like anything else but then again adrenaline does strange stuff.
2) Hadnt thought of that. Using a weapon automatically pushes it to aggravated even without injuries (plus I don't think anyone would have a problem with using deadly force if someone is using a weapon.)
Homicides
Blunt
objects
(clubs,
hammers,
etc.)
Over 14
469
Aggravated assault
Other weapon (Basically not a knife or gun)
214,484
Aside: Man, some of these stats are depressing. Biggest age group for personal weapon homicides is under 4 with 166.
http://www.wxyz.com/news/region/wayne-county/3-different-homeowners-use-guns-to-defend-themselves-against-intruders-this-week
Detroit this week - three separate home invasions ended in justified self-defense shootings.
EDIT: And really, it's kind of sad / not a healthy mindset. It's a product of bad circumstances and knowing too many people and too much violence and seeing this shit every day on the news. I don't know.
It has such intense extremes.
Also I am beyond glad that I no longer live there. I haven't even felt the need to carry concealed since I moved from there.
Yeah. I just mean, growing up in the area, and still listening to Detroit 2/4/7, and having family and friends live in the city and in surrounding area (read: not Birmingham/Rochester/Sterling Heights) it shapes you. I'm not there now but, thinking on it, I think a lot of how I framed my long-term beliefs comes from that.
Detroit/Metro Detroit, like you said, a really weird edge case of extremes. Nothing like old auto money mansions right next to / in the middle of the ghetto. Lot of interesting conversations to be had about that with classmates coming in from out-of-state, having never lived here.
It's also a weird bird because it really has changed a lot for the better, especially surrounding communities. But a lot of the older generation are scared / have no desire to head down there, outside of Comerica/Ford Field.
Not quite sure if your intention is to argue the legality of self-defense or more the ethical justification.
If the latter, what you seem to be arguing is that a potential for GBH justifies the use of deadly force. Which means that, for example, if you think some guy might break your arm when he punches you, you're morally justified in killing him. More generally, since you're apparently arguing that just about any attack by any individual can potentially lead to GBH, and since even a chance of GBH means you get to kill the dude, that you can justifiably kill any person who ever indicated that they're about to hit you.
If there's a breakdown in my flow of logic there, please point it out.
Thing is, even somebody who couldn't do GBH if they tried may manage to do so without actively trying. That's the point. The guy who decided to beat me up probably didn't intend to do permanent harm, but I fell wrong, spent half year in a cast, almost needed surgery, and wound up with a moderate but real permanent disability. All because a guy decided he wanted to do me (at the least) minor physical harm, and (more then likely) overshot.
It's mostly to defend the legality by arguing the ethical justification.
No, that's pretty much the flow. I've indicated already that this is problematic. Right now we mostly depend on rolling the dice with juries to separate the "shoot anybody that yells at you" from the "a reasonable person might have feared significant harm." But yes, realistically, you have a non-negligible risk of GBH any time somebody indicates that they intend to assault you. How that works out into a "reasonable fear of great bodily harm," (combined with "reasonable necessity" of deadly force to prevent it) is how we wind up with this thread. But what I see a lot of is attempts to dismiss the very real risk of great bodily harm at the hands of (initially) unarmed assailants.
What we're really trying to decide is which is more problematic: the status quo (which is pretty common across the nation, not just Florida) or changing the law to place higher burdens of justification and/or proof on the accused in a self-defense shooting.
I'm more than willing to admit that my position (status quo is preferable) is probably colored by the fact that I see myself as being much more likely to be assaulted and suffer significant injury (again) than to get self-defensed to death, along with having no particular issue with arming myself to prevent it (though I don't bother). That, and I'm jaded enough that I take the "better a hundred guilty men go free" thing to heart. Yup, some of these guys are totally guilty, but unless/until this turns into some wider trend of murder-by-self-defense we really are just talking about (in the grand scheme of things) a handful of people getting away with it. I see no need to upend the system over that, tragic though it may be.