I don't get it. Most of you are CCW advocates and have one yourself. A man uses his after being in fear for his life and half of you are doing nothing but criticizing him and saying he was in the wrong.
This is what makes it hard to convince a jury of our peers that we were in fear for our life. If a forum of CCW advocates and carriers can't be convinced, how hard is it to convince those that are unfamiliar with the intricacies of the laws?
His thought process was probably that these guys attempted to kill him while driving by trying to get him to crash or dump his bike. If these two thugs that are beating his ass were willing to risk killing someone on the road, why would they stop that behavior when they follow him and cause him physical harm.
I understand that a lot of you share the opinion that all CCL holders should get combat training, martial arts training, boxing, or take MMA classes. But that is not the law, and a lot of people are physically unable to do those things. The law says he is allowed to carry a weapon and the law says that he is allowed to use the weapon if he is in fear of his life.
Whether or not you all believe that ninja skills would have helped him, he met the criteria for a justified shooting by the letter of the law, and now must convince a judge to see it the same way. We should be backing this guy to get some kind of precedence set in case we are in a similar position.
There does not seem to be any LEGAL issue with the shooting.
There MAY be some TACTICAL issues that should be discussed and I believe that is what the forum is doing.
Where we need to be careful is becoming too accusatory in our statements and demanding too much from someone in a crisis. THAT is monday-morning quarterbacking and is unproductive and impolite.
Discussing how we can avoid or improve on our own potential situation is a good thing; criticizing the victim is not.
Thus it would probably be good to avoid typing if you must speculate too much or make blanket statements about the decision-making of the victim without a proper foundation.
Other than that, I say carry on.........
Michael Brown