Can you be shot in &quot;self-defense&quot; for attempting to disarm someone? "I'd like to see you try and take my gun" is a common mantra among 2nd amendment enthusiasts, the implied sentiment being they'll kill anyone who tries, but I'm interested in what would happen if this actually occurred. If, for instance, a student brought an AR-15 slinged across her back challenging others to take it, and another student abruptly tried to disarm her but was shot and killed, would the student who brought the gun be able to argue a successful self-defense case to a court, or would she likely be found guilty of homicide?
I think it would depend on how a jury viewed the "challenge" to her audience. The general rule for self-defense in Texas is that the person needs to reasonably believe that force is immediately necessary to protect herself from someone else's use of force. I think a jury would find it reasonable to believe that someone forcefully attempting to steal your gun was planning to use it against you. More importantly, the law generally presumes that that belief is reasonable if the person is being robbed, assuming that she isn't otherwise engaged in criminal activity. Since openly carrying an AR-15 is -- as far as I know -- legal in Texas, I think she'd probably be fine. But: The law also says that the use of force is not justified when a person consents to the other person's use of force, or if the person has provoked the other person. So now you have the question of whether the student's challenge constitutes a provocation or consent to the use of force. I think you can make a decent argument for provocation, which means that "the defendant did some act or used some words intended to and calculated to bring on the difficulty in order to have a pretext for inflicting injury." Neal v. State, No. 12-14-00158-CR, 2016 WL 1446138, at *11 (Tex. App. Apr. 13, 2016). You might also make out a decent argument for consent, which doesn't necessarily seem to require that the parties exactly spell out the rules of engagement, just that there is some kind of agreement between the two parties. In one case, for instance, a defendant tried to argue that a fight had gone beyond the rules because one party used a chokehold and knocked the other out. But the court said that the only actual rule agreed to was that there would be no weapons used. Padilla v. State, No. 03-07-00513-CR, 2008 WL 5423139, at *2 (Tex. App. Dec. 31, 2008). That makes me think that as long as there's consent to some kind of fight, you don't necessarily need rules, though you do need to abide by them if you agree to them. So what's the scope of consent in this case? If we say that she's agreed to the use of force by challenging people to take something from her, and she hasn't said how you can do it, can you do it by any means you choose? I don't think a court would let someone shoot her to get it, but maybe they would be allowed to pry it out of her hands. So all of that is a long way of saying that this is a tricky question, and that any decision would probably depend a lot on the specific facts of who she was talking to, what exactly she was saying, how she was carrying the gun, and so on.
The specific elements of the crime in question are going to be defined by Maltese law, which appears to be a blend of a European-style civil code with English-style common law. However, under ordinary Anglo-American standards, the alleged acts do seem to meet the legal definitions of these terms. At common law, an "assault" consists of placing someone in fear of an unwanted touching, and a "battery" is a completed assault; that is, an actual unwanted touching. If Mr. Suda, as alleged, took the victim's hand and touched it to his own genitals, without her consent, he committed an assault and battery. Any touching can constitute a battery, from a tap on the shoulder to a bullet in the head. Likewise, at common law, "violence" is any degree of physical force. If he tricked her into touching his genitals, that would not be a crime of violence; if he physically moved her hand to his genitals with his own hand, then he used physical force, or violence, to commit the crime. Again, what actually needs to be proven will depend on specifics you would need a Maltese lawyer to go into--but under general common law principles, neither "assault" not "violence" are particularly surprising.
The above is not quite accurate. First, assault. The correct definition is "a threat or physical act that creates a reasonable apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact." Therefore, no attempt at a battery is necessary. Rather, simply making someone subjectively believe that you are about to commit a battery against them is enough for an assault charge. Please note the following two points. One, that apprehension does not mean fear. Apprehension means that the victim has to believe that the actor's conduct will result in imminent harmful or offensive contact. Two, it's not necessary that the victim believes such conduct will actually be effective - rather, he only has to believe the conduct is "capable" of making the contact. I can't tell if by "other security personnel" you mean, in addition to bouncers, say, security at concerts or if you mean private security guards, such as ones who guard warehouses or other businesses. Nonetheless, for the warehouse/business "guards," they do not have a special privilege above or beyond what any random person may do. That is, you may use force to the extent you reasonably believe necessary to prevent a felony, riot, or serious breach of the peace. You may use deadly force only if it appears reasonably necessary to prevent a "dangerous felony" involving risk to human life, including, for example, robbery, arson, burglary. However, if the private security personnel are operating under authority vested to them by local ordinance or the state legislature, then their rights (and also any attendant restrictions, such as those provided to citizens under the Fourth Amendment) would apply instead. So where's the difference? It comes about at the standard a situation must meet to allow use of deadly force. A police officer can use deadly force to effectuate an arrest based on a reasonable belief that a suspect has committed a felony involving the risk of physical harm or death to others (murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, rape or burglary) or if there is substantial risk that the suspect was dangerous to the point that he may cause serious physical harm or death to someone if the arrest were delayed. On the other hand, as a private citizen, you may only use deadly force when attempting to effectuate an arrest if the suspect did indeed commit such a felony. Police can base their action on a reasonable belief and even if that belief is wrong, they will be safe from prosecution. A private citizen actually must be right about the suspect having committed the requisite crime. No matter how reasonable the belief was of a private citizen regarding a suspect, if that suspect did not actually commit the crime, the private citizen who used such force will be subject to prosecution. Bouncers are afforded no more rights than private citizens. They can issue verbal warnings, ask a patron to leave the establishment, check identification, refuse entry, call the cops, protect bystanders from violence, break up fights, and respond with equal force if necessary. They may not strike an individual with a punch or kick, push or physically toss someone out of the establishment, restrain them using chokeholds or other submission techniques, or use weapons or pepper spray.
Firstly, there is no jurisdiction in the US where rape is a potentially capital crime, and murder is not - so you are discussing a hypothetical (and rather implausible) jurisdiction. Given your jurisdiction is hypothetical, you can make the law be what you would like. Secondly, duress is accepted in almost all jurisdictions as a defence to a charge of anything except homicide (and some jurisdictions allow it to reduce the severity of a homicide charge). Courts can be reluctant to accept a charge of duress, but a bullet wound would probably be persuasive. I don't know if someone who had just been shot would be physically able to perform though. The precise crimes the perpetrator is guilty of would depend on your specific jurisdiction, but I would expect at least: rape (because they organized it) kidnap shooting the brother
There is pretty much never a right to retaliate against harm to oneself, even blatantly unlawful harm. There is a right to defend oneself and others. One can use force to stop someone from inflicting unlawful or unjustified harm, or to prevent someone from inflicting such harm when the harm is imminent. One is not permitted to use more force than is "reasonably required" under the actual circumstances. This is true in pretty much every jurisdiction that i know of. The details on how much force will be considered "reasonable" will vary. In some jurisdictions there is, under some circumstances, a s"duty to retreat". This generally means that if a person attacked can avoid the harm by fleeing with reasonable safety, that person must do so rather than using force in self-defense. In some jurisdictions this "duty to retreat" applies id the victim is attacked in public, but not in the victim's own home. The right to self defense does not apply when the "attacker" is an agent of the state acting lawfully. For example, a prison guard taking a condemned prisoner to a death sentence cannot be attacked on the grounds that the prisoner is engaging in self defense. In theory a police officer engaging an excessive force, particularly unjustified deadly force, may be resisted in self-defense. But courts are quite reluctant to find such resistance justified in practice. There generally must be very clear evidence of egregious misconduct for the court to rule for the non-police person in such a case. Note that "self" defense can equally be defense of another person. Pretty much all the same rules apply. Self defense applies no matter who the attacker is, but that force is reasonable may vary depending on the attacker. Only such force as is reasonably required to stop or prevent the harm may be used with a justification of self-defense.
This Question Is Tricker Than It Seems One of the things about being a non-expert in a field is that it is very difficult to know in advance what is a hard question and what is an easy question. Some questions that seem like they should have simple, straight forward answers are actually very hard to answer. Some questions that seem like they should be very difficult and have involved tricky answers are actually very easy. Without an in depth understanding of the field, you just can't know in advance. It turns out that this particular question is a quite hard question to answer. So, rather than really providing a clear answer, I will explain what about this question makes it hard to answer in this answer. Even this incomplete and ultimately inconclusive answer will require far, far more words (2,078 to be exact), than were necessary to pose the question (94 words). Essentially, the core difficulty is that there are several different principles of law that apply to this fact pattern, each of which, individually have specific things that have to be proved to establish that some legal consequence will follow (which in turn are often themselves intrinsically indefinite), and each of which has exceptions that could also be proved if specific things happen. In part, this is because, while the fact pattern set forth is not freakishly unforeseeable, it is also not a fact pattern that was contemplated when any of the individual legal principles that are implicated were conceived. Likewise, the interaction of these different legal principles in one fact pattern wasn't contemplated and there is probably no one clear controlling case precedent on point that involved this fact pattern. What the law does in cases like these (which come up all the time in real life) is to break down each legal theory individually and analyze it, possibly spread over multiple distinct court cases in different courts in front of different judges. I'll try to unpack the issues (dispensing with U.K. legal terminology in some cases, since I'm only trying to provide a sense of why this is complicated and not to provide a definitive answer to how it is resolved under U.K. law). Possible Claims, Charges, and Defenses; Traffic, Civil, and Criminal It is a crime to threaten someone with weapon or in another way that puts someone at risk of imminent harm. Depending upon the weapon and other circumstances, mere possession of the weapon might be a crime in the U.K. Someone who has been threatened with weapon or in another way that puts them at risk of imminent harm can be a civil lawsuit for money damages against the person making the threat which was called &quot;assault&quot; in historical common law. Someone who has been threatened by another can seek a restraining order/protective order directing that person to stay away from them in the courts in a civil action. Hitting someone else's car is a traffic violation, unless a defense to the traffic violation is present and proven. Hitting someone else's car with a statutorily mandated level of intent is a crime, unless a justification for the crime is present and proven. The person whose car was hit could credibly argue that hitting the door was a mistake, not because the door was hit, but because the driver intended to kill them and missed, so an attempted homicide charge could raised in a criminal proceeding. The person whose car was hit could argue that there was an intend to put them in imminent risk of harm providing a basis for a civil lawsuit for money damages for common law assault. Someone whose car is hit by another car through negligence or recklessly or intentionally can bring one or more claims in a civil lawsuit against the person who car hit their car for money damages. The standard of care for negligence is established by how a reasonable person would act under the circumstances. Self-defense is a possible defense to traffic offenses, criminal charges and civil liability related to harming another's property if the conditions for self-defense apply, which include a risk of imminent harm to oneself, another, or one's property, and if the action taken in self-defense is reasonably proportional under the circumstances as evaluated by a reasonable person in response to the threat. But, if the response of the person making the threat with the weapon was as a result of actions in which the person threatened with the weapon was the true aggressor, then the privilege of self-defense would be forfeited. In real life, good attorneys for the parties could almost certainly solicit and call attention to additional facts not mentioned in the question that would further muddy the waters and raise additional claims, charges, and defenses to claims beyond the ten listed above. I could analyze each of these issues on the facts in depth as best I could with references to statutes and case law (under a body of law other than U.K. law anyway), which would take a few lengthy and heavily researched paragraphs each that would take a fair amount of time each to prepare, but I won't. A full analysis would help you weigh the odds a little better, and if I was a lawyer of a party in this situation, I would do that since every little edge counts in litigation and negotiations of settlements. But even if I did that, it would still leave a lot of uncertainty regarding the final resolution of these questions on the merits. Decision-Making Regarding Bringing Claims The traffic and criminal charges would be brought or not brought largely in the discretion of the Crown attorney or some other government official. It is most likely that a government official making that decision is doing so because the offense was referred to them by the police officer who responded to the scene, or a police officer who received an informal complaint (as opposed to a civil court filing) from one of the parties, or through a complaint delivered directly to the prosecuting authority by an alleged victim. A prosecutor doesn't have to bring claims just because someone asks them to, and doesn't have to bring all possible claims even if some are pursued. The parties themselves would decide whether or not to bring civil claims against each other. Whoever is sued first would make the decision in the context of knowing that they will be a party to a civil lawsuit whether or not they bring civil claims of their own. Possible Forums The traffic offense would probably be resolved in one court. The criminal charges against the person making the threats would be resolved in another court. The criminal charges against the person who hit the car door would be resolved probably in the same court but in a different case, possibly with a different judge. The civil claims would be resolved in yet another court, probably with a different judge, although probably in a single case with the first person to make it to court as the Plaintiff and the other party as a Defendant bringing counterclaims against the Plaintiff. The civil claims might also involve other parties (e.g. the owner of the vehicles in question if not identical to the persons driving the cars at the time of the incidents). Issue Preclusion Some final decisions on the merits in some cases would resolve the outcome of other cases as a matter of law, other final determinations in some cases would not be binding on the other cases as a matter of law because burdens of proof are different, or the legal issue evaluated is not identical, or because other rules (like a rule against a traffic court decision resulting in a binding determination on civil liability for negligence) would apply. The exact rules are rather arcane and there are quite a few permutations of how it come up, but it is important to be aware that these kinds of rules are out there, exist, and would have to be analyzed by the parties as a matter of litigation tactics. Even The &quot;Legal Issues&quot; Are Fact Intensive Inquiries Almost all of the legal theories implicated above involve broad legal standards in which a lot of the substantive question of what is or is not legal is delegated to the finder of fact in a manner that cannot be reviewed on appeal. For example, in a negligence case related to damage to an automobile, even if there is a videotape and there is 100% agreement on precisely what happened, whether that conduct constitutes &quot;negligence&quot; that breaches the duty of care owed by a reasonable person to the general public to protect them from harm, is legally considered a &quot;question of fact&quot; to be determined by a judge on a case by case basis, rather than a &quot;question of law&quot; which will always have the same outcome and is subject to review by an appellate court if the judge gets it wrong. A similar &quot;reasonable person&quot; standard which must be resolved with a highly fact intensive inquiry that could be resolved more than one way by two different judges or juries hearing precisely the same facts and finding the same witnesses and evidence to be credible in exactly the same way, with both upheld on appeal, applies to the self-defense legal theory. This self-defense issue could also conceivably, based upon the order in which cases were tried and their resolution, be resolved one way in a criminal case and a different way in a civil case between the parties. In the same vein, when a threat is imminent is a highly subjective determination that could be resolved in a &quot;legally correct&quot; way that is not subject to being overturned on appeal on precisely the same facts, with precisely the same determinations as to credibility and weight of the evidence, by two different judges or juries. Again, the substantive question of whether particular conduct is or is not illegal is a &quot;question of fact&quot; that can't be resolved in the absence of a trial on the merits in a particular case before a particular finder of fact. Bottom Line The facts provided in the question aren't sufficiently detailed to provide a definitely correct answer to this question. Indeed, the nature of the facts is such that even an perfectly detailed factual statement regarding what happened might not be enough to definitively determine who has civil liability to whom, and to determine what charges each defendant is guilty of. Different judges and jurors could reasonably come to different legally correct conclusions in a case like this one when faced with precisely the same facts and resolving all issues of credibility and the weight of the evidence in precisely the same way. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that the same facts would be analyzed with respect to different legal theory analysis in different forums by different people, when there is not, as a general rule (although there is in some cases) any mechanism for compelling those decisions to be made consistently on outcome determinative evaluations of the same facts regarding what was reasonable for the parties to do under the circumstances. The notion that a judge is just an umpire, and that every competent judge acting in good faith will always resolve a case presenting the same facts in the same way is a myth. This simply isn't true, even in the U.K. where the judiciary is (as a consequence of how the system for appointment and retention of judges is designed) not nearly as partisan and politicized as it is in the United States. The outcomes of even fairly simple cases in many cases, like the one in this question, are intrinsically and irreducibly uncertain in common law legal systems. The range of possible outcomes from a best case scenario to a worst case scenario, for each party in this fact pattern, is very wide. A desire to tame the myriad uncertainties involved for all parties, and the desire to avoid multiple time consuming and uncertain court proceedings arising out of the same incident, is one of the reasons that it is very common for civil lawsuits to settle out of court without a trial, and for criminal cases to be resolved by an agreement of the prosecution and the defense (sometimes reached even before charges are filed).
It will hinge on the specific facts, but if the pistol is not discernible by casual observation it will most likely be regarded as concealed. Michigan Open Carry Inc's FAQ #11 asks: Can I open carry with an inside the waistband/inside the pants (IWB) holster? The Michigan Court of Appeals appears to answer this in People v Curtis Phillips (1996) (unpublished): In the case, officers observed Mr. Phillips standing on a nearby porch with the butt of a gun protruding out of his waistband. The Court held that the pistol was not visible under &quot;ordinary observation” and therefore &quot;A casual observer may not have discerned the object in defendant’s waistband.&quot; Essentially, it's up to the &quot;trier of fact&quot;, meaning open to interpretation for a judge in a bench trial, or a jury in a jury trial. The FAQ goes on to quote The Michigan Court of Appeals per curiam in People v Curtis Phillips (1996) Defendant argues that the evidence was insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he “concealed” a handgun because the arresting officers could see the butt of a gun protruding from his waistband. We disagree. To determine whether a rational trier of fact could have found that the essential elements of the crime were proven beyond a reasonable doubt, this Court views the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution. People v Wolfe, 440 Mich 508, 515; 489 NW2d 748 (1992). A conviction for carrying a concealed weapon without a license requires proof that the accused concealed a dangerous weapon. People v Pickett, 21 Mich App 246, 248; 175 NW2d 347 (1970). Concealment is a question of fact and exists when the weapon is “not discernible by the ordinary observation of [those] coming in contact with [the accused], casually observing him, as people do in the ordinary and usual associations of life.” People v Johnnie W Jones, 12 Mich App 293, 296; 162 NW2d 847 (1968). While searching the area for gunmen after a reported shooting, the arresting officers observed defendant standing on a nearby porch with the butt of a handgun protruding from his waistband. They were able to identify this object as the butt of a handgun based on their training and experience. The officers were not “casually observing” defendant “in the ordinary and usual associations of life,” and this was not “ordinary observation” because the officers were searching for armed suspects. A casual observer may not have discerned the object in defendant’s waistband. Therefore, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, a rational trier of fact could conclude there was sufficient evidence that defendant concealed a gun in his waistband.
Under current federal law, we would have to wait for some legislative body to change the law. If ATF changes the federal regulations, they might be classed as "machine guns" (under the "frame designed for converting" clause), which are banned. As the above Docket No. 2017R–22 (from December 26, 2017) says, DoJ expects to plan to discuss changing the rules. They might then be outlawed by executive action (though a court test could be necessary, since executive wish is not the final word on interpreting statutes). The relevant part of the definition of machine gun, which could apply to bump stocks, is: The term shall also include the frame or receiver of any such weapon, any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun, and any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person. But "such" weapon is one that shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger The definition does not say anything about a single finger action, so there is a reasonable probability that including bump stocks within the scope of existing legislation would be held to exceed congressional authority.