Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
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From: fcrary@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Frank Crary)
Subject: Re: What to do if you shoot somebody
Message-ID: <1993Apr18.163506.12532@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
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Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1993 16:35:06 GMT
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In article <93108.025818U28037@uicvm.uic.edu> Jason Kratz <U28037@uicvm.uic.edu> writes:
>Say you're in a situation where you have to pull a gun on somebody.  You
>give them a chance to get away but they decided to continue in their
>action anyway and you end up shooting and killing them.  My question is
>what do you do?  Should you stay and wait for the cops or should you
>collect your brass (if you're using a semi-auto) and get out of there
>(provided of course you don't think that you have been seen)?

For me, it would be an obvious choice: Armed self-defence is clearly
and strongly protected by the Colorado Constitution and the laws
of the state. In the very clear-cut situation of your hypothetical,
I wouldn't have anything to fear from the police (unless I had been
publicly carrying the weapon concealed, something I'm not in
the habit of doing... Even then, the worst I'd have to deal with 
was a class 2 misdemeanor.) Even if the situation were not so
clear, and I might have to worry about arrest for manslaughter or
homicide, it would still be safer to wait for the police. If
I were to leave and try to avoid police involvement, I'd be committing
several felonies and ruining my chances of claiming self-defence
in court ("If it really was self-defence," the prosecuter would
ask, "why did you run away and hide from the police?")

In other states, however, this decision might not be so clear-cut:
If someone in, say, Washington D.C. were to use a gun in self-defence
he would _automatically_ be guilty of several felony violations of
that city's gun control laws. Such a person's choices would be
between certain conviction for a couple of felonies versus possible
conviction for half a dozen. 

                                         Frank Crary
                                         CU Boulder
 
