Boston Marathon Explosion - Today's Topics: Public Schools

Grew up in Fall River and Westport. But more northerly nowadays.

Actually about ten minutes from Watertown and the drama last week.

They need a channel on TV that takes a serious situation like this and then does nothing but talk about every microscopic aspect of it 24 hours a day for at least 1 month or until the next catastrophic event occurs. Getting tired of the CNN/Fox news cycle still going over this. I have gotten to a point where if I turn on thr news and if it is still discussing this event in any way, I immediately change the channel. There has got to be something else to discuss at this point.

Television news is 100% worthless.

Looking at those pictures made me think of something. That person had a clear, perfect view of the brothers during the shootout. If he had a gun and shot them from his window, is that legal? Since he's not LEO and the gunmen aren't trying to shoot him, what's the law regarding that?

Dabamf_sl said:

Television news is 100% worthless.

Looking at those pictures made me think of something. That person had a clear, perfect view of the brothers during the shootout. If he had a gun and shot them from his window, is that legal? Since he's not LEO and the gunmen aren't trying to shoot him, what's the law regarding that?

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Generally, the doctrine of self-defense covers defending the life of a person if you reasonably believe that the person will be subjected to great bodily harm or deathandthe offender had no justification to use force against the person. In this context you'd be fine since you used deadly force to protect police officers, who were being subjected to great bodily harm or death, and the offender had no justification to use such force.

Those cases get a little dicey in the situation where the "offender," which the good samaritan shoots, was actually defending himself against the "victim." The law in most states places the good samaritan in the place of whomever they defend. So if that person would not have had justification, such as self-defense, to use deadly force, neither would the good samaritan.

TLDR; a person coming to the defense of another stands in the place of the person they are defending according to the law, in most states.

Here's West's most cited case on point in Massachusetts: "Actor is justified in using force against another to protect third person when reasonable person in actor's position would believe his intervention to be necessary for protection of third person and in circumstances as that reasonable person would believe them to be, third person would be justified in using such force to protect himself; ?reasonableness of such belief may depend in part on relationships among persons involved." Com. v. Martin (1976) 341 N.E.2d 885, 369 Mass.

Open and shut case if it was Florida... you'd be fine.

If photo taker was to engage the hat brothers in that instance, he's fine, defense of yourself or another's life.

And shit 75-80yards is one hellova distance to employ handguns, generally speaking 50yards is considered max "effective" of most. They lost that gunfight as soon as they stopped.

That's a good way to get shot by LEO. Random dude starts shooting out a window + high level of uncertainty = you're riddled with 100 bullet holes.

Cybsled_sl said:

That's a good way to get shot by LEO. Random dude starts shooting out a window + high level of uncertainty = you're riddled with 100 bullet holes.

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DING DING DING! We have a winner.

I mean, if I was in that exact position (elevated position, relatively clear line of sight) with something like my uncle's mini14, I probably would have popped at least one of them a couple times, both if the other brother couldn't tell where it came from and wasn't shooting at my window. But I definitely wouldn't hang out the window with a glock and start spraying fire at them.

So 75-80 yards away, night time, from a position 90 degrees offset of where the LEOs are looking, and lots of gun shots...I'm pretty sure the police wouldn't know if you did pop the(Hat brothers) from just inside the window.

But I'm sure I'd just fire from outside the window and silhouette myself with my Barrett .50cal and then charge out my front door toward the cops gun in hand to tell them I shot them. Might even toss out some Allah AkBars on my way.

Totally depends on the location and the DA. The DA will have the biggest impact on if you are charged. A guy here escaped from the cops, shot a cop and was on the run for a week or more. The state police got him cornered in a trailer and he shot the state trooper and dropped his gun and started running. A citizen shot him while he was unarmed in the back while he was running away. Someone wrote into the paper about how bad that was and was illegal (technically it is), the guy who shot him in the back was given the reward from the sherrif's office that had been posted and not charged with a crime.

Jais_sl said:

But I'm sure I'd just fire from outside the window and silhouette myself with my Barrett .50cal and then charge out my front door toward the cops gun in hand to tell them I shot them. Might even toss out some Allah AkBars on my way.

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There's something about this plan that I really like.