Gun News
Why not make it a ballot initiative and let Florida voters use butterfly paper ballots?
I’m a gun-safety nut. Maybe we should license people, not guns. Pass a stringent shoot/don’t-shoot course (like to cops’), demonstrate marksmanship, gun safety and you can pack one.
Posted by Oink
02/14/2005 at 08:51 AM
If I were to buy a gun, I’d get a Desert Eagle.
In Colorado, we have the “Make My Day Law”, which means we can use deadly force if someone comes in our home and we feel threaten! We shoot them. End of Story!
Posted by Erebus
02/14/2005 at 12:53 PM
Oh Yeah, I love that Make My Day Law. If someone comes through your door uninvited, it doesn’t matter if they are armed or not, you can use deadly force.
But if you have reasonable suspicion you’re in danger,as I told my wife and daughter, don’t stop shooting until there’s nothing to shoot at. Or you hear click click. (Revolver)
Otherwise, file off the sights, so it won’t hurt as much when that guy takes it away from you and shoves it up your ass.
Posted by Oink
02/14/2005 at 04:54 PM
Such a way with words you have.
Again, not original. But I sure can dredge ‘em up, eh?
I’m a man of few words—and I use ‘em often.
Posted by Oink
02/14/2005 at 05:38 PM
I don’t think that “feel threatened” is the right word. I understand what your getting at but “feel threatened” isn’t it. The law assumes that anyone in your house that is “uninvited” or “Does not have a legal right/duty to be in your house” constitutes a threat to your person. Hence your emotional state as to “feeling threatened” has no bearing. You could be in hysterics or as cool as a cucumber and it does not matter, the assumption of “threat” is made in the law not by your emotional state.
Where some people in this state get into trouble is they relate the Make My Day Law to Self Defense. These are two different things, and self defense does not allow an automatic use of deadly force. In self defense you must “feel” that your life was in peril and “show cause”.In the Make My Day Law the someone breaking into your has to be all the way in your house. If you let them have it when they are half way through a window you stand a good chance of doing time. If you have invited someone into your house, and that someone then turns on you/your family and you let them have it, you stand a good chance of doing time. If you are seperated from your spouse, and all rights to be in the house are not removed by court order, the opposing spouse could come into the house blind drunk with the intent to do harm, you let them have it, you stand the risk of doing time. All of the above are examples of what the Make My Day Law are not, they are examples that have happened and the courts found then to fall under Self Defense statutes. Self Defense statutes in this state are conflicting and the court presidence makes it worse.
The Make My Day Law was created by the legislature years ago to cut through some of the bullshit created by court presidence in self defense and breaking/entering cases. They did this by making a legal assumption that those without legal standing to be in your house automatically cause a threat to your person. There are a couple of cases where a drunk neighbor misstakenly entered the wrong house, was shot and killed, and nothing happened to the property owner. But there are other cases where a rapist/burglar entered a house, caused harm to the occupant, exited the house and was shot dead in a back alley or yard by the avenging occupant, and the occupant was not covered by the Make My Day Law and consequently charged.
Remember the famous case in which a woman poured gasoline on, and set fire to, her drunken abusive husband? She got off. I would never vote to convict the woman who was raped; I suspect few jurors would.
Charged doesn’t equal convicted. I’d tell “my” women this: I’d rather go to the jail and bail you out, than go to the morgue and identify your body.
Posted by Oink
02/14/2005 at 06:10 PM
I will amend my analysis above. I looked up the statute and in Colorado there must be,
1.)an unlawful entry.
2.)the occupant must have a reasonable belief that the intruder was or is intending to commit a crime.
This is the court precedence on “reasonable belief” -
“This inquiry focuses on the reasonable belief of the occupant, not on the actual conduct of the intruder. People v. McNeese, 892 P.2d 304 (Colo. 1995).” This is very important. In my example of your drunk neighbor, the neighbor is just entering the wrong house, but you don’t know what the intent of the drunk neighbor is. If it is night, you may not even be aware it was your neighbor. Thus establishing a “reasonable belief” on your part that the intrusion is for criminal purposes is not very hard.One bad court precedent is -
“Defendant bears burden of establishing right to immunity by preponderance of evidence when issue of immunity is raised at pre-trial stage. People v. Guenther, 740 P.2d 971 (Colo. 1987); People v. Eckert, 919 P.2d 962 (Colo. App. 1996)”.Again, in Colorado you don’t have to “feel threatened”. There only has to be an unlawful entry and belief of criminal intent. In some of the court precedent I found, it was shown that there was no criminal intent on the behalf of the intruder. Just the occupants belief that the intruder was going to commit a crime was sufficient for immunity.
Defense of person under the Make My Day Law must occur “within the dwelling”. The corridor outside your apartment, your garage, your backyard, etc, don’t count.Go here to read the actual statute and it’s accompanying court precedent.
O.K. - My link was shit.
Try here, it is a search engine for Colorado Law. Enter section 18-1-704.5 in the search bar, hit GO and it sould take you to the Make My Day statute.Well double shit. Type this in and it will get you there
http://198.187.128.12/colorado/lpext.dll?f=templates&fn=fs-main.htm&2.0
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