If you read a lot of gun forums, or ever speak with anyone who’s anti-gun, sooner or later you’re going to run into the question of “Shouldn’t you just shoot to wound? I mean, I don’t want to kill anybody.” Or, from the anti-gun crowd, whenever a successful defensive gun situation is discussed you may frequently see them question “Why didn’t they just shoot him in the leg or something? Did they HAVE to kill him?”
This usually leads to a discussion on the inadvisability of warning shots, “stopping power”, and, eventually, someone invariably will bring up something on the order of “Dead men can’t testify against you.”
Wow.
Can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen that (or something like it) posted on a public forum, or said at a gun store or gun show. It’s been repeated so many times that I fear new shooters may be getting indoctrinated with it and may actually think that’s “normal”. And, obviously, the anti-gun side uses statements like that to paint otherwise lawful and rational firearms owners as “bloodthirsty.” So, I’d like to go through all these scenarios and provide some hopefully clarifying commentary so that we can get to the bottom of these various questions.
Firearms Are Instruments Of Deadly Force
Let’s start with the first and most obvious fact that we simply have to address: Firearms are not toys. They are not symbols. They are not warning flags, or status symbols, or penis-measuring devices. They are instruments of deadly force, and they are only to be used when deadly force is necessary. You should only ever pull your firearm out when it is necessary to protect your life, or other innocent life, as your local and state laws and statutes allow. You should never use it for any other purpose (such as waving it out the car window to intimidate another driver; that in and of itself may be a crime known as “brandishing.”) You should never pull your firearm unless you are prepared to use it. A firearm is capable of inflicting deadly force, and it should always be considered in that context.
You Will Not Be Tried In A Court Of “Right” And “Wrong”, You Will Be Tried In A Court Of Law. What Is LEGAL Is What Matters There
Now, before going any further, let me say that I strongly advise you to discuss these issues with your lawyer. Only a lawyer in your state who is versed in your state’s firearms laws can truly, really answer your questions. And if you don’t have a lawyer, and you carry a firearm, you should seriously consider getting one. It doesn’t even need to be a situation where you pay big bucks for a one-on-one meeting; something as simple and comparatively inexpensive as a prepaid legal service like USLawShield would be vastly better than having nothing (and getting all your advice from strangers on a gun forum or a blog like this one.)
If you use a firearm, you can expect to deal with law enforcement officers, and perhaps a Grand Jury, be arrested, and perhaps face a trial. Firearms are serious business, and you need to understand that whatever your fears or motivations were, you will be tried on the LAW, not on your emotions. And your intentions matter very much. So let’s look at some examples:
Warning Shots
Why are warning shots a bad idea? Folks who don’t know anything about guns frequently seem to think that hey, you should just fire a warning shot to scare the bad guys away. Even the U.S. Vice President gave that advice! But it is terrible, terrible advice.
Why? First, because of the law of gravity. What goes up, must come down. A firearm is an instrument of deadly force, and if a potentially-lethal bullet is propelled from that firearm, it’s gonna go somewhere. If you shoot up in the air, that bullet is going to come down, somewhere, and if it’s from a rifle or a pistol, that bullet will almost certainly still be potentially lethal when it hits. Of course, if you didn’t fire up in the air, but instead fired horizontally, well, that bullet’s going to hit something — and it could be an innocent person that it hits. And depending on what it hits, it could ricochet, and hit someone who wasn’t anywhere near where you fired at!
Firing a warning shot is an incredibly irresponsible thing to do, and may subject you to all the drawbacks and penalties of having used deadly force, while offering none of the benefits (i.e., the ability to actually stop the attacker). A “warning shot” can be thought of as another name for a “missed shot”.
So why does the fascination with warning shots persist? I think it’s because people really, really want a way to discourage someone without having to resort to potentially lethally injuring them. I understand that wish, and I sympathize with it. All I can say is — don’t use a firearm to try to do it. A firearm is for using deadly force. If you want a non-lethal deterrent, then hey — use a non-lethal deterrent! Use pepper spray or mace or some other non-lethal defensive approach, if what you really want is just a way to say “I’m serious, leave me alone.” If it’s legal where you live, you can carry pepper spray or mace in addition to your firearm, and if you decide that the situation warrants a non-lethal warning, you could use it. But don’t go negligently firing deliberate misses, because that bullet is going to be potentially deadly to someone. A “warning shot” is the wrong way to use a firearm.
Secondly, a key concept to understand here is: firearms are to be used to protect your life when you are facing an imminent deadly attack (or you fear that you are in imminent danger of substantial and grievous bodily harm). If you have the time to think about and conduct a warning shot, were you really in imminent danger? Probably not — because if the situation was that imminent, you’d have shot AT the attacker, instead of trying to shoot randomly in the air. Which means, once again, that use of a firearm in that scenario is probably not warranted and may not be legally justified.
There are other ways to discourage an attacker. Just holding your firearm at the low-ready position may frequently be enough to discourage the attacker. In responsible firearms management, there really isn’t a place for a “warning shot”.
Shoot To Wound?
Getting past the ill-conceived notion of a warning shot, let’s move to the next bad idea: shooting to wound.
Why is shooting to wound a bad idea? I mean, we don’t actually want to kill anyone, do we? Can’t we just disable them and then run away?
Again, I understand the desire here. The idea of getting away safely is always the paramount concern. The question is: is shooting to wound a good idea, and is it a proper use of deadly force? And the answer is a resounding no. Because shooting to wound means you’d be deliberately trying to avoid hitting important targets, in order to try to focus on hitting an inordinately small target (like a forearm or a thigh, instead of a big broad chest). Defensive shooters are taught to shoot for the “center of mass” or, more specifically, the upper center of the chest. Among other reasons, it’s the biggest and slowest-moving part of the body, and therefore the easiest to hit. Arms are much smaller, and they move much faster, and are a potentially much more difficult target to hit. Legs, while bigger than arms, are still vastly smaller than the chest and much more subject to quick movement. And, heck, both arms and legs have arteries in them, and shooting someone in the arm or leg could indeed cause them to die if the bullet hits those arteries, so — it’s still deadly force that may still result in the person’s death, even if you only intended to wound.
Remember the central premise here: a firearm is an instrument capable of inflicting deadly force. You should only use it if you absolutely must, to save your own life or the life of an innocent person. You should be very, very, very hesitant to pull that trigger, and you should only pull it if there is no other way. And if that’s the case, and you’re in a situation where the law authorizes the use of deadly force, then you should obviously not be screwing around trying to take low-probability “wounding” shots, you should be following your training and taking deliberate shots that have the highest likelihood of forcing the attacker to stop.
Shoot To Kill?
Which brings us to the central question — should you shoot to kill?
If you follow internet gun forums long enough, or listen to enough guys at the gun store or gun show, sooner or later you’ll run into someone who insists that “dead men tell no tales” and “dead men can’t sue you” and “if you kill him, he can’t testify against you” and other such statements.
Frankly, I find that horrifying. I mean, seriously, think about it — killing people to keep them from testifying against you is something the mob does, not something that law-abiding citizens do!
Look — if you find yourself in a defensive gun use, and you shoot an attacker, and the attacker dies from his injuries, you can expect that you may find yourself on trial. The purpose of the trial, largely, is going to determine the facts of what happened, and to determine your INTENT. What was in your mind when you pulled the trigger? Did you WANT to KILL the person? Or were you solely trying to protect yourself?
In the smallest possible nutshell, that’s really the crux of the matter: the difference between self-defense and murder can largely be attributed to what your intent was. If, by pulling the trigger, your intent was to ensure that the person you shot dies, then that’s murder.
There have been examples of this in the news; the Byron Smith trial is probably the most noteworthy because he actually recorded himself during the shootings and you can clearly hear how he told investigators that he “fired a good clean finishing shot.”
The facts of the case are well-known, and you can read up on them if you want, but in general Smith may have felt that he was defending his home against intruders, and in fact two intruders did break into his house. But Smith didn’t just shoot at them to drive them away. His intentions were clear; he wanted them to die. And, once the facts were heard by a jury of his peers, Smith was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder.
I’ll say it again — just because you have a license to carry a weapon, does not give you a license to kill. The law does not justify or sanction civilians killing people.
So What Should You Do?
If you’re in a situation that is so dire that you need to employ legally-justifiable deadly force, you should shoot until the threat stops. You cannot and should not try to shoot to wound, or fire some vague warning shot, or fire just one bullet and then stop to see if maybe the bad guy will drop, or anything else. Follow your training, put the shots in the center of mass, and shoot until the attacker stops threatening you. And immediately after the attacker stops threatening you, you STOP SHOOTING.
It does not matter how mad or indignant or offended you are, you do not have the legal right to summarily execute someone. And you most definitely do not have the legal right to kill someone just to avoid the inconvenience or expense of a trial — again, that’s mobster activity, not the kind of thing a law-abiding citizen does!
Shooting to stop means placing the bullets where they have the most likelihood of forcing the attacker’s body to immediately discontinue its ability to attack you. That usually means destroying or damaging a vital organ such as the circulatory system or central nervous system, so that the attacker will fall unconscious or be otherwise incapacitated. And, yes, that MAY mean that your attacker may die as a result. That, however, should not be the desired or intended outcome, that would instead be an unfortunate but unavoidable result of a chain of events set in motion by the attacker’s decision to assault you. However, once they stop attacking you (i.e., they drop their gun, they turn to run away, or they fall unconscious) then you must stop shooting. If you continue to shoot them, you then will likely have crossed that line between “lawful self defense” and “unlawful murder.”
A defensive gun engagement can end in several ways — the attacker may break off and flee just at the sight of your gun, or you may fire and miss a vital structure but hit him somewhere else and he decides “ouch, that hurts, I’m not doing this anymore” and he breaks off. Both are effective, non-lethal ways to end a defensive encounter. But if he continues to attack you, you may have to force him to stop in order to save your own life. An effective shot that damages an attacker’s heart or major circulatory system can result in a rapid loss of blood pressure which causes the attacker to fall unconscious, thus rendering them unable to continue attacking you. That would be a nonlethal way that the encounter could end, although the person would need immediate comprehensive medical care to avoid dying from such a wound. The thing is — whether he lives or dies is, at that point, out of your hands and out of the equation. You would have legally and lawfully used deadly force to defend yourself. Your conscience is clear.
I’ve seen some people argue that “shooting to stop” and “shooting to kill” are the same thing. I would contend that there is a significant, substantial, and crucial difference, and that difference is in your intent, and your intent is one of the major things a trial will be attempting to uncover. Someone shooting to kill and someone shooting to stop, may in fact hit the attacker in the same place, and do the same damage. But one of these shooters is preoccupied with the idea of making sure that the attacker dies, whereas the other one is not attempting to make anyone die, they are merely attempting to avoid death themselves. There is a difference, and while it may sound overly dramatic, the law may find that it’s the difference between a finding of “lawful self defense” and one of “murder”.
I hope you and I never find ourselves in a scenario where we would need to employ deadly force. But if you do, remember what the law permits — there are certain scenarios wherein you are permitted to use deadly force to save yourself or other innocent life (or perhaps for other reasons, depending on your local laws). If you are forced to use deadly force, use as much of it as necessary, as quickly as you can, to immediately stop the threat. But don’t go one step further. And consider your intent — if you feel like that you really need to “finish” someone off (to keep them from testifying or suing you or whatever else) — I sincerely doubt that the law will agree with you on that.
Bravo !!
Thank you so much for clearing up the matter, should I Fire a warning Shot? Should I shot at a less vital body part? Or do I shoot to kill? For me shooting to kill is absolutely out of the question I never want to take another human life! If ever I have to shoot my weapon it will be only to stop an aggressor the fastest way possible to save my life or someone else’s from a deadly attack. This article has been so informative on the subject of what is lawful and what is not. In the end I’m with you I hope I am never trust into a situation where I would have to apply deadly force. God Bless
Put your guns away my friend.
If you need to pull your weapon obviously the sit rep is dire. If you think the shit head is going to have compassion for you or you and your family and not use their weapon while their under a crack/meth/heroine induced stupor because you are worried about where to wound, and you won’t shoot to end the confrontation….my friend..take your head out of your ass.
Just ask any local, state, sheriff’s officer. Ask them where they are TRAINED to shoot should they have to. Rather than tell you you should find out on your own. Pulling out a weapon without intent to use it to survive, will get it taken away from you, used on you and your family, because now your family are witnesses, and now the shit head has his gun and yours. And you are begging for your life.
Please, sell your guns and get something less lethal, maybe a Taser. That way those around you won’t be put in jeapordy because you want to defend yourself and don’t have the balls to actually do it.
Larry. Chicago IL
kinda harsh, eh?
there are possibly a large number of people who truly want to end and assault/invasion by discouraging the BG, rather than doing serious harm/injury. not a unreasonable desire (who really wants to deal with the bloody aftermath of a deadly shooting? guess who gets to clean-up?). i too would like to just point a gun at an attacker and have them decide they have something better to do. wouldn’t that be a really good outcome? so why hammer people who want protection, but wish to do no harm themselves? i think there are other posts recommending less-than-lethal alternatives (as you did, also), but without the insult.
you have a really important point to make, but i had to read closely to find it. the point is the BG most likely has total indifference toward your life (if not their own), and have already made the decision to kill. if the person being attacked has not reached the same conclusion prior to the attack, there will be a fatal hesitation (that the BG counts on; being they likely have already been a gunfight). if a person is not willing to repel the attack by any means necessary, they should look to other responses, like moving into a secure, gated, patrolled neighborhood (there are even business districts using private police to successfully prevent strong arm crime). if a person not willing to do whatever to stop the attack just cannot bring themselves to imagine any situation where they would take a life, and they cannot relocate to a safety zone, that person should probably gather their family and tell them that if attacked, there is high likelihood they will be disabled for life or dead. admit they and their loved ones are prey and are destined to live such a life.
inflation reduced my 2 cents to less than nothing.
cheers,
Excellent comment! I just posted a reply elsewhere basically underscoring that the purpose for a defensive gun use is to STOP THE THREAT. Your goal isn’t really doing as much carnage as you can but to do what you must to neutralize the threat. There is way too much “tacticool” banter on the Internet. Too many internet commandos who try to preach the gospel of large bore, high round count tactical strategies. Basic shooting center of mass should always be the goal IF SHOOTING IS EVEN REQUIRED. If I happen to hit a hand or foot and they fall or run away, I’ve done my duty. If I hit them in the chest and they die, I’ve also done my duty.
If you have to shoot, the most important thing is to actually hit. Shooting visible center of mass gives you the best chance. Shooting to wound or shooting to kill assumes you are a lot better shot than you are likely to be in those circumstances.
Agreed entirely.
It all comes down to what our goal in defending ourselves with a firearm is. Is it to kill the aggressor? Is it to wound the aggressor? If we answered in the affirmative to either of those two questions, we are thinking wrong. Our goal should always be stopping the aggressive behavior. Once the aggressive behavior is stopped, we should stop. That may mean killing, that may mean wounding, that may mean a warning shot, and that might mean just drawing, or that might mean a verbal warning like, “This won’t turn out how you’re planning, I’d reconsider.” I’d, however, be reluctant to fire a warning shot. There is too much risk for collateral damage to other persons and/or property. The key is this: remain in the adult ego state.
Entirely agreed. Especially about the last sentence. When you have a gun on you, it’s your responsibility to remain in and maintain control and keep your ego and emotions in check.
Thank you, STB for putting out yet another awesome, (uncommon) common sense article. I imagine from your high-cost ballistic testing activities that you have a pretty lucrative job already, but man, I really wish you could quit your day job to focus on firearms full-time. When I got in to shooting in 2008 at the age of 30 with zero experience I was swamped with the epic amount of information available on the internet and at my local gun stores; unfortunately it was all pretty much BS and it took me a few years to finally discover Martin Fackler, the FBI studies, etc. I would have given my left arm for somebody like you at the time. Thanks again, good sir.
Shooting with the intent to safely wound would be ideal, but the concept rides out on a common misconception that such a thing is possible in a situation of high intensity necessitating the use of a firearm– the most important thing to remember in situations where shots are fired is that they should only take place when deadly force was deemed necessary as the absolute last resort in protecting oneself.
Totally agree. You should only be firing if deadly force is warranted and necessary.
Your blog is comprehensive and very well written concerning the subject matter of why not shoot to wound and the why and when to shoot at all. I would opine that even those who frown upon firearm carry or use of same would understand your explanation of the proper use of a firearm for self defense.
Your article also dispels the myth that most of us that carry a firearm for self defense are irresponsible and most of us do appreciate the gravity of the use of deadly force.
In my opinion, a good follow up article or i would be to discuss the use of specialty, self defense ammunition for the benefit of those that do not understand the purpose of its use.
I recommend this based upon questions posed to me by a sister-in-law following a TV debate about the “terrible” bullets used in self defense cartridges. Many who are not firearm owners do not understand the connection between having to use deadly force and the use of effective bullets in order to successfully do so. Many people are under the impression (like my sister-in-law) that when a person is shot, it happens just as Hollywood depicts it. The bad guy falls down, the police arrive and everything is OK. The reality is often far from this impression.
Once again, great job!
Thanks for the kind words, and I do like your suggestion. The whole concept of attributing “evil” to hollowpoints misses the point entirely, as a hollowpoint is designed to make the firearm more effective and to minimize the potential damage to others. Then again, you have companies out there like G2 Research actively naming their ammo R.I.P. and making wild claims about how their ammo will “rip out all the internal organs.” I find such advertising abhorrent and irresponsible, not to mention inaccurate, it’s overly sensationalist, and in my opinion it absolutely gives gun folks a bad name.
I’ll keep your suggestion in mind for a future blog article. Thanks.
An excellente article. A very informative article that bring us many important legal
aspects that have to be take into account when we decide to have and use a gun. It does not matter in which country we live because the question is the same all over the world if you are a law abiding citizen.
Thank you for spend your time offering these precious piece of excellent information.
Sorry for grammar mystakes because English is not my native language.
Regards (from Brazil)
Otair
One big issue raised by the author is the difference between a court of right and wrong vs. a court of law. We need to protect ourselves first and foremost from both the BG as well as our own politically correct government who is just as eager to prosecute a citizen protecting their home as they are a BG. To me, this is where right and wrong and law diverge. It is also the difference between the two that to me gave rise to the saying “In order for evil to triumph, all that is required is for good men to do nothing” or something like that.
Anyway, let’s say you live on a street with kids living at all of the houses on your street. The kids play outside. A vicious dog comes into your yard and threatens you. You have a gun in your hand. You can either kill the threat or fire one into the ground to scare it off. However, if you scare it off, it will just look for an easier target that can’t defend itself. Did you do the right thing by scaring it off only to have it go down the street and maul and kill the neighbor’s kids? My answer to that is no because you didn’t protect your innocent neighbors. Kill the predator before it can hurt anyone else.
You can all see how the analogy applies to Bad Guys. You think they will be reformed by seeing you with a gun and saying to themselves “I could die here. I’ll just run away and change my life and become a priest”? Of course not. They are simply going to run away if you let them and they will then go to find prey that can’t defend themselves. So, if you let them go away to prey on your neighbors, did you do what was right? Did you stand up and protect your neighbors?
I’m trying not to turn this into a political rant, but to even have to think about this scary situation and to realize that if you don’t do things exactly the way the law says then you have a choice of either being killed/badly beaten by the BG or spending the rest of your life in jail as wife to a giant named Bubba. Only a corrupt government forces people into such a choice.
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When I first contemplated buying a gun I understood it was two things, one a killing machine, and two a sporting device. And I made a choice, was the gun going to be in my case, both or just one of those realities? I made the choice that I would ‘learn what it takes to do both realities legally’.
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Ok, then I bought a pistol. Immediately I started the sporting aspect of using the gun. Range shooting advanced from still to moving targets and the gun became ‘fun’ to use for sporting. Then the fun was over.
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I started to reason in my mind the idea of the other reality a gun was meant to address–loving my own life and my family’s lives ENOUGH to defend them from a possible lethal threat against us, by using this pistol I love to sport with. I did not like the idea of shooting a human, but I also did not like a criminal lethal threat to be directed towards us successfully.
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In my personal case I had to develop a mindset. One where I would force myself to do what I do not have the natural discipline to accomplish–shooting a person attempting to kill us. I knew it would not be an easy accomplishment and thus formed the following thought process.
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1. A person causing a lethal threat against us is not a person anymore, but an subhuman animal type being.
2. Keep my desire to not kill while keeping my responsibility to love my self and family more than his immoral being.
3. Pull the pistol and aim at the moving sporting target. looking only at its center mass–never it’s face or head as to keep a mental block that it was human.
4. Pull the trigger at low center mass and allow the natural rise of the pistol to place 2-4 shots in an upward center mass pattern.
5. Evaluate my attempt at striking the target and revise my action to address the outcome–if still threatening, shot 2-4 more shots at center mass, and if not moving keep the gun on the target for several minutes, no trusting that the threat is actually stopped.
6. I have set up my phone to easily employ a one-touch 911 call function, so I keep the gun trained on the attacker while contacting 911.
7. Follow USCCA procedures and enter the legal process responsibility.
By the way, when I first originally thought these steps through, It was only six steps until I got to step six and realized securing insurance for such a serious issue would be very wise. Thus the formation of step seven.
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I strongly suggest that all self defense gun owners experience active-lethal-threat training which puts you within real life scenarios which mimic threats to your life. Getting knocked off your feet by a fellow trainee who us bull rushing you in the dark, causes an entirely new serious mindset.
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The key in short—create the mindset essential for seeing perpetrators as targets—I shot for the accuracy score, and killing has nothing to do with it. I already know I am not a killer and if the perpetrator’s life ends, it’s because he chose to end it, not my decision, it was his to make and he chose to walk in front of my practice session. My state’s laws in this regard have been adhered to completely and I did the right moral law abiding action to stay within the state of loving myself and family responsibly—-Mindset Exorcise Over.
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Back to a moral upstanding life, being on guard for evil killers whom I hope never appear on the target range again.