Justifiable Homicides Up

[KBCraig]

I saw a chart about this on another forum, which showed the numbers of justifiable homicides by police and citizens. The two trend lines tracked exactly parallel back to 1994 (as far as the chart covered).

[John]

I saw a chart about this on another forum, which showed the numbers of justifiable homicides by police and citizens. The two trend lines tracked exactly parallel back to 1994 (as far as the chart covered).

did it look like the one above from the article. Kind of weird isn't it? I wonder what else follows this trend.

[Broge5]

I guess there are two takes here:

Self defense shootings are at the highest levels since 1997.
Theirs: Shoot first mentality - Guns bad.
Mine: Self Defense shootings must now be lower than in 1996. How many people, at least in Texas, carried in 1996? And look what happened as more applied for a CHL in 1997 - the numbers went down.

Also, I see that more BG's have been shot, what are the statistics on victims being shot during the commission of a crime? Could it be less due to more of the public being armed?

[stevie_d_64]

This report doesn't cite any significant statistics. It notes that justifiable homicides are up, but doesn't address the crimes which create the justification. The conclusion that there is a "shoot first mentality" is editorializing without foundation.

Yep, this bothered me as well...Like they want the unwashed public to assume that we do not accept the responsibility or feel accountable for our actions when we reasonably determine (per the law) that deadly force is necessary to stop the imminent or continued threat to ourselves and those around us...

Of course this is already ingrained (personally) in the membrane, and not needing the time (as it took to write the statement) to determine my re-action, or non-re-action...

[DoubleJ]

Of course this is already ingrained in the membrane, and not needing the time (as it took to write the statement) to determine my re-action, or non-re-action...

Ingrained in the membrane
INGRAINED IN THE BRAIN
Ingrained in the membrane
ONCE INGRAINED, GOT NO BRAIN

dood, you ruined my train of thought.....

anyway, woulda been nice to couple that story with the number of felons shooting victims. Hm, seems like the felons keep trying to kill ordinary citizens. guess those self defense shooting oughtta go up a bit, eh?

[Abraham]

Of course, there's no mention of how often a pistol is NOT used, but once drawn, the criminal decided to leave the intended victim unharmed...with no shots fired.

There are no stats (and I guess there's no way to accurately extrapolate such either) but I know of more than one anecdote from different friend's who've experienced a range of criminal actions from attempted car jackings to their use of late night highway rest stops where they were greeted with attempted muggings that were prevented because they were armed with no shots fired.

This type of crime prevention is rarely mentioned in the press.

[casingpoint]

The FBI says a homicide committed by a private citizen is justified when a person is slain during the commission of a felony, such as a burglary or robbery.

I would really like to see that specifically sourced from within the FBI. That may well be the opinion of the FBI, as well as many citizens, but it would take some extensive rewriting of many state statutes to be binding under the conditions stated without somehow being incorporated under the Fourteenth Amendmemt as a federal defense for such shootings.

[KFP]

Interesting to remember that when you're looking at violent crime stats in some locations, there is a strong possibility that the number in the murder column includes the justifiable ones....

[srothstein]

The FBI says a homicide committed by a private citizen is justified when a person is slain during the commission of a felony, such as a burglary or robbery.

I would really like to see that specifically sourced from within the FBI.

Ask and ye shall receive. Click here for the handbook for FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (a large PDF file). On page 17 of the book (page 24 of the pdf file) it explains the definitions.

Note that this is not a legal definition, but the definition for how to report incidents to the FBI for crime statistics. It only affects how the crimes are reported. If you look through the whole booklet (which I don't really recommend) you will find so many holes in the way data is collected that you will know that UCR data is faulty and therefore invalid. One of the things I have learned as a cop is to never trust FBI crime statistics.

For one example, if a person breaks into ten cars in one parking lot in one night (as happens in many cases), that gets reported as one burglary of a motor vehicle, and not ten.