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Backfire wrote:Question: Can you pull a weapon and shoot someone that physically attacks you with there fist only? When you know "its coming" do you have to wait until he pulls a knife, or weapon to draw and shoot the attacker? Do you have to endure a beatdown and let him go if he has no weapon and you two are comparable in size?

Anyone (like me) who has seen a victim who was beaten to death with naked fists can tell you that an assault with fists is PLENTY of reason to use deadly force. The legal standard ultimately boils down to the reasonable belief of the actor.

Read up: http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/D ... m/PE.9.htm.

In short, use of force in self-defense or defense of another is justified if you feel that it is reasonably necessary to avoid imminent harm to yourself and/or another person. Use of deadly force in self-defense or defense of another is justified if you feel that it is reasonably necessary to prevent death or serious bodily injury.

TPC Sec. 1.07. DEFINITIONS. (a) In this code:
......

• (46) "Serious bodily injury" means bodily injury that creates a substantial risk of death or that causes death, serious permanent disfigurement, or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ.

For the record, your skin is considered to be a bodily organ. An assault with fists has the potential to cause all of the above: death, serious permanent disfigurement, protracted loss or impairment of the function of ANY bodily member or organ. You are not required by law to wait and see if the fist breaks your skin or leaves a bruise, or breaks a bone, or ruptures your eyeball, or fractures your skull, or lacerates your liver or spleen—all of which are possible with a judiciously placed punch. If someone comes at you swinging his fists and you have a legal right to be where you are, and you have not provoked the attack, then you have a defense to prosecution if you shoot him.

This means that, while you are not normally allowed to shoot someone, you will have a defense to prosecution if you do have to shoot someone to protect yourself. But the main thing is that the law presumes you to be a reasonable person, and that a reasonable person might easily reasonably believe that deadly force is necessary even against a simple assault with bare hands. If you're a 6'4" 250 lb linebacker and someone swings at you, you may not feel that deadly force is necessary to stop the assault. But if you are a 60 year old mobility limited man like me, you might have a much lower threshold at which you reasonably believe that deadly force is necessary. But the point is that the call is mine or yours to make, not a prosecutor's, so long as we had a right to be where we were, and we did not provoke the assault. Furthermore, the law positively affirms (PC 9, subchapter B, 9.21 (c)) that "If deadly force is so justified, there is no duty to retreat before using it."

So NO, you do not have to wait until a weapon is drawn by the bad guy before you respond with deadly force. An assault with bare hands is sufficient justification, if you reasonably believe that deadly force is necessary. HOWEVER, you may well be called before a grand jury to prove that a standard of reasonableness was met. In fact, unless the particulars of the shooting are just so overwhelmingly in your favor as to preclude a prosecutor's belief that a grand jury is necessary, you can pretty much count on it.