Consequences For Holding A Bad Guy

[Purplehood]

......If they are of the cowardly type that drops to ground like a girl screaming don't shoot me,......

....I don't know why, but the visual makes me laugh.

Remember that trick from Diehard (movie)? The head baddie dropped and started crying when Bruce Willis confronted him. It worked for awhile till Bruce figured it out.

Also, a lot of posters mention they dont have the training to handcuff someone. So what? toss the cuffs to the BG and make him cuff his hand to his ankle or something. Cuff his own wrist to a burglar bar, bedpost, whatever. You can see from a safe distance whether it is done or not. Even if they are loose it will still slow him down considerably. Better solution than hoping he complies and doesnt change his mind 5 minutes later.

We have to have cuffs now?

[Excaliber]

There are no hard and fast answers here.

The simplest cases are holding a compliant suspect in place (definitely not bringing him closer to home and family), and allowing someone who is determined to flee to do so if he doesn't present a deadly threat during his actions. I'm not a proponent of using deadly force to recover property, even if that course of action is authorized by law.

One has to consider that a BG who may still be armed and / or may have accomplices nearby may use an opportunity to leave to flank the GG or otherwise reposition himself to initiate a secondary attack. This possibility can be addressed with repositioning by the GG as well, but it's something that should be kept in mind.

[Excaliber]

......If they are of the cowardly type that drops to ground like a girl screaming don't shoot me,......

....I don't know why, but the visual makes me laugh.

Remember that trick from Diehard (movie)? The head baddie dropped and started crying when Bruce Willis confronted him. It worked for awhile till Bruce figured it out.

Also, a lot of posters mention they dont have the training to handcuff someone. So what? toss the cuffs to the BG and make him cuff his hand to his ankle or something. Cuff his own wrist to a burglar bar, bedpost, whatever. You can see from a safe distance whether it is done or not. Even if they are loose it will still slow him down considerably. Better solution than hoping he complies and doesnt change his mind 5 minutes later.

We have to have cuffs now?

If you've got a BG who would comply with an instruction to cuff himself, you've got a BG who will simply stay where you tell him to without cuffs until the police arrive.

The reverse is also true.

[Purplehood]

There are no hard and fast answers here.

The simplest cases are holding a compliant suspect in place (definitely not bringing him closer to home and family), and allowing someone who is determined to flee to do so if he doesn't present a deadly threat during his actions. I'm not a proponent of using deadly force to recover property, even if that course of action is authorized by law.

One has to consider that a BG who may still be armed and / or may have accomplices nearby may use an opportunity to leave to flank the GG or otherwise reposition himself to initiate a secondary attack. This possibility can be addressed with repositioning by the GG as well, but it's something that should be kept in mind.

When I confronted a burglar in my brothers house and let him go, I didn't realize that he had 2 accomplices out front waiting in a pickup truck. Things could have got nasty.

[03Lightningrocks]

There are no hard and fast answers here.

The simplest cases are holding a compliant suspect in place (definitely not bringing him closer to home and family), and allowing someone who is determined to flee to do so if he doesn't present a deadly threat during his actions. I'm not a proponent of using deadly force to recover property, even if that course of action is authorized by law.

One has to consider that a BG who may still be armed and / or may have accomplices nearby may use an opportunity to leave to flank the GG or otherwise reposition himself to initiate a secondary attack. This possibility can be addressed with repositioning by the GG as well, but it's something that should be kept in mind.

When I confronted a burglar in my brothers house and let him go, I didn't realize that he had 2 accomplices out front waiting in a pickup truck. Things could have got nasty.

Yeah... that could have turned south real quick if you had tried to hold the guy while waiting on the police. It might have inspired them to come in to see what was taking so long. On the other hand, I believe most of these types haven't the intestinal fortitude to "back up" their accomplices. Chances are greater that if you had of held at gun point or shot their buddy, they would have made a hasty retreat to save their own butts.

These days, with all the gang activity, in either situation one has the risk of a street gang coming back later for revenge.

There are no easy answers, IMHO. One just has to do what one feels is right, at that particular moment and make that decision quickly and decisively.

[KD5NRH]

HOLD A BAD GUY??? You folks kidding me??? If the situation calls for "draw", it calls for "shoot".

Inside one's home, "draw" may not be a necessary step. After all, it's perfectly legal for me to sit in the living room in my bike shorts, twirling my Blackhawk and scratching myself with the front sight, or reenacting scenes from "Enemy at the Gates" with my Mosin-Nagant.

[KD5NRH]

Consequences For Holding A Bad Guy

He'll most likely break your heart. They don't get that sort of reputation for nothing, you know.

[03Lightningrocks]

HOLD A BAD GUY??? You folks kidding me??? If the situation calls for "draw", it calls for "shoot".

Inside one's home, "draw" may not be a necessary step. After all, it's perfectly legal for me to sit in the living room in my bike shorts, twirling my Blackhawk and scratching myself with the front sight, or reenacting scenes from "Enemy at the Gates" with my Mosin-Nagant.

Allow me to clarify. In public for the draw part of my statement. In your home, if the situation is anybody in MY home that is not suppose to be there, the situation calls for SHOOT! In YOUR home, you may want to make them sit on the sofa and watch you reenact enemy at the gates. That is the beauty of our country. We all have the right to make our own decisions.

Careful though, if your acting skills are bad, you might get thrown in jail for some kind of torture offense.

[Katygunnut]

I think courts would be very reluctant to convict anyone on unlawful detainment if the facts would have allowed for the legal use of deadly force.

Taking away a legal alternative other than deadly force would seem to strengthen a defense against an a charge of unlawfully shooting an intruder, since you really would have no other legal option available (assuming that fleeing is not feasible and the BG refuses to just leave peacefully).

Then again, IANAL.

[Bob in Big D]

A BG in my house, at night is 99.99999% gonna get shot....unless I miss...... several times. He will find it hard to flee with enough lead in him.
Armed or unarmed I couldn't tell, all I could tell was he was making threating moves and I feared for my life and my families life....period.... end of story.

[Winchster]

The kid that was browsing my garage late one night elicited an incorrect response from me. I chased him down the street, tackled him, and drug him back to the house. Banged on the door and told the wife to bring me a pistol and a phone. Then called 911, all the while explaining to this little twerp that if he tried to stick his hands in his pockets again, I'd just shoot him and be done with it.

Needless to say, I shouldn't have chased him. I know. I did detain, and the NRHills PD was extremely grateful, seems they had been looking for the kid for a couple of months.

My son on the other hand has done the same in public. Shortly after his return from his first tour in Iraq, he was driving to work to his oilfield yard down Rosedale. The jeep broke down, and while he is investigating the cause a man walks up to him holding a knife. From a distance of about 15 feet the guy demands my sons wallet. My son, having about the same tolerance for bull as myself, and just returned from a lengthy combat tour, assured the guy he didn't really want to do this. Well, this continued back and forth a few times, until my son agreed to get his wallet out of the jeep. As the BG stood there waiting patiently my son pulls his shotgun from the jeep, turns and asks the BG, "I told you, you didn't want to do this today, how much money do you have?" They stood like this for a minute or so and out of nowhere FTWPD pulls up. Long story short, the shotgun was unloaded, the police officer admonished my son that a wallet wasn't worth his life, yada yada yada, by the way thanks for your service and good job catching this guy. The BG had fled the scene, pursued by the other officer, caught, and was crying that my son had attempted to rob him at gunpoint. The officer quipped something about bringing a knife to a gun fight. They let my son go on his way to work.

Sorry for the lengthy post. I guess in my mind, in my case if the kid had been inside the house it's different than just trying to shop in my garage.

[Beiruty]

Talking about people browsing your garage.

This is a real story.
On a weekend, our neighbors had a garage sale. I do not like garage sales as it attracts shady people from all the way 1000 miles south of our house!
I left the house to get some groceries from the Kroger 2 blocks away, When I returned and I found out my garage still open (not sure why) and a unknown man and women were just trying to enter my house from the garage door, I mean they are in my house, in the laundry room, not just entering the garage.

I went to red condition (I was not carrying since I was waiting for my CHL at that time) and started to question them who they are and what are they doing in my house. I stopped them from leaving to till they are cleared and made sure nothing is missing from my house. They barely were able to speak a single word of English. After a while I figured out that they were browsing garage sales and they wanted to ask the house owner if something is for sale.

With the state of the economy so bad, those "browsers" just disappeared. Moreover, Garage door is all the time closed.

[Embalmo]

It is inconceivable to me that a judge wouldn't throw such a suit out of court. You're in your home, minding your own business, and a burglar enters? He's darn lucky if he doesn't get shot - and if it's at night, you're well within your rights to shoot first and ask questions later. If I hold an intruder at gunpoint until the police arrive, and it is my home, I expect the police to say "job well done, we'll take it from here," and never hear about it again until I appear as a witness at the BG's trial. If not, I'll make mincemeat in the local press out of the judge, the prosecutor, and the perp.

I'm not havin' it.

Don't spend much time in Travis county do you Mr. Tam?

[Embalmo]

I haven't read all the post, so this might be redundant, but I am terrified to hold a guy at gun point. Either he could draw, or suddenly his boys could show up and shoot me. I have every reason to believe he is armed. If I catch a burglar, car thief, whatever, and I get me stuff back, I'm gonna' yell, "get out of here!" If he takes one baby step toward me then I will empty my magazine in the man's exact global position.

It's just a fool's game. Even if you have cuffs handy, where are you gonna' set your gun down while you do it?

Embalmo

[KD5NRH]

If he takes one baby step toward me then I will empty my magazine in the man's exact global position.

...and then his buddies show up. How fast can you reload?