reckless endangerment?

Preach it, brotha. I think watching that all go down yesterday made me seriously rethink my apathy regarding gun issues.

Well, the disclaimer I should go ahead and lay down (because I know it’s gonna be the first assumption made) is that I am actually fairly pro gun rights.

Honestly I think the whole “gun control” debate would be a little more progressive if it focused less on when and where people are allowed to have guns and more on prosecuting people that are fucking idiots with them.

Agreed. Now that we know the whole story, this man was not acting responsibly in any shape, form, or fashion. Discharging a weapon at a fleeing attacker is bad enough, but doing it so recklessly, jeez. Way to give us all a black eye.

Absolutely. I was thinking about it yesterday and how it wasn’t a situation where he was carrying illegally, so stricter permit laws probably wouldn’t have helped. The process he went through to obtain the permit was probably completely legit. But the second he fired it into a busy street, there should’ve been repercussions–the very least of which should be losing the permit.

The first question you have to ask, before recklessness or even negligence becomes an issue, is who was harmed? If there isn’t an injury, there isn’t a cause of action, and therefore the degree of his breach of duty is a moot point. I’m not sure the shooter’s actions in this case constitute recklessness, either. According to the report, he hit the vehicle his assailant was using to flee the scene of the crime. As the police pointed out, his actions were within the bounds of the law; if the shooter wasn’t supposed to use his CC to fire at a man who was attempting to rob him, under what circumstances should he be allowed? The shooter is *always* responsible for where their bullet strikes, and if someone else was hit it would have been easy to sue the shooter for damages under a negligence theory (which is a much lower standard than recklessness). In order to prove recklessness, the shooter would have needed to fire much more wildly, and in blatant disregard for public safety, than it appears he actually did.

Personally, I could get a CC, but I don’t, because I’m not that good a shot with a handgun. I also think I would have stopped firing after the assailant got in his car and started driving off, but that’s a judgment call, and the burden of responsibility can end up very very great. What if I fire and miss? What if I fire and strike someone else? What if I don’t fire and he turns the car on me, or starts firing back at me with a weapon that was concealed in it? What if I don’t fire, and he ends up killing someone else later who is unarmed? Is the area crowded? Are my skills sufficient to avoid harming others? All of these questions must be answered instantly, under stress, and in time to react.

It does make me wonder if we should require more testing and evaluation of CC permit holders. Keep in mind, though, that whenever we start regulating a Constitutional right in this manner, we run the risk of creating a system that is unjustly prejudicial and discriminatory. Who do we need more protection against - criminals or CC permit holders? Do the majority of CC permit holders already take their responsibility seriously enough? I don’t necessarily think this guy is a bad example. It’s certainly not something I would have felt comfortable trying, but he seems to have carried it off rather well.

The first question you have to ask, before recklessness or even negligence becomes an issue, is who was harmed? If there isn’t an injury, there isn’t a cause of action, and therefore the degree of his breach of duty is a moot point.

Well, that’s the first question you have to ask if you’re considering criminal charges of assault with a deadly weapon or something, I don’t know? Recklessness and negligence is what I’m talking about here.

According to the report, he hit the vehicle his assailant was using to flee the scene of the crime. As the police pointed out, his actions were within the bounds of the law; if the shooter wasn’t supposed to use his CC to fire at a man who was attempting to rob him, under what circumstances should he be allowed? The shooter is *always* responsible for where their bullet strikes, and if someone else was hit it would have been easy to sue the shooter for damages under a negligence theory (which is a much lower standard than recklessness). In order to prove recklessness, the shooter would have needed to fire much more wildly, and in blatant disregard for public safety, than it appears he actually did.

Minor, but important quibble here: the authorities said he was within “his rights”, not the law. I don’t know what the law actually says here, since IANAL (or even a LS). Obviously they didn’t charge him with anything, so I’m assuming what he did actually is not illegal. If the law does indeed state that what he did was legal, I’d have to say I disagree with it. Societies don’t often (or in my mind, ought not to) make laws that are subjective or selective in their application depending on the skill of the subject. Michael Schumacher doesn’t get a pass for driving 120 mph down I-40 just because he happens to be particularly good at it. Nor is the outcome ever a sufficient justification for a risk. As I understand it, “reckless endangerment” and other offenses of their ilk exist to embody the legal equivalent of “oh my god, you fucking idiot, you could have gotten someone killed”.

As for the rest of your comment, you seem to be operating again on the assumption that I’m advocating for any stricter CC laws, which I’m not. I’m simply making the case that this strikes me as a pretty clear case of recklessness (based on my admittedly limited information about what happened). I was under the impression that there are other jurisdictions where discharging a firearm like this had at least one necessary prerequisite: a clear and present danger to a life (the shooter’s, or someone else’s). Maybe I’m wrong, or maybe that’s just not the case in TN, which seems fucked up.

Let’s review some hypotheticals about this scenario, and the risks involved (to others, mind you, taken on behalf of the shooter, who was not in any physical or material danger): he hit the door of a van. Had he missed – a clear possibility, even for a very talented shooter – a moving target with only a few feet between “door of van” and “clear open space and whatever is behind the van from the shooter’s angle”. It doesn’t take a wild imagination to suppose what would have absorbed that bullet had it not been the door of that van. You could perhaps suppose that this shooter calmly and rationally surveyed the landscape and made the judgement call that nothing/no-one behind the van was at risk of being hit. I’d also like a hit of the crackpipe you’re suckin on. Now, what if he had hit the driver? What exactly does that help? We now have a wounded, incapacitated or dead driver behind the wheel of a van that was already driving fast and erratically from a crime scene. Great, way to go, Tex. What if he had disabled the van instead of the driver? (hint: disabling a vehicle does not always make it safer, or make it stop).

Compare and contrast this to the risk or consequences of not shooting at the van: … uh, the suspect in the van drives away, and is apprehended later, which in fact is what happened. Horror of horrors. The most hilarious point about his firearm discharge is that, surprise, it didn’t do jack to change things. The jackass with the gun just made things worse (making a dangerous situation more dangerous – and in this case, not for him, incidentally – for others).

It’s certainly not something I would have felt comfortable trying, but he seems to have carried it off rather well.

Society of course is always a complicated network of negotiated decisions of risk/benefit between rational thinking beings. I’m not proposing that the risk involved there is something we can just legislate away. But there are some clear boundaries that seem worth considering – for example: you don’t risk taking another life (perp included) if there’s no clear and present danger of another life being taken. Frankly I think it’s a bit presumptuous of you to assume that the risk here (needlessly killing a bystander) is something you feel is within your right to “try”. If you had been in his position and had “tried” and failed, perhaps killing an innocent bystander, do you still have the same casual shrug of indifference? “Oh well, good try, let’s go grab a brew”?

Well, that’s the first question you have to ask if you’re considering criminal charges of assault with a deadly weapon or something, I don’t know? Recklessness and negligence is what I’m talking about here.

So am I. My analysis above is based strictly on Tort. Criminal law is a completely different matter, which actually doesn’t have any application under the circumstances (at least in respect to the shooter).

Societies don’t often (or in my mind, ought not to) make laws that are subjective or selective in their application depending on the skill of the subject. Michael Schumacher doesn’t get a pass for driving 120 mph down I-40 just because he happens to be particularly good at it.

You might disagree with it, but this is the entire purpose for a licensing system. It grants certain members of our society the right to exceed lawful limits of conduct, presumably because they have demonstrated enough skill and judgment to be trusted with that extra responsibility. For instance, far more people are killed every year by the conduct of reckless licensed drivers than reckless licensed CC holders, but rarely are there serious discussions of raising the standard of drivers license testing made with the same frequency and fervor with which we discuss regulating gun permits.

Furthermore, to use your example of speeding on the highways, police officers and some other emergency personnel are frequently allowed to break traffic laws because, 1) they are pursuing a public interest (such as responding to a grave emergency) that’s greater than the public interest in maintaining the speed limit, and 2) they’ve (supposedly) received special training in how to break those laws and still navigate the roadways with reasonable safety. This sort of exception *could* be extended to private individuals if they met these conditions and the conditions outweighed the prior public interest of roadway safety, but evaluating and balancing those factors would be up to a jury.

As I understand it, “reckless endangerment” and other offenses of their ilk exist to embody the legal equivalent of “oh my god, you fucking idiot, you could have gotten someone killed”.

Reckless endangerment doesn’t exist to punish mere stupidity, it exists as a legal theory to sue someone for damages resulting from their stupidity.

I was under the impression that there are other jurisdictions where discharging a firearm like this had at least one necessary prerequisite: a clear and present danger to a life (the shooter’s, or someone else’s).

I appreciate that you’re presuming the shooter’s life was no longer in jeopardy once the robber was fleeing, but I don’t think everyone would agree with you on that point. He was very likely fleeing *because* he was being shot at. If the shooter had not continued firing, the encounter probably wouldn’t have ended so quickly or with so little harm to everyone involved.

I’d also like a hit of the crackpipe you’re suckin on.

It’s not material to the discussion, but by and by, ad hominems do nothing for your argument.

The jackass with the gun just made things worse (making a dangerous situation more dangerous — and in this case, not for him, incidentally — for others).

Like I said - I wouldn’t have done it myself, and if the bullets had actually hit someone, this would be an entirely different scenario. You may feel outraged at him all you like, but you asked if what he did was legally wrong, and it was not.

Frankly I think it’s a bit presumptuous of you to assume that the risk here (needlessly killing a bystander) is something you feel is within your right to “try”. If you had been in his position and had “tried” and failed, perhaps killing an innocent bystander, do you still have the same casual shrug of indifference? “Oh well, good try, let’s go grab a brew”?

Show me where in my original post I indicated this is something I would try. I was very clear on the fact that I wouldn’t have done what he did, even if I had a CC in that same situation. However, no one was hurt, and a crime was prevented. Considering there were four shots fired, that is really a rather splendid outcome, and I have to give the guy kudos for pulling it off.

Gun laws have never and will never keep guns out of the hands of criminals; they will merely cause obstacles that must be overcome by brave citizens able and willing to fight back against gun-wielding thugs that use illegal firearms to commit crime.

A well-trained shooter, legally carrying a concealed firearm, should always return fire to protect the lives of others as well as his or her own. To not return well-aimed, well-intentioned fire would be both reckless and negligent. God bless those brave enough to act with good intentions and God save the Second Ammendment!

You … didn’t even read the post, did you.

Just a thought here that nobody seems to have covered. The story said,

“Authorities said the man held up five store employees and two customers inside, and when he came out into the parking lot, he held up a third customer.He didn’t realize that customer also had a gun.

Police said the customer pulled a handgun and fired several shots at the robber.”

So the robber had a gun that he used whenever he “held up” anyone because that is what it means to hold someone up, right? So presumably he went up to the last person (the “third customer. He didn’t realize… also had a gun”) and tried to rob him. So lets suppose he pointed a gun at him and said to him, “give me your money”. Remember, up until this point there were no shots fired, so it is possible that the robber’s gun was unloaded, and/or it may have been fake. Hence it is possible that the robber may have never fired a handgun in his life, and may not have been aware of how loud they are, etc. So when the last customer was held up maybe he responded by saying something like, “Yes, yes I will give you my money… just please don’t shoot me, I think I have $100 bucks for you, just please don’t shoot - just a minute I have to get it out of my wallet…” and maybe then he pretended to get his wallet out of wherever as the robber nervously waited and maybe the robber even looked around and took his eyes off of the armed victim, and the next thing you know he hears a shot go off so loud that he not only pissed his pants, but he also craps his pants as well, and just about has a heart attack, as he has never been so scared in all of his life. When he realizes that he has not been shot, he runs to his car, fumbles with the door and the keys, gets the car started and into gear … during this time he hears two more of the loudest noises he has ever heard in his life. The point is that maybe “Dirty Harry” with the CC permit somehow saw that this would be assailant was just a big dummy that really didn’t want to hurt anyone, and so he maybe he cut him some slack, and maybe he shot into the air, just to scare the living sh!t out of the guy which I suppose could easily have happened. When he saw that the guy was fleeing the scene, perhaps he shot two or three more shots into the air just to make sure that he kept on fleeing. Now when the guy gets his car moving we don’t know if he had to drive by or near “Dirty Harry” in order to get out of there. Lets just suppose that the parking lot was laid out in such a way that the robber had to drive right by “Dirty Harry” in order to leave. So “Dirty Harry” decides to fire one more shot into the van just for good measure, for good effect, to make sure the robber thinks he is facing deadly force and keeps on moving, which he did. The point I am making is that maybe the guy who fired off all the shots may have fired all those shots into the air, or maybe there was a brick wall behind the robber that “Dirty Harry” actually shot at. I have a feeling that the guy shooting made a decision to not actually shoot at the guy, but to just scare him really good and ensure that he kept on moving. Also vans have many doors besides the driver door and the passenger door - they usually have a couple of side doors as well as back doors - the story doesn’t say that “Dirty Harry” fired at the passenger door, and I am betting that he did not.

So the question for the original poster, and all of you that responded, and for anyone else who may find this page in the future, does this entire situation change if it turns out to be true that the shooter actually never tried to hit the robber, that he shot into the air, or into a brick wall each time, and the shot into the van was just another shot that was for show to make the guy keep moving away from the scene which it seems he did do (he did leave). Does this scenario change things? I would think that it would. I also think that something similar to what I have suggested is closer to what actually happened here… this would explain why the shooter was “within his rights”, etc., because he didn’t use deadly force against a fleeing person, but it was important to make the guy think that deadly force was present due to the layout of the parking lot, etc. - giving the robber a good scare was just that and each additional shot was just a little insurance added to the show. I have a feeling the guy with the CC permit is a much better shot than any of us will ever know.

Again, all this is just a thought - thanks for reading.