From: bressler@iftccu.boeing.com (Rick Bressler)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: Yoshi Hattori / UPI
Date: 20 Nov 92 20:05:05 GMT
Organization: Boeing Commercial Airplane Group

>>Frankly, most people with even the most rudimentry intelligence can
>>understand that it might be best to 1) stand still, 2) run away when
>>someone points a gun at them.  The last thing you would expect an innocent
>>person to do in this situation is walk toward an armed man.
>
>This is completely logical for someone who has grown up in a society where guns
>are commonplace. However, it is not necessarily logical to someone, especial a
>young person, who grows up in a society where guns are all but nonexistant.

A good point.  Equally important, don't walk out in front of taxi cabs
in certain major cities.  I think there is always a higher than normal
risk period when any time you enter unfamiliar surroundings or
societies.  The best you can do is try to learn as much as you can
before you go and pay attention to what you are doing until you learn
the 'ropes.'

I think it is interesting to note that many of the Japanese that visit
the are go nuts as soon as they find out that ANYBODY can rent guns and
shoot them here.  They (most) all have to rent the Smith model 29.
('Dirty Harry's .44 magnum.)  The Japanese appear to be fascinated with
firearms, probably because they are so off limits in Japan.  Most
Japanese have no opportunity to ever see/handle a gun, unless they are a
police officer.

Perhaps this student thought the homeowner was offering him a shooting
lesson?

Seriously, as I've posted many times before, civilian life isn't like
the military.  In the military you shoot somebody simply because they
are wearing the wrong uniform or are in the wrong place.  It's usually
very clear cut in combat.  You simply shoot the enemy on sight.

In civilian life you are justified in shooting if you believe your life,
or some other innocent's life, to be in imminent danger of death or
grave bodily harm.  What are the criteria used?  The yard stick of the
reasonable man, of course.  In the judgment of the 'reasonable man' was
your life in danger?  Well, the criteria that are used are:

1) Ability to do you harm.

2) Opportunity to do you harm.

3) Jeopardy.  Their actions must place you in immediate jeopardy.

Lets take the example of a dog.  This is not to in any way compare
Hattori to a dog, but to provide an example that more of us are familiar
with.

Any strange dog of any size has the ability to do you harm.  Their teeth
can tear your throat out in an instant.  I've seen this done to other
animals, and humans wouldn't be any harder in most cases.  Even martial
artists have extreme difficulty dealing with dogs if they have only bare
hands.  Thus I feel justified in saying that nearly any dog has the
ABILITY to do you harm.

If the dog is in the same physical area that you are, it also has the
OPPORTUNITY to do you harm.  All it needs is physical proximity.

This leaves us with JEOPARDY.  If the dog approaches you in a
'timed/friendly' manner, whining and tail wagging, you would logically
conclude, unless you have an irrational fear of dogs, that this dog is
not a danger.  If it is foaming at the mouth, baring it's teeth,
growling and charging, I doubt many of us would doubt it's intent and
most of us would at least try to take appropriate action.  Depending on
who we are and what means of defense we have, we WILL respond.  It might
be to roll up the car window, step into a building, club the dog, if we
have a club available, or whatever.  Certainly we would be justified in
shooting such a dog if we had no othor option.

Now lets take another example.  Brice Dowaliby writes:

> Phil, do you have a window at work that faces toward the street?  If
> you do, please go take a look at it.  See that woman driving down
> the street?  What are the consequences of her taking a grenade launcher
> out of her car and launching a grenade at your window?  Better shoot
> her now while you have the chance, eh?

Lets apply the criteria:

Does this woman have the ability to harm Phil.  Certainly she does.  She
is maneuvering a 2000 lb bludgeon, grenade launcher or no.

Does this woman have the opportunity to harm Phil.  Well, if he can see
the grenade launcher she does.  Otherwise not unless she can get her car
into the elevator.

Is she placing Phil's life in danger?  Not that I can see.  This is
where Brice's and similar BS falls down flat.  Now if she were aiming
that 'grenade launcher' in Phil's direction, he would have every reason
to shoot her.  No (honest) court in the world would disagree.  Very few
legal, moral, ethical or religious systems in the world would disagree
either.

Lets change the situation a bit.  Lets suppose Phil is in the parking
lot, maybe standing in a parking stall holding it for a friend.  Lets
suppose this woman pulls up and tells him that if he doesn't vacate the
spot so she can park, she is going to run him down.  Now what?  She has
the ability, she has the opportunity, and she has expressed the intent to
put him in harms way.  At this point he is probably justified in drawing
a gun.  If she moves to implement her plan he can and should shoot her
if he can't escape.  The only reason I list escape here, is that guns,
as a rule, aren't very effective against cars.

Does this sound contrived?  It happened here, less than two weeks ago.
The woman in the car ran down the woman holding the parking place,
seriously injuring her.  She ran her down, and went into the mall without
even looking to see if she was injured.  She was found unconscious by her
companion about 15 minutes later after she parked the car somewhere else
and went looking for her.

Now, lets get back to the case of Hattori.  Did Hattori have the ability
to harm the homeowner, or more properly, did the homeowner have reason
to believe he did?  Unknown.

Did Hattori have the opportunity to harm the homeowner?  Certainly.  He
was approaching him.  Even unarmed, anybody within 20 feet or so can harm
you seriously in short order if they have thought about it a bit.  This
is no reason to be paranoid though, just something to be aware of.

Did the homeowner believe Hattori was placing him in Jeopardy?  Unknown.
Apparently he did.  Why we don't know.

Thus, we have no way of knowing if the homeowner was justified or not.
There is a stereotype here that most Japanese know some form of martial
arts.  This is no more correct than many of the Japanese stereotypes of
the US still having a wild west, but given TV and so on it is
unavoidable.  Suppose the homeowner saw in Hattori's approach a martial
arts type attack that the homeowner had learned in class years before?
Suppose Hattori's hands were concealed in his pockets.  Maybe he was
just cold, maybe he had a weapon.

This is why the simple facts as presented on the net are meaningless.
They can literally describe dozens of situations in which the homeowner
was justified and as many more in which he was not.  I'll leave it to
the courts to decide.

We may NEVER know.  Nobody is unaffected by taking the life of another
human being.  Even Cnl. Jeff Cooper (who as been known to cast
aspirations of the 'man/womanhood of somebody showing remorse over a
justified shooting) displays clear symptoms of post violence trauma when
he says that his beer tastes colder and he seems more alert.  Part of
this syndrome is to black out the actual incident.  This likely leaves
us with very few witnesses in the Hattori tragedy.  Who gets the
benefit of the doubt?  Hattori because he is dead or the homeowner
because he is alive?  Maybe this is why tragedy is an appropriate term
here.

Rick.