Saruman said:
So the bad guy is running at me in the middle of the night shouting death threats at me, I have just seconds to react, my gun slips alittle, the bad guy is now trying to stab me with a 7 in blade, I finally get a grip of my gun and shoot him in the back.
He drops.
So now...
Lets say I called the police.
They arrive.
Do their investigation/violation crap and find me guilty for
"shooting an unarmed? indiviual in the back, while they were in retreat"
...since when he dropped, the nerves in his arm caused him to hurl the blade over a short wall out of sight.
And also since I had no wounds of a blade I said the dude had, the jury put the blame on me...
If you've ever been on jury duty, you'll know they aren't the brightest of folk. ~rolleyes~
So, I'm screwed for defending my life & calling the cops on someone who just tried to end my life, which now, I'm in prison for life.
Well done... ~rolleyes~
Actually, not necessarily.
My entire family is full of LEO's.. My uncle is an Immigration agent, my other uncle is an FBI agent, my uncle on the other side of the family is a police chief, cousin is a detective.. list goes on, and I know a bit about crime and such to help you with this.
First of all the chance of someone running after you and trying to kill you with a knife is the same chance that I'm going to get married to Laura Bush tomorrow..
Now, we'll get onto the hypothetical. If it were that type of situation, and you did struggle to shoot the man in the back, it would be your word vs. the word of a dead guy... plus forensics would be able to tell that you were running and they'd recover the mans knife in the vicinity.. maybe you'd be arrested and spend a few nights in custody ( likely at a precinct holding cell ) and, if it was the case the man didn't have a knife, you should have probably hit him over the head with the pistol or fired a shot into his leg, but again police would determine you acted in self defense.
Now, we'll go into the other scenario.
Guy has a knife chasing you, you draw your weapon fire one into his back - then you take off out of the area. Three bad things you're doing:
1) Not answering to the police that it was self defense
2) Leaving a man dead on the side of the road
3) Setting yourself up to be charged with murder
You leave a body on the side of the road with a bullet in it's back, authorities will assume he was murdered and launch an investigation. You would be found within a week or two, trust me, and at that point your claims of self defense would be laughed out of the courtroom and you rot in jail for 20+ years.