VETERAN’S AR-15 CONFISCATED BY POLICE- And he's facing criminal charges!

[losttrail]

ETA:
Did not our VP recommend this tactic?

Yes, but with a shotgun and for only hearing noises on the other side of the door.

[Zundfolge]

Firing warning shots in a densely populated area is a sure way to get someone killed unintentionally.

Yep.

In most cases, in an urban or suburban environment "Warning Shots" are a clear and absolute violation of Rule #4.

Additionally, in an urban/suburban environment the legal threshold of when you have a clear legal right to discharge a firearm is pretty much the same threshold as when you have the clear legal right to shoot someone.

[Bailey Guns]

I'll add my .02 cents. Based on the OP and what I know about Oregon law which is pretty much nothing:

1) The fact this guy is a veteran is irrelevant to the facts of the situation. In my opinion it's added only to encourage others to be sympathetic to his plight...as is the sensationalistic headline about his gun being confiscated. That's typical/standard procedure in a firearm related offense.

2) There's no such thing as a warning shot, FFS. There is no legal justification for it that I'm aware of in Colorado (though, depending on the circumstances and location it may not necessarily be illegal), I doubt there is in Oregon. The guy was an idiot to fire his AR-15 in an apartment bldg.

3) I totally understand the Reckless Endangerment charge. I think that's probably appropriate given what we know from the OP. I don't know about the other charges, but I suspect the officers considered the elements of each offense before arresting the guy.

4) The veteran needs to come to grips with the fact he's in Oregon...not Afghanistan or Iraq.

5) Burglar-boy better find a new line of work before he becomes a statistic. Eventually he'll get good at breaking down doors and the next guy might not be a dumbass.

[Ridge]

Well said, Bailey.

[Kraven251]

[QUOTE=OneGuy67;1155291][QUOTE=Sawin;1155169]Without knowing the details of the encounter, it's hard to really comment... despite the perp actually being a felon, he hadn't yet broken in to the house so firing even the first shot was probably premature (at face value of the article).

I agree. I watched the TV news video and they showed the area in which the encounter occurred to include the door he was alleging to try to gain entry into. No damage to the door at all. So, it wasn't like the suspect was putting a shoulder into the door and was physically breaking into the apartment. If he was jiggling the door knob and looking through the window, does that warrant a round being fired? Additionally, since we are dealing with another state, I am up on their defense of home laws. If it would have happened here and the suspect did not gain entry, our "Make My Day" statute would not apply and there could be a chargeable offense.

If he broke a window, or showed intent to enter the domicile after being warned, our Castle laws will protect us. This has been tested, and it stood in court.

As many have said, this guy screwed up, I do feel bad for him, but he was dumb. Metal to meat or don't waste the round.

[OneGuy67]

If he broke a window, or showed intent to enter the domicile after being warned, our Castle laws will protect us. This has been tested, and it stood in court.

As many have said, this guy screwed up, I do feel bad for him, but he was dumb. Metal to meat or don't waste the round.

If you have any case law on this, I would like to review it. Breaking a window does not constitute the ability to use the affirmative defense.

[Kraven251]

If you have any case law on this, I would like to review it. Breaking a window does not constitute the ability to use the affirmative defense.

I stated that poorly, it is breaking the window, while displaying intent to enter, such as reaching an arm into the home. Let me see what I can do with my google-fu to find it. This was a case from a few years ago where an older/elderly man killed a man that had broken a window and was not yet fully inside the home, the arm counted etc. Intent vs. Letter

[Skip]

I'll add my .02 cents. Based on the OP and what I know about Oregon law which is pretty much nothing:

1) The fact this guy is a veteran is irrelevant to the facts of the situation. In my opinion it's added only to encourage others to be sympathetic to his plight...as is the sensationalistic headline about his gun being confiscated. That's typical/standard procedure in a firearm related offense.

2) There's no such thing as a warning shot, FFS. There is no legal justification for it that I'm aware of in Colorado (though, depending on the circumstances and location it may not necessarily be illegal), I doubt there is in Oregon. The guy was an idiot to fire his AR-15 in an apartment bldg.

3) I totally understand the Reckless Endangerment charge. I think that's probably appropriate given what we know from the OP. I don't know about the other charges, but I suspect the officers considered the elements of each offense before arresting the guy.

4) The veteran needs to come to grips with the fact he's in Oregon...not Afghanistan or Iraq.

5) Burglar-boy better find a new line of work before he becomes a statistic. Eventually he'll get good at breaking down doors and the next guy might not be a dumbass.

1) It is relevant to the RoE he instinctively uses to confront a deadly and dangerous situation when the heart is racing and the adrenalin is pumping. It also demonstrates he has a certain amount of training when it comes to firearms.

2) There may be no modern legal justification, but most decent folks still think it's proper protocol before ending the life of another human being. This is one lesson everyone can learn; no warning shots. You either deploy lethal force and end the threat or you don't.

3) The criminal is the one who created the wreckless endangerment. Let's say the vet ending up dropping the guy without a warning shot and one of those rounds goes straight through the bad guy, through the wall, and kills a kid sleeping in an adjacent apartment.

Who gets the manslaughter/murder charge?

So why does it make sense to criminalize responding to a deadly situation instead of putting the blame on the criminal where it belongs?

4) Easier said than done. There are lots of guys struggling with this right now--you can't just turn it off.

5) Agreed, but I wouldn't consider the vet to be a dumbass--he was just ignorant of the fact that our laws no longer follow logic or basic morality. Ironically, it is the "system" that makes these encounters more deadly by removing a once commonly accepted tool; the warning shot.

We had a similar situation in CoS this week when a woman fired on an invader and scared him off. She wasn't charged with anything. The dynamics of that situation aren't all that different from this one--just that LE looked at it differently.

[Kraven251]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/01...shot-intruder/

This isn't the example that I knew of, but this is similar in scope.

[Kraven251]

We had a similar situation in CoS this week when a woman fired on an invader and scared him off. She wasn't charged with anything. The dynamics of that situation aren't all that different from this one--just that LE looked at it differently.

http://www.guns.com/2013/05/29/color...ntruder-video/ similar but different, and a whole other host of issues of continuing to shoot after he was fleeing

"As she saw the man’s Nike-sporting foot coming through the window, she fired at him. He initially hid behind a tree, but once Richter hit the tree he was hiding behind with one of the five shots she fired, he took off running down the street."