Quote Originally Posted by asmo View Post
I just posted this in another thread, but I will redo it here for education.. IANAL - but:


  • Do the protestors have the ABILITY to kill or do serious bodily injury to yourself or another?
  • Is someone in JEOPARDY of being killed or being seriously harmed by protestors?
  • Do these protestors have the IMMEDIATE OPPORTUNITY, and power, to kill or seriously harm someone


All three need to be a resounding YES before you can even think about using lethal force. And again, can you CLEARLY articulate your rationale of those three things under intense pressure.

In the scenario above, you should also think about proportionality/disparity of force (e.g. you are in a 2000lb car and they have no defense). Would it be better to drive over a few vs. stopping and engaging multiple.
Great advice here. Only disagreement is that a crowd of angry and murderous protesters are in a force disparity situation with someone in a vehicle. If you stop, you are just a monkey in a cage for the neighborhood kids to poke at, and just as helpless. If you don't stop, you are employing a VERY effective lethal force mechanism that may result in the death of others.

That said, violent protesters actually attackign your vehicle combined with an inability to exit the area represent a lethal force threat to vehicle occupants.

http://www.activeresponsetraining.ne...n-your-vehicle

There are some materials on this subject, but not very many. Very few people are as legally compromised as someone trying to escape mob violence without being a government official. If you read the legal aftermath of the Reginald Denny case, it would be QUITE easy to say that even in 1993 a protester who beat you within an inch of your life and left you crippled had more legal protection than any person who might respond to being murdered with violence instead. I would have said we are less stupid than California in this matter, but we ARE Eastern California now.

Today it wouldn't surprise me if protesters could drive around with the dead corpses of the children of their politically unliked opponents and get only a hearty wrist slapping for it.