Welcome to Gaia! ::

Whats up guys? Making the magic happen? I know I am!

Anyways....I guess we can have a discussion about reasonable force, in a street fight situation, and related topics, such as, legal issues involved with self defence, use of weapons, etc.

A story my instructor once told me: There was a chinese martial artist who owned a flower store, or something similar to that, I forget now. He had two or three female employees. One night, three guys busted in with knives, and tied the guy up and were planning on raping the women. As you can imagine, the chinese guy (we'll call him frank since I don't have a name and don't want to refer to him as the 'chinese guy'), who was tied up, managed to break the ropes and took the crooks by surprise. He injured the first one, took his knife, and killed at least one of them, and nearly killed another one. He was of course charged with a variety of offences while the remaining crooks got off relatively scott free.

This would be something I can imagine myself doing, were I in that situation and had the means to do it. Even if I didn't have the means, if someone threatened my girlfriend, or anyone I was close to, I would be fully prepared to do whatever was necessary to protect them, and perhaps I would go to far too, if I didn't get myself killed.

What do you guys think about the laws regarding self defense, and the use of reasonable force to prevent someone from attacking you? Personally I think that these laws make sense in some cases, but there are times when the situation you're in doesn't allow you time to think about your actions, and you either act, or lose. And by lose I mean die. Do you think it's fair that people are judged for their actions as if they're the criminals, when they're trying to protect themselves, and have no time to think about the appropiate actions?

Especially because it's on your property and he's trespassing. In the US it pretty much the same. Killing in self defense in the US is a tricky subject. I've spoken to my friend, who is a policeman, and he says in that situation it depends on the area and options. Basically if you've no choice but to kill, then kill. You can't be out in the park and then someone tries to mug you but you beat him up and then decide to dance on his head. You can however beat him up and then call the police. Maybe if you were in a building and he had you cornered and you couldn't escape, then you would have a better chance of getting away with killing him.

Well, you know what they say: better to be judged by 12, then carried by 6.

Here's a thought, most of the time people's actions are put under a microscope for a long time by laywers to decide what the best course of action was in a given situation, right? But when you're in the situation, you've got split seconds to decide what to do. Sometimes what you decide and what laywers say you should have decided isn't always the same thing. Thats almost always the case, actually. I'm glad that the laws were ammended about the trespassing bit. If someone broke into my house, I'd knife 'em pretty good. Assuming they didn't have a gun. And if they did, assuming I was able to ambush them somehow. I'm starting to ramble again. I do that pretty often I think. So, I'll leave you with a completly unrelated poem that I wrote:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
There's no easy way to say this:
I hate you.

Yeah, that was stupid. I know.

Funny thing, I was talking to a friend about breaking bones of idiot middle school muggers even if we didnt need to.

I dont think I would go as far as killing someone, unless of really dangerous circumstances, such as the flower shop owner's situation.. but his situation was obvious, but understandable how the heartless courts can do that to him.

Just to add on to what has been said..if you do get into a physical confrontation, if at any point the guy tries to get away or shows signs that he no longer wants to fight, and you continue to pummel him, that's considered excess force (that's probably not the correct legal term though).

I believe that courts are more lenient if you killed in defense of a family member, or, as Darkling said, if they were on your property.

If you're in front of the jury, the thing is to make them sympathize with you. If you're story was that you killed someone who was trying to rape your sister, or whatever, they would probably be able to identify with that and would be much more likely to say, 'not guilty'. And like delmar said, 'deny deny deny'.

Yeah but from what I've seen of 14yo is that they only tend to opperate in groups, I've never seen a 14 go one on one with an adult, except from maybe 50m... the way they opperate is in a group of at least 5 and get all around you, if one of them was going to stab you I guarantee it'll be the one stood behind you, you probably wouldn't even see the knife. Having said that, experiences from back in school is that typical 14yo, are s**t at fighting (despite what they might think) and are pretty bad at fighting in groups, and its usually possible to use one of them on on one or two others. But then I've never had a group of adolecents trying to kill me.

You can handle yourself.