r/canadaguns • u/AutoModerator • Jun 06 '22

Weekly Politics Thread

Please post all your Politics or Ban-related ideas, initiatives, comments, suggestions, news articles, and recommendations in this thread. Unless new information is published in the media, recurring articles related to the gov'ts ***possible*** legislation are to be posted here. These threads will be weekly, until it's necessary for another per-week.

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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '22 edited Jun 07 '22

Shooting anyone in the leg is a challenge in and of itself. A home intruder won't stand still, someone's leg silhouette is small enough as is, and not to mention that if you nick the femoral artery they're probably gonna die.

The PAL course already tells you to be aware of where you're pointing your muzzle, the environment, who / what is your target and who's around them.

If anyone draws a gun at you or you draw a gun at them the intent is to kill. I don't understand what point you're trying to make.

E: self defence firearms courses would be great but again, won't happen until we normalize self defence as an inherent part of gun culture in Canada.

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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '22

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u/GinnAdvent Jun 07 '22

From a target shooting perspective, if you want to stop someone that's coming at your or pointing a firearm at you, it's always number 1 rule to shoot center mass. This has been demonstrated multiple times in many scenarios, this is one of the misconceptions that people always tell the police why shoot to kill? Because it's a lot harder to shoot to disable, when they charge you. Go check out videos on how fast people can move from 5, 10, 15 ft before someone can draw and or react.

Even if you don't hit center mass, but extremities instead, you might nick a artery or vein, which will cause bleed out, but again, really hard to do so.

From a self defense perspective, Runkle has covered this multiple times, so say if someone break into your house, you have to have a list of questions checked before you can actually open fire on the guy. Which under stressful situations, is quite hard.

If the perp is looking for stuff to steal, you can't go look for him, and confront him with your firearm to scare him. You can sound the alarm, yell, and go hide or run to safety.

If the perp is coming at your with a stick, hitting things around, you should have similiar thing to go against him, not a firearm, and assume same size. Unless there are multiple perp.

You always have to go to a safe place, and get your love ones to a safe place to call the police. The only time you can fight back, is they caught you and trap you in a corner, or someone on the vicinity is trapped and being attacked by them. Against refer to what tool they use.

If they come with you with deadly weapon, in large force, and won't care to steal anything, and you can't run away or to protect someone about to be harmed, then that's a different story. If you have video recording with sound, and whole interaction is recorded.

One thing people have to understand, self defense is one legal entity of its own, and firearm usage has another own sets of law. When you combine both, it's overly complicated to explain in the court. So it's not like American castle doctrine to protect your property, or someone trespass. You have to series of law and evidence between self def and Firearm to reach a lawful conclusion. No matter how stupid it might be, at least for Canadian scenario. That's why I found it useful to review Ian Runkle videos because he explain it in great detail.

PS: the example provided is a very simplified version, of legal precaution to follow if you are in the court of law to explain yourself, from a self defense perspective. There are probably errors since I am not a lawyer, some things I have observed and compiled from friends who practice self defense and going through the legal process if situistions arises.

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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '22

Technically there is no duty to retreat clause. Here in Southern AB someone fired a warning shot and hit someone else in the hand and got off despite fulfilling literally none of those. Like the guy went out of his house with a .22 to confront burglars trying to steal an ATV and they posed more or less no threat to him and he got off by saying he was firing off a warning shot. The argument could be made that anything from a plastic spoon to a baseball bat is a deadly weapon. Personally I'm a 5'8" 135lbs guy, most females could overpower me. If some guy is coming at me with a bat my only real option is to shoot him. Hence why I keep a handgun on my bedside table (it's stored in a quick access safe with a combo trigger lock on the firearm, it's all legal). Thankfully Alberta's judges are pretty loose on their intrepations of a self defense shooting.

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u/GinnAdvent Jun 07 '22

The whole idea is that from a self defense perspective, you are not suppose to engage the perp unless you are physically blocked by them and can't escape.

From firearm perspective, I suppose you can discharge them on your property given that you live far away from neighbors and from main road. But you can't really fire warning shots to people, however, if it's rural setting, that might be taken into account by a learned judge? You definitely can't fire warning shots in the city.

If a guy is literally outside your door and you are trapped on the 2nd floor and might hurt yourself going out the window, then yeah, that's all you can use.

The premise is that if you want your case to be easier through the court, you adhere to both self defense and firearm acts and policy, there might be less legal hassle, but by no means you have to use it. Then again, every court case is different with jury so maybe firing a warning shot will work if police is an hour away.

There are always previous cases people build up on as precursor, and that would be something that court may decide to use or may not depend on some similar it is.

The only way to find out is that when your standing before the judge, so no one will know until then.

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u/DarseZ Jun 07 '22

Like the guy went out of his house with a .22 to confront burglars trying to steal an ATV

That guy didn't get charged I guess, according to your story, but that is a complete abuse of the notion of self-defense.

Self-defense is the imminent threat of losing one's life. Someone stealing an ATV doesn't come close to meeting that definition.

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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '22 edited Jun 08 '22

It's Alberta, and Canada has no laws saying you have to retreat. I hope we can get a clear castle doctrine law. I think the only reason he didn't get any time was because he said it was a warning shot. He was charged but it was dropped. Personally I like the guy, he did the right thing. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/eddie-maurice-rural-homeowner-shooting-trespasser-lawsuit-intruder-watson-1.5295370 thanks to him, I can't be sued for shooting a home invader if they survive. Because the AB government introduced this beautiful piece of legislation: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-alberta-introduces-law-to-protect-rural-landowners-who-use-force-to/

Really the trick is to not say you intended to hurt them even if you did. If you say something like the gun went off accidentally or it was a warning shot you'll be okay because we have very sympathetic jurys around here