www.ditl.org

Ergo, "demonstrable." Walk on my lawn? Iffy. Break into my house? Good enough for me to start swinging.

LOL reason I love this site, only here can a threat about customers being idiots turn into a depate about deadly force and self defense.

Anyways where I used to live in Illinois to defend your home the person must one be completly inside the house and two be armed and also had to have threatened you.

Okay, for one thing, my dad came to the aid of a pregnant woman who was getting smacked around by her boyfriend. He carried the tire knocker in plain sight in his right hand just in case he needed it, which he did when the dork put his hands on my dad's chest and pushed hard and told him to "f@%k off". My dad didn't give him a chance to follow up and neutralized him by rendering him unconscious, fracturing his cheekbone in the process. Once he was down, my dad didn't continue turning him into a gooey red soup, but proceeded to try to help the girl, who decided to pull a Tammy Wynette and "stand by her man." Dad said he was kinda shocked, but just shook his head and went back to his truck.

For what it's worth, I think your dad was 100% justified.

Agreed.

Agreed here as well.

Eh, I think smashing the guy's face was maybe a little too much. I would simply have broken him arm.

But can't say he didn't deserved it.

Well it's not as if he chose to break the guys face, as oppossed to his arm. The guy touched him so he hit him with the tire knocker to get him off. He was successful in that regard. Everything else is just a side effect (i.e. the broken face)

SolkaTruesilver wrote:But can't say he didn't deserved it.

Depends on what you're basing that on. For smacking his girlfriend around, fair enough, he needed to be stopped and there was no need to be gentle about it. As a reaction to getting shoved, on the other hand, "grossly disproportionate" is the only term that springs to mind.

Yeah, I'd say he was in the right.

Captain Seafort wrote:As a reaction to getting shoved, on the other hand, "grossly disproportionate" is the only term that springs to mind.

Depends. If the guy just gave Dad a shove, then maybe. If the guy shoved Dad and continued to move forward in a threatening manner, then not so much. That would be grounds for punching the guy, so why not punching the guy with an extra 15" of reach? It's not as if Dad's reaction was to use a firearm, or even a blade - the broken cheekbone was an unfortunate result, not a deliberate goal.

Mikey wrote:Depends. If the guy just gave Dad a shove, then maybe. If the guy shoved Dad and continued to move forward in a threatening manner, then not so much.

If the bloke pulled out a knife or a firearm, fair enough. If not, then no.

That would be grounds for punching the guy

No, it wouldn't. If someone attacks you then you're entitled to defend yourself. A shove, while it would be enough to haul the bugger up in front of a magistrate, doesn't count. It certainly doesn't warrant assault with a deadly weapon occasioning GBH.

The defender could have as easily broken a cheekbone with a well-placed right hook as with his tireknocker.

Let's say a wildlife observer considers chimpanzees animalistic for eating live termites. Is one of those chimps any more animalistic for using a twig to dip termites out of their hill (which chimps do?) As I said, if it was a simple shove, then let it be. If the shover kept his hands on the defender a/o continued to threaten him by his actions, then have at it.

The above post comes, of course, from a man who hails from the country that invented the Millwall brick.