Minimum force being used.....the more things change the more they stay the same...

[ChrisNG53]

Chris - what about these situations?

Scenario 1:
I get home and find 5 guys in my house stealing my stuff and one points a gun at me:

Do I have the right to wound him?
Do I have the right to kill him?
Do I have the right to kill all 5 of them?
Do I have the right to kill the one with the gun outright and the others while they are laying on the floor ducking my bullets?

Scenario 2:
I get home and find 5 guys in my house stealing my stuff (no weapons):

Do I have the right to shoot at all 5 of them?
Do I have the right to kill all 5 of them?

Scenario 1:
I get home and find 5 guys in my house stealing my stuff and one points a gun at me:
Do I have the right to wound him? = Yes.
Do I have the right to kill him? = Yes.
Do I have the right to kill all 5 of them? = Not until the other four evince an intention to put you at risk.
Do I have the right to kill the one with the gun outright and the others while they are laying on the floor ducking my bullets? ---- the gunman = Yes. The other 4. not until they evince an intention to put you at risk.

Very simply, you are already at considerable risk of injury or death with a gun man pointing a gun at you. The threat of serious injury or death is already present as regards this intruder ---- shoot him dead,i.e, "a kill shot", as a "wounding shot will not rid you of his means to injure or kill you.

As regards the other 4 everything depends on what they then do. If they lie still on the ground "and submit" -- you cannot shoot any of them. However if one or any jump up and evinces an intention to attack -- kill the bastard(s).

[tec0]

my "educated guess" is that it will fail!!!

Let's be clear people died before the police got involved, but there deaths is not important enough to be pursued in court?

The police acted in self-defence and again this is unacceptable?

Now or I am missing something or your moral compass is just spinning isn't it…

Maybe I am just an idiot thinking everything has a cause and effect…

[IMHO]

Chris, something that caught my eye in the sample case. The policeman claimed he fired a warning shot first. My understanding is that warning shots is not allowed anymore and that you can get into trouble for doing it. What is the law about that now? Is the law different on that for police vs citizen?

[adrianh]

tec0 - What Chris is pointing out is that it doesn't make sense to charge 237 people with the MURDER of 34 people that were shot by the police.

Think about it this way: 50 people get pissed at a disco and start throwing chairs around. The police rock up and corner 5 of them. 2 of those 5 pull out guns and the police shoot all 5 of them. Now the police go forth and charge all 45 people with the murder of those 5 people. The POLICE pulled the trigger, not the 45 pissed chair throwers.

The problem with cause and effect is that the cause and the effect cannot always be directly correlated. The police were supposed to be in control of the situation and the police were the ones who did the shooting. They made a choice to shoot (be it out of fear or fright or whatever - the choice was in their hands) - they could have run away or jumped in their vehicles or whatever but they chose to shoot.

Be very careful of allocating effect to cause. The fact that actions follow on one another does not mean that they are directly correlated and can be said to be the cause.

Think about this: You are driving your car and a kid runs across the road and you kill the kid. Direct cause and effect linking would say that the kid caused the accident therefore the kid is to blame. Well, no, it doesn't work that way. You should have been aware of our surroundings and you should have anticipated that a kid might run out. Maybe you were fiddling with the CD player, lighting a cigarette, daydreaming or whatever. So, one can say that an event took place and that an accident occured but now one needs to consider the training and expected skill of the driver. The driver is expected to anticipate the situation and to act accordingly. The same goes for the police, they are supposed to be skilled in handling such tough situations without resorting to killing the protesters. In the car anology what the police did was this: they saw the kid runnnig towards them and they panicked, they put the pedal to the metal and droves over the kid with the front, rear and trailer tyres. And now they have the audacity to charge the mother for murder because she allowed the child to slip free from her grip.

[ians]

Lucky they didnt kill all 237, they were all armed, or am i looking at different footage?

Lets say 5 people jump over your fence, smash the front door and security gate completely out the wall and enter the house, You and your family are locked in a room, they are busy breaking down the door. This is becoming a common type of breakin.

what can you do,

shoot until the banging stops?
wait till they have knocked down the door completely and enter the room, then see who is armed and only shoot the person who is armed, taking into consideration that it is dark?
What if only one has a hammer?
and lastly the one who manages to get hold of you wife or kid is unarmed but is strangling your wife or kid, but they are all unarmed because they left the hammer in the passage can you shoot any of them?

[ians]

This actually happened,

A guy walks up to you and tells you that he and his mates are armed and they are about to rob you and your customers, they dont expose any firearms but indicate that if you stay calm and just give them what they want nobody will get hurt. You have a loaded firearm in a place where they are about to take you, which you can draw and shoot faster than the person will be able to draw his firearm if he actually has one, can you shoot him?

[ChrisNG53]

This actually happened,

A guy walks up to you and tells you that he and his mates are armed and they are about to rob you and your customers, they dont expose any firearms but indicate that if you stay calm and just give them what they want nobody will get hurt. You have a loaded firearm in a place where they are about to take you, which you can draw and shoot faster than the person will be able to draw his firearm if he actually has one, can you shoot him?

On those simple facts, shooting and killing the intruder(s) is justifiable under the sub category of "in defence of property", i.e, killing in order to stop robbery is justifiable, under long established common law.
I would however add this qualification --- since you say you can draw faster than any of the intruders - -that is what you must do, calling on them to submit, e.g, "hands up or I will shoot you".
Any threatening move thereafter by any of them would justify you shooting to kill that member of the gang. Conversely if they all raise their arms in submission you cannot "execute" the buggers.

[ChrisNG53]

Lucky they didnt kill all 237, they were all armed, or am i looking at different footage?

Lets say 5 people jump over your fence, smash the front door and security gate completely out the wall and enter the house, You and your family are locked in a room, they are busy breaking down the door. This is becoming a common type of breakin.

what can you do,

shoot until the banging stops? === Yes! .. if a warning called out by you that this is what you will do in u heeded.
wait till they have knocked down the door completely and enter the room, then see who is armed and only shoot the person who is armed, taking into consideration that it is dark? == No.. start shooting, if a warning by you is unheeded.
What if only one has a hammer? === how do you know this? -- If you do know this fire warning shot and warn that if they do not desist you will shoot to kill.
and lastly the one who manages to get hold of you wife or kid is unarmed but is strangling your wife or kid, but they are all unarmed because they left the hammer in the passage can you shoot any of them? === call out a warning that unless he releases your wife you will shoot to kill. If he does not - start shooting.

shoot until the banging stops? === Yes! .. if a warning called out by you that this is what you will do in u heeded.
wait till they have knocked down the door completely and enter the room, then see who is armed and only shoot the person who is armed, taking into consideration that it is dark? == No.. start shooting, if a warning by you is unheeded.
What if only one has a hammer? === how do you know this? -- If you do know this fire warning shot and warn that if they do not desist you will shoot to kill.
and lastly the one who manages to get hold of you wife or kid is unarmed but is strangling your wife or kid, but they are all unarmed because they left the hammer in the passage can you shoot any of them? === call out a warning that unless he releases your wife you will shoot to kill. If he does not - start shooting.

[ChrisNG53]

tec0 - What Chris is pointing out is that it doesn't make sense to charge 237 people with the MURDER of 34 people that were shot by the police.

Think about it this way: 50 people get pissed at a disco and start throwing chairs around. The police rock up and corner 5 of them. 2 of those 5 pull out guns and the police shoot all 5 of them. Now the police go forth and charge all 45 people with the murder of those 5 people. The POLICE pulled the trigger, not the 45 pissed chair throwers.

The problem with cause and effect is that the cause and the effect cannot always be directly correlated. The police were supposed to be in control of the situation and the police were the ones who did the shooting. They made a choice to shoot (be it out of fear or fright or whatever - the choice was in their hands) - they could have run away or jumped in their vehicles or whatever but they chose to shoot.

Be very careful of allocating effect to cause. The fact that actions follow on one another does not mean that they are directly correlated and can be said to be the cause.

Think about this: You are driving your car and a kid runs across the road and you kill the kid. Direct cause and effect linking would say that the kid caused the accident therefore the kid is to blame. Well, no, it doesn't work that way. You should have been aware of our surroundings and you should have anticipated that a kid might run out. Maybe you were fiddling with the CD player, lighting a cigarette, daydreaming or whatever. So, one can say that an event took place and that an accident occured but now one needs to consider the training and expected skill of the driver. The driver is expected to anticipate the situation and to act accordingly. The same goes for the police, they are supposed to be skilled in handling such tough situations without resorting to killing the protesters. In the car anology what the police did was this: they saw the kid runnnig towards them and they panicked, they put the pedal to the metal and droves over the kid with the front, rear and trailer tyres. And now they have the audacity to charge the mother for murder because she allowed the child to slip free from her grip.

Eloquently put eminent Counsel.
In law these are situations exotically called dolus directus and dolus eventualis
Dolus directus is when the end result is perfectly foreseeable and a direct consequence of your joint actions,e.g, we both are aramed on a robbery and one of us shoots someone.
Dolus eventualis is when I am not armed, but know that you are armed, and you shoot someone. The law says that I foresee that shooting as a probability or reasonable possibility, so I have "common purpose" with you in that result, even though I might have not intended the result.
So there are situations where the "non-shooter" can be found guilty of what the shooter did because he has associated, linked or identified with the actions of the shooter in a way which makes the shooting "foreseeable" by a "reasonable man" in his position.

Where I think DPP Smit is dead wrong is that he has missed the point that in all these situations the "linking" has to be between you and the perpetrator, who must commit a crime to which you can be linked by your association ..etc.
By no stretch of the imagination can it be said that the miners are "linked by association" with the action of the police, who did the killing.

In addition, the police are not admitting that they committed murder. So there is no crime that the miners can be linked to, other than any murder, assault ..etc that members of their group, to which they undoubtedly were linked, committed.

[ChrisNG53]

Chris, something that caught my eye in the sample case. The policeman claimed he fired a warning shot first. My understanding is that warning shots is not allowed anymore and that you can get into trouble for doing it. What is the law about that now? Is the law different on that for police vs citizen?

????? I don't know where you might have got this impression. ANYTHING done to avoid killing is not only allowed, it is an IMPERATIVE!.
Simply put, killing must be the last and unavoidable result.