Tales Of Justice

American Handgunner, March, 2000 by Massad Ayoob

Situation: "Urban legends" have risen around the use of guns in self-defense.

Lesson: Each such tale exemplifies certain principles of actual law on deadly force.

Regular readers know that all the cases discussed in The Ayoob Files actually occurred. I was involved in many of them as an expert witness or consultant. If I don't know it happened, I won't write about it. This is why I've never done much on the so-called "Strasbourg Study," which reportedly involved the shooting of numerous French goats in the 164 lb. weight range with popular handgun bullets, to see how quickly they would be neutralized by shots through the lungs.

One man purportedly involved in the study sent me an early copy. I told him that since the report said the animals were hooked up to medical telemetry when shot, I would need to see EEG and EKG results and run them by my experts before validating his study. That data was never forthcoming, and I treated the Strasbourg Study as if it had never happened. (That said, its published results were about what I would have expected, based on in-depth review of numerous shootings with similar rounds that are thoroughly documented. And I won't say it didn't take place.)

I've been researching gunfights informally since childhood, more than 40 years now; seriously researching them for about 30; and researching them professionally for 25. A number of cases that I don't usually write about or reference come in the form of "you can't repeat this" stories from what we call in the trade "previously credible sources."

There is something called "the apocryphal story." It's closely related to "urban legends" (or, sometimes, "rural legends"). It is a tale told so often it gains the credibility of documented truth in some quarters. Often, there is a grain or more of truth at its core. Interestingly enough, most urban legends have enough logic at their center to make you think about them, and that can be valuable in and of itself.

The urban legend is a touchstone of a society's fears, and sometimes, a barometer of that society's values. The ones that have risen up about armed citizens fighting back at criminals, and of cops bringing "street justice" to the bad guys, speak of a society that still supports the underdog, still supports the victory of righteousness over evil.

I don't have documentation for any of the following stories from my files, a departure from my usual procedure, which we will compartmentalize into this single column. But these "tales from the street" are the kind about which it has been said, "If they didn't happen, they should have."

More than one Southerner has told me the tale of the old man and the bullies. Picture a small town, long ago, where local bad-asses have intimidated the village police and the citizenry alike.

On the day in question, a crusty old farmer had driven his pickup truck into the village to pick up supplies. On the seat beside him was a loaded Colt .45 auto pistol, a souvenir from either World War I or II depending on where you heard the story.

A jalopy with a couple of drunk members of the loosely-connected gang of bullies backed up from a parking space in front of a bar into the road, and into the path of the farmer. The result was a fender-bender accident. The two inebriated hulks slowly got out of their car and stalked toward the old man, yelling that they were going to stomp him.

Without a word, the story goes, the elderly farmer reached down to the seat next to him. He picked up his 1911 and, when the first of the bullies tried to tear open the car door to drag him out, shot him one time in the center of the chest.

The man collapsed instantly, mortally wounded. The second thug froze in horror and supposedly cried, "You killed him!"

"Yup," the senior citizen is reported to have answered laconically. "Gon' kill yew, now!"

By this time, citizens had gathered. They were all screaming for the old man not to shoot. However grudgingly, he conceded to their wishes. The story goes that the surviving thug disappeared, the old man was exonerated in the killing of the dead one, and the bullies in town became a lot more polite to decent folks.

Lessons: This story, if true, illustrates a number of valid points in deadly force law and caselaw. The attacker doesn't need to land the first blow if his intent to kill or cripple is obvious. Nor does he need to be armed with a weapon per se.

All he needs is what the law calls "disparity of force." This means that the attacker has a physical advantage so likely to result in you being killed or crippled by his violent assault that this advantage becomes the equivalent of a weapon in his hands. All other necessary elements being present, this warrants your use of a firearm in self-defense.

In this case, each of the two attackers was supposedly much larger than the old farmer: Disparity of force element number one. There were two of them against one of him: Disparity of force element number two. They were young and strong, and he was old and showing the physical effects of advancing years: Disparity of force element number three.