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Posted by scrubcedar: In Colorado as well as Utah if someone threatens you with a deadly weapon you can defend yourself and we all know even from that far away they're still a threat. In the scenario I was assuming, a mugging, at that point you have every right to stop an armed robbery of you or anyone else with deadly force.
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You may lawfully use deadly force
if you have
reason to believe that it is
immediately necessary to stop an
imminent threat of death or
serious bodily harm.
If you have to do so, someone else will judge whether your belief had been reasonable, knowing what you knew at the time.
A man with a contact weapon at close range has the ability and the opportunity to cause death or serious bodily harm; if he has indicated an intent to harm you, you are in jeopardy; at that point, if you have no other alternative available, you would be justified in the use of deadly force.
But not if he should cease and desist.
If you were to fire at someone mugging you who had quickly stopped, you could argue that things had happened so quickly that you fired before it was clear that the attack had stopped. And you might well prevail.
But not if you had time to aim for his knee.
Your testimony that you had delberately aimed for the knee of a stationary man who was no longer making any overt attempt to harm you as you pointed your gun at him would likely defeat your own defense of justification.
Look at it this way. The law does not
permit you to shoot someone because he
might harm you, or because he
had indicated an intent to rob you if the circumstances indicate that it not his intent to so at the time.
Rather, the law will
excuse you
if you reasonably believed at the time that you had had no choice but to use deadly force to defend against a clear and very immediate threat.
Have you considered getting some good SD training? They will explain these things to you.
And they will almost cerainly advise you to fire at center mass.