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Originally Posted by BillCA
It's called a reasonable belief. Would a reasonable man in your shoes believed that a can of spray seasoning would be sufficient to stop someone from causing him some kind of injury?...
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Actually, if he were just the "man on the street" without demonstrated training, he very well might. After all, the stuff is sold in drug stores and sporting goods shops and a a bunch of other places expressly for self defense. Some of the advertising of some brands I've seen shows extravagant pictures of evil, ugly men brandishing weapons who are crumbling in the aerosol mist of this wondrous product.
I suspect that most people who are reasonable and prudent, but who also haven't been well educated about self defense, have very overly optimistic expectations regarding the effectiveness of pepper spray. And that would include most of the public, and probably most of the folks on the grand jury. And if you're unlucky enough to wind up on trial, it will include some, if not all, of the folks on your jury.
But you're not one of those people. You are a person well educated in self defense issues. You've been taught, and therefore learned, the limitations of pepper spray. You understand how to distinguish between a situation in which pepper spray will be appropriate and a situation in which a threat is likely too great for pepper spray to be relied on.
And I think you're completely misunderstood my argument. I agree that there are situations in which the use of pepper spray is appropriate. I also understand that there are situations in which pepper spray is likely to be inadequate and escalation of force will be necessary to preserve your life.
The thing is that IME many people don't realize the deficiencies of pepper spray. So if you resort to lethal force instead of relying on pepper spray, and assuming it was the proper choice, which it certainly can be, you will need to be able to articulate why you understand that pepper spray could not have been relied upon to stop the attack and how you had reason to know that. You will need to do that because your knowledge is inconsistent with the unfortunate, but IME common, misunderstanding regarding the effectiveness of pepper spray.
You and I both know that pepper spray is not going to stop that 250 pound, 20 year old, Hulk Hogan look alike on meth charging us brandishing a club. However, too many people don't know that. Too many people think that pepper spray will work. So we need to be prepared to show how it is that we know what we know.
It's much like the assailant 20 feet away with a knife. We know how fast he can get to us and kill us with that knife because we've been trained to know that. We also know how much time it's likely to take us to put our gun into play to neutralize the treat. But many people who aren't educated in self defense matters would intuitively believe that the assailant is too far away to be a threat. They'd of course be wrong, so we need to be able to educate them.