Man Pulls Gun on Sam’s Club Customer.

[blackwidowp61]

Maybe Pierce was looking for an entry in "The Darwin Awards" or "The LawDog Files"?

[thallub]

The concealed carrier is eaten up with cheap political trash. A couple wearing those hats; going peacefully about their business, were too much for the guy. He should never be allowed to own a gun.

Folks at the extreme ends of the political spectrum sometimes believe they have a right to confront folks whose politics are opposite theirs.

[jmorris]

It’s what you get when idiots are told day after day on “news” channels that freedom of speech is actually hate speech. Then you get someone that has no business with a firearm do something that could have gotten him killed.

He should be lucky to be alive and unarmed from now on. Likely not the case though and some day we will read another story about him where “someone” (after all we can’t have anyone in particular responsible) ignored “the warning signs”.

Anyone old enough to have watched looney tunes knows what bugs was referring to, the others watch the above “news” channels and “form their own narrative”, not based in reality.

[USNRet93]

He should never be allowed to own a gun.

He should be lucky to be alive and unarmed from now on. Likely not the case though and some day we will read another story about him where “someone” (after all we can’t have anyone in particular responsible) ignored “the warning signs”.

"Red flag" law?
Mental health review as a requirement to own a handgun?

I agree with you both, BTW...too many stupid, untrained, people with guns.

[Double Naught Spy]

That's right! We need more laws!!!!

[briandg]

Folks at the extreme ends of the political spectrum sometimes believe they have a right to confront folks whose politics are opposite theirs.

This is applicable to so much.

I have been a broncos fan for a number of years. I had just watched a particularly disappointing game. My wife insists that I wear a team shirt for the games we watch. (yes, it's mostly her that is the football fan.)

I'm antisocial and at times I have real problems with my temper. It had been an amazingly hard month. As soon as this game was over, I had to go out for groceries, still in my broncos shirt. well, I didn't realize that denver and KC were rivals, and i was in missouri. some young guy got in my face and yelled at me about my shirt. he nearly wet himself when i snarled at him.

it's REALLY dangerous to do things like this. it's possible that most impulse murders world wide occur over things like politics, art, religion, or morality.

If that guy hadn't melted down and hurried away, if he had stood his ground and pushed me even farther, I feel certain that it would have ended with me breaking him apart. My anti-seizure medication was doing awful things to me. This guy just randomly picked someone to harass, and my god, he picked someone who at the time was just plain dangerous.

This dipstick picked on someone who WAS dangerous, not just angry. The other guy followed him to his car after he melted and turned away from the confrontation.

This situation strikes me as being nearly identical to the one I had over a freakin football jersey, but the people and the culture were different. We are far more confrontational now. ordinary People used to understand fear and danger involving confronting strangers.

[Mannlicher]

as much as we dislike the reality of things, sometimes one of 'us' goes bonkers. I feel it's a rare thing, but it does happen.
This also points up the wisdom of not escalating bad situations. Being flipped off is just not worth getting shot, and everybody now seems to be willing to play the "my life was threatened' card.

[Mannlicher]

FireForged

Please remember that the bugs cartoon is very old and although I am sure the meaning is not intended to be be racial. Using a word which does have a historical meaning referring to slaves- can be taken the wrong way.

I used the word quite often as a kid from hearing it on the cartoons but sometime in the 90s I was cautioned about its historical meaning

Just food for thought

sometimes we just over think things. Looking for offense when there was none intended has it's own cautions. Just food for thought.

[FireForged]

sometimes we just over think things. Looking for offense when there was none intended has it's own cautions. Just food for thought.

I was not offended, saw nothing offensive and took no affront to what was said

dismiss it if you like, use the term if you like, call it an exercise in overthinking (if you like). Its an issue that has been discussed for years with varying degrees of consensus and one which could potentially impact a person negatively in certain environments. That's my generally thought on the matter and my offering was intended to be good natured rolling of the eyes. Having people put words and inflections under a microscope is the world we live in and I simply prefer not to give someone an easy avenue to twist my words into something unintentionally insulting. I thought others here might feel the same and consider my caution to have some minor value. I see that I have likely misjudged but I stand by what I said. Good luck

[briandg]

If people knew the reported genesis of the song "turkey in the straw", the ice cream truck song, we'd be able to see something more impressive than a sixteen car pileup on an icy highway. Look it up, anyone can find it. But just like the first example it is a relatively unknown fact, so there's no real trigger.

I can picture in my mind ice cream trucks being shot at or burned if people only knew.

[kenny53]

I may have followed the aggressor out to identify his car, license plate ect. I don't think
I would have confronted him if he was retreating. Like most of us here I would have been armed. I don't think it is prudent to draw on a drawn gun but if my life and my wife's life had just been threaten I just might make a move. I just hope I never have to find out.

As for the use of the word "maroon" why do we allow political correctness limit free speech. You should be allowed to say what you want but realize "while speech may be free, it still has social and legal consequences" .

[briandg]

There was an event in metairie LA that erupted and resulted in a death when a 'hero' followed a bad guy out of a store and made a public spectacle of taking down the license number.

Done discreetly that's a good enough idea, but just like anything else that we can do in life, it can trigger unwanted repercussions.

The safest thing to do when observing a situation like this is to do nothing and wait for the situation to resolve itself. many people can do so. Some people just can't help themselves, they have to get involved.


The smartest and safest thing that the MAGA hat wearer could have done was take the thing off and let it go. Toss the hat on the floor and walk away. Let the dozens of cameras scattered throughout the store and parking lot and the store security personnel do the job that they are intended to do.

Is anyone surprised that this happened? Politics has become polarizing and the MAGA hat has become a monster. Some people wear them just to make the other guys angry.

[Lohman446]

Two idiots posturing like children in a playground

If the "victim" wanted the fight he claims to have been looking for he had every justification to throw the first punch and well beyond. Even if he happened to have pushed the gun holder the gun holder had escalated the threat and he would have been justified in responding.

The gun holder whipped out his gun, expecting it to instantly compensate for something?, and was utterly embarrassed and unprepared for when the "victim" didn't cower in fear and repent.

All that's missing is a couple friends and the idiots telling them "hold me back, hold me back"

[briandg]

I'm not sure why you say that the unarmed man was justified in throwing the first punch since the guy had already backed down. when he realized that the guy with the gun wasn't going to shoot, he had no further fear of being harmed and thus had no justification to 'defend himself' with violence.

Maybe I misread something, but according to many laws I have studied, lethal force laws ignore who started the conflict. If the unarmed guy had started pounding on the guy with the gun, at that time, he had become the aggressor and was putting the other guy's life and safety in jeopardy. The guy with the gun, who now has a guy beating him up, may be so afraid of dying or having his brains knocked loose that he may have full justification for shooting the unarmed attacker. He will be legally justified in shooting the guy who followed him out to his car with the sole intention of beating the hell out of him. (he admitted that, right?)

[briandg]

Tennessee is complicated.

(b) a person who is not engaged in unlawful activity and is in a place where the person has a right to be has no duty to retreat before threatening or using force against another person when and to the degree the person reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to protect against the other's use or attempted use of unlawful force.

(2) a person who is not engaged in unlawful activity and is in a place where the person has a right to be has no duty to retreat before threatening or using force intended or likely to cause death or serious bodily injury, if:

(A) The person has a reasonable belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury;

(B) The danger creating the belief of imminent death or serious bodily injury is real, or honestly believed to be real at the time; and

(C) The belief of danger is founded upon reasonable grounds.

(

(e) The threat or use of force against another is not justified:


(2) If the person using force provoked the other individual's use or attempted use of unlawful force, unless:

(A) The person using force abandons the encounter or clearly communicates to the other the intent to do so

The place where the claim that pierce would have been innocent and that phillips could not have killed him at his car if he was brutally attacked falls apart at section B first paragraph. he has the right to be in the parking lot, as he was never told to leave. He was not committing a crime as he had holstered his gun and was actively seeking to leave the site of the confrontation. we cannot presume that the earlier crime of aggravated assault justifies a later use of force by the pierce against the phillips. It's over and past, and there are no legal grounds for pierce to pursue phillips in order to provoke a fight or attack him.

2 and A of the next paragraph clearly state that the phillips, who started the conflict but left the scene and no longer presented a threat, could, in fact, attack and kill the pierce if he should press an attack against him in revenge. That depends on the next paragraph.

A) The person has a reasonable belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury;

(B) The danger creating the belief of imminent death or serious bodily injury is real, or honestly believed to be real at the time; and

(C) The belief of danger is founded upon reasonable grounds.

There are the laws, with a whole lot of editing of inapplicable wordage edited out.

This set of statutes essentially states that phillips had committed a crime of what should be aggravated assault, but the assault had ended and the crime was in the past. It states that if pierce had then threatened or attacked phillips, that is a new violation of law on his part and that phillips would be justified in either threatening or using deadly force, contingent on the threat being genuine, or at least so genuine in his mind that he believed that he had no choice.

An attorney and jury will have to decide whether he made that conclusion reasonably, or if he was just using it as an excuse. There must be genuine danger, or reasonable and provably reasonable danger.

These terms are pretty consistent in most of the stand your ground, castle, or other defense laws that I have read. My reporting of them here isn't to be taken as gospel as they are incomplete and edited from the original language and full context. Everyone here needs to read, learn, memorize, understandthe laws of their own state and municipalities and any other place that they may travel to. Don't depend on the cut and paste of an internet user. If you do take your information from anything other than official sources of the jurisdiction that you are currently in and commit a crime, you deserve whatever you get.

[Lohman446]

He probably would not have gotten away with pounding his head into the pavement (see the Zimmerman verdict) but I bet he would have gotten away with swinging, knocking down, and disarming him

[briandg]

He probably would not have gotten away with pounding his head into the pavement (see the Zimmerman verdict) but I bet he would have gotten away with swinging, knocking down, and disarming him

That's covered above. Pierce had no right or justification to beat the guy up and take away the gun as phillips was peacefully walking away. If he had gone to phillips and said "gimme your gun or I'm going to knock you on your butt and take it" and then behaved in such a violent or threatening manner that Philips was scared to death, or if he had violently laid hands on phillips and phillips felt that he was at risk of death or severe injury, Pierce was completely wrong and could have been legally shot and possibly killed by the initial aggressor.

That's just the way the laws are written. It protects all of the hotheads who might think of shoving or punching a guy who committed an offense.

Watch the westerns and you will often see the bad guy goading the good guy into drawing first. Those dudes would go to jail.

[Lohman446]

I was unclear. I meant while the gunman was making aggressive movement (gun in the face, the draw). Not while he was retreating.

[GarandTd]

I don't think these are problems with a lack of training. These guys were both idiots. One shouldn't need training to not pull a legally carried firearm on a person for their political views or middle finger. One should not need training to understand that following and confronting an unstable person that just had a gun to your head is a very bad idea.

[jmorris]

That's right! We need more laws!!!!

No, if convicted of the charge, he will be a felon. Even if he is not locked up, gun rights go away.

Now if we only enforced the laws we already have....

[briandg]

I was unclear. I meant while the gunman was making aggressive movement (gun in the face, the draw). Not while he was retreating.

Okay, that is correct, when phillips had the gun pointed at pierce, IF, and this is a great big if, pierce felt threatened he could have acted on it with a certain level of legal immunity. If he had drawn a gun and popped phillips, we still and always will come back to whether or not there was an actual threat, or a threat that was real to ignore.

In retrospect it's obvious that phillips didn't want to shoot. It may have been pretty obvious at the time. I'm not sure what I would do if phillips had pointed a gun at me. It is completely obvious that pierce didn't fear him at all.

A bit of looking around will show that Pierce isn't a quiet man. As time passes we may find out that he was actually the instigator, that maybe he had provoked philips, and that phillips was the one who got caught. My brothers always kicked me under the dinner table and of course I was the one who got poked with with a fork when I started yelling.

It seems pretty clear here at the beginning. Whatever comes out in the trials will be interesting.

[USNRet93]

Originally Posted by Double Naught Spy

That's right! We need more laws!!!!

Not what I said, I guess you missed the '?' at end of each QUESTION. Stupid people with guns doing stupid things...the price we pay for 2nd amendment rights?

[Lohman446]

IF, and this is a great big if, pierce felt threatened he could have acted on it with a certain level of legal immunity.

Remember the legal requirement is not if Pierce felt threatened but if a reasonable person in Pierce's place would have felt threatened. It would be pretty hard to argue that a reasonable person would not have felt threatened once a gun was drawn, brandished, and used in an aggressive manner.

[briandg]

Correct. It would be hard not to take it seriously with a crazy looking dude like phillips pointing a gun. But it's the subtle points that would make or break it, unless there is some sort of legal protection involved.

maybe irrelevant to the discussion, but a person can look into pierce's personal life and the fact that he pursued phillips in search of a new confrontation and clearly see that he's probably not suited to carry.

IMO.

[Lohman446]

There is a thin line between bravery and stupidity but in the case of Pierce we don't have to worry about which side of the line he fell on. Following a known armed man into the parking lot to continue the confrontation speaks of stupidity to a level that seems to rise to dangerous in itself. I'm not a legal scholar but once Philips ended the confrontation and retreated and Pierce decided to pursue and re escalate it the roles of who was the aggressor may have reversed (again?).

As noted earlier though there are clearly parts of this situation that are unknown as we have already heard about areas "off camera" and I expect there is much more to the story then we will ever know. I'm sure Philips has been in the presence of those who espouse political views different than his own in the past and has managed to, seemingly, NOT draw his gun and confront them so it is likely there is more to it with Pierce