Would this be legal in Florida?

[CathyInBlue]

..., or call 911 and be a good witness (same senario, under castle doctrine, but your home instead of a car)

Regardless of scenario, home or car, how am I to call 911? I don't own, and will not own, a cellphone. In order for me to call 911 myself, I would have to enter my home while it's being burglarized in order to gain access to my landline.

"Just go next door and have a neighbor call 911."

I don't live in the best neighborhood in the first place. It might very well be one of my neighbors that's in there burglarizing my house, having seen me driving vehicles that aren't rusted out or using power tools in the backyard to maintain my home while they rent, and waited to watch me leave before burglarizing the place. That, or they're not home because they work all kinds of freaky hours just to maintain themselves at the poverty level, or they "just don't want to get involved". (Yes, I was told that very thing from some white trash neighbors once after an act of vandalism against my property.)

So, yes, I would drop my packages, pull my sidearm, and advance on my own home and anyone I found therein who was not leaving all of my property and fleeing for their lives would be liable to get a JHP in the chest.

 

[Bondhead88]

I believe only on Tx can you protect property with deadly force and there you can protect your neighbors property also but you do have the right to detain someone for police in most states. always check your local laws yourself

I think you need to read up on Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground, both of which are law in Indiana and many other states. Where you can protect your property, your life and those around you with deadly force.

 

[Bondhead88]

If you want legal advice...best to get it from an attorney who knows the laws, as opposed to opinions from faceless forum folks.

Without answering to the legality - you'd have been foolish to engage someone for breaking into your (empty of people) car. No lives were at stake. Your best option would have been to send your wife for the cop in the store right away, while being a good witness and getting a description of the guy, his truck, his license plate, etc. NEVER risk your life for "stuff." (And keep your most expensive "stuff" insured, for this very reason.)

If you had elected to engage him anyway, and he had pulled a knife, you would be justified in defending yourself with your firearm, shooting until the threat was stopped.

I so disagree with you. You have no idea if once he is done what his next act will be. It could be violence against him and his wife and/or others. We have gone to war with oppressive regimes over "STUFF"

Once a criminal knows they will not be engaged they will return and keep on coming back. I do not consider it foolish for my wife to always feel safe know that I will protect her. If you have never been robbed (even while you were out of your home when the burglars hit) You would not understand that most people relate it to being violated sexually. They do not feel safe & secure in their own home.

 

[SGB]

Lots of misinformation and erroneous assumptions.

 

[Phillip Gain]

I so disagree with you. You have no idea if once he is done what his next act will be. It could be violence against him and his wife and/or others. We have gone to war with oppressive regimes over "STUFF"

Once a criminal knows they will not be engaged they will return and keep on coming back. I do not consider it foolish for my wife to always feel safe know that I will protect her. If you have never been robbed (even while you were out of your home when the burglars hit) You would not understand that most people relate it to being violated sexually. They do not feel safe & secure in their own home.

I don't think you read the original poster's story very carefully. Let me quote from it:

My wife and I had parked at a local store to do some shopping at night. When we came out of the store and back to the car there was someone in my car and he was going through it and putting our valuables on the seat to steal. I quickly pulled him out of the car and began yelling at him.

Again, without answering to the legality, I think the victims's initial response was ill-advised. The victim, by his own admission was un-armed, and was with his wife. Presumably the thief was too busy burglarizing the car to realize the victim was even there. When the victim pulled the thief from the car, he escalated the situation and put his own life in danger, along with the life of his spouse. And for what? A few hundred dollars worth of stuff in the car at most?

He goes on to write:

I saw that he had a duffel bag in the bed of the truck. I don't know why but when I realized that he was going to get away, I grabbed the duffel bag. He threw it in park, got out and came after me with a knife. I yelled to my wife to run back into the store and get the cop that was fortunately at the door. Meanwhile I was keeping the duffel bag between me and that knife as he was trying to get me with it. After what seemed like an hour (Probably less than 2 minutes), the cop showed up and told him to drop the knife, which he promtly did and was arrested.

Had he not grabbed that duffel bag (which by the way, was also theft, under the ages-old "two wrongs don't make a right" doctrine), the perpetrator would have likely gotten away. Instead, the perpetrator stops his truck and attacks the (remember - unarmed) victim with a knife!

Fortunately justice was done, and the perpetrator was arrested. But the guy put his own life in danger TWICE to make that happen.

I'll concede that this is after-the-act armchair quarterbacking, and that in the heat of the moment thing seem reasonable that later do not. BUT...that's what this forum is about, learning from each other, and sometimes learning from each others' mistakes.

 

[Bondhead88]

Instead of jumping to conclusions and misrepresenting what I was talking about. I was not responding to the OP Iwas responding directly to the quote and captured and to the fact that it is just "STUFF". As well I was responding to the fact he said "No lives were at stake." Because there is no way to determine that the criminal might not end up attacking someone else. He even goes on to say "If you had elected to engage him anyway, and he had pulled a knife, you would be justified in defending yourself with your firearm, shooting until the threat was stopped."

And I still disagree with the "It's just stuff" argument. Once criminals see they are not going to get away with crimes thye will not try it again. One of the reasons we have gone from Break and Enter to violent home invasions is because of the "It's just stuff" argument. Criminals became more emblazoned once the learned they were being unimpossed.

 

[BluesStringer]

Personally, as Mr Gain said, IMO, stuff that in my case is insured, is not worth my tangling with anyone who may be better at this "gun thing" than me and I am not replaceable--this goes for my car and my home when I am not directly in contact with the BG. In my home, for example, I lock our bedroom door at night--if someone breaks into my home in a different area of house, I will activate car alarm, call 911, and stay in my bedroom--if the BG decides to defeat my locked door, he has now called into play imminent danger and pure Castle Doctrine, IMO, and it will then be the last thing he ever does, but the insured stuff in the other rooms--it is not worth my life. I should preface the "home comments" by saying it is just my wife and I and no childen or others living in other parts of the house--that is whole other story.

When I first read the part of this reply about locking one's self inside an interior room as a way of delineating between "stuff" and life, I loved the idea. I still think it's quite a creative solution, but then I remembered something that happened to me in '85. My house caught fire. It happened overnight and it just so happened that both I and my girlfriend at the time worked the graveyard shift (still do - jeesh, when will I learn?) and neither of us were in the house. Never knew for sure what caused the fire, but it wasn't arson or anything like that. Point being, it was either a cigarette left burning, or a pile of dust-bunnies not cleaned up in the gas furnace, or some other accidental or negligent cause on our part. The vast majority of damage was caused by the smoke, not by flames. Had we been there sleeping, we would have almost certainly been overcome by the smoke before we could've mounted a fight against the fire, and being behind a locked door would've slowed down the firefighters at least as much as a burglar. After applying that life experience, I had second thoughts about the strategy, but I still love any idea that is intended to prevent or delay the need to shoot someone, even a scumbag trying to steal one's stuff. Interesting and creative idea kelcarry. Just give some thought to how that strategy might affect your other emergency plans.

As to the OP, I was a committed and hard-working activist for Alabama's Castle Doctrine law, and it does extend to one's car the protections it affords to the home as far as defense of property and life. We won, and obviously I'm stoked and proud to have been an active part of making it happen. However, armed or not, I would not have done anything that OrlandoChuck described having done in his scenario, except the yelling part. But the yelling would've been as I was in retreat, heading for the front door where he said the cop was, or for cover from where I could still witness and report while discretely calling 911 on my cell phone. I would've taken the same action (or lack thereof, depending on your perspective) whether I was carrying or not (which I definitely would have been), and whether or not there was a good, strong Castle Doctrine and/or Stand Your Ground law in effect. I definitely would have NOT grabbed anything from the back of the truck. No need to use insulting language to describe that particular part of the story since the OP asked our opinions in good faith (I presume), but I'll just leave it at I think that was a very bad idea.

Bottom line, I don't carry because I'm looking for some legal justification for shooting someone. I carry to protect mine and my wife's lives first, other innocents I'm in close proximity to second, and as a component of my overall preparedness plans and duty to community third. In the OP's scenario, it would have been his introduction of a firearm to the circumstances that turned it from a property theft to a potentially deadly situation. I can't justify that either logically, ethically, or morally, even if it can be justified legally, which I have no idea of as it pertains to FL.

Let's be careful out there folks. There are grave threats against our rights being perpetrated by the very people charged with protecting them. Let's not give them any added ammo ('scuse the pun) to further restrict them.

Blues

 

[Phillip Gain]

Instead of jumping to conclusions and misrepresenting what I was talking about. I was not responding to the OP Iwas responding directly to the quote and captured and to the fact that it is just "STUFF". As well I was responding to the fact he said "No lives were at stake." Because there is no way to determine that the criminal might not end up attacking someone else. He even goes on to say "If you had elected to engage him anyway, and he had pulled a knife, you would be justified in defending yourself with your firearm, shooting until the threat was stopped."

And I still disagree with the "It's just stuff" argument. Once criminals see they are not going to get away with crimes thye will not try it again. One of the reasons we have gone from Break and Enter to violent home invasions is because of the "It's just stuff" argument. Criminals became more emblazoned once the learned they were being unimpossed.

Bondhead - the guy you were quoting and replying to was ME. And you cannot in good faith segregate my words from those of the OP...because it was the OP's words upon which I was commenting.

NO LIVES WERE AT STAKE. The perpetrator was not a direct and imminent threat to the OP's life. He did not notice the OP was there until the OP started yelling and engaged him.

While it is true that the perpetrator MIGHT be on his way to attack someone after burglarizing the car...there is no way that the OP can know or predict that. The possibility of violent future actions from someone who is committing a simple burglary is NOT justification for use of deadly force. The threat has to be DIRECT and IMMINENT for deadly force to be justified.

So if the OP had yelled "Get out of my car!" and the perpetrator had attacked him...then the OP would have been justified in defending himself (in most jurisdictions).

If the OP had yelled "Get out of my car!" and the perpetrator had fled...then the OP would NOT have been justified in using deadly force (in most jurisdictions).

Not to put too fine a point on it...but the OP was foolish for engaging the thief unarmed. Had the thief been armed with a gun, the OP's actions would likely have resulted in him being killed in front of his wife. IT ALMOST DID when the perpetrator drew a knife and attacked.

I have no further comment on this discussion. I stand by my assertions.

 

[julez456]

Soo...what was in the duffle bag??

 

[SGB]

Soo...what was in the duffle bag??

I'm going to guess what ever it was included information which would lead to IDing the thief.

 

[Stan45]

You cannot use deadly force for protection of property. Your life was not in danger with someone going through some papers.

 

[Hamilton Felix]

There's really no such thing as "the law is clear." Look what happened to very clear one saying "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." If that one was clear, there would be NO laws at all placing any sort of restrictions on knives, guns, clubs, you name it. Lawyers can always twist things.

If a shooting actually went down, I think the scenario would matter a lot. A gun-hating Prosecutor would say in the scenario as described that by grabbing the duffel bag from the fleeing perp's vehicle, "...you predictably escalated the potential violence of the situation." If you shot him then, they might try to hang you.

OTOH, suppose you'd jumped into your car before realizing someone else was in there, and only then become "in fear for your life." Different picture.

 

[walt629]

Late to the party here! He brings out a knife, you bring out your gun. Seems logical to me. He was violating your property. Florida has a castle doctrine that does apply to your vehicle. THe law doesn't care if your vehicle is in your drive way at home or in the parking lot at the local Wally World.

You would have been justified in hammering him the minute you found him in your vehicle.