Good for him, your friend has every right to protect his life and property. We could rely on police, but all the police can be guaranteed to protect is his body after they show up 5 minutes too late.
Luckily for them it didn't have to go that far, but he did pull it and they immediately took off. He then got in his car and called the police to report what happened.
His life doesn't have to be in danger to pull a gun!
1. He just has to justify that he had a reasonable fear for it.
2. Anyway he was protecting his property
In fact, he did a very honest thing: he brandished his gun. Which means he showed the would be criminals that he was packing.
Steps to shoot a would be assailant legally:
1. Show that you're packing
2. if the would be assailant doesn't leave, aim
3. if the would be assailant doesn't leave, shoot.
Its a very fast, but choreographed dance. The point of it being that you don't just get to shoot anyone right away, you have to give them a chance to bugger off. Which they did.
EDIT: I've never owned a gun and don't really want to own one (shooting is a lot of fun, but I don't want to be a gun owner). I might buy a .22 rifle (hardly relevant for this story)
There seems to be missing something in your story to show danger.
They just asked for his cash, nothing show any sign in danger in that. Would you pull out a gun because someone asked you for food too?
Was there a threat? Which kind of threat? Did it look like these guys had the means to carry that threat and did it look like they actually were going to carry that threat?
I wouldn't kill a guy in hope to get a few thousand dollars. There are cars that are worth much more than I could steal and risk much less than a homicide sentence (which I guess is pretty high in Arizona).
I don't believe his life was in danger, but I'm also not living in a country where people think their life is constantly in danger and they have to carry gun for their safety. That mentality is dangerous in itself and may justify itself sadly. Having a gun in any interaction escalate way too quickly any risk.
> They just asked for his cash, nothing show any sign in danger in that.
Yeah, that's all they said. I'm sure there was no threat in their words or mannerisms at all. Certainly, if the victim had merely given these gentlemen a firm "no," they would have just shrugged their shoulders and walked away.
Two guys demanding money from you doesn't sound like a dangerous situation to you? You're nuts. Even if his life wasn't in danger he was gonna get roughed up, and that's worth pulling your weapon for.
Demanded cash. Only an asshole would pull a gun on some homeless man who asks if he has any spare change.
It changes if they come up and demand money.
Losing a couple thousand bucks would suck, and if that was guaranteed to be the end of it then I'd rather that be the end of it. The problem is you are dealing with people who are already willing to commit robbery, there is any number of ways that situation could get violent. Once it does then who knows what happens.
In most states in the US you are definitely allowed to defend yourself and your property by brandishing and using a gun. "life, liberty, and property" -Locke
Classic example is doing a startup (and failing to take off). You have a very large nominal wealth, but you practically bankrupted yourself, because as a founder you probably spent all your money to try to raise more funds, or on sales, or on product development.
Yes, the Forbes list is different.
And yes, erikb's point about being a billionare is strange, because not many people would consider anyone a billionare just because someone funded a company with nominal value 1B$.
However, erikb is right, that rich people have cheap access to enormously powerful success multipliers. (They can very realistically - almost literally - get a cheap loan from any of their dad's neighbour, or get in touch with anyone, and so on.)
It's also hard for me to see where our experiences diverge so much that we can't understand each other. Maybe you don't know that billionaires are not having this billion dollars on their bank account, but instead it's a calculation of assumed ownership of stock, houses, derivates etc?
If you have a billion dollar on a bank account with a bank that would cash that amount of money, then I'd say yes you are rich. But the Forbes list is mostly guessed values that are used in calculations, based on real but unknown values that may change a lot between one day and another.
I hope that was the point. If not give me some hints or explain your point of view more detailed. I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that we actually share the same view but express it differently.
Please tell me how many on the Forbes list are starving. Hell, give me an example of any billionaire ever that ended up starving. The point you’re trying to make has no basis in reality.
