3407

Those weren’t remotely the only choices. He was in a car. Driving away wasn’t just a choice, it was the easiest choice.

My point being that “hey, he didn’t manage hit the guy when he was shooting, so it doesn’t count” is hardly a sound argument.

Let’s imagine for the moment that he didn’t trip. What was his plan? To go after a guy with a bat with nothing but his bare hands, even though he had a pistol in his belt, and was clearly willing to use it? Let’s be real here. He always intended to pull the gun. He’s spinning the story to justify that.

Not villain of the “highest order,” no. But this wasn’t just “defending himself.”

This could have ended with no violence at all. All the guy had to do was drive away. If he wasn’t armed, that was the most likely outcome, because honestly, guys with bats are scary. Being armed gave this guy the idea he could win a confrontation with a bat. Because he was armed, he turned “no possible injury” into “possible death,” which makes him a huge asshat who shouldn’t be allowed to carry.

3408

I’m actually not surprised by this. Most people are terrible shots because they don’t practice. Movies depictions of marksmanship aside, actually hitting a target usually requires careful aiming, because small variations in barrel angle result in huge errors downrange.

This is doubly true if you’re a hotheaded asshole just yanking the trigger in a panic.

3409

No, it would’ve been better had he simply driven away, like any reasonable person would do.

The obvious question here is: would Mr. Fedrick have gotten out of his car if he didn’t have a gun? It’s purely speculative, of course, but I’m pretty confident when I say that no sane unarmed person would initiate a confrontation with an angry man with a baseball bat when he could just drive away from a potential assailant. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that having a gun emboldened Mr. Fedrick; he felt he had the upper hand, so he initiated a confrontation. Whether he actually tripped or lied about that is largely irrelevant; he escalated the situation when he didn’t have to. It’s just dumb luck no one was injured or killed by his 3 shots.

3410

Haha, some of you people can’t even see how ridiculous it is that a guy driving in in a truck stops to allow himself to be caught by a guy on foot with a baseball bat, then pulls a gun to shoot at him - and that’s considered ok!

3411

Two points:

  • He fired three shots and missed, so he’s perhaps not an expert marksman. What’s your thinking about a poor marksman spraying lead in front of a day care center

  • The article doesn’t clarify whether he could have simply driven away, perhaps because it doesn’t matter in Florida. In most cases, someone behind the wheel of a moving car can elude angry pedestrians, and that seems a safer option than stopping and opening fire

Stand Your Ground is just bug**** nuts. Self-defense is a time honored right, including the use of deadly force when needed. Stand Your Ground laws remove most of the “when needed” bit, though.

3412

It’s not difficult for me to think of incidents from my own life where I realized the best path forward was to leave the area or talk things down. I wonder if I would have chosen to escape or de-escalate if I’d had a concealed handgun, and I’m honestly not sure of the answer.

3413

I’m sure of the answer. When I carried, I was distinctly aware of any potential opportunities for conflict so I could avoid the situation. I’m not a hot head in general, so this was mostly academic, but I tend to believe most concealed carriers feel the same way.

3414

It almost seems to me like it boils down to whether you believe people should take responsibility for their feelings (anger, fear), or if feelings should be allowed to absolve responsibility.

3415

I just want to point out that I wasn’t arguing “hey, he didn’t manage hit the guy when he was shooting, so it doesn’t count” but merely pointing out the inconsistencies between the actual news stories and what Funkula wrote.

But I agree with you that simply leaving would have been the best choice. I’m mostly just trying to get across the point that none of this would ever have been an issue if the guy hadn’t chased him down with a baseball bat.

The tone of the argument in this thread, and coming from a lot of people on the left in the US in general, is that having a firearm somehow makes you automatically a “bad guy” and it makes you even worse if, heaven forbid, you actually find yourself in a situation where you need to use it. If he had simply wanted to shoot the guy he wouldn’t have gotten in his car and driven away; it would have been a lot easier to simply shoot somebody. Your speculation of his intentions seems pretty pointless. How do you know he wasn’t simply trying to scare the assailant away by revealing the existence of his pistol? You don’t know, and neither do I. It is best to examine the facts and leave the speculation to the science fiction writers, or lawyers.

See above.

3416

Your argument makes sense and is agreeable, but as I mentioned in a previous post, I think it is probably best to avoid speculation and stick to facts/evidence. But, in the case of speculation, considering the man with the bat was chasing him down on foot, the confrontation (which had been initiated by the man with the baseball bat, and continued by the chase) clearly wasn’t resolved, and he didn’t know that the bat-man wasn’t going to get in his truck and chase him and keep on threatening him or actually assault him. So, speculating of course, it is possible he intended merely to reveal the existence of his weapon as a deterrence from any further escalation. But we don’t know one way or another. What we know is what actually happened, that he was being chased by a man wielding a bat, fell, fired at him in defense, and scared him away.

WHatever the case may be, and however smart it might not have been, getting out of the car wasn’t illegal or wrong. Chasing a man down with a baseball bat and approaching him with an expressed intent to commit bodily harm is wrong. Shooting in self defense at a man coming at you with a baseball bat and who is in the position to imminently injure you, is not wrong.

3417

As a person with a rich experience in conflicts between drivers and pedestrians (thanks misspent youth!) I have to say that a person in a car has little to fear from a bat. Or crowbar. Or knife. Basically pedestrians that dont have guns are a non threat. Its trivially easy to stay away from a pedestrian at speeds that are low and safe for a car. Even if the other person hops in a car and starts chasing its pretty easy to avoid trouble. Just drive slowly to a public place and call 911 en route.

If you are feeling assholish, as teen me often did, you can even stop once a block to let them think you are finally going to hop out and fight, then drive away again when they hop out of their car. Oh and if you can get them pissed enough to ram your car there probably won’t be serious damage at low speed. And now you get to report them for a felony hit and run. Which in many states is worse legally than if the other party had simply beat you up.

3418

No, that’s just your knee-jerk reaction filtering what you’re reading through your expectations. I’m a firearm owner. I don’t believe owning a gun makes you a bad guy. The issue here is what this guy did specifically.

Some people are not safe around guns, for various reasons. For example, I went shooting once with a guy who did not seem to get the concept of being careful of where he pointed his weapon. I never wanted to go shooting with him again, under any circumstances. He was an accident waiting to happen.

Oh, man. You think that is somehow better? What is wrong with you? Brandishing a weapon is escalation. If you show a weapon, you’re creating a situation where you might be forced to use it.

Here’s the flowchart, which should be obvious to you:

Drive away: No possible negative outcome for anyone.

Stop, get out of car, and confront bat guy with bare hands: probably get injured.

Stop, get out of car, and brandish weapon: either bat guy runs or attacks.

If he attacks, either do nothing and certainly get injured, or shoot him and probably injure or kill him.

It’s not goddamned rocket science. At this point, you seem absolutely determined not to understand the basic point: by stopping the car he unnecessarily created a situation where either he would get hurt or bat guy would get hurt. That was terrible judgement on his part.

It’s virtually certain if that he had not been armed, he would not have done something that stupid. So this specific guy makes poor decisions because he’s armed. Not everyone does that, but he did.

3419

This is a good example of why I think most Stand Your Ground laws are stupid.

I realize why they were enacted, for the most part, but the implimentation encourages this kind of stupid shit. In my state he would be charged with a crime because he was in a public place and could easily deescalate. No one else was in danger of having a felony committed upon their person, therefor he had a duty to attempt to retreat - which was pretty easy given he was in a car vs a man on foot.

If he was say getting into his car and the guy was rushing him, well then it would be a little more vague and that’s, theoretically, where a SYG law is supposed to clear things up. Instead it makes situations like this. Without a duty to retreat or deescalate you can basically do whatever you want to them. It’s fine and dandy to say you don’t have to flee from a threat, but the reality of it becomes “you don’t need to even walk away from a threat.” And from what I’ve seen FL’s SYG is probably the most poorly written.

3420

Is there one of those frustrated stick figure drawings where someone is patiently typing at a computer for years to calmly and rationally explain things in an educational manner, and then a bunch of people jump in at the last second and get it completely wrong?

3421

Bullshit. There was no goddamn reason for him to do anything but drive away unless he wanted to shoot the guy, and the fact that he couldn’t hit his target doesn’t absolve him of that.

3422

Yep.

Classic self-defense doctrine dealt with situations where you have to kill someone. Stand Your Ground laws are about when you get to kill someone.

3423

As presented, the gunman’s actions are indefensible. However, like most of these incidents we’ve jumped straight into the condemning without all the facts. In particular, was the car in a situation where he couldn’t drive away? He could have been stuck in stoplight traffic and got out to try and talk the situation down before the guy started whaling on his car. I don’t know if that was the case, and neither do you. The important thing is to not start labeling people as deranged murderers in waiting until you actually have the facts. Quit defaulting to standard arguing positions.

3424

Reckless endangerment, it almost doesn’t matter what the situation was, he fired 3 wild shots, your hypothesis that the street was busy enough that he could not have driven off just makes that fact more damning (if true).

Baseball bat dude should be charged as well. What is wrong with these idiots.

3425

It’s fairly easy to Google Map the location. From the article, it sounds like Mr. Fedrick is claiming he exited the large parking lot on the left, went south on N. 53rd St about a block, and stopped in front of and across the street from the KinderCare.

I don’t see any traffic lights in the vicinity, but it’s possible Fedrick was stuck in morning rush-hour traffic. If that’s the case, there should’ve been plenty of witnesses to this incident. But if there weren’t, then that torpedoes the “stuck in traffic” rationale.

Since Fedrick stuck around to be interviewed by police, he evidently felt his actions were justified; or at the very least thought fleeing the scene would make things worse for him. It’s been 3 days and I don’t see any updates to the story; I wonder if that means the police have made no headway or the Tampa Tribune doesn’t consider it worth a follow-up.

3426

I can go with all of that, sure. But there’s a long way between “guy panics” and “guy just wants to murder someone and get away with it”, which was the position of several in thread up until now.