That’s the crazy thing about the law. In most of the USA, if you fire a warning shot you are at risk of being charged with assault or reckless conduct of some sort. The feeling in contemporary jurisprudence being that the bullets have to land somewhere, therefore you are endangering others by firing shots at random without a justified target. If the situation justifies firing a shot at all toward an assailant then it generally must justify shooting to kill. Presumably because you reasonably perceive that you are in danger of being killed or suffering grievous bodily harm of some sort if you do not immediately act to halt the assailant’s attack or threat of attack. Of course this is in contradiction to what we have all been brought up to believe. We have all watched countless movie and TV dramas where a protagonist fires a shot into the air or at the ground to scare off or intimidate a villain. Regardless, that is not what the law allows nowadays. Experts in law and gun-fighting like Massad Ayoob advise that, given the current state of the law, the situations where firing a warning shot would be justified and/or advisable are really very few. That is why Old Joe’s advice is so ruinously bad. You risk going to jail if you take it. Unless you can get the courts to give you a pass because you were following the advice of the Vice President, who happens to be a lawyer himself.
Christopher Isaiah Cloer of Dalton Georgia fired "two blasts" when men came to his home harassing his sister, and now he's the one in jail.
In February of 2013, Vice President Joe Biden infamously told a woman named Kate to fire “two blasts” from a 12-gauge shotgun to scare away intruders.
A 29-year-old man in Dalton, Georgia Christopher Isaiah Cloer, applied the Vice President’s advice, and is now facing charges of aggravated assault.
A Dalton man told investigators he was just trying to protect a family member from a stalker when he fired a shotgun blast into the air and then another at the ground near the tailgate of a pickup truck. The man who was the target of the warning shots said he was just trying to go see his girlfriend.So, Cletus and Bubba show up where they aren’t wanted after being told to stay away and no uncertain terms, and Mr. Cloer roughly follows Vice Presidents televised advise to fire “two blasts.”
Christopher Isaiah Cloer, 29, of 209 Trade Way, was arrested on Monday and charged with aggravated assault for firing the shots.
According to a report filed with the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office, the incident occurred early in the morning of Jan. 9.
It started with a man and his buddy coming back from a bar in Chattanooga in the buddy’s pickup truck. The passenger was texting a woman he told deputies was his girlfriend. The female texted her address to the man and told him to come on over. But as they were driving to the address, the passenger called the woman’s phone and a male answered. The men argued, and the man who answered the phone told them not to come to the girl’s house and hung up.
The passenger then got a text from the woman’s phone saying to not come to the house followed by an expletive-filled, threatening text basically telling him to stay away. The passenger told a sheriff’s deputy he thought the guy had taken his girlfriend as a hostage.
When the cops asked the man why he continued to the address after being told not to go there, he said he didn’t think anyone would be hostile when he got there…
Unfortunately for Mr. Cloer, the Vice President’s advice is likely to end up in assault charges in the vast majority of these United States, as firing a shotgun or any other firearm—even as an alleged warning—is the unwarranted discharge of deadly weapon.
Be smart.
Don’t be a Biden.
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