There’s an article in today’s NYT about Anwar Ghazali. Mr. Ghazali was convicted of second degree murder a few days ago.
What did he do? He shot a 17-year-old who shoplifted some beer from the convenience store Mr. Ghazali was clerking at.
You should apply the usual NYT gun related story discount to this article, but I think there are some illustrative lessons to be learned here.
So the guy was running off, he wasn’t a fleeing armed felon who could endanger others, and Mr. Ghazali was (by this account) out of danger. Why did he grab a gun and pursue? I’m not a lawyer, much less a Tennessee one, but I’m pretty sure grabbing a gun and pursuing a person who is in flight, and poses no immediate threat to you or others, takes you outside of “castle doctrine” and into “the DAs likely going to charge you – that is, if you don’t get shot by the cops while you’re running down the street waving a gun” territory.
The store clerk grabbed a handgun and chased him, firing off a few shots into the dark night, on March 29, the authorities said.
“I think I shot him,” the clerk, Anwar Ghazali, 29, told a customer when he returned to the store, according to a police affidavit and the Shelby County District Attorney’s office.
“I think I shot him.” So he was spraying shots into “the dark night”?
Always be sure of your target and what is beyond it. What if he had hit an innocent person in a house or apartment nearby?
But he did hit somebody.
And:
If he had called the police, there’s a pretty good chance they would have found Mr. Harris, stopped the bleed, gotten medics out there, Mr. Harris would be alive today, and Mr. Ghazali wouldn’t have been charged with murder. (Admittedly, I haven’t seen the autopsy report, which is why I qualify that with “pretty good chance”.)
Also on point: in a defensive gun use, even if you just display the gun without actually using it, first one to call 911 wins. Massad Ayoob’s writings contain more than one story of someone who legitimately displayed a weapon to deter a threat, and found themselves on the wrong end of a police investigation and legal bills. If I remember correctly (I don’t have the book here at work) Chris Bird’s Thank God I Had a Gun contains a story like this that ended “well”: in that the defensive gun user avoided prison time, but still racked up legal fees and other consequences.
So that’s my takeaways: don’t shoot people who aren’t an imminent threat to life, don’t shoot blindly into the dark, and call the police. Did I miss any salutary points? Feel free to mention my many shortcomings in comments below.