I make the TFB Youtube Big Time

[Hambo]

Whom do you get on the jury? Do criminal defense lawyers try to discern such as voir dire? Not something I know.

I'll tell you, but it's going to cost you $49.95 plus shipping and handling. Ah, fuck it, I'll give you a freebie: generally the answer is no.

I understand the point of your study was to isolate the gun used, and it did a good enough job of that. However, there are so many other factors that will decide whether you get charged or not, what you're charged with, and the outcome of your case. It's a chess game that starts immediately and the state gets the first three moves.

[Borderland]

If a 1911 can't reliably handle 100 rounds of factory ammo, including some fast shooting, there is a problem. And there are some problem guns out there. I've owned one or two.



Gun matches run the gun hard and can reveal reliability problems with a gun. They can also expose ergonomics and other problems with the guns that may not be apparent at regular shooting sessions. Shooting competition puts you under some pressure to shoot so that your marksmanship and manipulation skills have to be honed. But you don't need 3 gun to train, and certainly not to be able to defend yourself. There are also other ways of running the gun hard on the shooting range.

I would want to do some realistic drills on my own with any gun that I might use for home defense--and not just fire a few rounds offhand and call it good. You want to start each drill with the gun in low ready with the safety on.

For example, fire one magazine worth of ammo where you bring the gun up from low ready while disengaging the safety and firing one shot. Then engage the safety and bring the gun back to low ready and repeat again until you have expended the rounds of one 20 round Ruger mini-14 magazine. Then fire one magazine's worth of bringing the gun up, disengaging the safety and firing two shots. Then safety on and back to low ready. Then do a magazine's worth of failure drills where you fire two shots to the body and one to the head. Then do three magazines worth of non standard responses--meaning bring the gun up from low ready, while disengaging the safety and then fire from 3-6 rounds as fast as you can accurately get hits. You vary the number of shots you fire each time you bring the gun up from 3-5, hence the name non-standard response: https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....nsive-shooting Try to integrate multiple target drills where you have to fire rounds at one target and then fire them at a second target. This can even be two bulls on one target at close range if that is all you can do. You want to shoot those drills as fast as you can while getting accurate hits.



We are comparing it because Glenn included a Mini-14 in his study and concluded that it would look better in court. If we are talking about some place a standard AR is legal I would much prefer an AR over the Mini-14 for reasons of reliability, durability, better ergonomics, easier to mount things like a red dot sight which is a game changer over iron sights.

Question: are you restricted from owning and using a 20 round magazine for your mini, or does it restrict the sale of new magazines?

No, I'm not restricted. Just can't purchase those after July 2022. Same with semi-auto rifles, AR, AK, Mini, etc. That restriction went into effect a few months ago. If you purchased before the law went into effect you're GTG. Massive magazine and rifle sales here the last few years. Then the dealers started going out of business.

[davisj]

He’s talking about you again today.

[Ed L]

Finally, here are my detailed thoughts on Glenn’s study after reading his complete article that was published in The Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2009, 39, pages 945-972. It took quite a bit of reading and much more rereading. After reading it I can definitely see the inadequacy of the online summaries that I had read. In some ways I think that Glenn's project has been misunderstood and oversimplified. His study dealt with several things including how the appearance and type of firearm might affect the jury’s decision, how the gender of the homeowner affected the jury’s decision, how the gender of the jurors was reflected by the decision, and several hypothetical situations involving law enforcement. I am only going to cover Glenn’s work concerning the firearm type and appearance and how it might affect a jury’s decision about a non-LEOs who got involved in a home defense shooting.

I think there is some validity to his conclusions about the intimidating effect of some weapons and possible effect on a jury. However, I am not going to use a less effective LEGAL firearm in case the legal aftermath goes south. Specifically, I would not use a S&W 642 for home defense over a Glock 19 or similar high-capacity handgun even though his study suggested that the revolver would look better in court. On p. 952 of his published paper Glenn wrote: “The particulars of local laws were considered in constructing the scenarios (State of Texas, 2002).”

However, in the state of TX the scenario for the shooting would have been completely justified, absent extenuating circumstances, or real stupidity on the part of the defending homeowner. It’s important to keep in mind that this hypothetical home defense shooting was used as a tool to examine the attitudes of the participants on weapon appearance and how it can influence them if they were serving on a jury. To accomplish this, the homeowner had to go on trial. As Glenn wrote in the article, he specifically created an ambiguous situation with regard to the need of the homeowner to shoot. If the situation was more threatening, the defense attorney’s case would have been stronger, or the homeowner might not have even wound up on trial. There are quite a number of home defense shootings that don’t wind up before a jury.

I had questions about the methodology used in this study, since it really wasn’t clear to me from the descriptions and articles that I read about it on the internet. It only became clear after I read Glenn’s actual article. The participants in his study received a written description of the incident as well as written presentations of the arguments used by the prosecution and the defense. I have no idea how good the written presentation for the defense was. This is a very significant factor. In the article Glenn stated that he had consulted with legal and law enforcement resources to ensure that the arguments made were valid and likely in such a case. However, that doesn’t mean that the defense’s case was very good.

Glenn had three groups of people participate on the civilian side, totaling 270 people. The groups were drawn from college students. This included some students who were attending community college at night who were older than the typical college student. These participants came from the workforce and had more life experience.

The 60 participants in the first group were told that the theoretical homeowner was already tried and found guilty, and their job was to assign a prison sentence. As described on p.952 of The Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2009, 39, "After the case presentations, participants were asked to assign a sentence—assuming that the defendant was found guilty—that could range from 2 to 25 years, as mentioned in the scenario."

With two other college groups, Glenn asked the participants to render a judgement of whether the homeowner was guilty or innocent and to assign a sentence if he were found guilty. P. 854 Second group: "The same materials and procedure for the male homeowner shooter were used again. Participants were asked to make a guilty/not guilty judgment. Next, participants were asked to assign a sentence—assuming that the defendant was found guilty—that could range from 2 to 25 years, as mentioned in the scenario."

I would argue that the study participants were not properly briefed on TX law because in the hypothetical case the defender was completely within the law to shoot the burglar. Typically, juries are instructed or "charged" in the legal rules that they are expected to follow when deciding a civil or criminal case. This would include the TX penal law which allows the use of deadly force against home intruders. This goes back to the point that the hypothetical home defense shooting was used as a tool to examine the attitudes of the participants on weapon appearance and how it can influence them if they were serving on a jury.

I don't think that the theoretical case would lead to indictment in TX much less trial, unless the shooter said or did something very stupid along the way. Grand Juries here have no-billed people who shot people under far more questionable circumstances.

An example of pushing the envelope for TX home defense shootings is a situation where a man called 911 to report a burglary in his neighbor's house, and then left the safety of his house to confront the men even though he was instructed not to do so by the 911 operator. He wound up shooting and killing both of the burglars in front of his house with a shotgun. He was no-billed by the grand jury and did not go to trial for it. Under TX law you can use deadly physical force to terminate a burglary of another person’s home, but I would advise against it in most situations for reasons that would require a thread of its own. I think the person who did this was foolish and put himself in physical and legal danger. Here is a link to that article that details what happened:
www.chron.com/neighborhood/pasadena-news/article/joe-horn-cleared-by-grand-jury-in-pasadena-1587004.php

I can post a dozen links to articles on people who used AKs and ARs for home defense and did not get arrested. In many of the cases they faced multiple home invaders, so having extra capacity was a good thing to have. Nevertheless, I urge people to only use firearms that are legal where they live, and to be especially careful in states like NY, NJ, CA, MA, etc. Learn the laws and attitudes of your locale and act accordingly. High capacity handguns were very common when the study was published in 2009 and are even more common now (even in places that limit the magazine capacity to 10 rounds).

After having written this exhaustive post, if I get into a home defense situation, I am more likely to use a high cap 9mm than an AR because the pistol is likely to be closer at hand. Glenn doesn’t want to admit it, but he agrees with me on the high cap pistol because in an interview in https://armedcitizensnetwork.org/ima...rk_2012-10.pdf 2012 he said: “No, I think best thing to know is how to defend a reasonable choice. If I had to defend my primary gun, a Glock 19 or Glock 26, I could say that I shoot it well, it is used by police, it is a reasonable firearm.” That interview is definitely worth reading.

More to come . . .

[Paul Blackburn]

On magazines; Pistols- 15-19 rounds is a standard capacity magazine for modern compact carry guns. For rifles a 30 round magazine is standard capacity.

[Ed L]

Just a bit of clarification on my last post. I wrote only use firearms that are legal where you live. I would not suggest using a legally owned select fire gun for numerous reasons. Among them are if you have to shoot someone 5 times in semi auto in a home defense situation, there will be a question of whether you shot him 5 individual times because that is what it took, or if you fired a 5 shot burst when only one or two shots was necessary. I think image here would be an issue--since select fire guns are not commonly owned the way AR's are. I think for several years there have been more AR's produced in the US than any other type of firearm. Also, there is the prospect of getting an expensive select fire firearm confiscated.

[Ed L]

On magazines; Pistols- 15-19 rounds is a standard capacity magazine for modern compact carry guns. For rifles a 30 round magazine is standard capacity.

This is an excellent point. When the Clinton Assault Weapons ban was passed in 1994, handguns with magazines in excess of 10 rounds and semiauto longarms with magazines in excess of 10 rounds were not nearly as common as they are now. They were were a quite a lot of them back then, but nothing like there are today.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Excellent analysis, Ed. The issue with TX law was not something we presented, as pointed out - we trying trying to isolate a generic gun effect. Thus when I talked to legal and law folks - we tried for a reasonable, ambiguous one, similar to used other studies. Of course, in the real world, your attorney should press the actual laws.

As far as my home, first to go the gun - yep, now it is a Glock as it was then. My training experiences indicated it is most, useful, all around gun for our house, given all the things one does. The long arms are hunker down guns or some zombie-ish multiple end of the world scenario - as compared to a sound in the night. The 19, though became a couple of 17s.

Another thing about the results, I said before - this wasn't an absolute principle. Many participants were in favor of the shooter. There wasn't a mock jury room and discussion, each made their own judgement. Now, some studies indicate that this methodology of a written description as compared to an actual mock trial has validity, so it was worth a try. Had to be at a major university with lots of bucks and grad students to do a full mock trial. If only.

In a real jury discussion, it would have been interesting to see how the issues played out. People have used the guns in SD successfully. In Goetz, the jury discussed the HP and tac holster issue and it was not determinant in SD issue but the gun carry charge.
I forgot about the picture of me with John and Mas at Tom's. Here's another picture.



It was an exercise at Givens, where you had to save the baby. Marty Hayes took the picture and Tom had it on its newsletter cover. My artistic daughter said it had a good composition and flow of motion. A sergeant LEO buddy like my pose. We used it as the opening slide when my research group made a presentation in our research seminar to the department. Probably annoyed some faculty but not the TX kids in general. Problem is that I look fat (haha).

It was a fun study, out of my original visual neuroscience track but the kids liked working on it and it went somewhere. Now, I'm happy to be retired and just complaining about legislation and court decisions.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

PS - in the baby picture, you were supposed to get the baby to cover behind a truck. One well known trainer tossed the baby behind the truck. That was not well received. I've been in matches where we had the save the baby. It certainly screwed up reload patterns.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

https://armedcitizensnetwork.org/oct...orney-question

Asking some attorneys about the issues. FYI. They think it could be an issue in some manner.