Important Question: Can I Shoot A Smash & Grab Robber?

From Guns America: "Can I Shoot a Smash-and-Grab Robber?" And as with most legal advice, the answer is "it depends". Basically, as the article and accompanying video explains, the situation must fulfill the elements of self-defense with lethal force:

    Kirk explains the legal considerations: “For any Force no matter what whether it involves a fist or a firearm…has to be 1. Necessary 2. It has to be reasonable both objectively and subjectively speaking, and 3. It has to be proportional.”

    In most states, lethal force is permissible under specific circumstances, such as imminent threat of serious injury or death.

    However, he stressed that “in almost all jurisdictions in the United States lethal force is not allowable to defend only property.”

    Kirk then examined whether the scenario [in the video] justified lethal force, saying, “While we may think that this is a property crime…what we are witnessing right here is a violent felony. That’s right, it is the felony of robbery.”

The article continues quoting Kirk:

That’s right, it is the felony of robbery. Okay, we call them smash-and-grab robberies. We don’t call them smash-and-grab thefts or anything like that because this is a robbery. What is a robbery? Every state has its own way of defining it, but in general, a robbery is going to be defined as the action of taking property unlawfully from a person or place by force or threat of force. Okay, so if we are taking the property of another by using force or threatening to use force, that is a robbery. And here’s the deal: that is a felony in every state. And here’s the deal: it’s a violent felony. Okay, which means the victims of this robbery are actually having a violent felony committed upon them. Now if they just stay put and really don’t get involved, the likelihood of them being injured is under this hypothetical not particularly great. And I want you to remember that when we circle back on that. But this is much more than than a property crime. This is a serious. This is no different than if you walked up and you saw that some old lady had two hoodlums, one holding a crowbar over her head while the other one was ripping the purse off of her. Okay, they haven’t actually physically harmed her yet, thank God, they have not hit her with the crowbar, but is she being robbed? She most definitely is.

 But he also cautions about getting involved when your own life is not at risk. 

    In any event, read the whole thing and watch the video.