Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
Most of that is far from established fact. First off, his defense never even argued that he felt he was in life threatening danger because there's no evidence of that. His defense was that he experienced a hang fire, which introduced a long delay between pulling the trigger and the bullet firing. But for that to be true, the following would've had to happen based on the trial testimony:
-he loaded 3 bullets while thinking he only loaded 2
-he pulled the trigger 3 times to fire 2 warning shots
-the 3rd bullet's firing was delayed the exact length of time it took him to walk from where he fired the shots up to the vehicle.
-despite him saying he wanted the trespassers to leave, he reached into the SUV to take their keys to prevent them from leaving
-at the exact moment he was leaning into the vehicle the gun went off while it was pointed at the passenger's head
To me that's exceedingly implausible. The fact that his lawyer tried to use a Reddit discussion as evidence of hang fire being a common occurrence says a lot about the nature of the defense. Gun experts agreed that this is a very rare event and when it does happen, the delay is quite short. To me it sounds like a Hail Mary defense.
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So just a few things to add so that it lends a little more credence to his defense.
1) There was an imperfection discovered in the casing that he claimed was a hangfire.
2) They tested his gun and it had a hangfire after the 33rd shot I believe (brought up at trial).
3) He used old soviet military surplus ammo, which could also have contributed to issues.
4) It was a Tokarov. Not the gun I would trust my life with.
I do agree it is still pretty rare that this exact circumstance would happen.