Quote:
Originally Posted by llwhiteoutll
Under Canadian law, you are allowed to use lethal force against someone who is stealing your property when life threatening danger is also present.
In this case, he believed that his wife had been run over by people who were there trying to steal his truck and quad. He fired warning shots and never intentionally pointed a firearm at anyone, let alone one that he thought was loaded.
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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.