Hypothetical of the day, if you’re forced into sudden fight or flight situation and you decide to fight can you determine reasonable use of force on the fly without hesitation?

What would you do?

I despise Doug Ford in general, but I agree with him on this issue. Someone fighting for their lives does not have the time or expertise to have to be considering what is an “appropriate” response, and should not be required to. Also ACAB.

I’ve been assaulted and defended myself multiple times. Our laws are specifically designed to account for the unique the context of every situation.

Forced into sudden fight or flight situation and you decide to fight can you determine reasonable use of force on the fly without hesitation.

1. If you were forced to defend yourself than you had no choice. So regardless of the damage you inflict, the first bar to reasonable self defense is to prove that you were deprived the ability to alternative choices.

2. Determining reasonable force is as simple as proving that you once the assailant stopped being a threat, you stopped inflicting damage on them.

Hot take: anyone who hospitalizes someone else with life threatening injuries should be required to defend that action in court. “I was defending myself” is a valid argument, but one that should be heard by a judge at trial. Nobody should be allowed to skip trial entirely just by claiming self defence.

That’s literally how the law works. Reasonable force means you can hurt them (pretty badly) but once they stop being a threat you have stop hurting them.

Nobody gets a free pass.

What would you do?

Well first off I live in a province where our Trespass Act permits me to physically remove trespassers. If that person assaults me during that removal, I will defend myself. But I used to do that for a job so I’m much more adept at navigating confrontation and responding to violence than the avg person.

Ultimately in a home invasion situation, I just want to avoid my house getting trashed. I do have “whacking sticks” staged throughout my house. I also have flashlights with strobe function (GOAT self defense tool fyi).

1. De-escalation. “Hey man. You Okay?” “This ain’t your house” “Can you please leave”

2. Assertive that I will not victimized. "There’s the door. Leave now or else tonight is going to end very badly for you.

3. Attempt to remove them while creating a tactical advantage such that I can preemptively strike as to end the altercation with minimal damage to all parties.

4. TKO them. People with concussions cannot provide reliable testimonies.

5. Call an ambulance/police. 50/50 They wake up and assault the police officers. Makes things suuuuper easy for you.

I disagree with Drug Fraud (as I almost always do). The reason being that I abhor the fact we have completely adopted the idea that our “stuff” is worth more than someone’s life – whether it be ours or someone else’s.

George Carlin made fun of it, but it’s true.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac&pp=0gcJCf8Ao7VqN5tD

Reasonable force means you can hurt them (pretty badly) but once they stop being a threat you have stop hurting them.

So, dead?

It’s almost unreasonable for the courts to believe that someone experiencing a home invasion would be in anything but survival mode, and would have the capacity to simply “calm down” once the threat has been stopped. Because to them, they don’t know if the threat is over, or if someone else is going to bust in to kill them, or if the original attacker will fight back, or if they have a weapon, etc.

Courts should be very lenient towards homeowners deafening their life, family, and property. And if the jackass who decided to commit this crime is still alive, they should have severe consequences laid on them, with additional compensation to the homeowner for the trauma they caused.

So, dead?

In some contexts, yes. However you’ll still likely have to defend charges of manslaughter. You’d have to demonstrate that the actions you took could reasonable be expected to not result in the death of the subject; and that those actions were necessary to prevent receiving grievous bodily injury or death.

and would have the capacity to simply “calm down” once the threat has been stopped.

Lots of people defend themselves without turning their unconscious assailants into pin cushions. You seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding how reasonable force is determined. I suggest you read my other comments.

they don’t know if the threat is over,

If you can remove yourself from the situation the threat is over. It’s factually wrong to suggest that people can’t tell when they’ve won a fight.

or if someone else is going to bust in to kill them,

Continuing to inflict damage on an incapacitated assailant logically does nothing to prevent another potential unknown assailant from attacking you.

or if the original attacker will fight back, or if they have a weapon, etc.

Those factors will determine what level of force is reasonable. Unreasonable force generally comes into play after the assailant has been incapacitated.

Courts should be very lenient

You should be thankful you have right to defend yourself at all. Not all countries grant that to their citizens. The logical limitation of that right is that defending yourself does not permit you to “counter-assault” others.

Assault in Canada doesn’t require them to hit you first. It includes threats with the ability to follow through. So you may preemptively strike to end an altercation without being charged for assault. HOWEVER, the average male is 28,000% less effective in combat than they think they are. So it’s generally a poor option for untrained individuals… as shit gets out of hand. Pre-emptively striking to end the fight early only works if you can actully do that.

I don’t care what the reason is, if you break into a home - the actual home, you deserve whatever you get, no restrictions.

I mean, same argument back. I’m not exactly a castle doctrine advocate, but if they’re breaking into my home they may have decided my stuff is worth more than my life. That’s the thing about actually breaking in, it’s so far past what society deems acceptable that you can’t bet on them not hurting you. I’m not saying a situation like this is acceptable, because end of the day that’s what castle doctrine gets to. But you can’t put it all on our “stuff”, people are also in homes.

When you catch someone in your house, it’s not about your “stuff”. It’s about someone being in your home and all that threat implies. You have no idea how it’s going to end.

Give homeowners the same benefit of the doubt cops get when they kill someone that threatens them. Probably more because they aren’t trained to deal with immediate threats and evaluate the options like a cop would.

Asking some poor bastard whose never had an altercation and that’s scared of being killed or their family being harmed to evaluate a proportional response in seconds is pretty unrealistic. And then making them go through months of legal hassle and cost to prove that what they did in that moment was correct is cruel and unreasonable.

IMO an important fact is the intruder was charged with possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose.

That raises the threshold of reasonable force quite a bit in my eyes, including “life threatening injuries”

Now he shouldn’t keep beating him when he’s down and out but I’m sympathetic to the invadee so far.

That’s what judges are for, I’m curious how it comes out.

Riiight. Because there’s millions of home invasions that happen in Canada on a daily basis.

I’ve been burglarized, I don’t give a shit about the stuff that was stolen, it’s being fucking sketched out about thinking someone is going to be in there the next time I walk in. That takes years to go away or you just move.

And that isn’t about “possessions”. It’s about violation.

I’m guessing from your dismissive cuntery that this hasn’t happened to you, so why would you understand feeling this way about it, eh?

If someone breaks into my house, that’s locked up and secured in the evening, and while I’m asleep starts ransacking my house, scaring or terrorizing my kids and wife, or causing harm, if their face happens to meet the end of a baseball bat, so be it. Reasonable force or not, I’m protecting.

The fact is, if that person wasn’t breaking into my house, there’d be no need for me to introduce a bat to their face, and they wouldn’t be injured.

This protecting perpetrators is nonsense especially when it’s on my own property. They’re the ones doing illegal activities.

I have been as well. Money stolen once, and the second time I was laid out on the floor with a shot-gun to the back of my head while they took my tv and stereo (way back in the 70’s so no computers, etc to take).

Hope that answers your incorrect assumptions, eh.

Damn as an American whose frame of reference is, “if someone breaks into my home in the middle of the night and I shoot them dead it’s likely going to be called justifiable - period” it’s wild to see this.

Like, I’m not saying it’s good that we basically have a mentality of “yo if someone comes into your house you can blast em” as a people … But it’s interesting how divergent the views are.

We really don’t know the details here, and I think that’s key. There are scenarios where charging a homeowner make sense. Like you see an intruder with a knife. You whack them with a bat. And you knock them to the ground. And then you just…keep doing it. The guy is literally on the ground, skull half caved in, just begging you to call a fucking ambulance, completely at your mercy…and you’re still whacking him. Force can easily escalate well past what is needed for any reasonable level of self defense. Just because someone breaks into your home does not give you legal permission to torture them or murder them in cold blood. Maybe the homeowner tied the intruder up and literally tortured him.

A prosecutor knows how unpopular prosecuting a homeowner for attacking a break-in victim would be. It would be an obvious political lightning rod. I’m inclined to believe that if they’re willing to go to all that trouble, the homeowner likely did something that went well beyond what any jury would consider reasonable self defense. This is the kind of case you do not as a prosecutor make unless you can be damn sure you’re getting a conviction.