Gun control advocates like to point to the FBI’s civilian “justifiable homicide”table in the Uniform Crime Reports series. This is very misleading, because this only includes those killings that are initially identified by the police as justifiable homicide. A shooting might be charged as murder, or manslaughter, and then reclassified as justifiable homicide during the police investigation, or while the district attorney is considering the case. The grand jury might refuse to issue an indictment, or at trial, either the judge orthe jury might rule the killing justifiable.
Also, look at the FBI's manual on reporting justifiable homicides on p. 17:
Justifiable homicide, by definition, occurs in conjunction with other offenses. Therefore, the crime being committed when the justifiable homicide took place must be reported as a separate offense. Reporting agencies should take care to ensure that they do not classify a killing as justifiable or excusable solely on the claims of self-defense or on the action of a coroner, prosecutor, grand jury, or court.
It is not just that homicides may be found to be justifiable later. The FBI UCR definition requires that a felony must be reported with the homicide in order for the homicide to be justifiable. So if someone attacks you, and you shoot them in clearly justified self-defe3nse, and the crime of the assault is not recorded by the police; then the shooting does not qualify as a "justifiable homicide" according to the FBI.
ReplyDeleteThe FBI specifically says in the UCR instructions, not to rely on judges, coroners, or juries for a "justifiable" ruling.
The FBI numbers are likely only 10-20 percent of the actual justified homicides in the nation.
http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2015/02/how-many-justified-homicides-occur-each.html