Massad Ayoob and Marty Hayes analyzed incidents in which armed citizens shot ostensibly unarmed assailants. While it seems that prosecutors are quick to paint shootings like these as murder or manslaughter, testimony by the defendant and expert witnesses can show why shooting was a reasonable response to an attack by someone who did not possess a firearm.
Next, Ayoob identifies three key elements and why all three must be present to justify use of deadly force in self defense. They are ability, opportunity and jeopardy. Jeopardy, he states, is the assailant’s intent “manifest ... by words and or actions ... to kill or to cripple an innocent party.” Opportunity, which is nearly self explanatory, often speaks to proximity. Is the attacker close enough to inflict the deadly harm his words and actions promise? Ability is generally attributed to having a gun or knife – a weapon per se. Ayoob expands that definition, describing how an attacker who has no weapon at hand can use “his physical advantage over you” so effectively that “if this attack is allowed to continue you’re likely to be killed or crippled.”
“Physical advantage” does not apply only to larger, stronger aggressors attacking small, weak people, Ayoob continues, describing how multiple attackers, an attacker with skill in unarmed combat, a man attacking a woman, an adult attacking a child, or an attacker aggressing on someone in a disadvantaged position like knocked down on the street, all give such an advantage to the attacker that, in those circumstances, the disparity factor becomes a de facto weapon.
