This Ain't The Movies
“This ain’t the movies, and you ain’t John Wayne.”
- from the Street Survival book series
A little reality check:
A knife is deadly force
A person with a knife attacking another person without a knife is not a “knife fight.”
A person using a knife (deadly force) on another person must reasonably believe they are under imminent threat of deadly force or serious physical injury in order for it to be self defense. (along with a few other conditions)
You (or the police) are legally permitted to use deadly force to defend another person, if they would have been legally justified to use deadly force themselves. (See Number 1 above.)
It is not reasonable to expect anyone to respond to a deadly force threat with non-lethal force in defense. It would be nice to be able to defeat deadly force without having to use deadly force in return, but that is a poor wager with your life and is not a legal requirement.
Shooting another person with a gun is considered deadly force in the eyes of the law. Whether you hit them in the pinky toe, the knife hand, between the eyes…or even if you miss them completely…you have just used deadly force, and it must be legally justified as such. And if you’re legally justified in shooting at all, then take the shot with the highest probability of success. You can’t just shoot someone “a little bit.”
You are responsible for every bullet that comes out of your gun. If you try to shoot them in the leg, or shoot the knife out of someone's hand and miss, that bullet will still hit something…and you own that something. Miss that small, moving target and hit an innocent person, and that’s on you.
