Screen capture by Boch via YouTube.

You’ve read the platitude in the comments a thousand times – play stupid games, win stupid prizes. The recent equivalent for a Florida man was, walk up to an innocent man in a car who was minding his own business, with a gun in your waistband, then draw and point the heater at the man while shouting at him.

A man in Tampa did just that and came away with multiple new piercings in the upper body which resulted in a premature death.

Cops say the legally-armed good guy in the car was parked in a friend’s driveway when a guy in his late 30s parked on the street out front, left his car after stuffing a handgun down his pants and walked up to the concealed carry license holder.

It turned out that the perpetrator’s gun was fake.  The intimidation moved failed rather spectacularly for the older man.

The Tampa Bay Times has the details . . .

A man fatally shot another man who raised what turned out to be a fake gun toward him at a home in Tampa’s Lowry Park North neighborhood, police said.

8500 block of N. Hamner in Tampa. Screen capture by Boch via Google Maps.

Officers dispatched about 11:30 p.m. to a call about shots fired on the 8500 block of North Hamner Avenue found a man in his late 30s suffering from gunshot wounds in his upper body, according to Tampa police. Officers provided first aid until Tampa Fire Rescue crews arrived and pronounced the man dead.

The shooter, a man in his mid-20s, stayed at the scene and cooperated with investigators.

Quick reminder: don’t “cooperate” too much with the police until your attorney is present.  Here are the quick and dirty rules for communicating with responding/investigating officers.

You have nothing to gain by answering detailed questions without your attorney’s guidance. In fact, while anything incriminating can be used against you in a court of law (where have we heard that before?), exculpatory evidence you share will be deemed inadmissible as “hearsay.”

Watch (or listen) to this video from Regent University School of Law if you want further explanation why it’s against your interests to talk with the police. The professor has quite a sense of humor and it’s entertaining as well as informative.

As for pointing fake guns at people late at night…it’s not the smartest idea.

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67 COMMENTS

  2. Please tell me the dead guy hasn’t spawned any kids. That level of stupid needs to be removed from the gene pool.

    (Insert tasteless joke about Floriduh Man here)

    • “(Insert tasteless joke about Floriduh Man here)”

      There’s always one smartass in every crowd… 🙂

    • jwm:

      I hope he hasn’t procreatedfir fiscal reasons ie. the monthly Social Security Survivors Benefit check all his sprogs will/would receive until they turn eighteen (18).

  4. Correction: pointing fake (or otherwise) guns at people at ANY time day OR night is not the smartest idea…

  6. Highly recommend watching even a part of the the Regent Law School video. VERY informative and actually entertaining as well.

    As far as the not-so-bright laddie that pulled a fake gun on an unsuspecting person (of which he had no idea was armed or not), the Darwin principle comes to mind…

  7. The “fakes” be it air-soft and pellet pistols are virtually indistinguishable from an actual firearm. Some pellet pistols are built on the same platform that a regular firearm is. Also, even if it is a pellet pistol, they are capable of inflicting serious injury and even death.

    I can speak for many of us, although not all because there are some idiots here, but if a person points ANYTHING that looks like a firearm at us, their futures is going to take a drastic turn and surviving it is dubious at best.

      • “… should precipitate your balls into shrinking, along with your presence. Now, fuck off”. *drinks Guinness*

        One of Guy Richie’s better movies, though I’m still partial to Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels.

    • Be the worst case of acne they ever had, right quick. “If you’re gonna pull it, you better use it.” Black Rain.

      • No pastrami ad haz ever shown on my screen.

        Haz no likey da pastrami anyway. Haz likey da turkey.

        • no such ad for me. But I very heavily ad block and haven’t tried with the ad blocking off.

        • Pop-up ads are unacceptable. As others mentioned and as I also do, I have strong blocking measures in place and NEVER have popup ads. Does it break sites and functionality at times, yes. In that event depending on what I’m trying to do, I either disable the blocking applications or use Edge or Brave which always works. Generally I have to do this when trying to enter information into fields and clicking “next” won’t function because its blocking new windows. Overall, that is a minor issue easily rectified. Sites I access often that are “safe” that exhibit that behavior are simply granted an exception. If it’s not a site I want to grant an exception to, I use an alternate browser that are set to clear everything on exit which clears cookies, data and browsing history.

        • “Add” is a verb and it applies to an action…a mental action, as in addition.

          “Ad” is a convenient truncated form of the word “advertisement” which is a noun.

          Those other participants in this discussion seem to be more informed than you.

          Did you get your elementary education overseas but not in America?

    • A badly designed ad takes over 90% of my screen on mobile, can’t dismiss it…. and they wonder why we install adblockers.

      Does anyone even test this stuff? I doubt the pastrami people meant to annoy everyone.

  10. This exact same thing has happened to quite a few cops over the years. Yet the cops are the bad guys in these cases.

    This is a lesson in what NOT to do in life.

  11. Nope, bottom half of screen a pastrami recipe.
    …..Good I was spending to much time dicking around on TTAG anyway. No need to tell me about add blocks.
    Adios Amigos

      • “See you on the double yellow, possum.”

        Or the single-yellow, or the no yellow…

        *Splitch* 😉

    • You don’t even need an adblocker possum, just a script blocker like NoScript or it’s equivalent.

      While I hate to step on anyone’s revenue stream, that at the expense of my privacy or security is unacceptable. Somewhere north of 85% malware is served up by ad servers, been the state of things for almost a decade and a half. Advert companies only care about the money, and do not scan for security threats making for rich pickings for hackers…

      @TTAG Staff

      Speaking of, 24 minutes to find an IP that isn’t being blocked by Cloudflare, this time. WTF guys? And the ONLY reason it’s doing so, is because of a feature set client side setting to block all traffic from certain browsers which as you can see, isn’t very effective.

      • I never have these issues, and I’m on the other side of the world using my phone and PC at different times of the day.

        • USA-based advertisers probably don’t care about those in “The Land Down Under”.

          (“Where women glow, and men plunder?” 😉 )

      • You using a VPN? I use PIA and it blocks most ads and I run ad and script blockers on top of that. Haven’t had issues with cloud flare either no matter the IP I get from the PIA VPN.

        • @.40

          Tor over some double or triple VPN of the high sec variety. No need in hiding that, most Tor IP’s are a known quantity, and exit node is the only IP ever seen.

          All that you do plus a bit more. Everything this browser spits is shape shifting ephemera, and changes frequently. Works everywhere where there is not a purposed Cloudflare Tor block set by the site owner, inclusive of all other Cloudflare protected sites without that setting enabled.

          All in an amnesiac VM treated as adversarial running in an encrypted protected memory space only. Nothing writes to disk. It can be seen that Tor in play, and that anything queried of the browser is full of shit by some specialists. But that is all they can tell…

          In consideration of the current pol climate, everyone on this side of the fence should be doing the same.

        • Found the source, Cloudflare itself is blocking everyone using browser identifier phreaking now, to an extent. If in the same family, even versioning independent, you may pass. Other than, hard block and infinitely loops on the “checking your connection” page.

          Apologies to TTAG for the assumption.

          Having said that, Cloudflare, through their Insights program has been sifting (spying on with canvas fingerprinting) your personal information for quite some time. They are no friend to your privacy. No big surprise they’d go a little farther into trying to pin down who is behind the machine.

  12. Several years ago on Halloween evening, and before I started to “home carry” every day:

    We were out of candy so we turned off our porch light. Something like an hour later, about five raucous and obviously goofy teenage boys came to our front door and yelled, “Trick-or-treat!”

    I opened the door and graciously told the boys that we were out of candy which is why our porch light was OFF. Undeterred, the boy in front started to run down a list of possible alternate treats, all of which I rejected. Finally–and his costume is supposed to be a police detective–he lifted up and pointed a handgun at me and asked if I had any money. Fortunately for him, I recognized him as a neighbor and was pretty certain that he was being a dumb teen with what had to be a toy/replica handgun–and was not actually trying to rob me. Needless to say, that could have turned out very poorly for him.

    My point is that people–especially boys and men–do some really dumb stuff sometimes. It sounds like the deceased man in this story did something very dumb which ultimately caused his unnecessary and untimely demise, as boys and men often do.

  14. We’ve had those fake gun guys here for a while. I almost shot one once. When I started drawing my very real gun and he saw it he dropped his fake gun then peed his pants, begged me not to shoot him, and then ran off. It was a replica, looked like the real thing. Cops found him a little ways away at the side of a business building using their water hose to wash his pants out.

    That was on a date with my then future wife. We were walking along and I saw him coming.

  15. Trolling MSM…. lol 🙂

    The claims about Pelosi’s hubby and his attacker being naked when the cops arrived allegedly isn’t true but the claim and others are being used to troll MSM who is spending a lot of time trying to debunk this and other claims. For example > https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fact-check-paul-pelosi-and-alleged-attacker-were-both-clothed-when-police-arrived/ar-AA13Fq6c?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=d2f7a6df6f9a46889e2b6d648fed1bba

    And it looks like Musk at Twitter is already having an effect > White House deletes tweet after Twitter adds ‘context’ note > https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/white-house-deletes-tweet-after-twitter-adds-context-note/ar-AA13FhpN?OCID=ansmsnnews11

    “The White House deleted a Twitter post on Wednesday touting an increase in Social Security benefits for seniors after the social media platform added a “context” note pointing out that the increase was tied to a 1972 law requiring automatic increases based on cost of living changes.”

    The democrat White House trying to take credit for a 1972 law implemented under a republican White House administration (Richard Nixon).

    • Just to note… Biden took credit for this increase as if he created it. Yet another deception played out among hundreds by Joe Biden. I don’t think the man can get through a single day without telling a lie.

        • No he didn’t. It was going to happen no matter who was president or inflation or not. Its just the amount, which was decided based, partially, upon the COLA needed due to the inflation and he didn’t even have anything to do with that as its automatically done no matter who is president.

        • Yes Braindead IS responsible for the COLA, the POLICIES of this POTUS is the reason for the escalation of INFLATION and the COLA.. As a 100% disabled Veteran AND a Social Security recipient I thank Brandon for the pay raise but look forward to the right leadership that puts us back where we were in 2020 so it means something.

  16. The guy in the last video in the article is an idiot. Hes going to show his audience how to carry concealed without a holster, which is a dumb and dangerous thing to do. He says, its not illegal. I don’t know about all states or the state where he lives but I do know about some states and where I live, and in these places it is illegal to carry a pistol concealed without it being in a holster and that includes ‘pocket pistols’ and ladies (and in today’s world I guess some guys too) can use a purse in lieu of a holster. Same applies for open carry when its not in your hands.

        • What, no Mexican carry? Ain’t that raciss?

          I was curious, so I “ducked” the phrases “holster mandate” and “holster requirement” and saw a lot of hits that said to check your local laws, with specific references only to Texas. Hmm. So I broke down and “googled” the same, with generally the same results. How many of you folks have a holster mandate in your area? Ohio doesn’t, that I’m aware of.

  17. Several years ago on Hall o ween evening, and before I started to “home carry” every day:

    We were out of candy so we turned off our porch light. Something like an hour later, about five raucous and obviously goofy teenage boys came to our front door and yelled, “Tr ick or tr eat!”

    I opened the door and graciously told the boys that we were out of candy which is why our porch light was OFF. Undeterred, the boy in front started to run down a list of possible alternate treats, all of which I rejected. Finally (his costume was supposed to be a police detective) he lifted up and pointed a handgun at me and asked if I had any money. Fortunately for him, I recognized him as a neighbor and was pretty certain that he was being a dumb teen with what had to be a toy/replica handgun–and was not actually trying to rob me. Needless to say, that could have turned out very poorly for him.

    My point is that people–especially boys and men–do some really dumb stuff sometimes. It sounds like the deceased man in this story did something very dumb which ultimately caused his unnecessary and untimely demise, as boys and men often do.

  18. Homeowner Legally Defends Their Home From Armed Burglar > https://concealednation.org/2022/11/homeowner-legally-defends-their-home-from-armed-burglar/

    “Washington was armed with a butchers knife when he attempted to break into a home. According to authorities, Washington attempted to enter the home but was confronted by the armed homeowner. The armed homeowner gave several warnings telling Washington to leave and that he was armed.

    Washington continued his attempt to enter the home, and it was at that point the homeowner shot and wounded Washington, who then fled from the house.”

  20. If you are involved in a defensive shooting you want to get your information to the police FIRST. Your statements set the bar and are THE truth until refuted.
    1. I shot to stop the threat
    2. I want to file a complaint against him and testify against him
    3. point out evidence
    4. point out witnesses
    5. I will continue answering questions after I talk to my lawyer
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIJ4wLP_0UM

    • “I shot to stop the threat”

      No, don’t say that. Its ambiguous and leads to looking closer and more questions later. Its possible to shoot to stop the threat but it not legally be self-defense even if it was justified to shoot.

      You want to say “I feared for my life.”

      • Never ever ever state a specific action you did, to the police when they roll up on scene.

        variations:

        I feared for my life.

        I feared for the lives of my family and myself.

        I feared for the life of that person. (If in defense of another)

        I feared for the lives of those others. (If in defense of others, for example, a robbery you happen to have walked into when you entered a store.)

        I feared for the lives or that person and myself.

        I feared for the lives of those others and myself.

        …. then shut up about what happend.

        Notice how you are last in the cases where there are others. Its a subtle thing that shows you were thinking of others too and not just yourself, in other words you were selflessly putting your life on the line to save others as your main motivation – a hero. How you say things maters too.

        • No! Never say you had fear. Fear is an emotion. A prosecutor will claim your fear is irrational due to racism, sexism, classism,xenophobia etc. You were faced with an imminent, credible, real threat to your life and those around you. That is the truth and now you will be dealing with actions and not feelings or emotions.

        • I’ve been through several of these, yes, you want to say “I feared for my life”.

          Of course fear is an emotion, its suppose to be. Its an emotion of natural instinct fight or flight. Fearing for your life is an action, its suppose to be, its an natural action of reacting to a threat. If you did not fear it would not be self-defense. Let an over-zelous or anti-gun prosecution claim anything they want, racism, sexism, classism,xenophobia etc., they are going to claim what they claim anyway no matter what you say. That’s why you have a lawyer so let your lawyer handle that.

          You never say a specific action that you took, period, to police when they roll up on scene. You don’t say “I shot to stop the threat” when police roll up.

          I have some personal experience with that. My very first DGU the cop asked me what happened and I said “I shot to stop the threat!”, almost yelling it at him because I was so stressed. That’s what I had been taught, that you shoot to stop the threat so that’s what I thought you were suppose to say. I was naive back then in the ways of DGU, I knew what I was suppose to do but no one had ever told me what to say when the cops roll up. But I was still smart enough not to say anything else when the cop said to me “then you weren’t in fear but thought he was a threat.” and that’s when they put the cuffs on me and took me to the police station.

          About an hour later my lawyer shows up and tells me “Do not ever say anything about the event its self but ‘I feared for my life’ when the cops arrive.” – and why? Because fearing for your life is the justification underpinning of justified self defense by DGU and “I shot to stop the threat” isn’t. You want to start controlling that justification with your very first words.

          “I shot to stop the threat” is an explanation of what you did not a justification. The justification (for your DGU) is because you feared the harm just like nature intended thus ‘I feared for my life’ and everything after that is to explain why you feared for your life and what you did to stop the threat.

        • And heck, even the various laws outlining justified self defense use the fear concept. For example “…reasonably feared great bodily harm or death…” (or similar, varies). In other words the law is telling you your justification is fear thus “I feared for my life”. Using the ‘fear’ word in justified legal DGU is not as you say, the law expects you to have been in fear if its justified legal DGU self defense and you had to shoot someone.

        • correction: “If you did not fear it would not be self-defense.”

          should have been …

          If you did not reasonably fear it would not be legal justified self-defense DGU.

          expansion clarification:

          The fear has to be ‘reasonable’ (in other words, genuine and natural) under the circumstances and not ‘manufactured’. Manufactured fear is easily discovered. Basically, in the practical mechanics; ‘reasonable’ is what is particular to a person for fear under the circumstances AND under law (for example, conditions outlined in law where deadly force of DGU can be applied). So basically and shortly, when those two things, that reasonable fear particular to a person under the circumstances AND whats reasonable under law come together you have ‘reasonable’ justified legal self-defense by DGU. And this is why you need to have a good lawyer on your side, its their job to put all this together and present it in a way that screams ‘justified legal self-defense’ so obviously or well that it can’t be denied no matter what the prosecution says otherwise. For example, this is what happened in the Rittenhouse case where the defense made it clear it was justified legal self-defense DGU and cut through all the prosecution rhetoric to reach the jury with that message – and it was for a fact legal justified (and naturally morally correct) self-defense DGU.

  22. multiple new piercings in the upper body which resulted in a premature death.

    I strongly disagree. That death was not premature at all. That fruitcake was ripe for the picking. To delay his demise for any reason would have been a great travesty.

    One at a time, they are being “neutralised”.

    Betchya he won’t ever do THAT again……..

  23. What get’s me is exactly WHY would anybody have a bloody replica when the real thing is so easy to get. We are not told what the motive was and neither are we told whether the two persons were known to each other
    If the driver DID not know the gun was a replica and if it had NOT BEEN a replica the chances are that the driver would BE DEAD.

    But here’s a thought. Was the driver brave or did he actually KNOW the gun was a replica? If he did know then he’s guilty of MURDER
    There do seem to be a few unanswered questions here that the opening comment has not addressed and I would have thought it wiser to have waited until some of them have been answered before commenting.

    • would have thought it wiser to have waited until some of them have been answered before commenting.

      Yet here YOU are, “commenting” like anyone really gives a damn what you think, that’s cute…

    • @Albert L J Hall

      Its a short article, its not suppose to be novel with rich character development and all the twists and turns laid out. But even so, you obviously didn’t comprehend what was written.

Comments are closed.