Originally Posted By FaygoJoe:
 Some states don't have a definition of brandishing so people there may get away with it.  

Originally Posted By Colt653:

if you’re inspired by stupid hollywood bullshit, you should stay in your mommy’s basement

Originally Posted By feudist:
No.
Ability, Opportunity and Jeopardy are not sequential events that are heading towards legal justification. AOJ is a set of simultaneous states that the perpetrator must present in order to justify deadly force.

He must have the Ability to kill or cripple you. Whether by his size, possession of a weapon or force of numbers he must be legitimately able, right now, to do grave bodily injury. A man who tells you, "I'm coming back with a gun and kill you" does not have the ability to do so right now.

At the same time he must have the Opportunity to use deadly force. Meaning that a man standing in the street waving a knife while you're in house behind a locked door is not an imminent threat. He may become one soon, but not yet. The lawful use of deadly Force is an emergency event. The time you have to react is critical. There must be so little time that you're only reasonable action is deadly force.

It is his actions that create Jeopardy. The mere fact of being approached by a stranger in a parking lot, or a man threatening you, or the sight of a gun holstered does not in themselves rise to the level of requiring deadly force.
He must act in such a way that a reasonable person would believe that he is about to commit a violent crime right now. That is what places you in Jeopardy.

The sum of his ability to kill or cripple plus his proximity(in time and space) enabling him to inflict it, plus his actions indicating that he is going to do it right now equals AOJ.

As far as deterring an attack by some level of brandishing it can be tricky in some places. If a sketchy looking dude with his hoody pulled low and his right hand shoved in his pants is beelining towards you at the gas pumps while he repeatedly looks around...some level of brandishing is not only appropriate, but necessary. It needn't involve drawing and pointing your weapon. Merely saying "Stop!" forcefully and lifting your shirt to reveal the butt of your pistol will cause 99% of robbers, beggars and con artists to do a 180 and disappear.
This is one of the serious tactical advantages of a pocket pistol. You can stand around in public with your hand on your gun, without causing any alarm-or sacrificing the total surprise of a counter ambush.

But the main thing that trips people up in all Civil uses of force is resorting to the gun over personal affronts instead of deadly physical threats.
Even liberal DAs rarely blink when a solid citizen is approached in the Walmart's parking lot by a career criminal with a rap sheet as long as a roll of Brawny paper towels who produces a weapon, announces a robbery and gets ventilated.

It's when said solid citizen gets into an argument with another solid citizen over beans in chili and decides to punctuate his point by drawing a pistol that eyebrows start climbing towards hairlines.

An escalating series of arguments and physical altercations between neighbors that leads to one shooting the unarmed other because he was "Trespassing" and the shooter chants "I Was In Fear For My LIfe(heh heh)" starts looking like the actions of an irresponsible man-child that thinks a gun lets him do what he wants.

The bottom line is that the legal and moral defensive use of a pistol isn't resorting to it when you get angry enough, or to "put the fear of God" into some asshole that cut you off in traffic, or to shut some Karen up. You might get away with it, but when The Man comes around...you have fucked around, and now you are going to find out.

Originally Posted By Cape_hunter:

Side note and now laughable moment from this whole thing was the 911 operator. After he stepped away and started back to his truck, I told my wife "If he gets out of his truck armed, go to the ditch and Ill take the gunfight across the hwy, away from you". The dispatcher then tells the responding officer, "the caller said he was going to "gunfight" across the hwy"..... he asked me what I said about a gunfight and chuckled when I told him. He said the dispatcher was all kinds of worked up over it.