Ask Lemmy

That's all well and good but the prosecution in your case, and there will be a case, is definitely going to use the fact that you were shooting irresponsibly against you.

First of all as has been previously noted by another user, it has been used successfully to "prove" that the defendant didn't fear for their life and as a result people who were just defending themselves have wound up in prison for a long time.

Second, "aim for grazing shots" is dangerous, and is more likely to injure a bystander than putting an appropriate hollow point bullet into the thickest part of an attacker, center mass, where the bullet is more likely to be contained rather than exit (and if it exits, it will have dumped most of the kenetic energy into the target and broken up a bit, thus still safer.) Literally all training classes teach you to aim for center mass because of this, and the fact that you're more likely to actually hit than miss entirely, which is pretty important. Like Mel Gibson says in The Patriot when he and his kids ambush the british, "Aim small, miss small." It's a movie, but it's no less true, "chest bigger than head, hit to chest better than missing head." (In this case, "head" would be "graze," but that advice is so untethered from reality I'm not used to it, most people you have to tell this to are aiming for heads or feet, which it also applies to, so I'm used to instructing them rather than grazers.)

I suggest you take a bare minimum defensive pistol/rifle class before giving advice designed to get people killed or imprisoned, they can be very informative.

For anyone else reading his advice: PLEASE do not listen to that, look up the laws in your specific area and take basic safety and basic defensive courses, and practice until you have muscle memory.