Yeah, and a knife can kill just as well as a gun. Except it can’t. A medium build woman can break one’s skull with 2-3 swings of a skateboard, especially if it lands on the edge or on a sticking metal part. To achieve the same damage with fists, it would take years of training and would also cause a significant damage to one’s hands.
If hitting with just the right angle on a hard bit is good enough to count then half the things on my desk are deadly weapons. I can't get behind that definition.
Then don’t. You can continue denying common sense. But if someone threatens to assault you with a skateboard, bare hand or an item from your desk, then will intuitively discover the difference.
If you started using your desk items as a weapon and swung them at a person in a manner that could reliably kill them then the court would consider you to have a deadly weapon as well.
If you use an item in a manner that can reliably kill people then you use a deadly weapon even if it wasn't intended to be a deadly weapon. Is a pair of scissors a deadly weapon? Yes. Is a heavy hard blunt object (like a statue) a deadly weapon? Yes.
Well, noted I guess. I probably dismissed the idea in the wrong way then. Next time I'll just say "'deadly weapon' is a very low bar and doesn't mean much".
It's not productive to argue about definitions, even if they don't make sense to me. My intent wasn't a semantics argument.
The requirement is that you be in fear for your life or the life of another in your vicinity. Let's say you grabbed a Bic pen, and went for someone's neck with it: in this situation the courts would favor the persons right to self defense given the credible threat to their life. The same counts for something that is a risk to incapacitate them, because courts have historically favored the argument that what happens after you are disarmed or incapacitated could result in death.
I'm not saying it's right, I'm just offering my observations of precedent.
We don't have to argue about it, you can look at the Wisconsin law for it.
> “Dangerous weapon" means any firearm, whether loaded or unloaded; any device designed as a weapon and capable of producing death or great bodily harm; any ligature or other instrumentality used on the throat, neck, nose, or mouth of another person to impede, partially or completely, breathing or circulation of blood; any electric weapon, as defined in s. 941.295 (1c) (a); or any other device or instrumentality which, in the manner it is used or intended to be used, is calculated or likely to produce death or great bodily harm.
I would say a skateboard, wielded as a weapon, is likely to produce death or great bodily harm. Getting hit in the head with a skateboard even once seems likely to cause a concussion or maybe even internal bleeding.
You probably do have a good number of items that could be classified as deadly weapons on your desk, depending on how they were used.
