How have courts dealt with the issue of arming a person with a screwdriver?

Here, of course, defendant's arming had both a temporal and a facilitative nexus to his section 417.8 conviction, when he pointed a firearm at pursuing officers out of the rear window of the truck he was driving. Pointing a deadly weapon constitutes a "use" of the deadly weapon. (People v. Simons (1996) 42 Cal.App.4th 1100, 1111.)

In Simons, the defendant exhibited a screwdriver in a threatening way to avoid arrest and was convicted of violating section 417.8. On appeal he argued the trial court should have instructed the jury on misdemeanor resisting a peace officer ( 148) as a lesser offense. The appellate court disagreed, noting lawfulness of the police conduct is an element of section 148 but not section 417.8. (Id. at p. 1110.) And on the facts of the case there was no basis, other than an unexplainable rejection of prosecution evidence, on which the jury could find the offense to be less than that charged. (Id. at p. 1111.) "[T]he evidence demonstrated that defendant not only intended to use the screwdriver as a weapon but actually did use it as a weapon. One can certainly use a weapon without inflicting injury with it, by pointing a gun, for example. (People v. Chambers (1972) 7 Cal.3d 666, 672-673.) Defendant's repeated gesturing with the screwdriver, coupled

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