This video has been around for a little while and you may have already seen it. It involves a man firing his gun in self defense from the front seat of his car while driving in Florida, and it provides us with many important lessons about self defense and road rage.
If we watch this video slowly we see several events transpire very quickly. Understanding these events is important for understanding how road rage unfolds, and why it’s easy to get caught up in a confrontation that doesn’t need to happen in the first place.
Our driver stated that initially he cut off the other driver. While we pretend that driving is a normal activity for us, the reality is that the human body did was not designed for highway speeds. When we in a car, we are moving through space much faster than our brains are designed to process. We have engineered cars, roads and rules in such a way to control this chaos, but when things start to go wrong, it is very normal for our brains to process immediately that we are in extreme danger. This recognition, even at a subconscious level, can trigger a response that can lead to drivers to overreact to the danger. Cutting someone else off is almost always a harmless mistake, but our brains don’t necessarily process it that way.
After cutting off the other driver, our shooter described the actions of the other driver. He said the other driver started to tailgate him. It’s common for drivers to have an aggressive response to the danger they were just in, and one way of demonstrating that aggression is to get physically closer to the other vehicle. Tailgating is not smart at all, but if we understand why people respond in this manner, we can take steps to deescalate. Unfortunately, tailgating tends to elicit the same aggressive response as cutting someone off. And our driver here admits to brake checking the other driver. Each driver continues to escalate instead of backing off.
At this point, our driver is feeling threatened enough that he pulls out his handgun. From the video, we can see that he isn’t waving it around to intimidate the other driver, he has it low and out of sight. This starts to change as the other driver pulls up beside him. The sequence of the next set of events makes it hard to tell what the driver intended, whether he was simply preparing to defend himself or if he was planning to wave or point the gun at the other driver has he passed. We can’t know because the other driver throws a water bottle at the vehicle as he passes.
The noise of the impact causes the driver to bring the gun up and wildly start pulling the trigger. His body language while firing seems to show a defensive posture, he’s slouching and pushing himself backwards. This would seem to lend some credibility to his statement that he believed he was being shot at. His reckless shots are not aimed and he endangers every other driver on the road while he believes he is defending his life.
This is a very good example of someone who hasn’t developed a responsible defensive mindset, has not trained, has not considered the risks of carrying a gun and has not developed a plan for self defense beyond simply carrying the gun in his vehicle. It’s also a good example of how small events on the road can quickly escalate to life and death fights.
If you carry a gun for self defense, you carry an immense responsibility to be a better person. You carry the ability to end someone’s life. That responsibility doesn’t go away if you ignore it. It’s always present. The question is, will you take it seriously?
In Self Defense, luck is always an element. But it could be good luck, or bad luck. Luck counts, but luck is not a plan.
In this self defense example, our good guy is minding his own business when the attacker picks him as a victim. Our good guy complies with his attacker until an opportunity to act presents itself as the bad guy allows himself to become distracted and take his eyes off his victim for several seconds.
Our good guy demonstrates an important principle in self defense. If you’re going to act, no half measures. He aggressively and quickly attempts a disarm of his attacker. It works surprisingly well and the good guy gains quick control of the gun. He immediately gets the gun into a shooting grip and fires multiple rounds.
If I was an aggressive prosecutor I may try to show that the good guy acted excessively by shooting our now unarmed bad guy multiple times as he tried to flee. As a defense attorney, I would make the argument that the bad guy had an accomplice and the good guy had no idea how far either of these two men were willing to take this fight. Our good guy acted decisively and almost all of his aggressive actions took place in less than 2 seconds. His final act was to physically strike the bad guy with the gun. Here is where the luck starts.
As he strikes the attacker with the gun, it goes off and the round fired travels through the glass door into the shoulder of the second attacker who was waiting outside. The odds of this wild sequence of events have got to be astronomical.
After it became clear that the bad guy had no more fight left in him, the good guy stopped attacking. After the attacker managed to burst through the shattered door and leave, the good guy made no attempt to pursue him. Legally this is a very advisable decision given these circumstances. We also see in the video that the first thing the good guy does after the threat runs out the door is to try to get a full assessment of what is happening outside the store. We can see him looking through the tinted window.
Violence is ugly and it is something that many people shy away from. But when it is required to resist evil, it is best when it is fast, aggressive and as coordinated as possible. This good guy did a fantastic job of defending himself.
This attack demonstrates many of the principles we talk about in our Free Concealed Carry Classes, and the principles that we train around in our Defensive Shooting courses. We have a responsibility to be as prepared as possible if we carry life and death tools on us.
Last week, we sent an email discussing common legal myths in the self defense world. This week we’re focused on a video of a crazy fight at a gas station in robbery.
The following is video of a fight that took place at a gas station and this video does a fantastic job demonstrating a range of truths about dynamic critical incidents.
Notice first the victim profile of the group of guys. Think about this to yourself, would you expect a group of young men to be targeted by a single attacker? Yes there is probably a lower probability than a single person of less ability but you are not guaranteed to not be targeted just because you are young, capable, male, or in a group.
Next we notice the awareness level of our group. No one was really paying attention to the surroundings, and this ends up putting everyone on their heels when confronted with the threat. Our bad guy gets very close to the victims before they even realize they are in trouble.
The bad guy holds the initiative as he starts trying to take items from the victims and this is where things start going badly for the bad guy. SOME of our good guys decide to try to disarm the bad guy. Even though the bad guy is outnumbered, the act of disarming the threat is by no means easy at all. A prolonged fight ensues for control of the gun. Notice that at least one of the victims refuses to get involved in the fight at all. He is completely useless to his friends. In fact he’s not even paying attention to anything other than the fight. He’s in a freeze response, even though he’s mobile.
As the fight continues on the ground, the bad guy’s partner rushes from the getaway car and joins the fight. This fight went from 3 vs. 1 to 3 vs. 2 very quickly and the balance of the fight changes. Thanks to outnumbering the bad guy, as well as the ferocity that our good guys fought with, our good guys were able to wrestle the gun away from the bad guy. Fortunately our good guys did manage to get not just the gun, but also get and maintain the distance needed to use that gun to threaten violence enough to end the physical fight.
Our good guys have now taken the gun and gained the initiative in the fight but they don’t really know what to do next. In fact, the bad guys don’t seem to know what to do either. An argument ensues and the good guy who now possesses the gun has to point the gun at the bad guy a couple more times to ward off another fight. One of our good guys finally decides to call 911.
Much of what is going on after the immediate hands on fight is over relates to situational awareness. Our good guys need to maintain their position of advantage, which in this case is distance. They need to contact people who can help them, in this case calling the police. Notice that our freeze guy still has not done anything to engage in the fight or in the aftermath.
This attack demonstrates many of the principles we talk about in our Free Concealed Carry Classes, and the principles that we train around in our Defensive Shooting courses. We have a responsibility to be as prepared as possible if we carry life and death tools on us.
Even though the bad guy is outnumbered, the act of disarming the threat is by no means easy at all. A prolonged fight ensues for control of the gun.
I strongly encourage you to take the chance to train for actual defensive scenarios. More training and education is always the best answer to these tough questions. Join us for an upcoming class and build the skills that may save your life!
A few months ago we posted an article about some self defense myths. We’re going to cover a few more, specifically myths related to ammunition.
Since the dawn of web 2.0, the gun world has seen a very important shift away from folklore (or Fuddlore if you prefer) and to fact based education around guns. But after 10 years of Free Concealed Carry Classes, we have encountered a lot of people who still believe things about guns that are not based on fact, or are grossly misunderstood. Today we’re going to attack a few of those myths.
Myth 1: Carrying a bigger caliber is the best way to ensure that you will stop the threat.
The first thing to address about caliber is that in general, handguns are pretty terrible at stopping threats, IF you compare them to rifles and shotguns. Handgun rounds are moving much slower than rifle calibers and the differences in damage between handguns and rifles are drastic. The true differences in performance between common handgun calibers are very small. Data clearly shows this. For instance, more than 80% of people shot with 1 round of handgun ammunition survive. For those shot with a rifle caliber (excluding .22lr), the survival rate after 1 round drops to just over 60%.
We carry handguns because they are efficient. It’s impractical to carry a rifle everywhere. A handgun is an acceptable trade off to meet my self defense needs. The way to maximize the effectiveness of a handgun against a threat is to put multiple rounds into the vital areas of a bad guy. One round of .357 is never going to do as much damage as 3 rounds of 9mm. For most people, a smaller but adequate round is a better choice than a bigger, harder to control caliber. There are some genetic freaks out there who can shoot a large caliber just as fast as something like a 9mm, but most people cannot.
In a self defense fight, efficiency is extremely important. Being able to shoot fast AND accurate improves your chances of stopping the threat with multiple rounds landing in vital areas. This is one of the reasons that most industry professionals choose 9mm as their primary handgun round.
Myth 2: I carry a .22 because it will ricochet inside the body.
This is the kind of myth that makes me laugh when I hear it. One common source for this myth is mafia movies. It is true that a .22 is less likely to penetrate all the way through a person but there is no factual evidence to support that it ‘ricochets’ around inside the body like a pinball. When a bullet hits a body, it immediately starts to deform and in many cases begins to fragment into smaller pieces depending on what it hits. These fragments can change direction but bullets do not carry enough energy to “bounce around” inside a body and the body is not strong enough to contain the kind of energy that would be needed to accomplish this.
Bullets are extremely unpredictable once they start hitting flesh and bone and there are plenty of examples of strange ballistic behavior. But the myth of the ricocheting .22 is no reason to carry this caliber or to believe that it is somehow more deadly based on this mythical behavior.
…if you watch videos of people being shot in the real world it may be easy to mistake human reactions to being shot for “knockdown power”.
Myth 3: “Knockdown power”
This myth is related to the one above. I blame a lack of education about physics and also a lack of critical thinking for this myth. Handgun bullets (or rifle bullets for that matter) lack the energy to knock anyone down. How do we know this? A basic understanding of force tells us that whatever energy pushes an object away exerts the same amount of force in the opposite direction. For a bullet to knock someone down, the person who fired the round would also have to be knocked down.
This myth is common in movies but if you watch videos of people being shot in the real world it may be easy to mistake human reactions to being shot for “knockdown power”. When we see a video of someone falling down after being shot, there is one of two reasons for this. The first is a physical reaction to the trauma to certain organs, the second is a psychological reaction to being shot.
A physical reaction comes from major damage to the brain, the spinal column, or any part of the body responsible for keeping us upright including the leg bones, pelvis or spine. When there is damage to these body parts, the body loses the ability to stay upright. Sometimes the damage is severe enough to shut down all control and a body will fall quite dramatically as a consequence. Depending on where the person’s balance is in that moment, that may result in that person falling backwards. This is not the energy of the bullet blowing them backwards, it’s a loss of control of the body and gravity doing it’s work.
A psychological reaction is less predictable and includes the person mentally processing that they have been shot or shot at, and responding by falling to the ground. There is extensive study on this topic including why falling happens to be one of the possible reactions. But what is clear is that the reason for the fall is the brain sending signals to the body to fall to the ground, not the energy of the fired round moving the human body.
These are a few of the common myths we hear in our classes. There are many more and we will continue to address them in the future. Part of understanding self defense is dispelling myths like these so that we understand our tools and tactics better. You can learn more at our classes by visiting our website at www.concealedcarryforfree.com.
This week we’re going to look at some legal myths that are common in the Concealed Carry world.
Edgar and I have had nearly 100,000 students come through our Free Concealed Carry Classes, and we have heard every variation of these myths when students ask questions. Today we are going to tackle these common myths.
Myth 1 – Warning Shots are ok when you think it might work to scare away an attacker.
While it is true that some bad guys may be deterred by a warning shot, it is in fact not lawful to use warning shots against an attacker in Colorado. Using a firearm in a threatening manner, or even threatening the use of deadly force when you don’t even have a gun, is only lawful when the attacker has presented an imminent threat of death, serious bodily injury, kidnapping or sexual assault. A lesser threat does not justify introducing deadly force into the encounter. And warning shots are still considered deadly force under the law.
In addition to that, while you might think bad guys are stupid for attacking someone who has pulled a gun, you’d be surprised how motivated an attacker can be. We do not shoot to scare the threat, we shoot to stop the threat. In a dynamic critical incident, the best place to shoot in order to stop the threat tends to be in the high center chest or the head. Yes, it is possible the bad guy may die, and the more you shoot them the higher that likelihood that it will result in the death of the bad guy. This is why it is so critical to develop other skills and tools. The firearm is the last resort, in part because of the high potential of death to the attacker.
Myth 2 – Castle Law protects me legally if I shoot anyone in my home.
While it is true that in Colorado the Defense Against Intruders law (C.R.S. 18-1-704.5) does provide that deadly force is justified against a lower level of threat inside the home than outside the home, there is still nuance to that.
The Defense Against Intruder law in Colorado (commonly referred to as Castle Law) says that lethal force is justified when three factors are present:
Unlawful Entry into a dwelling, and
Reason to believe a crime has been committed, is being committed or is about to be committed on top of the unlawful entry, and
Reason to fear for the safety of the occupants of the dwelling from any threat by the intruder, no matter how slight.
The most notable part of the law in this myth is the unlawful entry. The bad guy can’t be a family member who is allowed to be in the dwelling, it can’t be an invited guest, it can’t be someone who had permission to be there. Now we must state that the occupants still have the right to defend themselves from a deadly threat, no matter where it happens. But the lower threshold of threat that castle law provides for only applies to intruders.
There are other myths about castle law that we will cover in the future. But for now, we will move on to other myths.
Myth 3 – If you shoot someone, you better kill them because if you don’t they will sue you, testify against you, etc.
We shoot to stop a threat, period. Morally and legally this is the only justified use of deadly force. Once the threat stops being a threat, deadly force is no longer legally defensible. That’s the short answer.
The longer answer involves a small mountain of contextual information about the tactics of shooting an attacker, physiology, psychology, ballistics, criminal and civil law and more. But I will attempt a simple summary. Shooting someone tends to cause life threatening wounds and many people who are shot die. It’s a common outcome. But a surprising number of people who are shot, especially with handguns, do survive. Most of them stop fighting once they have been shot. If your goal is to save the lives of yourself and your loved ones, then once the bad guys stops fighting you have accomplished your goal.
The hard reality is that the legal fallout from a defensive shooting will ALWAYS be unpredictable and fraught with legal and civil peril.
If that bad guy survives, it is absolutely true that he may testify against you, sue you, or otherwise make your life miserable. That is the reality of the world we live in. It’s better than you being dead. This is one of the reasons it is critical to have a legal plan in place if you keep a gun for self defense. The hard reality is that the legal fallout from a defensive shooting will ALWAYS be unpredictable and fraught with legal and civil peril. Ensuring that the bad guy doesn’t survive by putting a couple extra rounds into him has just as much a likelihood of landing you in legal trouble as him surviving and testifying against you. You don’t win just because he’s dead.
Another real complication is that in A GREAT MANY CASES, the good guy may not mentally process that the threat has stopped in time to stop shooting. Good guys are likely to fire more rounds than absolutely necessary. Even though it is a normal neuro-physiological response to the stress, a prosecutor may very well use that against you in court. This is another reason I emphasize that the legal aftermath is so unpredictable.
These are just a few legal myths when it comes to deadly force, and there are more. I strongly encourage you to take the chance to train for actual defensive scenarios. More training and education is always the best answer to these tough questions. Join us for an upcoming class and build the skills that may save your life!
