When is lethal force justified in an arson attack?
The following is a news story out of Florida (of course) where an unknown attacker threw two molotov cocktails at an occupied dwelling.
FORT PIERCE, Fla. (CNN) – A man was caught on camera throwing Molotov cocktails at a house, according to police.
It happened on Sunday in Fort Pierce, Florida.
In the video, a man is seen running up to the window of a house and throwing something inside. Flames were then seen starting to shoot out of the window.
Police reported the object was a Molotov cocktail.
In Colorado, lethal force is justified to defend a person who is in imminent threat of death, serious bodily injury, kidnapping or sexual assault.
(2)Deadly physical force may be used only if a person reasonably believes a lesser degree of force is inadequate and:
(a)The actor has reasonable ground to believe, and does believe, that he or another person is in imminent danger of being killed or of receiving great bodily injury; or
…
(c)The other person is committing or reasonably appears about to commit kidnapping as defined in section 18-3-301 or 18-3-302, robbery as defined in section 18-4-301 or 18-4-302, sexual assault as set forth in section 18-3-402, or in section 18-3-403 as it existed prior to July 1, 2000, or assault as defined in sections 18-3-202 and 18-3-203.
Deadly force is also justified to prevent first degree arson.
A person in possession or control of any building, realty, or other premises, or a person who is licensed or privileged to be thereon, is justified in using reasonable and appropriate physical force upon another person when and to the extent that it is reasonably necessary to prevent or terminate what he reasonably believes to be the commission or attempted commission of an unlawful trespass by the other person in or upon the building, realty, or premises. However, he may use deadly force only in defense of himself or another as described in section 18-1-704, or when he reasonably believes it necessary to prevent what he reasonably believes to be an attempt by the trespasser to commit first degree arson.
Obviously this is not a usual case, but it’s important to test your knowledge and understanding of the laws of your state if you consider yourself a protector.
Colorado Bureau of Investigation Authority to Investigate Firearms Crimes
Concerning the authority of the Colorado bureau of investigation to investigate illegal activity involving firearms, and, in connection therewith, making an appropriation.
When we see students come through our classes, we know from experience that most of them will not continue to train with their guns and self defense skills. It’s an unfortunate reality and it tends to be for very important reasons: Time and Money. These two factors are hard to argue with.
I want to acknowledge these hurdles. I have my own budget and schedule that can get in the way of training. What I tell students in the class is that we need to remember the high stakes of what we are preparing for, and to encourage them to find a balance for themselves between their competing priorities and their need to be ready for a self defense incident.
How much is training is enough? Obviously there’s always more to learn. But a reasonable amount of training for most people is at least one live fire defensive handgun class a year. That is manageable for most people. Yes it’s time consuming and expensive, but remember what motivated you to take responsibility for your safety in the first place. You understand the high stakes, the training should follow. Ongoing education can and should augment the training. Fortunately great education is widely and easily available these days.Your preparation for self defense is a journey, not a single destination.
I saw an amazing Instagram post the other day and yet at the same time, it’s not that amazing at all.
The story behind this photo is that a woman was shot in the chest, and the bullet was stopped by her implant.
When people discuss the merits of different pistol calibers, one of the common fallacies that is overlooked is how inefficient handgun calibers are. Most people don’t realize how well protected the heart, lungs, arteries and spine are by things like skin, muscle, rib structure, or in this case, added parts. The more I study ballistics and injuries and outcomes of shootings, the less I am surprised when I read something like the above story.
Handgun rounds are not very powerful, given the wide range of performance of different types of guns and calibers. When we choose a handgun for self defense, we are giving up a lot of the power that we would want in a firearm. We chose the handgun because it is convenient to carry. But there are no reasonable handgun calibers that reliably cause the kind of damage that we would want to stop an attacker in his/her tracks. For that kind of performance, we would be much better off with a rifle.
The other thing that we need to pay attention to when discussing handgun calibers is how they perform in the moment. If the bad guy dies eventually from his wounds, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the handgun round had the desired effect. Our goal when we shoot someone in self defense is to IMMEDIATELY stop the behavior that put our life in danger. It turns out that handguns kinda suck at this. There is a mountain of video evidence to support this across ALL commonly carried handgun calibers.
What turns out to be the most important factors when it comes to the performance of handguns against threats is location of the round and how many rounds find their way into the target. Skill is an important element of this and this is why we emphasize training and practice. So when choosing a handgun caliber, we want something that is easy to practice with.
Between price, availability, shoot-ability, number of rounds that can be carried in the gun and ultimately performance of the round in self defense, the round that tends to check these boxes for most people is 9mm. This is why we suggest this round for almost anyone who intends to carry or stage a handgun for self defense. There are benefits to other calibers in theory, but in practice, 9mm wins.
In our Law Focused Free Concealed Carry classes we spend time talking about what motivates Prosecutors, District Attorneys and the rest of the Criminal Justice System to file charges in self defense cases. Most people look at that decision as being decided on moral grounds. The truth is, it’s a simple practical decision, for the most part.
The chances of charges depend on the chances of a conviction. In this news report out of San Francisco in which a security guard fired in self defense, the local news reports exactly what the District Attorney said about criminal charges.
The lesson we take from examples like this is simple: a case that is not likely to get a conviction is a case that is less likely to get charged. The legal outcome is pragmatic and also highly dependent on the circumstances. You cannot predict the circumstances under which you will need to defend yourself. It’s your job to win the fight, and it’s your job to be prepared for the legal fight afterwards. Making yourself hard to convict makes you less of a target for a DA. Don’t gamble with your legal outcome, have a plan.
While everyone generally agrees that we as human beings have a right to self defense, what most people either ignore or don’t understand is that we also have a responsibility to defend ourselves. People have died to protect your rights, but with that equation comes the truth that those some people died so that you could uphold your responsibility to self defense.
That is an enormous burden to bear and adults should be aware of this responsibility to protect themselves. That burden also extends to our children, who cannot reasonably be expected to protect themselves until they reach an age of maturity to take on that responsibility for themselves. We as parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, teachers, and caretakers take on this responsibility when we accept the care of children.
On Father’s day in Wilson’s Mills, North Carolina, a father was put in the position where he had to do exactly that. A 23-year-old man approached an 11 year old girl who was playing with other children in the yard of their home. When the children ran to the house to alert the parents, the man followed the kids and tried to enter the home. The father of the 11-year-old retrieved a firearm and shot the attacker, killing him.
Those are the facts as reported by local news outlets. But if we take a moment to picture the scene, the story can be quite unnerving. It was late evening on Father’s Day and there were probably celebrations that might have been winding down. Children, maybe siblings, cousins or friends are enjoying a warm summer night and playing in the relative safety of the yard. The parents are inside, probably cleaning up and thinking about getting the kids inside.
Out of nowhere an unknown young man appears and approaches these kids who are vulnerable. The kids somehow have the sense to know that this man is bad news and that they need to go inside the house to get help from mom and dad. Not only do they run inside in fear, but this attacker follows them and starts aggressively trying to get through the door. The kids must have been absolutely terrified at this unfolding nightmare.
Dad hears the commotion, and the kids inform him that something terrible is happening. He must make a series of life and death split-second decisions. Are these kids telling the truth or are they misinterpreting the situation? Where is the problem? Maybe he had to ask himself if he should arm himself, or maybe he already had his firearm on him. Is this really happening right now? Whatever thoughts ran through his head, the situtation turned out to be a nightmare scenario as Dad finally made the decision to shoot this attacker who tried to accost his daughter. The stakes could not be higher.
This dad is a hero, and his daughter will never forget that her dad was there to protect her. Dad will know that he did what he had to do to keep these children safe from evil. But he’s going to carry this event with him for the rest of his life.
When we take on the responsibility to protect ourselves and our children, we must take that seriously. The consequences are extreme in any direction, and ultimately, we hope this never happens to us. But it’s our job to be as ready as we can be.
Get trained, educate yourself, build your skills, think and act defensively. Make yourself harder to attack. You have a moral responsibility to be as prepared as is reasonable to defend yourself.
The media is never going to tell you this but good guys and ladies stop bad guys EVERY DAY in this country with legally owned and carried firearms.
This week I found an article written by Crimeresearch.org, documenting 30 such instances in just the month of April, 2023. I strongly encourage you to visit the link and read each story. I am going to use this space to highlight a few of the most outstanding incidents based on the information provided.
Arapahoe County, Colorado, April 6, 2023 (CBS News)
A 31-year-old man was fatally shot Thursday by a Glendale pawn shop employee during an apparent robbery attempt. The alleged robber was on parole.
A caller from the pawn shop called 9-1-1 late Thursday morning to report the incident. Deputies from the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office found a man dead inside the Top Colorado Pawn Shop at 8030 E. Mississippi Avenue.
Based on preliminary evidence, the man who died was trying to rob the store, according to an ACSO spokesman…
“He came in with the gun all ready, three seconds and he had it out, pointed it at one sales person, then pointed it at another sales person,” Anisov said. “The scary part is, he had no mask. Who knows, he might want to kill everybody.”
New details have emerged from Coeur d’Alene police regarding last week’s shooting at the Silver Lake Plaza parking lot between a man allegedly stealing from cars and an older man who confronted him with a gun…
Hagar says Dean and his wife were walking back to their truck in the Michael’s parking lot when they noticed Brown, who appeared to be robbing their truck. Dean drew a gun on Brown before the suspect ran back to the car he arrived in.
Police say Dean put his gun away, thinking the standoff was over. Soon after, Brown accelerated quickly towards Dean, who was hit and lifted onto the roof of the car.
Fort Worth, Texas, April 12, 2023 (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
A man was shot outside of a store in Fort Worth on Wednesday after he tried to steal a woman’s truck with a passenger inside, according to the Fort Worth Police Department.
On Wednesday at about 5:30 p.m., police were dispatched to the 4700 block of Benbrook Highway about a robbery.
A man was acting suspiciously inside a local business, according to police.
He was told to leave by an employee and went outside. The man got into a customer’s pickup truck that had the engine on. An adult passenger was sitting in the back of the vehicle, police told the Star-Telegram.
The passenger asked him what he was doing and the man stated he was going to take the truck, according to police.
Multiple suspects and an innocent bystander were injured during a robbery that turned into a shooting at a gas station near the South Loop Thursday night.
The incident took place at the Circle K Valero convenience store at around 8:09 p.m. in the 8000 block of S Loop near Broadway.
According to Houston police, five suspects between the ages of 15-18 arrived at the gas station and four entered the building while the other person remained behind the wheel.
Houston police officers say the four suspects who entered the store with face masks on began demanding customers’ belongings at gunpoint.
That’s when a 22-year-old customer inside the store pulled out his own firearm and began shooting at the suspects. The customer wasn’t injured in the incident, police said.
You cannot rely on the media to bring important information about self defense. It’s important to develop your resources for learning more about self defense, legal risk, statistics and true stories of self defense. Resources we recommend include Personal Defense Network, Firearms Legal Protection, our Free Concealed Carry Classes. You should add CrimeResearch.org to that list as well. These stories also underline why it’s so important to have medical training and skills in the event of an attack. We are excited to be hosting “Stop The Bleed” courses which are essential and FREE classes that will start you on the path of learning these life saving skills.
Get trained, educate yourself, build your skills, think and act defensively. Make yourself harder to attack. You have a moral responsibility to be as prepared as is reasonable to defend yourself.
A little over a month ago, a Denver area man had his car stolen at the Northfield shopping center. He tracked his car down using an app and when he located it, he approached the car to confront the thieves. At least one person in the car shot at him and he immediately returned fire. The car took off and was found a few blocks away, the driver was dead. The driver was 12 year old Elias Armstrong.
Two weeks later, a Pueblo resident was leaving her house to walk to her car when she was ambushed by 4 armed juveniles. When she turned to go back into the house in an attempt to get to safety, she was shot twice in the back by a 12 year old boy. The assailants have been caught and charging decisions are being made.
When the story about Elias Armstrong’s death hit the news, there was a general outcry from some about the killing of a 12 year old boy by a grown man who was trying to get his stolen car back. The story reached national news. The boy’s pictures were used to show the public that this child did not need to be killed.
The story about Chanise Sena being shot twice in the back by a 12 year old boy has received very little attention, even in the city where the incident happened.
The lesson that we should be taking from these two incidents are important. The first lesson is that you are risking a great deal when you voluntarily enter a potential life and death situation. In the case of the car theft, the victim risked his life, his criminal future and his future financial stability. The family of Armstrong has indicated that they intend to file a lawsuit against the defender when they can identify him. This civil suit is likely to go on for a very long time once it starts. And because it was a 12 year old boy who was killed, he will have an uphill battle. He will also be living with the fact that he killed a 12 year old boy for the rest of his life. In the moment where this man was being shot at, it is reasonable that he defend himself and return fire provided that he is prepared to do so. But the question he’ll probably be asking himself for a long time will be, “was it all worth it to try to get my car back?”.
The other lesson we should be taking from these two incidents is that threats can come from anywhere. We have a moral responsibility to be as prepared as is reasonable in our daily lives. Chanise Sena stated that she didn’t take the boys seriously when they first ambushed her, she didn’t believe that a group of young boys was serious about the threats they were presenting her with. I’m not encouraging you to treat everyone as a threat, but rather to not take the world around you for granted and assume that the world reflects your expectations and values.
Chanise was not armed and had very few options to respond to this extremely dangerous threat, but if she had been armed it would have been reasonable for her to respond with lethal force. Chanise did not create this situation, she was in a place where it was normal for her to be, doing things she normally does when the threat literally came to her doorstep.
We carry guns in case we are forced into a position where we have to defend our lives or the lives of others. We should be prepared to do that against anyone who presents that kind of threat, whether it be a group of hardened criminals or a 12 year old boy with a gun who is shooting at you. We only shoot when we have to, because the risks of using a gun in self defense are extreme.
Get trained, educate yourself, build your skills, think and act defensively. Make yourself harder to attack. You have a moral responsibility to be as prepared as is reasonable to defend yourself.
Police said a Walgreens employee was notified by another employee that two women were stealing items from the store. The employee told police he saw the women putting items into a store cart and into a large over-the-shoulder bag. The employee said he began recording the women with his cell phone and followed them as they left the store without paying for the items.
According to investigators, the employee said as the women began putting items into the trunk of their car, he made his way to the back of the car. That’s when one of the women reportedly pulled a can of mace and began spraying at him.
The employee then pulled his semi-automatic pistol and began shooting, saying he was afraid and did not know if either of the women were armed. The women then fled in their car while the employee went back into the store and called 911, according to police.
It’s very likely that this employee had no intention of shooting either of these women who were stealing from his employer. But when you are carrying a gun around, every conflict includes the risk that the gun will become involved. This requires that you think ahead about your actions and seriously consider what you’re willing to risk and why.
This man’s self defense case is now going to include that he shot a pregnant woman who was forced to deliver the baby prematurely through emergency surgery, putting both the mother and child at risk. Many people are frustrated with issues like shoplifting, but this man now has a very long and very difficult criminal battle ahead of him, not to mention the likely civil action he will face. He is not only facing the legal consequences, but this man is almost definitely no longer going to be employed by Walgreens.
Carrying a firearm carries certain risks, and these risks are potentially life changing. The benefits of carrying and using the firearm should always clearly outweigh the risks. In this case, they certainly did not.
Get trained, educate yourself, build your skills, and think before you act. Remember what is at risk when a gun is involved.
In December of last year, I was in Reno for the IDS Instructor Development course. Edgar and I rented an AirBnB for the instructor candidates, one of which was from Jalisco, Mexico. His name was Angel, and when we arrived at the AirBnB he was very surprised that the house we were staying in did not have a wall around it. He couldn’t believe that the front door of this house led straight into the living room.
American’s live in a peaceful society. You can argue if you want, but I’ve been to plenty of other parts of the world where having a wall around your dwelling is not only a good idea, it’s practically a requirement. Angel illustrated that with his disbelief that anyone would live in a house without more layers of security. In the US, finding a house with a wall around it is unusual in most areas. This is a reflection of the threat level that we live in. If walls were necessary, we would build them.
Yet even though we live in a peaceful society that doesn’t mean that plenty of bad things don’t happen. Our normal experiences can lead us into a false sense of security and lead to behaviors that are welcoming to a bad guy who wants to victimize us. In addition to making it easy for a bad guy to select us for an attack, we also in many ways lack the mindset to respond to a threat once it’s been presented.
In the following video, we are going to see all of these points illustrated. This video comes to us from Houston, Texas where a 72 year old woman and her 75 year old husband are robbed at gunpoint. The woman in this video is horrified and panicked at the sight of a gun in her face, and when her husband responds to her screams, he has no plan for self defense. They both left in a position to only try to negotiate with the criminal who holds the power of life and death over them.
We can see from the video the woman has little time to react. Even if she had seen him coming from further away, the bad guy is faster than she is. But once she does recognize the threat, she is essentially paralyzed into inaction. This kind of reaction is due in part to not mentally preparing yourself for this kind of situation. I wrote an article in our newspaper, the Guns For Everyone Gazette, last month about mental repetitions and why they are important.
The husband responds to the screaming and comes out to check on what is going on. He has a counter ambush opportunity as he comes outside as we can see the bad guy is not aware of his presence until he speaks. But instead of having the tools and skills needed to deal with the threat to his wife, all he is left with is his voice. Communication is a powerful skill in self defense but in this scenario, a gun would have been better.
What we see in this video is two people who don’t seem to have anything resembling a defensive mindset. This is the “it wouldn’t happen here” mindset, and it leaves them wholly unprepared.
Get trained, educate yourself, build your skills, think and act defensively. Make yourself harder to attack. You have a moral responsibility to be as prepared as is reasonable to defend yourself.
Multiple news outlets and organizations in Colorado are now reporting that the Assault Weapons Ban that was intended to be introduced in the Legislature is not going forward. Until the legislative season is over, I’m still leaving the possibility open that it could be resurrected but it seems for now, the immediate threat of this bill is over.
While I wholeheartedly cheer the grassroots work done in this state the likely led the legislature to change course, the fact remains that gun control is expanding in this state. The fight is not even close to over and we are still ‘on the ropes’. Every gun control bill that does pass in this state makes it easier to pass more. The momentum is going firmly in the wrong direction.
The Colorado legislature passed multiple bills in the last few weeks, including expanding red flag laws, raising the age of purchasing a rifle or shotgun to 21, and allowing firearm dealers to be sued by the victims of violent crimes in which a gun they sold was used. That last one has the potential to effectively shut down firearm dealers across the state. A plaintiff doesn’t even need to win a lawsuit in order to put a gun store out of business. Lawsuits are expensive to fight and time consuming. It’s very possible that even one lawsuit could be enough to put a gun dealer out of business, a point I made in an interview on Fox21 this week.
These new laws will go into effect in this state soon, and if we want to fight against them, we will be left with the courts. I encourage you to support Rocky Mountain Gun Owners to fight these suits in court. But Colorado will gain national attention for passing more “gun reform” and will give Colorado the reputation as being a gun control state. That will embolden the lobbyists sending money into this state to pass more gun control in the future.
We have another problem as well, gun violence will continue to rise in this state, perhaps even sharply. We are already seeing headlines in this state that look like they came from Chicago, “12 people shot in Denver area this weekend” is becoming more normal. The rise in gun violence in the state will continue to give the media and the legislators the momentum they want in order to push gun laws, including an assault weapons ban. And I hate to say it, but I have no doubt that Colorado will see more mass shootings in the future. These high profile tragedies will apply the same pressure.
The groundwork for fighting against these laws needs to be done constantly, not just when there is an emergency. We need to show that gun laws are not popular here, and when they are passed they will be fought against fiercely. Colorado gun owners need to get their act together and join the fight. In the strongest possible words, I urge you to get engaged. Your state needs your time, energy, money, and effort. There are a lot of ways to do it, but the quickest and perhaps most efficient way to get started is to work with Rocky Mountain Gun Owners. They make it easy to contact lawmakers, join petitions, fight lawsuits, and other ways that are proven to work. But don’t let another day go by before you get involved. It’s time.
One question that we get all the time in our Free Concealed Carry Classes is “What is the definition of concealed under Colorado law.”
Its an important question asked by people who are conscious about following the law. But In Colorado, the answer is not as easy or intuitive to find as people would hope.
The starting place to look for clarification is C.R.S. 18-12-105: Unlawfully Carrying a Concealed Weapon
(1) A person commits a class 1 misdemeanor if such person knowingly and unlawfully:
(b) Carries a firearm concealed on or about his or her person.
The statute goes on to show that it shall be an affirmative device if the person has a valid concealed handgun permit or is in their home, vehicle or their own business.
This state does not provide a definition of “concealed” here. It just says it’s against the law. But if we move down to the relevant case law referenced below the statute, we are directed to two important cases that provide a definition.
The first part of the definition of concealed is based on a case involving a 15 year old juvenile who was approached and then chased by police officers (https://casetext.com/case/people-v-or-1). While he was running away, the arresting officer saw the silver handle of a handgun sticking out of his back pocket. The officer went on to testify that he could tell that this was a firearm and the juvenile was charged and convicted of unlawfully carrying a concealed handgun.
The state court of appeals eventually overturned this conviction based on the interpretation of concealed as a weapon “carried on or about the body in such a way as the weapon is not readily discernible” as a firearm. Essentially, how could the police officer say that he saw the gun while also making the argument that it was concealed? The court overturned the conviction based on this analysis.
“For these reasons, we conclude that the juvenile court erred in determining that a partially concealed but readily discernible firearm is “concealed” for purposes of section 18-12-105(1)(b). We further conclude that the evidence was insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that O.R. carried, or even attempted to carry, a concealed firearm on or about his person.”
In our classes a variation of the question of when the gun is concealed includes, “What if I’m walking from the gun store to my car and the gun is in a case.”
Case law provides the second important part of the definition of concealed . Pueblo vs Sanders, 1962, affirms that intent must be part of the criminal activity when the offense is carrying a firearm unlawfully concealed. The defendant here was charged with unlawfully carrying concealed when he was carrying the gun as an article of merchandise. The Colorado Appeals court found that:
“The offense of carrying a concealed weapon forms no exception to the general rule that to constitute a crime there must be a criminal intent. . . . In trials for the offense of carrying a concealed weapon, it should be borne in mind that guilty intent is the intent to carry the weapon concealed, and does not depend upon the intent to use it.” (Emphasis supplied.)”
What does this mean for you? Simply put, if there is an intent to conceal the gun, and the gun is not readily discernible as a firearm, it is concealed.
My personal advice here is to not try to ride a line between lawful and unlawful carrying. If you are going to carry open then do it in an obvious way. If you’re carrying concealed, keep that gun well concealed.
join us for a free concealed carry class by checking our class calendar at https://concealedcarryforfree.com.
Guns For Everyone has had nearly 100,000 students come through our Free Concealed Carry classes in the last 10 years. We have heard every kind of story, heard every kind of question, and seen every walk of life.
When we discuss the 911 call in our class, we always emphasize that the recording of the call will be used in the investigation after a self defense incident, and is very likely to be used in the prosecution against you.
You are almost guaranteed to say something on that 911 call that opens legal doors that are not easily closed. You must understand this risk.
Two months ago I had a County Criminal Court Judge in the class. She had 16 years experience as a Prosecutor, and had been on the bench for more than 2 years. In this class, when we reached the topic of the 911 call, our judge emphatically agreed, and made it a point to tell the entire class that in her experience, the prosecution will almost always use the 911 call in the court room.
A key point that I try to impress on our students is that there is a huge amount of risk involved in that call. You are likely to be in an altered and elevated state of mind. You are almost guaranteed to say something on that 911 call that opens legal doors that are not easily closed. You must understand this risk.
Most people have never experienced an investigation or a prosecution, and will be caught completely off guard as the investigation moves forward. Training and education is essential to prepare you for that risk. Take your responsibilities seriously, continue your education, and don’t take anything for granted in the aftermath.
William confronted a drunk intruder on his property on the night of January 29th, 2022. The intruder was a man named Christopher Cotton. Cotton was caught trespassing after dark on Scholle’s property. According to Scholle, he held Cotton at gunpoint while waiting for Routt County Sheriff’s to respond to his wife’s 911 call.
At some point Cotton refused to stay on the ground and when he got up, Scholle shot him once in the abdomen. Cotton eventually survived. Scholle was charged with two felonies — first-degree assault and menacing, and one misdemeanor, prohibited use of a firearm.
Originally Scholle tried to use the Defense Against Intruder law to defend his actions. This defense ended up being rejected by the presiding judge as the shooting did not take place within the dwelling.
The judge also determined that Cotton had not made an unlawful entry into the dwelling. The court determined that “dwelling” and “premises” are two separate things, and after considering numerous other court cases, the judge concluded that the concrete patio where Cotton was shot shouldn’t be defined as a part of the dwelling.
This was not the only issue with Scholle’s invocation of the Defense Against Intruder law, but it was an insurmountable problem for Scholle.
Scholle also made inconsistent statements about the events of that night. Without video evidence, the prosecutor and ultimately the jury are left to decide who the credible parties are. Scholle originally said that he shot Cotton after Cotton stood up from the prone position. 10 months later, Scholle stated that he now recalled that Cotton and he exchanged punches before Scholle fired. Prosecutors did attack Scholle’s credibility based on this change of story, as well they should if they are any good at their job. This is exactly why it’s so important to get an attorney involved immediately when involved in a self defense incident. A competent attorney would have helped Scholle gather all of his thoughts as well as evidence before providing a statement to detectives. This isn’t because Scholle was guilty, but his job after protecting his family is to protect his affirmative defense.
Eventually, a jury was left to decide whether or not Scholle’s actions were “reasonable” in defense of his life and the life of his family. The jury did acquit Scholle of all charges. However the path to a conviction is much easier when the jury is left to decide the case under the Defense of A Person statute, especially when dealing with an unarmed attacker and a Defendant who has admittedly changed his story.
William Scholle did hire an attorney but from all appearances, this was not done immediately and almost certainly at extremely high expense. I’m sure Scholle counts the cost of the attorneys as “worth it” to keep him out of prison. But I’m also sure that it was a very painful experience.
Once again this is why we recommend Firearms Legal Protection, in part so that you will not hesitate to call an attorney right away after you have defended yourself. William Scholle was protecting himself, his wife and his children. But without a plan for the aftermath, William created problems for his case that cost him a year of his life, an expensive legal defense and the stress of leaving his future up to a jury of his peers.
We get this question in our Free Concealed Carry classes on a pretty regular basis, and it’s worth discussing.
What happens if you end up in a self defense shooting but you were carrying the gun illegally?
Before you jump to conclusions on ‘illegally carrying’, the most common way people end up carrying illegally is carrying in a ‘gun free zone’, often unaware that carry is prohibited in that area. Colorado has just made this circumstance much more likely by removing some important state law that prevented local jurisdictions from enacting local ordinances about where concealed carry can be prohibited. With 336 local jurisdictions, it becomes impossible for everyone to keep track of all the prohibited places.
What we’re going to discuss here is a guiding legal principle. I won’t promise that it is true in every circumstance because I’m not an attorney and honestly I’m not well enough informed to be fully aware of possible exceptions to this principle. I’m not qualified to give legal advice and you should always consult an attorney about specific legal circumstances.
Coffee was acquitted by a jury on 5 counts including attempted murder of a police officer. The jury agreed with the Defense’s argument that Coffee was reasonably acting in self defense. However Coffee was also a convicted felon and possessed his firearm illegally.
The fundamental question in these circumstances is whether or not you surrender you’re right to self defense by being in possession of an illegal item. The short answer is, no, you do not surrender your natural right to self defense just by possessing a gun in an illegal area, or even possessing an illegal item. This is better illustrated with a couple of examples.
in 2017, Andrew Coffee was involved in a shootout with a Florida SWAT team. The shootout resulted in the death of Coffee’s girlfriend, Alteria Woods. Woods was killed by police in the raid and Coffee was charged with felony murder for causing her death. I won’t rehash the details of the case, you can read a synopsis HERE. Coffee was acquitted by a jury on 5 counts including attempted murder of a police officer. The jury agreed with the Defense’s argument that Coffee was reasonably acting in self defense. However Coffee was also a convicted felon and possessed his firearm illegally. The jury convicted Coffee of the possession charge, and Coffee was eventually sentenced to 10 years.
A more recent case is even more stark. in June of this year, William Thompson was arrested after being involved in a shootout with a group of teens who had assaulted his 9 year old daughter. The attack on his daughter led to a fight which escalated to a shooting. Thompson was armed with a ‘ghost gun’ (a non serialized homemade gun) equipped with a switch that converted the handgun to full auto. A grand jury announced today a no bill (no charges) against Thompson for his act of shooting at his attackers in defense of himself and his daughter. But Thompson is not off the hook for the illegal machine gun. He is still facing a federal felony charge which carries a possible 10 year sentence.
This principle could also apply to carrying a gun while under the influence. The difference with being under the influence is that the prosecution will likely try to use your inhibited state against you, questioning your judgement in the moment.
These kinds of legal questions are good reasons why it’s important to expand your legal education about self defense law beyond just taking a concealed carry class.
Even if you’ve already taken the state mandated classes, you will benefit from more FREE education and training.
Guns For Everyone is now offering multiple versions of our Free Concealed Carry classes that focus on specific topics, such as the legal implications of deadly force. Even if you’ve already taken the state mandated classes, you will benefit from more FREE education and training. You can find our complete class calendar HERE. Continue your training and education, your life and your freedom may very well depend on it.
Tuesday afternoon I was stopping in to a gun store to see a fellow instructor. As soon as I walked in the door he told me, “Another mass shooting. Elementary school, so far 14 kids.” I was instantly speechless. Unfortunately we are used to hearing this kind of news but hearing about it taking place at an elementary school hits harder.
I’m sick of hearing about this. Many people are tired of hearing about it too. But because of my role as firearms instructor I am steeped in news of violence far more than just mass shootings that make it to the headlines. I have a responsibility as an instructor to be a student of violence. It’s a dark place to hang out. I force myself to watch and read about the most heinous types of attacks in order to better understand how and why it happens.
The details of this latest shooting in Texas are unusual in a few ways that I don’t really need to go into here. The point of bringing it up here is to underscore the fact that as much as we try to group these events under the convenient umbrella of “crazy”, or “racist” or “evil”, at some point these reasons are not useful to us. Lots of people struggle with crippling mental illness without shooting up a school. Lot’s of people are sociopathic or psychopathic without being violent. If we continue to rely on these broad descriptors then we will never have a useful way to confront these issues.
This young man has a history of violent and anti social behavior according to friends, family and others. But we have many of these people in our society who never get close to shooting up a school. How do we stop this kind of tragedy when the target is so small and so concealed amongst the noise?
I have a controversial answer to this question. My answer is that is the wrong question. In my humble opinion, the right question is to ask is, “How prepared can you be for when horrific moments come to you?”
“Evil” has been with us since Cain killed his brother in a jealous rage. Mankind has always been murderous towards his fellow man. The motivations vary, but murder is in our hearts just like kindness and goodness is in our hearts. We blame whatever helps us make sense of the act, but essentially this is part of who we are. Just like Mother Nature will always give us food and at the same time threaten to kill us with heat, cold, storms, drought, even lightning.
How do we protect ourselves from Mother Nature? We build shelters, we plan for the worst, we plant in the spring and harvest before the cold. We understand that the world doesn’t owe us safety and we work extremely hard to guard against the inherent danger of the world. That’s what a responsible person does. And when the sun is warm and the wind is calm, we bask in the joy of Nature.
These killers will always be with us. Sometimes we will see them coming from a mile away, and sometimes they will cloak themselves until they are ready to destroy and no one will see it coming. The responsible thing to do is to accept this reality and be as prepared as possible.
How do we prepare? My belief is that the first step is Mindset. Mindset drives everything we do and understand, or fail to understand, about the world around us. In this case, I think a useful mindset is to acknowledge the reality of this world and not trick yourself into believing that you have a right to safety. You have a right to defend yourself, but not a single person on this planet can guarantee your safety. Developing and maintaining this mindset requires you to confront the reality of the potential for evil in the world around you. This shouldn’t make you cynical, it should make you aware.
The rest of your preparation will depend on you, your values, your priorities, etc. Are you the type of person who would fight this kind of evil should it come to your threshold? Then prepare by learning how to fight, whether with hands or weapons. That may not be the best answer for everyone, you will have to make these determinations for yourself.
We cannot wipe away the evil in the hearts of men, and trying to remove their means for evil will be an exercise in futility. I’m reminded of the line in Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way.” The sick but very real inverse of that line is, “Death finds a way.” Our job is to prepare for it.
Last week, we sent an email with a story about why it is so important to have a legal plan for the aftermath of a self defense encounter. This week we will be talking about a horrible situation involving two young girls shot in a road rage encounter.
This story is tough to believe. But the way it starts is all too common. Two drivers take offense at the other’s driving, which leads to brake checking, swerving, obscene gestures, thrown objects and ultimately gunfire.
William Hale and Frank Allison were involved in a road rage incident in north Florida on October 8th, 2022, that ended with both men shooting each other’s daughters.
We will probably never learn exactly what started the confrontation between these two men, but witnesses say that both drivers were driving erratically, chasing each other, trying to get in front of each other. We do have a witness statement that at one point one driver flipped off the other. Then an object was thrown. That escalated to a gunshot from one driver, which hit a 5 year old girl in the leg. The other driver then fired multiple rounds at the other vehicle, striking a 14 year old girl in the back.
Both drivers pulled over near a deputy who was already stopped on the side of the highway and then began fist fighting until the deputy broke up the fight. Both girls who were shot survived, one with a collapsed lung. Both drivers are now charged with attempted murder.
What can we learn from this incident as responsible gun owners and self defenders? The first lesson I take from this act of stupidity is that we have to remember that our actions have the potential to affect more than just ourselves. Both of these men acted selfishly and their children paid the price.
The second lesson is that what may seem like self defense to you can easily be read as escalation to your opponent. I’m sure both of these men felt like the other driver was escalating the confrontation, while in reality both of them repeatedly increased the intensity and stakes of the fight. Either one of these guys could have stopped this confrontation by refusing to continue, but both of them chose the wrong options. And from the reports, it wasn’t just the men driving, at least one passenger engaged in the escalation as well.
The third lesson from this story is that when you hold the power of life and death in your hands, the consequences for wrong actions are extreme. Both of these dads not only caused life changing injuries to their children, but both of them now face legal consequences that will affect them for the rest of their lives. In addition, there will be life changing financial impacts for both of them. Both will lose their jobs, both will have serious criminal records even if they don’t get convicted. Both will have trouble getting jobs in the future, qualifying for loans, for insurance, Whether or not they accept responsibility, both will live with the knowledge that they put their child in life threatening danger over something so idiotic that it defies belief.
This story reminds me of another road rage tragedy from 2013, in which two Michigan men, both with Concealed Carry Permits, shot and killed each other. James Pullum, 43, and Robert Taylor, 56, escalated from tailgating to murder within a few moments. I’d be willing to bet that both men probably felt like they were in the right for defending themselves, and both are now dead.
When we cover when it is appropriate to use deadly force in our Free Concealed Carry classes, we discuss the concept of Could versus Should. It is important we don’t focus on asking when “can” we shoot, we instead ask, when “should” we shoot. The defensive mindset includes understanding what is truly at risk when a confrontation starts, and doing everything we can to deescalate an encounter. If deescalation is ultimately not possible, we may find ourselves in a position where we have to resort to deadly force to protect ourselves. Road rage is a common example of people losing sight of what is most important, and this story is no exception.
In a majority of self defense incidents where a gun is used to defend a person, the gun is used without having to fire it. This is the best case scenario as it limits the overall risk to the defender. But in some of these cases, the bullets do start flying. Once that happens, the risk to the defender becomes extreme.
Two weeks ago in Seattle, a father of 2 was forced into this position. Returning home with his wife and children, a 30 year old man was accosted by two armed bad guys who pointed guns at him. Drawing his own gun he fired at the attackers who fired back. According to the good guy, he moved away from his family while the shooting was happening to draw the attack away from his wife and children. He ended up with 3 bullets in his legs and foot. He applied a tourniquet to one of his legs while waiting for police and ambulance.
He survived the shooting, and the two bad guys escaped and have not been found. Our good guy demonstrated not just bravery but also preparation by having the ability to think and act in the middle of a dynamic critical incident as well as to help himself survive after the shooting stopped. He is certainly a hero to his family.
His story demonstrates to us that while it is a great advantage to be armed when attacked, these are highly dangerous encounters and our training should reflect that. I cannot recommend enough that you not only train on how to use your gun defensively, but to also learn how to treat life threatening bleeds and carry the tools to treat them. A good place to start with this training is StopTheBleed.org.
This man’s wife and kids not only can thank him for being prepared to act, but also prepared to survive.
This week I want you to take 3 minutes and 49 seconds to understand an extremely important concept when it comes to your personal defense. The topic is presented in the video below by Rob Pincus, founder of I.C.E. Training and developer of the Intuitive Defense Shooting curriculum that we use to teach our students about using a gun for self defense.
Before we get to the video, I want to point something out that I think many people don’t fully understand. When we say “Warrior Expert Theory”, many people think to themselves, “Well I’m no warrior, how does this even apply to me?” You may or may not be a “warrior”. But if you are ever targeted as a victim by a violent attacker, you ARE in a war. This makes you a warrior, even if just for those few moments. What kind of warrior you will be will depend in part how prepared you are. This is why understanding how we should learn to respond to these kinds of threats is important.
The video is short, but the mindset described in those few minutes can take a long time to develop and understand. Take some time to reflect on your own mindset when it comes to your training, your education, and how you understand the very high stakes of a violent attack.
Last week, we sent an email about the Warrior Expert Theory and why it’s essential to self defense training.
This week we will be talking about some of the people we have welcomed into our classroom.
Over the last decade, Guns For Everyone has instructed over 100,000 students in Colorado in our Free Concealed Carry Classes. We’ve had every walk of life in our classrooms and on the range. It’s not unusual for us to have current or former law enforcement officers in our classes which always adds an element of interest for our students as we provide our perspective and compare that to what an officer would say. We take it as a point of pride when the concepts and principles that we teach are affirmed by these professionals, especially when it runs counter to the conventional narratives that students usually come to class with. But ultimately, most of our students will never be cops and the overlap of these two worlds is not usually very important.
What can be very eye opening is when we have lawyers in the class, and even more so when those lawyers are prosecutors and district attorneys. In 2022 we have had at least 4 local prosecutors and district attorneys in our classes. When we start discussing the legal processes and risks of defending yourself with a firearm, students are usually quite surprised to learn how the system actually works, and even more surprised when what we say is affirmed by these professionals who work in this system every single day.
Often times, the people who really grasp how brutal the criminal justice system is are the people who have been through it.
When we have criminal defense attorneys speak in our classes, either as students or as invited guests, there is a certain amount of natural skepticism from the other students in the classroom. The question often running through students’ minds as the defense attorney lays out the legal risks is, “How much of this guys’ perspective based on him trying to sell his services to me?”. It’s a natural reaction to be skeptical when someone is telling you how much you’re going to need their services in the future.
But when a prosecutor or DA starts speaking about how they actually prosecute these cases, people tend to listen. The DA isn’t selling anything, he has no incentive to exaggerate or spin things. In our classes these professionals have offered up their input and expertise about the post shooting legal processes. What the students get to hear from them is that the legal system is far more complex and loaded with risk than they assumed.
What we try to communicate to our students in our classes is that the legal aftermath is far more challenging than almost anyone knows. Often times, the people who really grasp how brutal the criminal justice system is are the people who have been through it. And most people in our concealed carry classes have never been anywhere near this system, let alone through it. It’s hard to grasp the reality of these risks without first hand experience.
In addition to the risks, most people do not understand how self defense cases are investigated and prosecuted. This is where hearing from a criminal defense attorney is helpful. But I’ve heard at least a dozen criminal defense attorney’s lecture on what an affirmative defense is and how it’s used to claim self defense, and I still wouldn’t feel confident that I’d be able to walk this knife edge in the aftermath alone. The more I learn, the less I feel like I know.
This story is an excellent example of how a normal day can spiral into a life changing legal mess in just a few moments. This Ohio father protected his daughter in a home defense setting, and yet the last paragraph of the news story reveals the awful legal aftermath: this case made it all the way to a grand jury before the father was ultimately not charged. The prosecutor had a lot to work with in this case, despite the apparent moral certainty of a father protecting his child. While many people watched the video of this shooting, few watched the video of the father’s initial interrogation with detectives. Without legal representation, the father gave the DA enough evidence to pursue a grand jury indictment. If you don’t understand why, it should become obvious to you how unprepared you are for the legal aftermath.
Guns For Everyone is partnered with Firearms Legal Protection to offer our students an affordable legal plan for the aftermath. The cost is low, the stakes are incredibly high. There is no simpler way I can try to put it. Most people are skeptical when offered a service like this, which is natural. But I can tell you with 100% certainty that that skepticism isn’t going to help you after the shooting stops and you’re about to be chewed up and spit out by the criminal justice system. My best recommendation is to have an attorney on speed dial, and to have that attorney fully paid for with the plan offered by Firearms Legal Protection. I carry a gun to protect myself from physical harm. I am a member of Firearms Legal Protection to protect myself from legal and financial harm.
This week we’re going to talk about tragic accidents involving firearms.
Last week a Florida sheriff’s deputy accidentally killed his best friend while playing with his gun. According to an affidavit, Deputy Aaron Larson pointed his firearm at his roommate and pulled the trigger. The gun did not fire but Larson apparently then pulled the slide back and pointed the gun back at his roommate and again pulled the trigger. This time the gun did fire, and 23 year old Austin Walsh was killed.
If gun owners rely only on a set of rules for safety but do not first and foremost respect the risk of handling the firearm, at some point the rules may very well fail to keep the user from doing something they shouldn’t.
Walsh and Larson were best friends and now two lives are essentially over. Larson is facing manslaughter charges as well as the end of his career and most importantly, the psychological weight of being responsible for the death of his best friend. Walsh’s life was over in an instant.
The obvious reaction to a story like this is disbelief and an incredulous response of “this is why you follow the rules!”. But I’ve seen enough examples of negligence around guns to know that we can’t count on rules to keep people from having the wrong mindset about firearm safety. It’s no secret that this young deputy made a very stupid and life changing decision to treat this gun as a toy. But there are other examples of deaths caused by firearm accidents that are much less boneheaded than this one, and the end result is the same. People lose their lives when people take safety for granted.
On November 20th, an 11 year old boy in Wisconsin was accidentally killed by his uncle in a hunting accident. As the boy’s uncle was attempting to unload his rifle while it was laying in the truck, the gun fired and the bullet struck the 11 year old in the chest, killing him.
Both of these accidents have something very important in common. In both stories, the person with their hand on the gun failed to maintain the proper mindset when in control of a gun. I’m fairly certain that both of these men knew “the rules”. But knowing the rules is not going to guarantee that you have the mindset necessary to respect the risk of handling a firearm.
Guns are dangerous by their very design. They have the capacity to cause enormous damage with very little effort. If gun owners rely only on a set of rules for safety but do not first and foremost respect the risk of handling the firearm, at some point the rules may very well fail to keep the user from doing something they shouldn’t. Cultivating the mindset of acknowledging the serious risks of guns is intended to not allow a user to become complacent about safety.
Every action you take with the firearm should be guided by an understanding of the risk of what you are doing, and what the benefits are. The benefits should always clearly outweigh the risks. Is there a benefit to hunting? Of course there are lots of benefits. But is there a benefit to attempting to unload your hunting rifle while having it pointed at your 11 year old nephew? The life changing risk was ignored.
I don’t even need to analyze the risks and benefits of playing with a gun and pointing it at your best friend’s head. It’s easy to understand the stupidity of that action. But there are plenty of accidents with firearms that happen in much less stark circumstances. An Ohio firearms instructor who was accidentally shot by a student in the classroom in 2016. A Houston gunsmith who killed a customer when he accidentally fired a rifle he was working on in 2017. The LA police officer who accidentally killed a 14 year old girl in a department store changing room while the officer was shooting at a violent criminal who had been assaulting multiple people with a hammer.
Guns are inherently risky. We must never assume that they are not. We as a community have a responsibility to cultivate a mindset for gun ownership and gun handling that keeps that reality front of mind for everyone. This is how we address safety in all of our classes and more importantly, it’s how we think about safety in every action we take with our firearms.
Last week we covered a firearms accident that resulted in the death of a young man. This week we are going to look at what training should look like for defensive use of a firearm.
I took a couple of students to the range a few weeks ago. The gentleman had a little experience around firearms, but not much. The lady had essentially zero experience. These two were middle aged, interested in being prepared for self defense and taking their education and training seriously after coming to one of our Free Concealed Carry Classes.
Perfection of skills or preparation in a self defense context is impossible. There are too many variables to account for.
Both of these people struggled with a number of skills throughout our 1 hour together. It seemed obvious to me that they were getting a little discouraged on the range and were feeling like they had failed. Part of this is my fault for not doing a good job setting the expectation before we started of what the actual goal is for the training. Part of this is also the mindset that they brought with them to the range that they were going to have to perform to some kind of standard and that without that performance they were failing.
Aside from their perception of the goal and their performance, both made significant progress in the time we spent together. But progress in what? If I was to set a standard, let’s say consistently shooting 3 rounds in the high center chest at 5 yards in 3 seconds, then they didn’t get anywhere near that. But if I set the goal as progress in essential skills and understanding for how the gun and the body should work together intuitively in a dynamic critical incident, then there was progress. If the goal was for each of them to become better prepared to use a handgun to defend themselves should the need arise, then we accomplished the goal.
Perfection of skills or preparation in a self defense context is impossible. There are too many variables to account for. The more controlled we set up the training, the more likely we can attain a standard. If the training is set up in a way to control for distance, movement, gear, preparation, clothing, etc, then we can set a standard to say, draw from concealment and put one round on a set target in a set amount of time. But there is very little that we can control in the dynamic world of human beings. We are also morally and legally responsible for the consequences of our actions in the real world and training methods that do not make room for decision making do not accurately represent the necessary totality of self defense.
So how do we approach improvement if we don’t have a standard? First is understanding the context of the fight. We can look at objective truths about self defense fights, such as most likely distances, physiological and neurological processes and limitations, ballistics and more. We can use these facts to determine how we train and what we focus on for skill development. Then as we teach these skills in a training environment we put the student in more and more dynamic situations as we make sure the student continues to learn and apply the essential skills.
Back to our couple and their improvement at the range. Both of these people got much better at their gun handling skills. These are essential for using a gun safely in any context. Both improved their full extension of the gun into and parallel with their line of sight, trigger press and use of sight alignment and sight picture for intuitive sighted fire. Neither of them “perfected” anything on the range but again, that’s not the point. The last 10 minutes we spent together I made sure that they understood what the goal of our time together was, what they did well on, where they needed improvement, and how to work on that improvement. Ultimately it will be their responsibility on whether they will continue their practice and training.
The reason all of this is so important is because we are talking about skills and tools for preserving life in a dangerous circumstance. These high stakes necessitate the dedication to the correct approach to learning. This is how we conduct our Free Concealed Carry Classes as well as all of our other training and education.
In our last blog post, we discussed how we get better at the skills necessary for self defense with a handgun. This week we wrap up 2022 with an interesting analysis of instances where civilians used a firearm to intervene in a mass killing attack.
The article linked does a great job of breaking down the data and I will not waste time re summarizing it. But I do want to point out 2 important conclusions.
First is that the rate of success at stopping the attack is EXTREMELY high. In the world of violent encounters, it’s difficult to get consistent results from any data set due to the generally unpredictable nature of violent encounters. These numbers from this data set show that despite what the media tries to tell us, armed intervention is consistently reliable in stopping mass killing events.
Johnny Hurley stopped a mass shooting in Arvada, Colorado in 2021. But he lost his life when a police officer mistook him for the shooter and shot him in the back.
The second point I want to draw your attention to is that in 9% of these documented cases, the armed defender was killed in the fight. In my opinion, pretty much anyone who is willing to put their life on the line to stop a mass killing is a hero. But nearly 1 in 10 events, the defender indeed lost their lives. When you make the decision to be a defender, a protector, you must recognize the real risk. Just because you are armed does not mean you will survive. The high stakes of the fight should be your motivation to train and be as prepared as possible.
This is why we always emphasize these high stakes and realities in our Free Concealed Carry Classes, as well as all of our other training and education.
In our last blog post, we discussed some incredible data about armed citizens stopping mass killers. This week, we have a video for you that defies belief….or does it?
The following video hit the internet a couple weeks ago. A piece of brass that was ejected from a handgun bounces off the barrier and lands on an open box of ammo. The brass hits an exposed primer hard enough to detonate it, causing a small explosion as well as quite a bit of confusion.
This seems a little impossible to believe, yet here we have the video. But what is interesting is that this is actually the 3rd documented case of this kind of freak accident that I have personally come across.
Several years ago when gun blogs were all the rage, I stumbled across a post where someone said this happened to him. He had several pictures documenting the .45 ACP brass case that had exploded, including pictures of the tray that the ammo was in when it happened. Even with the pictures, readers were skeptical.
In 2021 I encountered another documented case of this happening, again with pictures documenting it. Again, people doubted the circumstances. Now we have evidence on video.
What do we learn from this? For me, I am reminded of the way that we approach safety when it comes to firearms. There is always a balance of risk and benefit. Even in “controlled” settings, we cannot eliminate the risk of something going wrong. Accidents are sometimes hard to prevent because some of them are so incredibly unlikely. This is a reminder that we should always be cognizant of the risks as much as possible, known and unknown.
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On December 13, a 70 year old man had a very pissed off neighbor trying to break through his front door. After firing a warning shot that was ineffective at deterring the threat, the defender fired at least 3 rounds at his attacker, striking him at least once.
Mugshot of the defender, Charles Rickey Wolford
On it’s face, this looks like a pretty clear cut case of home defense. Proving you acted in self defense after someone kicks in your door should seem like a slam dunk.
What we have to understand is that there are no slam dunk cases when it comes to using force against another person. Using a gun to defend yourself is always risky from a legal perspective. Wolford is finding that out the hard way.
From the linked news story, we find out that this situation led to Wolford’s arrest, followed by a bond of $75,000. That bond was adjusted to allow Wolford to leave jail while the defense and prosecutor build their investigations. But Wolford doesn’t get to go home, he is required to live elsewhere due to his residence’s proximity to the ‘victim’. There is also a chance that the charges could be upgraded if the victim does not survive. On top of all that, the man he shot was his own nephew.
Wolford has no criminal history and while that may help with his bond situation, that doesn’t mean the prosecutor is just going to assume that he acted lawfully in self defense.
The usual response from people when they hear a story like Wolford’s is to point out that it’s not fair that you can act in self defense and then be the one to pay the legal price afterwards. The criminal justice system often doesn’t seem fair to us because we are not familiar with it. Unless you have spent time in or near this system, much of the way it works definitely looks unfair to us. We must remember that our perception of this system does not matter at all. Once we interact with this system, we have almost no control over it.
The legal risk of using a gun to defend ourselves should not scare us. But we should have a healthy respect for what is coming should the terrible moment come. The more I learn about this risk, the more it makes sense to me to have a plan for what comes after the shooting. I carry a gun not because I want to get into a shooting, but because if I cannot avoid the moment then I want to be ready. It is for the exact same reason that I am prepared legally by being a member of Firearms Legal Protection, and it is for the exact same reasons that I recommend that you do the same.
Much ink and video has been devoted to the mass shooting and the young man that stopped it on July 17th, 2022 in Greenwood, Indiana. Eli Dicken, a 21 year old man who was carrying a concealed handgun that day was mentally and physically ready to stop an evil, murderous threat, and that is exactly what he did.
While the gun community and many others rightfully hailed his actions, details on exactly what happened were not very well known or understood. What we were initially told was that Eli fired a total of 10 rounds, with 8 hits, at a distance of 40 yards, in about 15 seconds. As is par for the course, overzealous gun owners took this as the whole story and began to analyze the shooting according to these sparse details.
However if you really understood the nature of gun fights, the human body, and other factors in self defense and you look at these details, it should be obvious that these details really couldn’t have been the whole story. Many have been patiently waiting for more details to emerge so that we can better understand what happened and hopefully take the right lessons away from this event.
On December 21st, the Greenwood police and the FBI held a press conference to give their findings in the case and announce that Dicken would not be charged. Dicken’s attorney spoke out about what happened in an interview the same day with WTHR in late December and gave his account of what he saw in the still unreleased surveillance footage from the mall security cameras. What we have now learned is different from the impression most people took from the original details.
Eli was eating dinner in the food court with his girlfriend. At 5:57 pm, the shooter began firing at shoppers on the other side of the food court after emerging from a hallway. He eventually fired a total of 24 rounds from his AR-15, killing 3 people. Eli reacted by pushing his girlfriend to the floor and took up a position of cover behind a pillar. Eli fired his first 2 shots just a few seconds after the gunman started shooting. His first shots were fired from a stabilized position (atop a trash can) and from approximately 40 yards away from the bad guy. Dicken was forced to stop shooting as bystanders ran in front of his muzzle (at 40 yards in a public space, this was a near certainty). He then had an opportunity to fire 2 more shots from that position and distance. Out of those first 4 shots, he scored 2 hits.
By this time, the bad guy had begun to retreat back into the hallway that he came from. Dicken then moved to close the distance and get into a position to re engage with the now moving threat. At a distance of approximately 20 yards he fired 4 more shots, gaining 4 more hits. Finally Eli closed the distance to about 20 to 25 feet for the last two shots fired as the bad guy stumbled to the ground. At this point the threat was over. The approximate amount of time from when the bad guy started his attack to when the shooting stopped was 15 seconds.
Almost immediately after the shooting stopped and as Eli was assessing the bad guy, a mall security guard made it to the hallway where Eli and the bad guy were. Eli begins to reholster right about the same time the first police officer arrived. In the middle of a mass shooting, having a gun in your hand is a very high risk as law enforcement arrives. It sounds like Eli reholstered as soon as he was sure that the threat was over, but an officer was already arriving. Fortunately the officer quickly assessed that Eli was a good guy and began to control the scene without further endangering Eli.
Let’s look at some of the lessons we can take from this event. Situational awareness during a self defense encounter is critical, and also difficult. Eli apparently did a stellar job of managing his shooting in a crowded, dynamic environment. There was risk in his decision to engage the threat but he managed the risk well and we can clearly see that the benefits of his decision outweighed the risk. This shooting further demonstrates that in a dynamic critical incident, using the “4 universal firearm safety rules” as our approach to safety is absurd. Dicken was actively engaging with the threat and unpredictable bystanders were panicked and running in front of his sight picture. Is it reasonable to expect Eli to “Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction” as he is involved in an active gunfight in a crowded area with a bad guy so far away? This is why we teach that our approach to safety must always be to understand and manage risk and benefit, and that our skills must be ready to meet that risk and control it as much as possible.
We also learned that Eli moved toward the threat. Normally this is not possible, nor is it legally or tactically advisable. But absolutes should be avoided in the world of self defense and this is an example of where closing the distance on a threat proved to be the right move. Without knowing how motivated the bad guy was, Eli picked the right tactic of pressing the fight to the threat and definitively ending it. This tactic again carries it’s own physical and legal risk, but the benefit was to put a definitive end to the active killing in this dynamic critical incident.
Dicken fired from a variety of distances at varying speed. His precision under stress was commendable. But unlike the original story, he did not fire all 10 rounds from 40 yards. His last 4 rounds were fired at approximately 7 yards. We should be focusing our training on balancing the speed and precision of our shooting. Our speed will be determined by the situation, the distance to the target and the size of the target. This will always be a dynamic equation and cannot be applied with a training standard. We also got confirmation that two of the four shots taken at the greatest distance missed the target. In hindsight we can say that no one was hurt by those missed rounds. But 50% accuracy when you are firing in a public space is not an ideal to aspire to. We train to pull the trigger when we believe we will get the hit we want. We don’t attach an arbitrary number to our training and call it “good enough”.
We also learned a few details about the legal aftermath. From the Criminal Defense attorney’s perspective, the police acted professionally and even with compassion. In a self defense shooting, we would all hope that this is the case but most of the time it is not. Fortunately for Dicken, he was treated very well. We also learned that even though Dicken’s shooting was on video, he saved countless lives, he hurt no one else and he acted with extreme skill in a high stress environment, his legal aftermath still took 5 months. 5 months before he could say, “It’s over.” 5 months to get his gun back and 5 months to retain expensive legal counsel. This is why Guns For Everyone recommends that you have a legal plan already in place, and we recommend Firearms Legal Protection for that plan because it’s the best plan on the market and it’s the most affordable.
Dicken’s attorney also alluded to the mental and emotional toll that this has taken on Eli. He is being thanked and congratulated constantly but it’s a reminder each time that he was forced to kill someone, as well as accept that three innocent people lost their lives before he was able to act. That is a heavy toll for any normal person to carry.
The next time you hear a story about self defense, take note that the details matter and the less details we have the less we can be sure of what actually happened, no matter what the youtube experts say. Eli Dicken is a hero, and it would be wrong of me to sit in any kind of judgement of his actions if I wasn’t in his shoes. But we can always take lessons from real life examples and we should not be shy about that.
The final lesson is to carry your tools and train your body. Nobody asked the shoppers that day if they were ready. You are either ready, or you are not. But you do not get to pick the time and the place. Eli was ready, and dozens of lives are owed to his decision to be ready.
This week we are going to look at a video from an armed robbery that took place in Oklahoma City last year. This video starts like so many others, a normal person in the middle of a normal routine. In this case, our victim is at the car wash in the middle of the day.
Notice that our victim here doesn’t have much of an opportunity to respond once he recognizes the threat. The bad guy is able to close the distance to a point where our good guy has really no other option but to comply with the demands. The robber orders him to the ground, face down. Not only is this a difficult position to draw the gun from, but he’s submitting to our armed threat. He is now at his mercy with no viable option for defending himself, only hope.
In the initial moments of the video, our good guy is at his best position to respond with force, IF he has the ability to draw, move, then shoot. The greater the distance between you and the threat, generally speaking the greater advantage the good guy will have. With regular practice on the draw, movement, presentation and firing of the gun, the more likely our good guy would be to deliver an effective hit on target before the bad guy can effectively respond. Once again, we see why efficiency is a key factor in our tools, skills and tactics.
There is no guarantee that the bad guy wouldn’t take a lucky shot that could be life threatening to a defender. As the bad guy closes the distance, the less skill or even luck he needs to deliver an effective shot with his gun. The window of opportunity closes quickly even though our bad guy doesn’t appear to be rushing anything. Acting violently when faced with an active threat will always be risky. The alternative here is to lay face down and hope that this violent criminal won’t fire a round into the back of your head. There are life changing decisions to be made and many times they must be made in fractions of a second. This is why we spend time learning about the “Warrior Expert Theory” in our Tactics focused Free Concealed Carry Classes. This is why we train the brain to recognize the attack as quickly as possible and tie that recognition into the skill to deliver effective actions in our Defensive Shooting classes.
Last week we saw an armed robbery that showed how important it is to have the skills to go with the tool. This week we will be reading about a brave 16 year old boy used a gun to stop a home invasion.
Brayden Jarrett, a 16 year old from Ohio, was home alone when he saw a suspicious vehicle parked in his driveway. He cautiously armed himself with a 9mm handgun that belonged to his mother. As the stranger approached the door, he stood with the unloaded gun. When the intruder starting trying to open the door, Brayden loaded the gun. As the intruder was able to see inside the house, he was confronted with an armed opponent. He swore and quickly ran away.
Brayden and his mom recount the event in the news story linked HERE.
Brayden knew where to find the gun, how to load it, and was prepared to use it. This is not something we can expect from every 16 year old. Kids and teenagers are known to be less than trustworthy and it takes time to build up trust with any child that they can handle responsibility. However, in most states across the country, we start training our teens to drive at 15 years old. We do so under intense supervision and by default we emphasize a lot of practice before we let them drive on their own. As a parent, you are the first and most important person who will assess when your child is ready for the responsibility of driving a car. But it is also normal for most teens to start learning how to handle a car at these ages.
The reason this becomes important in the context of guns is that it has been shown to be true across our history that teenagers have been willing and able to use a firearm to protect themselves, especially within the home where the lines of self defense are much more clearly defined. But in many states, including Colorado, gun owners prohibited by law from giving access to a firearm to an unsupervised minor. Guns must be locked up and parents are criminally liable if a teenager has access to a gun.
This is a perfect example of a blanket solution that doesn’t work in most cases to preserve life and safety. Should a 5 year old have access to a gun, in almost every case, the answer would be no. But the law cannot make distinctions that parents can. And the broad approach of the law is to simply outlaw it outright in the name of safety. Parents who care about their children’s ability to respond to a threat have a difficult decision to make, break the law or leave their children defenseless. That is not an easy decision.
In our Free Concealed Carry Classes, we constantly stress that everyone is responsible for their own decisions. We educate our students as best as we can about what the laws say, and what the legal and physical risks are and then we encourage people to carefully consider these risks.
Fortunately for Brayden and his mom, there are no laws in Ohio that outlaw Brayden’s access to that gun, and he was able to use to it save himself and his home from this intruder. Stories like this are encouraging to read but we can also use them to help motivate us to be more involved in what happens in our local, state and federal legislatures and courts. The easiest way to do this in Colorado is to become donors or members of proven gun rights organizations like Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, Firearms Policy Coalition and Gun Owners of America.
Colorado is once again in the cross hairs of the anti-gun lobby and we are facing an assault weapons ban. This time the proposed law changes represent some very dangerous outcomes for our gun rights, far more than we’ve faced in the past. Colorado is ground zero for this fight in 2023.
I want to spend a few moments to give a short history of gun laws in Colorado. Guns For Everyone started in 2010 with the idea that we would build community around real action to expand gun rights in this state. There was talk about how we might get Constitutional Carry on the ballot when almost no other states had it. We were young and perhaps a little idealistic and we made really no progress at all towards our lofty goals.
In 2012 there were two major mass shootings that ended up helping to send Colorado in the other direction. After the Aurora movie theater shooting, Colorado started flirting with changing the laws around ‘Assault weapons’. As a largely Purple state, it was hard for anyone to believe anything would change. But in December 2012, the Newtown Shooting captured the attention of the country as well as Legislators in Colorado. This was the start of the momentum they needed to pass a mandatory background check law and a ‘magazine ban’. The fight over these two laws was intense. Eventually these laws passed but not without a price for lawmakers as two state legislators were successfully recalled thanks to some amazing work by local activists. No more gun control was passed at the state level after that.
Fast forward to 2018 as more mass shootings mounted, including in Colorado, Boulder County decided to gamble by passing their own assault weapons ban that they knew would be challenged in court. As predicted, in 2021 the Colorado Supreme Court struck down the law. A week later a King Soopers in Boulder was the site of yet another mass shooting. Legislators quickly put legislation up to change the state’s Preemption law, attacking concealed carry with an insidious shift of the law from serving the citizens to serving the local governments. This time there were no consequences for lawmakers.
The difference between 2012 and 2021 is that most gun owners in this state knew about the legislation in 2012. In 2021, almost no gun owners were even aware of Preemption or that it was under attack. The difference wasn’t the legislators, it was the citizens. If we take the same approach in 2023, we are guaranteed to lose this fight too.
How do we fight back? My first recommendation is to go support Rocky Mountain Gun Owners with a donation. Like Right Now. The next step is to seek out opportunities to show up at city council meetings, legislative sessions, write your congressman, write letters to the editor, speak to your friends and keep supporting the organizations that are putting in the fight. But do not sit back and post angry rants on social media that do nothing to make a difference. We need every single gun owner to take responsibility for this state. If we sit back and whine about how all the Californians ruined this state, we are guaranteeing that we will lose this fight. Get up, get involved, get ready for the fight. We can win.
In the nearly 20 years I have owned guns, I have had a range of different gear and firearms. The first gun I bought was a 9mm Hi Point Carbine and I paid $100 for it. It was not exactly ideal for self defense but not knowing much about guns and not having a lot of money, it made a lot of sense at the time.
As the years have rushed by I have gone through just about any phase you can think of when it comes to buying and trying the tools of self defense. I have carried a number of different handgun brands, actions, calibers and sizes. I have tried just about any holster you can imagine including, yes, even a shoulder holster.
Most of the money I have spent over the years has ended up “wasted”. I have a graveyard of discarded holsters. Most of the handguns I own now I would not carry. Then there are the wasted belts, the magazine carriers, the training tools, odd magazines for guns I don’t even own anymore, and even a few abandoned calibers.
It took me a long time to figure out that there really are only a couple useful factors when deciding if I should consider spending more money in the name of self defense. Those factors are “efficiency” and “consistency”. In the context of self defense, efficiency and consistency are critical principles that help us be as prepared as possible to engage in a life and death fight with an attacker. Efficiency means hopefully being the first to deliver an effective blow in the fight. Consistency is the principle that helps us to learn and be able to rely on our tools and skills in a dynamic critical incident. Any new tool in my plan needs to first be able to be efficient and consistent with what I know about using a firearm in self defense.
Developing a sense of what is actually likely to be efficient takes time and experience. That experience should be training and it should be training in context. A fancy gadget that looks cool on instagram may not actually stand up to the rigors of a defensive handgun class or a combatives course. In this sense, money spent on good training may actually help save you from buying a bunch of things that will never get used in the real world.
Nothing fancy, just shit that works
Understanding consistency also comes from experience. I started with a basic holster in the 3 o clock position on my hip. After trying a lot of different carry positions over the years I have learned that the optimal position for myself is still the same place that I started. I can trust that this position works across the most number of circumstances for me.
So when it comes time to consider updating any gear I have something useful to base my decisions on. I have learned how to evaluate the usefulness of an item usually just by looking at it. This is starting to save me some real money now, as the number of pieces of gear I discard is slowing down.
There is a real urge to buy our way into a good self defense plan. The truth is that the useful number of tools is actually not that many, it’s far more important that you spend time and money developing an understanding of the fight and the skills to win that fight.
Nearly 20 years after I bought my first gun, my best recommendation for almost any person who is carrying a gun for self defense is a good quality 9mm striker fired handgun, a quality inside the waistband holster with a somewhat rigid belt, a handheld flashlight and, depending on your attire and habits, perhaps 1 extra magazine.
Over time one might decide that one handgun model is easier to shoot than another, or that a specific holster design might be easier to conceal than another, and perhaps some quality pepper spray. Beyond these basics there is little else I’d recommend for 99% of people who carry a concealed handgun. Spend your extra money on training.
Buying a gun for self defense is a big step in a self defense plan. It is a very powerful and effective tool and when used properly, it has the potential to allow people who are smaller, weaker or outnumbered to prevail in a dangerous attack. But the tool by itself is not usually enough to give you the best chance to win the fight.
The video below shows an attack that happened a couple weeks ago in Denver. The young man who was attacked was ambushed by multiple attackers who were able to quickly beat him into submission. Once he was on the ground, he was essentially defenseless.
Let’s say that this man was armed with a handgun. By the time the fight actually started, he had already been hit once in the head hard enough to knock him to the ground. The time it would take him to react to this new reality doesn’t give him the opportunity to get to his gun and deploy it. I would argue that if you ran this same scenario 100 times, you would be lucky to have one instance where the guy was able to get his gun out and use it.
Situational awareness is a key factor in self defense but many people throw that term around without really bothering to learn what it means or how to use it to help you. Situational awareness starts with the mindset that while 99.9% of the time, the world is a safe and predictable place, you must leave space in your mind that very bad things can happen and they can happen anywhere. If you are in a situation where something feels off, you must be able to allow yourself to ACT accordingly, even if it means doing something that seems unusual.
If we watch this video a little more closely, we can see that these 4 attackers were riding the train with the victim. There’s no way to know for sure what took place on the train but it certainly appears that the victim was caught off guard by the approach of the 4 attackers. The victim allowed himself to be coaxed off the train when it should have been obvious that something was wrong. The attackers appear to have singled him out for the attack, which we can see by the fact that they let the first passenger off the train to walk right through them. Very often there are a lot of clues leading up to an ambush like this and in this case it is likely that there were cues taking place on the train before it arrived at the station. It appears that the victim was somewhat oblivious the moment he approached the exit.
He may have been attacked either way whether he retreated further into the train or not. But if he had paused and taken a different action rather than walking straight into the ambush, he would have bought himself some time. It may not have been much time, but time is like GOLD in a defensive encounter. Time provides options and the more options you have the higher chances you have of taking effective action to win the fight.
To further increase your options and chances of winning the fight, training will help you develop usable skills and tools. There is no doubt that when you are facing 4 attackers intent on turning you into a bloody pulp you are at a severe disadvantage and your chances of winning are in serious jeopardy. But that doesn’t mean that you cannot win. A gun is a very effective tool at evening the odds in the fight, but without the time to use it, it won’t be much help. Paying attention to your surroundings, and more specifically, the PEOPLE in your surroundings, is a skill and its a skill that helps buy the time you need to defend yourself. I encourage you to invest your time into learning this skill and developing it into something you are good at.
Any sane person who arms themselves for self defense will tell you that they don’t really want any trouble, they carry the gun in case trouble finds them. But life is anything but simple and a recent self defense situation in Denver shows how ugly self defense can get.
An unknown male in Denver had his car stolen from the Northfield parking lot 2 weeks ago. Using an app he had on his phone, he was able to track his vehicle down. Upon finding his car, he jumped out to confront the thieves, one of which was a 12 year old boy. As the owner approached the vehicle, at least one other occupant in the car started shooting at him. He drew his gun and fired back multiple times. 2 of his rounds found the 12 year old driver who died from his wounds after speeding away. Once the gunfire was over, the owner of the vehicle did not continue the pursuit of his car. He called the police who tracked down the vehicle and the deceased driver. The other occupants of the car were long gone.
Video of the shooting has just been released.
The Denver District Attorney announced publicly last week that they don’t intend to file charges due to the unlikeliness of getting a conviction based on the evidence they gathered. The family of the boy who was killed have been vocal about their feelings about what happened. They have indicated that they would like to sue the owner of the car for the death of their son.
It’s easy to get lost in the weeds in a story like this. Why was the 12 year old stealing cars? Where are the parents? Why did the car owner decide to go look for his car instead of letting the police handle it? Who shot first? Was the car worth the life of another human being? Each of these questions is important but nearly impossible to answer in today’s social climate. The reality is that good honest citizens are frustrated with crime, the police are over extended due to lack of staffing as well as policy changes, there are a lot of “kids” out doing bad shit these days and parents are not doing their jobs.
If this story had been in the news 5 years ago, it would be a lot easier to blame the car owner for taking matters into his own hands. But the way our society has seemingly dramatically shifted in the last few years, it becomes much more difficult to expect the good guy not to take risks. The veneer of law and order that existed in years past appears to be gone. The fact is, more citizens are more likely to take more risks than they used to. Whether it’s right or not, it IS happening.
Not only is violence more common, but the potential long term risk is higher. The family of the boy have indicated that they want to sue once they find out the identity of the man who pulled the trigger. Right or wrong, it doesn’t change the fact that this man may be involved in a multi year, multi million dollar legal fight. I’d be interested to know if this man still feels like his car was worth the trouble and the life of another person. He may feel that it is. But the point is that when we defend ourselves we must have a good understanding of what we are risking when we do it.
These kinds of stories also hammer home to me why it’s important to have a legal plan in place before the moment of self defense arises. I hope I am never in the position to have to take lethal action against another person, but the fact is that it is not up to me. I am prepared with a solid legal plan that will make it easy for me to call an attorney immediately. I have a strong feeling that this car owner called an attorney right away, considering how quickly the DA announced that charges would not be filed as well as the fact that the DA has remained silent as to the identity of the man. The aftermath of a self defense incident is a minefield, and I am not planning to do it alone.
This week we’re going to talk about a psychological phenomenon that could impact whether you are really ready to defend yourself.
It’s 10pm on a Saturday night. You and your best friend have just finished dinner at a restaurant that you have been to many times before. As you are walking alone towards your car you see a stranger walking in your direction on the sidewalk. There is something about him that gives you a feeling that he is going to talk to you. No problem, it’s not unusual for strangers to talk to each other. As he approaches his focus is on you and he looks quickly left towards the street as he starts to ask you for a cigarette. His hands don’t look threatening but he’s fidgeting with his belt. Your brain starts sending you signals that this is a dangerous situation but you don’t want to be rude, weird, paranoid or judgy. While he’s asking for a cigarette, you politely tell him sorry you don’t smoke and have a nice night. What you didn’t notice is that he has positioned his body between you and the street, putting your back to a wall. Without any apparent warning, he takes a swing at you and now you’re in a violent robbery.
To most normal people on the street, violence is not normal. But to an attacker, violence IS normal.
Normalcy bias is a psychological phenomenon that causes us to ignore important information about our environment because we can’t or don’t want to accept that things outside the norm can be happening. In the world of self defense, this can be a huge problem for us. It can slow down our recognition of a violent encounter and can impede our ability to act.
In the story above, as the stranger is approaching he is giving signs that he is going to speak to you. While speaking to strangers is not unusual, the circumstance of being alone on a public street at night and possibly no one else around makes this a much higher risk interaction. If things go wrong, they can go really really wrong.
As the unknown contact approaches, your gut is telling you that this is high risk, but your rational brain may be trying to search for reasons to believe that there is nothing wrong here. There is a fight happening in your brain.
As the encounter develops, the unknown contact continues to broadcast signals. Looking around while talking to you, touching his pant line, moving you into a vulnerable position are all pre attack indicators. But you might be distracted by a very normal question, a request for a cigarette. As the encounter continues, your options to keep this from becoming a fight are disappearing. The bad guy is trying to act normal but he’s about to do something very abnormal. These conflicting signals are going 100 miles per hour in your brain.
To most normal people on the street, violence is not normal. But to an attacker, violence IS normal. For good moral people who unfortunate enough to have been in violent encounters, it’s much easier to defeat this normalcy bias and to take this situation as seriously as they should. But if you’re new to the world of violence, your rational brain may be working against you.
How do we learn to defeat this bias without exposing ourselves to a mugger just for the experience? Training and education. Training to be confident in our skills, training in dealing with unknown contacts, to recognize pre attack indicators, training to communicate with skill, and educating ourselves on what violence looks like in the real world. Without having seen the real world consequences of these encounters, it’s hard to take them seriously. Thanks to the internet, you don’t need to look very hard anymore. But you do need the will to learn.
Don’t let your biases blind you to the world around you. Take your self defense training and education seriously.
I strongly encourage you to take the chance to train for actual defensive scenarios. Join us for an upcoming class and build the skills that may save your life!
This week we’re going to talk about why it’s so important to understand the human body and how it works when it comes to self defense shooting.
Most people took biology in high school. Most of us have a general idea where the heart, brain and lungs are. Most of us understand that damage to these parts of the body will reduce someone’s ability to function.
The Heart, Lungs, Major Blood Vessels and Spine are all located in the high center chest
But if you own a gun for self defense, this rudimentary understanding of anatomy isn’t enough if you take your personal safety seriously. The human body is amazingly complex as well as resilient and a lot of people are quite surprised when they learn how difficult it can be to stop a threat effectively even with a firearm.
I don’t expect people to get a medical degree but I am constantly amazed at how little is understood by the average gun owner of how the body functions, how it responds to damage and trauma, and how the ammo fired from their guns relates to damage within the human body.
On some level, the gun is a simple machine that is not hard to understand. It fires a bullet at a high rate of speed in the direction it was pointed. If anything is in front of that bullet, it will be damaged. In a fight, it is a force multiplier, meaning it allows a person to exert more damage than would otherwise be physically possible without that tool. Some call it an equalizer, and to some degree I agree. A physically smaller and weaker person can use it to cause death or serious injury against a larger, more skilled opponent. But it is not a magic wand that guarantees that the user will win the fight.
In order to learn how to fight with the tool, we really need to understand the tool, including its limitations. That’s right, the handgun has limitations. In the realm of weapons, handguns are not even close to the top of the list when it comes to damage. Compared to rifles and shotguns, handguns are relatively weak and ineffective. How do we know this? Statistics. 84% of people shot with one round fired from a handgun survive. 68% of people shot with one round fired from a rifle survive. That’s a big difference, especially when we filter out incidents involving suicide.
The reason we carry these lesser tools is convenience. I can have this tool on my person much more easily than a rifle or a shotgun. Since I’m choosing the more convenient tool, I should learn how to use it in a way that leverages its benefits.
To give ourselves the best chance to stop the threat, we need to be prepared to deliver multiple rounds to the threat, as fast as we are able to, until the threat is over. Our training should always reflect what we are preparing for in the real world.
When we are training with our handguns, we train to fire between 3 to 5 rounds at the high center chest as fast as we can accomplish the task with the necessary precision. Why 3 to 5 rounds? In part, the reason is that in order to ensure that our threat is most likely to change his/her behavior, we need to hit the vital area multiple times. The high center chest contains the heart, lungs, aortic arch, aorta and spine. It’s a target rich environment. But it is also well protected by the rib cage, a structure that turns out to do a pretty amazing job at preventing injury to these organs.
Since we cannot predict what a round will do once it starts hitting the inconsistent structures of the human body, we are training to get at least 3 rounds into this vital area. The goal is to cause traumatic bleeding that will significantly impair the bad guy’s ability to continue to be a threat. If we are really lucky, the bullet may strike the spine, possibly causing temporary or permanent paralysis.
Is it possible that one round can cause this type of damage? Absolutely! But based on what we see in the data, the chances are more likely that it won’t. One round may also be enough to cause a psychological stop, meaning that the bad guy changes his mind about fighting. But relying on a psychological stop is basing your self defense plan on luck, and luck isn’t a responsible plan.
We don’t shoot to kill, we shoot to stop. But we want to be sure of our tactics, and part of that means training for the most likely scenarios. To give ourselves the best chance to stop the threat, we need to be prepared to deliver multiple rounds to the threat, as fast as we are able to, until the threat is over. Our training should always reflect what we are preparing for in the real world.
I strongly encourage you to take the chance to train for actual defensive scenarios. Join us for an upcoming class and build the skills that may save your life!
This week we’re going to discuss how your right to self defense comes with a huge responsibility.
We love talking about Rights. I have a right to speak, a right to own a gun, a right to expect privacy from my government. Individual Rights are the bedrock of our Western civilization. Many people in our society still understand this, and advocate for it.
What often gets ignored in the defense of Rights is a discussion and acknowledgment of our Responsibilities. Guns For Everyone has made Responsibility part of our message from the beginning. For instance, your Right to own a gun comes with the Responsibility to handle that gun safely.
When it comes to self defense, every human has the Right to protect themselves. We are born with that Right and it is sacred. But we tend to not acknowledge the Responsibility that comes with that Right. You cannot expect other people to protect you if you will not accept your Responsibility to protect yourself.
While we are all blessed with the same rights, we are not all blessed with the same abilities.
There is only one person you can guarantee will be present the moment you are faced with a threat: You. You are your only reliable defender. If you take your personal safety seriously, you must accept this. Your mindset must reflect this. Your preparation must respect this.
While we are all blessed with the same rights, we are not all blessed with the same abilities. I understand that not everyone is physically, mentally or even financially gifted with the resources to be a top level fighter. Not everyone is going to be able to deliver a damaging punch with precision. Not everyone is born with the ability to stay calm in a fight. Nor can everyone afford the means to train like an elite athlete or soldier. Life is not fair, life is not equal.
The Responsibility to defend ourselves starts with our mindset and our will to win. Anyone can develop the mindset for self defense. Even if I am not as trained as the next guy, even if I am older, smaller, more frail, I will do everything in my power to be ready to defend myself. If I am targeted for an attack, I will win the fight or I will die trying. Why? Because it’s my responsibility. How can I ask others to do for me what I am not willing to do for myself? How can I ask someone else to risk their safety to protect me when I am not willing to fight for myself?
The Right to self defense must be paired with the Responsibility to prepare for self defense, and the will to defend yourself. If we all took this Responsibility as seriously as we take our Rights, our society and culture would be very different than it is today.
I strongly encourage you to take the chance to train for actual defensive scenarios. Join us for an upcoming class and build the skills that may save your life!
This week we are going to watch a man with extraordinary composure in the face of an armed threat successfully evade an attack, and then make a huge mistake.
The following video is from Milwaukee Wisconsin and shows a 66 year old Vietnam veteran face down an armed carjacker.
Our defender is getting out of his car when he is confronted by a man with a gun. The good guy’s reaction is to simply walk away. This reaction was clearly not what the carjacker was expecting as we can see the confusion on his face and a moment of indecision before he and his 2 accomplices take off running.
This is a win and our good guy could have ended this interaction here. Instead, he jumped into his car to chase down his attackers. This resulted in him getting shot at multiple times, with his car being hit a total of 4 times. Obviously this is not a good way to end your day. But is this something our good guy should have done?
In our Free Concealed Carry Classes, we often discuss the idea of “Could versus Should”. Just because something is possible, or even legal, does not always mean it’s something you should do. The reverse is also true, just because the legal aftermath is unpredictable and high risk doesn’t mean you should do what is necessary to save your life or the lives of others.
In order to answer the could versus should question, a person must have a good understanding of the laws, the nature of violent attacks, the stakes involved and a clear understanding of what is most important to them. We often bring up the idea of protecting property with deadly force. A lot of people value a thief’s life much less than say their vehicle. But the life of the bad guy is not the only part of the equation. There’s also the physical risk for yourself, as well as the potential for legal fallout that could land you in jail. Most people who look at the whole equation will rethink the idea of charging out to take on a car thief in their driveway.
But we have to also consider another motivation when it comes to self defense. Humans are territorial. We haven’t socialized that out of our society yet. It is possible that this 66 year old veteran felt like it was in his best interest to chase away violent people who were threatening not just him, but his neighborhood as well. The instinct to protect is noble and it is innate in some people. While it may seem crazy to some people that this man would risk his life to pursue his attackers, to him it may seem worth the risk of getting shot or even killed.
I used to have a neighbor who was 80 years old. His wife of many decades had passed away. He lived alone, and didn’t go out much at all. We had several problems with thefts in the cul de sac and the police were unable to prevent the problems we were having. This neighbor would spend many hours after dark sitting in a lawn chair in his driveway, sometimes bundled up against the cold. He held a flashlight in one hand and pistol in the other. We would run off any suspicious vehicles that happened to venture into his neighborhood. First he’d shine the flashlight. If that wasn’t enough, then he’d show the gun.
While I’d never advocate that anyone take this approach for dealing with this type of crime, clearly my neighbor had decided that he’d rather spend his remaining years after a long life doing something that he felt was necessary, no matter the risks. And I doubt anyone would have been able to talk him out of that.
The point I am trying to make with this story is that we will all have to evaluate what is most important to us and decide how to act based on that evaluation. But in order to properly understand it we must educate ourselves about what the true risks are to our lives, our freedom, our resources and so on. To live with conviction, we must be certain of our convictions in the first place.
A plan is a precarious thing. Anyone with enough experience in high risk situations, whether that risk is physical, financial, interpersonal, etc, will tell you that things rarely go according to plan once the ball is in play. But these people will also tell you that failing to plan is a surefire way to lose.
The legal fight after the physical fight can cost you more than you are prepared to lose. And I don’t just mean financially.
When I first started carrying a gun back in 2007, I was extremely naïve about pretty much everything related to self defense. But what I was acutely aware of was that if someone decided to try to victimize me, the only person responsible for my protection was me. This is what started me on the path to developing the knowledge and skills to develop a self defense plan.
The gun is one part of that plan, but as a responsible human being, it’s certainly not the only part of the plan. Will the plan work to save my life if someone tries to attack me? There’s no way to guarantee that. But I have a much better chance the better developed my skills, knowledge and plans are.
But the fight is not over once the shooting stops. There are more fights coming. The legal fight after the physical fight can cost you more than you are prepared to lose. And I don’t just mean financially. I want to share a story that I was just made aware of recently.
Jay Rodney Lewis was a resident of Des Moines Iowa who held a concealed handgun permit. One night he was on his way home when he was attacked my two men. One of these men had over 40 criminal convictions in his past. Jay did nothing to provoke the attack. In fact Jay retreated several times from the confrontation while on the phone with 911. His repeated attempts to deescalate and retreat did not save him from the fight. Finally he was forced to shoot one attacker in self defense. Jay fired once, hitting and wounding one of his attackers in the chest. The fight was over, both attackers broke off the attack.
When the police arrived, Jay was arrested and subsequently charged with two misdemeanors and two felonies. The good news is that Jay fought back and he won a jury trial. The jury took only 90 minutes to acquit Jay of any wrong doing. The bad news is that Jay spent nearly 4 months in jail waiting for that outcome. Jay was evicted from his apartment, all of his possessions were tossed out on the curb and disappeared. He also lost his job. When Jay walked out of the courtroom a “Free” man, he was homeless and penniless.
I often hear people say, “Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6”, meaning better to have to fight it out in a court room than to die in the fight because you were afraid to act. While I agree with the sentiment, usually people who say this have a very naïve understanding of what it means to be judged by 12. They don’t often count the cost of things like losing your job, the intense emotion tied to fighting for your freedom when you know you were the victim, the lost days, weeks, months or even years of your life spent battling charges and lawsuits, lost relationships, loss of reputation and more.
How do we prepare for this? Part of thinking defensively is having a plan for this aftermath. Hopefully I won’t be arrested, hopefully I won’t get charged, hopefully the prosecutor won’t see a winnable case. But hope is not a plan.
I carry a self defense legal plan through Firearms Legal Protection. They aren’t the only company that offers a self defense legal plan, but based on all of my years of study and experience, I do think that they are the best option among many. Is it a guarantee? There are no guarantees. But it’s a strong plan designed to handle a fight that I know is costly once it starts. As a responsible gun owner, I take that fight very seriously. I recommend that you do as well.
We don’t chose to be attacked. But we have a responsibility to be ready if we are. If you are interested in having a Legal Plan, check out what Firearms Legal Protection has to offer by clicking the button below. There’s no reason to wait until it’s too late.
This week we’re going to dive into a discussion about when the use of deadly force is justified.
When we look at self defense shootings in the news, a quick review of the comments below the story almost always reveals a discussion about whether or not a shooting was “justified”. People rage at each other and argue points that they really do not understand. In order to be responsible gun owners and be prepared for self defense, we need to understand what the word “justified” really means.
Attacks tend to happen quickly. The victim often has very little time to process what is happening to them. In that short amount of time, the victim needs to recognize the attack, decide what to do and implement action. This is a recipe for mistakes. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not blaming the victim. But we must acknowledge the massive level of legal risk of choosing the wrong actions in that high stress moment.
It’s very normal for victims to cross legal boundaries in the middle of the fight. But just because it’s normal does not mean there will not be consequences. As the news reports on the story, readers love to debate whether the person will “get off” or whether they will “end up in the slammer”. But what we always must remember is that there is only one group of people who will ultimately make the final decision: the Jury.
I’m not a lawyer and I’ve never argued a criminal case in front of a jury. I have a little experience as a witness, a little experience as a possible suspect, a little experience speaking to detectives in an interrogation, and a little experience in a courtroom. I have just enough experience to know that I am not equipped to handle the aftermath alone. The stakes are too high for me to not take this seriously.
An act of self defense is only “justified” when a jury of your peers decides it was justified. The police will investigate, the lawyers will argue, a judge will mediate, the press will report, the community will gossip. But the Jury decides.
It is always possible that a District Attorney will decide not to pursue charges. This still doesn’t mean the act was justified, it only means that the DA doesn’t see a winnable case. More evidence could come along and the DA could change their mind. Then the case ends up in front of a jury.
Why am I arguing semantics? Because it should help us understand how the unpredictable legal aftermath can be. Not a single juror will have witnessed the attack. Not a single juror will be friends with you. Not a single juror will have felt what you felt in that moment. The jury is supposed to an impartial, sober, sane group of peers who determine whether your acts were reasonable. Even though you, your family, your friends, or even all the commentators on Facebook believe that you were “justified”, your future is in the hands of 12 strangers.
This is why I have a legal plan in place for the aftermath. I’m not a lawyer and I’ve never argued a criminal case in front of a jury. I have a little experience as a witness, a little experience as a possible suspect, a little experience speaking to detectives in an interrogation, and a little experience in a courtroom. I have just enough experience to know that I am not equipped to handle the aftermath alone. The stakes are too high for me to not take this seriously.
Next time you see a news story about a self defense shooting, remember that that victim’s fight is not over and that ultimately their future rests in the hands of a jury.
These are just a few lessons, and there are more. I strongly encourage you to take the chance to train for actual defensive scenarios. Join us for an upcoming class and build the skills that may save your life!
Lesson 1 – Defensive shootings tend to be DIFFICULT. In this case, our bad guy was outnumbered, outgunned, surrounded and confined to a small space with no easy means of escape, cover or concealment. The bad guys pick the terms of the fight. This cannot be stressed enough. The shooting you do at the Range is the exact opposite of a situation like this. At the range, all of the environmental factors are chosen and or artificial.: distance to target, speed of the fight, direction of target, etc. In the real world, almost none of these factors will be up to you. Our good guy in this situation started out the fight with a gun in his face. Once he began his draw, he was immediately shot in the face/neck. These fights are far from easy.
Lesson 2 – Speed of draw. Our good guy was open carrying, but the bad guy had the drop on him. When the good guy made the decision to draw, he had about 1 second to successfully draw and fire before the bad guy would be able to respond by pulling the trigger. The mistake our good guy made was to hesitate in his decision. His hand went to his gun and almost a whole second went by as he made the decision as to whether he would shoot or not. In that moment, he lost any chance he had to shoot first. A fast draw is not simply about getting the gun out of the holster and on target. It also includes the decision to act.
A fast draw is not simply about getting the gun out of the holster and on target. It also includes the decision to act.
Now once our good guy did draw the gun, he was actually extremely fast. The problem was the interval between when his hand went to his gun, and his decision to draw. This interval gave the bad guys time to act. I’d like to add a fantastic resource to this discussion on how training for that decision should really look in the real world.
Lesson 3 – The will to win the fight. Our good guy was shot twice in this fight, at near point blank range. He initially went into a flight/freeze response as he dropped to the ground and curled into a fetal position. However he did not stay down as the bullets continued to fly. He got back up, with bullet holes in his head, and continued to fight, and FIGHT EFFECTIVELY. He maintained continuous movement and continuous fire towards his threats. This is incredibly important, the fight is not over just because you are shot.
These are just a few lessons, and there are more. I strongly encourage you to take the chance to train for actual defensive scenarios. Join us for an upcoming class and build the skills that may save your life!
Guns are dangerous. This is how I start my discussion of firearm safety in our Free Concealed Carry Classes. It seems like an obvious statement, and it should be. It’s the reason I carry the gun in the first place, this dangerous item has the capacity to cause death or serious injury with minimal effort. It’s part of the reason why guns are the ‘great equalizer’, it allows an under sized, under skilled or otherwise under capable person to defend themselves from someone who wants to inflict their will upon them physically.
While it would seem obvious to say that guns are dangerous, a lot of gun owners do not treat them that way. We see gun owners buy guns for important benefits like preserving their lives but without any understanding what it takes to control a gun to manage the inherit risk of owning the gun. Today I want to talk about why learning to control your gun is so important.
Most of us learned how to drive in our teenage years, and have continued driving in the years and decades after. Like guns, cars are inherently dangerous. The focus when we teach teenagers how to drive is to learn the basic functions of the car and how to CONTROL the car in all situations. We don’t teach our kids a set of 4 rules about the car, then leave them alone with the keys. We spend weeks working with them to develop the skills of controlling the speed and direction of the car, as well as cautioning them about the dangers inherent in any situation they encounter. We stress that if they make bad decisions or do not pay attention they will hurt someone and will lose their ability to drive. I’m sure some of you readers learned the hard way what happens when you don’t take the responsibility of the car seriously. I did.
When it comes to guns, a great many gun owners will focus on their rights to have and carry guns. They are not wrong. As human beings, we possess the natural right to arm ourselves however we can manage, provided you don’t hurt the wrong person. But in that strict focus on our rights, many of us forget to also respect the responsibilities that come with those rights. Since no one is sitting over our shoulder to ensure that we are learning to properly control the gun, laziness or ignorance drives us to not take those responsibilities seriously. As a result I see an astonishing number of gun owners who do not possess the simple set of skills to control their guns. Control may mean controlling the muzzle of the gun in EVERY situation, or maintaining a safe position of the trigger finger when handling the gun. Control also means keeping the gun in a safe place when not in use.
Guns left unsupervised pose a very serious risk. You may not believe that your unsupervised gun is dangerous but nobody volunteers to be victimized in a burglary. Guns represent risks for children, people dealing with mental health problems or for a criminal who would gladly liberate your gun from your possession given the right opportunity. Just like a car in the hands of someone with ill will or lack of good judgement is dangerous, guns in the wrong hands are extremely dangerous. Part of the right of owning the gun is the responsibility to keep it safe. If we don’t, eventually we shift that responsibility to someone else. In our modern society, that ‘someone else’ will end up being the government.
Colorado passed a safe storage law last year and now under Colorado law, gun owners are required to lock up their guns under certain circumstances. The government has no business telling me how to keep my guns in my house. But thanks to too many concrete examples of kids getting a hold of an unsecured gun, the law made enough sense to the legislators to get it passed and signed. That was in part because enough gun owners decided to ignore their responsibilities.
If we don’t take our responsibilities seriously, someone else will. Gun ownership is not just about your rights. For the sake of everyone, make controlling your guns a way of life. It matters.
Last week, a 22 year old man stopped a well armed mass shooter in a shopping mall in Greenville, Indiana. The evil bastard who decided to perpetrate this act of violence went into a bathroom near the food court, armed himself with an AR-15, walked out of the bathroom and started shooting.
Eli Dicken, a 22 year old Indiana resident, was carrying a 9mm handgun concealed. Within 15 seconds of the first shot fired, Dicken told his girlfriend to get down, gained a position of cover, took aim and fired 10 rounds at the attacker, hitting him 8 times. This hero was physically and mentally prepared to act in the face of extreme violence. He was also lucky that he had enough time and distance to put his plan into action. He saved countless lives because he was ready.
Carrying a gun is no guarantee that you will be ready when you are called upon for the fight of your life.
We have also learned that this young man was not the only citizen carrying a concealed handgun. The first victim, who was shot and killed immediately after the attacker exited the bathroom, was armed. What he did not have was the time to react. Even though he was prepared by having his gun, luck put him right outside that bathroom door as the shooter began his attack.
Carrying a gun is no guarantee that you will be ready when you are called upon for the fight of your life. It improves your chances of being able to fight back, but it’s not the only element of your preparation. Developing a mindset that will help you employ extreme violence at a moments notice, learning the skills of observing your environment, identifying potential and active threats, deciding to act, and putting your plan into action and having the mentality of a protector are all part of the preparation. There will always be the element of luck as well, and luck can count in a fight. But you can’t count on luck.
I want to acknowledge the 3 victims who died in this horrific event. While we celebrate that there was someone ready, willing and able to act to protect himself and everyone else, we still mourn the loss of life due to the evil that was unleashed that day. We wrote before about understanding that evil and preparing for it in a previous blog article.
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.
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!
