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!
This week the focus is on how we can work to stop these changes from becoming law.
A quick history of these changes is in order. In 2003, Colorado amended concealed carry law to say that State law was the supreme law of the land. No individual jurisdiction could make more restrictive laws. This was challenged many times by cities and counties who wanted to make their own local laws. These challenges were all unsuccessful in the long run. The last major challenge occurred in 2018 when Boulder County banned ‘Assault Weapons’. Boulder county knew that this law would not stand up to the legal challenge, but they fought anyway. The case went before the Colorado Supreme Court and in 2021, the Supreme Court unsurprisingly ruled that the Colorado Preemption laws overruled Boulder’s new gun laws.
One week later, a man walked into a King Soopers in Boulder and started shooting. In the aftermath, a bill to change the Preemption clause in C.R.S. 18-12-201 was quickly brought in front of the state legislature. In 6 short weeks, the law was passed and signed by the Governor.
The pertinent question to ask would be, how did this happen so quickly? The reality is that Colorado is prime target in the nationwide gun control debate. This means that there is a lot of money being spent by national organizations to push gun control in Colorado. These law changes were just waiting for the right opportunity. The Boulder shooting was that opportunity.
The reality of our situation is that one of the only ways to fight the changes happening at the local level is to financially support the organizations that are fighting to hold back these changes. Many people do not want to spend the money to support these organizations and this ends up putting Colorado in a very bad position. Anti Gun organizations know that they have an easy fight in Colorado.
How can you help? The first answer is to get involved. There are organizations such as Rocky Mountain Gun Owners at the state level, and Firearms Policy Coalition at the national level that need both manpower and money to operate. We can also get involved by keeping track of city council meetings, agendas, and local news to be ready to fight when these changes are being proposed. Fighting in the trenches is where a lot of us can help.
EDGEWATER — The Edgewater City Council has significantly scaled back — at least for now — most of what it planned to consider in way of new gun rights restrictions being encouraged by an anti-gun advocacy group, after dozens of residents and others emailed and showed up at an April 19 work session to express their displeasure on possible ordinances targeting gun owners.
If you can’t find the time or money to get involved, unfortunately you won’t have any right to complain as the laws change around you. It’s an uphill battle but it’s a fight worth winning. Don’t lose heart, we can win. But we have to get in the fight.
A new push for restricting Concealed Carry has begun in several Colorado cities since the Colorado Legislature changed how Colorado law functions.
Denver, Boulder, Edgewater and even Canon City have all proposed banning concealed carry in certain locations within their jurisdictions. The latest city to put the issue before their city council is Edgewater, a small city within the Denver Metro area. These restrictions proposed in Edgewater include prohibiting Concealed Carry in Bars, Liquor Stores, Medical facilities and more:
Bars and Liquor Stores
Day Care Centers and Preschools
Medical Facilities
Mental Health Care Facilities
Banks
Event Venues, Theaters
City Parks
City owned buildings
These types of restrictions will be coming hard and fast across the metro area cities and counties in 2022. But this is not just a metro area issue. Canon City, in Southern Colorado, has also been debating banning concealed carry in City buildings.
Edgar and I at Guns For Everyone are doing our best to keep people informed of these proposed changes but the truth is that it will be impossible for anyone to fully keep up on all the possible changes and their impact.
The state legislature has demonstrated that they do not care about you, the law abiding citizen. There are 336 individual jurisdictions in Colorado and each one of them now has the power to make up their own laws about where you can carry a gun within their jurisdiction.
It’s easy to get discouraged but I encourage you to instead focus on getting involved. In the next newsletter, we will discuss how to do that. If we don’t actively defend our rights, they will be taken from us. It’s time to step up.
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.
