You take your family on a drive along a beautiful mountain road.
The kids are looking off to the left at the amazing view as your car hugs the mountain on the right.
Suddenly, small rocks begin dropping, hitting the road, and pelting off your car.
In a moment of terror you recognize it’s the start of an avalanche. You’ve thought about this possibility in the past and now its ‘go’ time.
What are you gonna do as the rocks continue to fall — faster and bigger?
You want to take action, in fact, your foot is straining to hit the accelerator. Yet you hesitate!
Why
Flashing through your mind you see yourself getting a felony speeding ticket for reckless driving if you take action. And this dilemma causes you to freeze, frantically trying to think of another answer. But the rocks just keep falling — bigger, faster and now there’s a lot more of them…
A ridiculous situation? Of course. And obviously, unless you are a fool, you’ll hit the accelerator and do everything you can to get your car to safety to protect you and everyone else in it.
Yet as obvious as this situation is to you, I get the same question posed to me about various self defense laws and the liabilities you may face if you take action to “defend” yourself in a life-or-death situation. Usually people are very thorough in their analysis of the the situation and ask me for exact levels of response that they may “safely” use to protect themselves yet be “proportional in response to the threat.”
After dealing with sane, socialized clients for the past 20 years I understand what you’re grasping for with such questions. Unfortunately I’m constantly forced to be the one dumping a bucket of ice water on these reveries of “self defense realities.”
I do this first by quickly asking people the “scenario” you are imagining. If it does not constitute a life-or-death situation then I summarily dismiss the situation.
If the imagined scene is a life-or-death situation I then walk folks through the above “mountain road” analogy. And you quickly see that once the rocks start falling you must hit the gas and go for it all out. Any other course of action will leave you crushed under tons of rock.
At the point of violence when someone attacks you with the intent to do “grievous bodily harm” (yep, I threw in a popular legal self defense term) there are no options and no such thing as a proportional response.
Furthermore in that very scenario the only person concerned with the law is YOU. The other guy is too busy stabbing, stomping or shooting to be concerned about laws nor does it matter to the asocial criminal. It’s the dirty little secret most self defense and reality fighting programs leave out of their training. In fact they often go overboard with the legal aspects of such incidents while ignoring the physical realities of violence.
In the above mountain road scenario once the rocks are falling you need to hit the gas — not worry about getting a speeding ticket.
Now an intelligent question to ask is what decisions did the driver make before traveling that road. Did he ignore warning signs? That is when you can really make a difference in avoiding even the possibility of facing an avoidable ‘avalanche’ in your life.
I wrote a whole book on that subject and it’s the best Self Defense insurance you can buy. My job is to make sure my clients avoid every possible personal self defense avalanche in their lives so they never freeze when they should, instead, be hitting the gas!
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Also, “…concerned about laws” could use a comma before, “nor does it matter…”
Grammar Nazi is all I can manage. Couldn’t find a thing out of place with the rest of how good it was.
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Use a gun to defend yourself and your gun will be destroyed (during “examination”) and you arrested and probably tried. Very expensive, time consuming and the price of living in a nation that has a legal system to protect the innocent and collects money from the survivors to pay for it. An ordeal worth living through given the choices.
If you can understand it’s the guy who was the problem, and not your methods; then depend on convincing your peers that TFT was your only choice, but at a price. There is likely to be a lawyer who will know you trained to be a killer and he’ll want to make you look like a brainless gun.
Life may deal you the opportunity to use these skills, being able to survive is worth it… keep in mind there will be a show that follows… keep it real. Unlike the DVD training scenarios you probably won’t just “walk away, fade camera to black”. But you will move on with your own power, most likely with a police escort.
Gun and CCW Experts recommend you talk to a lawyer about what it means to shoot someone when you get a CCW permit, don’t wait until after you killed a perp. Part of learning to swim to safety is knowing what to do when you get out. I live near the Pacific Ocean in Northern California. People die from hypothermia after getting pulled out of the water. They thought swimming was enough and drowning was the only problem. Not any more.
Going to court after defending yourself on the street won’t get you killed, but unless it really was a dark alley and no one saw you coming or going; you probably will end up in court. It’s another reason to only fight when you have to. Otherwise you’re gambling on some shaky motivation that witnesses may paint in a very dark color.
Do you want to be fully prepared?
Know what matters to an investigator, defender and prosecutor after a fight to the death or life crippling injury… Tim/Chris… can you post something on that? Not that you want to tamper with evidence, you certainly don’t want to disarm a dead man after it’s over(or do you?) Are there things you “should say” and things you “definitely don’t say”? To the first witnesses on the scene, the police who show up too late to help you survive and now see you as a threat to the public?
Know a good DA who’s willing to share?
Knowledge trumps fear. Fear of the legal system will compromise your intent and get you killed. If it bothers you, make it part of your training.
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Anyway, as Geoff Thompson has pointed out so brilliantly in his book “Dead or Alive”, your freedom often depends more on what you say than what you did. That is, after the conflict is over, you will have to give very careful thought to how you’re going to explain to the police what you did and why you did it. As a lawyer, I can absolutely confirm that.
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True enough, any response to avoid an actual “life or death threat” is “reasonable under the circumstances”. However, the smart predators don’t necessarily give you a clear indication of their intent before it is too late to avoid it. Instead, they employ deception, stealth, and cunning to try to surprise you.
To effectively prevent an accident, you first have to see it coming. One thing is for sure, if you are not in proximity, then you can not make “love or war” at any level.
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I choose to live, pure and simple. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about what happens to me legally afterward should I ever use TFT to save my life.
I would like to hear from a layer about what to say, or not say, after taking a life in self defense. When asked by a LEO what happened, what do I say? Do I have the right to remain silent and ask for a layer instead of explaining what led to the death of a criminal? Should I put a layer on retainer after attending a live training session? I’ve heard of people who retain a layer immediately after getting a CCW permit, just in case. Seems like a prudent thing to do after learning TFT, but I’m not sure. Would putting a layer on retainer ahead of time make me look guilty after an incident?
I would view learning how to handle the legal backlash after a violent incident where a criminal loses his life or is maimed as the same thing as learning to defend myself physically; just another way to protect my life. A DVD or CD on this subject would be an awesome addition to the TFT products lineup. If a great defense layer would lay out on DVD or CD the steps one should take long before and/or immediately after an incident I for one would make sure I listened to or watched it. Perhaps someone can point me in the right direction to get the answers I’m looking for about this.
I will be attending the upcoming live training session in Boston this February. Can’t wait.
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With all my years in law inforcement, I saw so many officers getting killed because they were too ”civilized” only took few seconds of hesitation…What Tim teaches is simple but brutal attacks with no mercy or consideration for the attackers body, you have to kill in order not get yourself killed!
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Herman
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I just got a piece of advice that I think will help in the legal aftermath of a violent encounter from the Front Sight Blog. Always describe (the words are important) your actions and intent to effectively “stop” the attack. Leave the effect of those actions, the living or dieing, to a higher power.
Signed: Bill, the 260 pound, 56 year old, out of shape (but working on it) attack-stopping-machine.
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As a combatives instructor I instruct my students to learn what works to stop an ATTACKER.
Key word as you are being attacked, you flick the kill switch. In the Canadian court system cases of assault and self defence are based upon the national use of force model. Many factors are included when these cases are being tried, however it comes down to one basic point. How the defender percieved the threat at the time. In very quick summation, if you are in fear of losing your life and all other options of obtaining safety have been exhausted or eliminated then you are legally justified to use lethal force.Flick the mental kill switch and destroy your attacker.
Stay in shape, and train as though your life depends on it.
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