What should you not use in self defense?

[Mitchell, Esq.]

Stand your ground laws aside - the standard for using lethal force is that it is only justified when you are confronted with imminent, otherwise unavoidable threat of death or grave harm.

The trick is have a base of knowledge which allows you to make that determination sooner.

You are judged on what you know at that time, and then if your judgment is reasonable to those reviewing the facts of the case.

What is reasonable? Depends on the person's basis of knowledge and background.

Person A "just knows" he's going to be attached.

Person B has taken instruction on pre-assault cues and that information is solidly grounded on statistics, and police-criminal interactions of the instructor sharing the material with the students. He knows he is going to be attached.

Person C "just knows" he's going to be attached...because he spend 8 years of college as a bouncer in 14 different bars during the time it took for him to get his masters in women's studies (Don't laugh, the ladies thought he was sensitive and he had a good time...).

Both A, B & C respond in exactly the same way to the same situation.

Who is having an easier time explaining why he put someone in the hospital?

[David Marlow]

Stand your ground laws aside - the standard for using lethal force is that it is only justified when you are confronted with imminent, otherwise unavoidable threat of death or grave harm.

The trick is have a base of knowledge which allows you to make that determination sooner.

You are judged on what you know at that time, and then if your judgment is reasonable to those reviewing the facts of the case.

What is reasonable? Depends on the person's basis of knowledge and background.

Person A "just knows" he's going to be attached.

Person B has taken instruction on pre-assault cues and that information is solidly grounded on statistics, and police-criminal interactions of the instructor sharing the material with the students. He knows he is going to be attached.

Person C "just knows" he's going to be attached...because he spend 8 years of college as a bouncer in 14 different bars during the time it took for him to get his masters in women's studies (Don't laugh, the ladies thought he was sensitive and he had a good time...).

Both A, B & C respond in exactly the same way to the same situation.

Who is having an easier time explaining why he put someone in the hospital?

I'm certainly not smart, but in terms of who will have the easier time explaining, as in articulating, why he/she chose that course of action, then the second person probably will. If I'm not mistaken, the law sees justification based on what a reasonable person with similar education, background, training, or experience would do given the same information available to the accused at the time, right? It seems that someone who is trained and certified with a proven method would have an easier time explaining his or her thought process that led up to the shooting than someone who graduated from "The School of Hard Knocks". Assuming everything else about the three is the same (i.e. age, size, gender, physical limitations, etc), my vote goes to number two.

Or was this a rhetorical question?

[Mitchell, Esq.]

I'm certainly not smart, but in terms of who will have the easier time explaining, as in articulating, why he/she chose that course of action, then the second person probably will. If I'm not mistaken, the law sees justification based on what a reasonable person with similar education, background, training, or experience would do given the same information available to the accused at the time, right? It seems that someone who is trained and certified with a proven method would have an easier time explaining his or her thought process that led up to the shooting than someone who graduated from "The School of Hard Knocks". Assuming everything else about the three is the same (i.e. age, size, gender, physical limitations, etc), my vote goes to number two.

Or was this a rhetorical question?

No, it wasn't rhetorical.

B & C will have the easier time explaining why they did what they did, likely because B has the benefit of being able to explain what and why in terms someone reviewing the incident will understand, i.e. "imminent & unavoidable threat of death or grave injury...ability, opportunity, intent...";

C's opinions and judgments of the situation, if based on longstanding personal experience in dealing with violent people, once explained in similar terms to B's, will produce the same results - each reacted based on what they reasonably believed to be a substantial likelyhood they were going to be attacked, and based upon the training & experience they had, the belief was reasonable.

Self defense does not require you to be RIGHT, but it does require you to be REASONABLE, both subjectively (to yourself based on your training & experience) and objectively (to the reviewer of your incident if he were to imagine himself in your shoes).

The subjective part - you, and your basis of information - allows you to justify faster action and responses, maybe even preemptive striking if called for, provided it's based on solid reasoning and can be shown to be reasonable within a framework that a reviewer can understand.

"I just knew I was going to be attacked" isn't enough...

How did you know?

If "How did you know?" can be answered in a rational, fact based way, such as "I recognized his bladed body stance, mono-syllabic responses, his failure to keep distance when I told him to stay the fuck back, 'grooming behavior', target glancing, and his matching my movement as I stepped sideways were classic signs of a set up to an attack as I was taught by XXX who is a recognized self defense instructor/as I learned in Y-number of years working the door at bars in college as a bouncer dealing with violent people..." then hitting someone before they get the chance to hit you isn't outside the realm of reasonable.

A person who reasonably believes that another is
about to use physical force upon him/her need not wait until
he/she is struck or wounded. He/she may, in such
circumstances, be the first to use physical force, so long as
he/she reasonably believed it was about to be used against
him/her [or someone else]. He/she is then not considered to
be the “initial aggressor,” even though he/she strikes the first
blow or inflicts the first wound.

NYS Jury instructions - http://www.nycourts.gov/cji/1-Genera...ical_Force.pdf

Basically, the better trained you are, the easier it is to act because you can effectively say "I was just doing what established, recognized, peer reviewed instructors told me to do in that situation...I didn't just make this shit up on the fly."

If following the lesson's of established, peer reviewed, nationally recognized instructors isn't reasonable, I'd like to know what is.

[DrDave]

There was the famous case of the person in Louisiana who went outside to confront the Japanese student who had come to knock on his front door by mistake and now was going around to the side of the house.

This even made headlines in South Africa. IIRC the guy shot him with a .44 Magnum, which went down like a cold glass of vomit.

+100 on the warning shots issue. There seems to be a misperception on our side of the duckpond that warning shots are mandatory. This is a no-brainer. If you are justified in using deadly force, you shouldn't be purposefully sending off rounds in a potentially unsafe direction

[MikeO]

The stuff hanging on my walls: horsebow, crossbow, battle axe, spiked ball and chain mace, boar spear, katana, rapier, gladius, battle axe, tomahawk... unless I really, really have to.

I know what should not matter to a jury when they are deliberating, I don't know what will... my attorney said she has to be prepared for every argument, prep takes time, and her time is my money. So I KISS by using what the local law (not local SWAT) used/uses: 38 revolver, 9x19 auto, 12g pump.

We don' need no stinkin ARs...