This a thousand time this. Even as a LEO when I was off duty I would lean heavily this way even though I would likely have better legal and aura of authority than a regular citizen I would leave it as a last resort. Now that I am retired I lean even more heavily on this mental state for engaging into an situation.Originally Posted by NH Shooter
My opinion is, legally both versions are the same. With your training and experience can the person stab you? If you understand the teaching points of the Tueller/21 foot drill the answer is yes. Therefor you can shoot him while moving.
The fact that you may shoot him doesn't mean you will shoot him. That's up to you. This is the problem most of the, "public" doesn't get about those, "trigger happy police". Officers place themselves in far too much danger because they don't want to shoot someone, don't want to look bad in the news the next day, etc. If we shot people who legally should be shot, there would be a substantial increase in the officer involved shooting.
As a byproduct, once an officer gets into a shooting they tend to adjust that line towards shooting people sooner. Where that line is redrawn depends a lot on what the circumstances of the shooting is. Put into a civilian perspective, if someone robs you by pointing a gun and saying demanding your money, they are waiting for you to give them the good news. That is the good side of the action/reaction principle. But if someone comes up and tries to hit you in the head with a bat and plans on removing the good news from your pockets on their own, well that's the other side.
One victim might tell you that a smooth draw from the pocket is fine. The other will laugh at that and explain why speed of draw matters. Both are right for their shooting but not for the unknown.
What you do right before you know you're going to be in a use of force incident, often determines the outcome of that use of force.
There are studies on intervention in the prosocial behavior literature (came out of the Kitty Genovese incident) that indicate the more immediate and heinous the incident, the more likely for intervention. Thus, a man assaulting a woman may not bring intervention. However, a man stabbing a woman and trying to set her on fire (this really happened and a CCW type intervened) will increase intervention. It might be because the latter brings clarity to the right and wrong of the incident beyond the usual domestic.
The things that influence intervention are the worthiness of the victim (a kid vs. a gang banger), do you identify with them (all kinds of things, age, race, dress, gender, etc.), risk to yourself, how you will feel if you do or don't (the classic: I couldn't live with myself vs. I couldn't live with myself if I were dead or being in jail or sued).
The emotional quick response is seen in floods, earthquakes, fires, etc. vs. the cognitive gun fight / crime scenario of intervention and its risks to yourself.
It's complex. At the NTI, IIRC, given a simulated beating of a woman in a dark garage, half the folks intervened and half waited/call the law. These are all folks who had some knowledge of the issue.
JOG and Glenn, my sincere thanks for your insight!
It's interesting perspective that compliments my current thinking: we can "pre-wire" certain responses but the ultimate decision to trigger them is very much situational.
While "jumping the gun" on preclusion may not look good in the legal aftermath, not acting in a timely matter may make that a moot point. My current thinking of the hypothetical parking lot scenario would be to "evade" at least a few steps (appear to onlookers to be retreating), provide a verbal "stop, don't make me shoot!" command (make a visual and audible effort to avoid deadly force) and then if the anti-social behavior continues, do what is needed to preserve life and limb.
Of course, there may be scenarios where the immediacy of the threat does not make that possible.
I think that's a wise perspective.
The officer doesn't have the option to quit, and indeed is obligated to place him or herself in a situation which may result in a shooting. You don't have that burden. When it comes to the scenarios which dominate private citizen defensive shootings, avoiding force if it's safe to do so is always the best choice tactically, legally and morally. Whether you like it or not, public (and police and jury) perception will demand that of you. If you leave room for interpretation, mom's going to cry on TV about how "he could have just left my baby alone," the investigators and prosecutors are going to look at you like a junior G-Man wannabe, and the jury's going to have that lingering expectation regardless of whatever Stand Your Ground instruction they get.
Your goal is this: your actions must demonstrate you acted because you had no reasonable alternative. The justness of your actions must be abundantly clear to the lowest common denominator; metaphorically, it may as well be spelled out in crayon.
No, I don't think so. Verbal engagement -- if safe to do so -- can be a very good thing. It isn't a permission slip for the use of force.For a civilian, is any verbal engagement such as taught by SouthNarc ("that's close enough", "don't make me shoot", etc.) required to satisfy preclusion? Once a potential assailant is engaged verbally, where does the line get drawn to avoid "getting stuck in the loop" and perhaps seriously injured or killed as a result of it?
What verbal engagement allows you to do is gauge intent and, more importantly, helps you articulate that intent later on. "That man approached me from over there and he had a drawn knife, so I drew my gun and shot him" leaves a lot more to question than, "That man approached me from over there and he had a knife drawn. I told him not to come any closer. He continued approaching, so I drew my gun and shot him." Both scenarios can be justifiable. One is a lot more obvious. You want obvious, because the people dealing with you post-shooting may not be the ones you'd pick if you had a choice of "who do I want to comb through my shooting after the fact." Left with room for ambiguity, some of them may misread (or even misrepresent...) what they see. That can have consequences, and not just with the police. When the police report gets Sunshine Law'd by the press because you and the victim fit a convenient narrative, you probably want that "I told him not to come any closer but he kept coming" line in there.
The line drawn is exactly the same as it was before you engaged him verbally: he must display ability, opportunity, and intent to cause you serious bodily injury or death. Verbal engagement is not a permission slip. It's a tool you can use to potentially ward off a confrontation and, perhaps, gauge intent that may not have fully made itself known.
ssb, thank you for your post! It confirms my thinking that circumstances permitting, engaging a potential assailant verbally has the benefits you describe: it could end the encounter without violence or in a worst case scenario, prove to a jury that a person did everyone reasonable to avoid using deadly force in a self-defense situation. IMO, training to do that under stress seems a wise thing to do.
Looking at this from another perspective, knowing and being confident in your own self-defense abilities is a prerequisite for successfully addressing P. Being confident in one's abilities to quickly deliver accurate fire under stress (pure shooting skill) and possessing some basic evasive and verbal engagement skills (such as SouthNarc's Managing Unknown Contacts) provide the "room" to hold one's fire until all reasonable escape/de-escalate options have been eliminated.
Of course if one's situational awareness did not catch the impending assault early enough, escape/de-escalation options could be greatly reduced (or perhaps eliminated entirely). Obviously, this skill set - or lack thereof - could have a major impact on the outcome. Happily SA is something we can learn and practice every day with little effort and zero cost.
Last edited by NH Shooter; 05-04-2017 at 05:29 AM.
There is no 21' threshold. Get that shit out of your head right now. There is no arbitrary distance, there is only "reasonable". The Tueller drill is JUST a drill, not s study on human speed or legal doctrine.
Understood. I use it as a general reference to "line in the sand" proximity which will obviously vary based on the circumstances.
Good clarifying comment. Thank you for bringing it up.
The drill teaches concepts of action/reaction and the need for movement. It's been demonstrated that 30 to 35 feet might not be enough if you just stand there. Then we get into how much shooting will be needed to actually stop the bad guy from his actions. I find it to be a great teaching drill for a new person to understand the need for movement and to have a student work through, how this gunfight is going to end.
Sadly, most people never do the drill because its teaching points have gotten skewed. they turned it into the, "21 foot rule". So it's gotten a bad reputation. It is also a drill when modified that can be done with two people in a backyard with absolutely no weapons involved. Kind of like playing tag. Your training partner's finger poking your torso can just as easily be a knife or club.
On a side note, many years ago Dennis was teaching. I think it was a Glock Armors course. We kept having people, when they met him say, "Yeah the 21 foot rule guy." He rolled his eyes a lot that morning. Being semi-famous sucks...
What you do right before you know you're going to be in a use of force incident, often determines the outcome of that use of force.
By nature, a "line in the sand" will not vary, and that's why BBI is telling you to drop it. Sound advice. What you're doing is trying to define your shoot/no shoot before it happens, which is not possible, and I think you know that. All you can do with this mindset is cause confusion and distraction at a potential time where time is life. Make the moral decision now, as best you can, know your local laws, and then be ever observant (as best you can). Make good choices, in both where you go and how you interact with people. Pride is a mental form of cancer, and kills just as efficiently, get rid of it. I guess my point is, there are all kind of things you actually control which should increase your success in any scenario, or better yet evading one, so I see no reason to get caught up trying to fully define that which is out your control.
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