Totally agree everything is situation dependent.
My only point is that confronting or fighting back drastically increases the odds of a mugger/intruder actually attempting to use their weapon in a violent manner instead of just using it for intimidation.
Maybe, maybe not. Depends on how ready the person is to fight. Most successful defensive uses of firearms involve zero shots fired, meaning they didn’t want a fight at all, but a soft and compliant target.
You can’t control an attackers readiness to fight, but you can control your own.
I think if safety is your #1 goal, then you should be less willing to fight than how I am inferring your suggestion.
I think fighting should be the last tool in your tool belt you look to use. My job is to come out of the encounter as healthy as possible, my job isn’t to subdue or contain the threat.
We might be saying the same things, just in a different tone/manner.
I used the term ”readiness” deliberately. Your readiness to fight is not necessarily connected to your willingness to fight.
I’m paraphrasing someone else’s words here, but being peaceful means you have the means to inflict great harm, but choose not to. If you don’t have the means to fight, you’re not peaceful. You’re just harmless.
I can tell you first hand that achieving the former sometimes requires the latter. I was harmless once, long before I ever took a bouncing job, trained firearms, jiu jitsu or even picked up a barbell. It got me beaten severely and concussed during an unprovoked assault. One more kick to my head while I was down could have been life shattering, but my attacker chose to stop attacking me. I was entirely at the mercy of this guy, wholly dependent on the whims of a guy who attacked me on a basketball court with children present.
That’s a terrible feeling. I believe that encounter would play out much differently now, due to my readiness.
This thread is to discuss lethal force situations, and we are once again straying into general notions disconnected from any specific event or situation.
You’re welcome to start a thread discussing the benefits of not offering any resistance to your attacker and hoping for the best. It’s certainly an option.
Edit: If there are specific lethal force scenarios with good outcomes from not resisting, that’s fair game for this thread. Let’s look at things that have happened rather than ponder what you think might happen.
A good source for civilian lethal force encounters has been the NRA with their “armed citizen column” . It is published monthly in the American Rifleman Magazine.
In common law, self-defence as a legal defence says that when assessing reasonable force that assessment should be predicated on the threat the accused believed himself to be facing, not the threat he was actually facing with the benefit of hindsight. That is a critical distinction that should inform your choice of words when making a statement to the police following a lethal encounter.
Take your time to make your initial statement, and do it in the presence of a lawyer.
I have a few problems with the Armed Citizen column. It’s always happy ending stories where the good guy wins and avoids getting screwed over by the legal system. Occasionally the story gives the impression that you can get away with what could be considered murder.
I have read several stories in that column on the model of “Grandma retrieves gun and shoots intruder as he runs out the door. Sheriff says she won’t face charges.” That’s because she’s an 86 year old grandmother with 15 grandkids and no jury would ever convict her. If you or I were to shoot an intruder in the back as he ran away we be in serious trouble.
I’ve mentioned Andrew Branca’s Law of Self Defense before. He has a great way of breaking down self defense into 5 elements, Innocence, Imminence, Reasonableness, Proportionality, and Avoidance, which are a great way of examining actual self-defense shootings legally and ethically. He also has a blog where he breaks down current cases as to why the shooting may be legitimate or illegitimate, and points out the failures and bias of our mainstream media.
He’s a Lawyer, and he’s selling books, so like Mas Ayoob he’s controversial, people say he’s peddling fear. But I think if one is going to go about armed they should seek education on the law.
I read this on my lunch. I’m sure many will believe that you don’t need to shoot someone armed with only a taser, but it seems like a successful taser application could have given the madman access to a gun.
Good job officer.
That video, from a tactical standpoint, is a clinic on what not to do in a lethal force encounter.
I think, that much of the general public believes the police should have a greater responsibility to the health of the civilian, than their own health.
ItemFix - Social Video Factory.
The above could have very easily turned into a letgal force situation. What are folks thoughts?
Wait, civilian as in bystander, or as in the person they are confronting? I could absolutely understand people having an expectation that offers will risk life and limb to protect innocent civilians who happen to be near a dangerous situation. However, I would strong push back against an expectation that an officer placed the safety of the person causing a threat over their own safety. We can discuss Just War Theory, Kantian views on violence, Natural Law, social contract, you name it, and I just can’t think of any moral philosophy that would demand an officer place his own safety at a lesser priority than that of the aggressor.
It’s a similar line of thinking as a man should never hit a woman… Even if being attacked.
Okay, well let’s go along with that false equivalency for a moment.
Even in that situation, there’s a line. Would I ever get mad and punch a woman? Nope. Would I readily fight a man for laying hands on a woman? Yes, in fact that very circumstance led to the only time I have ever had any sort of run in with the law.
Now, if a woman began to attack me, and I began to fear for my life, would I still remain passive? If a woman grabbed a knife, do I still keep my hands to myself? How about if she reaches for a gun, does the genitalia between my legs dictate that her actions as the aggressor are justified because society has identified me as the more capable agent in the situation?
Or rather, as a human being with inherit worth and agency, would I respond to a direct threat upon my life with the force necessary to assure I would maintain safety? As a man, would you refrain from hitting a woman trying to stab you, because your chauvinistic views on gender relations dictate your pacifism in any violent encounter with a woman?
Now, let’s remember that cops are both men and women, placed into life and death situations against men and women.
My understanding is that the thinking is many/most LEO lethal force situations are split second judgement calls and that the responsibility should be on the LEO to wait (putting themselves at significantly more risk than is demanded by law), to ensure there are no other options besides lethal force.
You could argue that it was a lethal force situation the moment that guy picked up a knife.
Ability? Check
Opportunity? Check
Jeopardy/intent? Not exactly clear, but picking up a knife after a cop told you to drop it isn’t exactly a show of good will. I’d call this a check too.
We can wonder just how stupid that guy is and hope he doesn’t go on to reproduce, but the reality is he could have been on the cop with that knife in about one second and the cop had no idea what he was going to do.
Maybe the taser stops him, maybe it doesn’t. Only one way to know how it would play out, and luckily it wasn’t learned that day.
Obviously the cop in the video showed a lot of restraint and the outcome was good. Contrast that with the video I linked way above, and restraint put an officer’s life in grave and immediate danger.
I don’t think most cops are eager to shoot anyone. Both videos demonstrated that. Few people are. I only encountered one borderline lethal force situation as a bouncer, but I wasn’t particularly eager to hurt anyone on the job when handling violence with lower stakes. I took risks that I didn’t need to, legally or morally, in order to respond with the least amount of violence.
I’m also stronger than most LEO’s with much more hand-to-hand training than most LEO’s. I’m not some ultimate badass, but I recognize I have an edge most cops don’t in a bare-handed struggle. I KNOW how hard it can be to subdue someone, even with a huge size/strength disparity, a skill disparity and the edge of sobriety.
People have this image in their head of cops moving like they’re in a Steven Seagal movie, disarming knives and subduing violent people with no harm coming to either of them. That shit doesn’t happen without some combination of luck and/or lots of training on their own time and own dime.
To top it all off, as @Frank_C pointed out, a gun is involved in EVERY struggle a cop gets into.
I see where your thought process is at. Can I ask, and I very legitimately don’t mean this as a slight, have you ever been in any sort of violent encounter? You seem like a decent guy, and it’s obvious you have a decent academic understanding of a lot of this, but I get the impression that’s where it stops.
Yes, split second decisions happen all the time. Ultimately, they dictate who walks away and who doesn’t. Which means that taking that extra second can mean a cop dies instead of the aggressor.
Now, I come from a military background, not law enforcement, so I’m switching to something I know a little better. If a man risks his life in combat to save a comrade, he is often given a reward for valor. If he jumps on a grenade, giving his life to save his peers, he gets a Medal of Honor. These are men who have gone through countless hours of training, with government spending thousands and in some cases millions of dollars preparing them for violent encounters.
Police are given little training in tactical skills, with almost no work done outside initial work at the academy. They are poorly funded, often shooting no more than twice a year. They are less likely to see combat, but also far, far less prepared for the moment they do. (Not talking crap to any cops, nor does this apply to all units. But a trooper and a grunt have different jobs, and the training reflects it.) To expect that all cops are ready to risk their life, to purposely hold off on taking life saving measures in the hope that maybe the situation de-escalates to the point where the cop can protect the safety not of the innocent bystanders, but the safety of the aggressor in question, frankly presents an unrealistic ideation of police as superhero characters.
That’s not even getting into the moral issues of risking your life as an officer when their are bystanders present, because if there is a violent aggressor and you are killed, the innocent bystander are now lacking their first line of defense against the threat in question. But now we are getting too deep into hypotheticals
That is a very accurate description of us. We shoot twice a year. The opportunity to shoot more is there, but not everyone takes advantage of that.
The only units trained for combat are the SWAT guys. The rest of us get occasional training on entries and force on force encounters.
While I’m still military, have a couple cousins and an uncle who all went LEO after getting out of the military. So I have a decent idea on cops, just can’t say I have ever done any of it myself.
Edit: One cousin was SWAT for St.louis. Almost insane the training and stuff they did, really cool to see. He stopped kicking in doors after his first kid, but man does he have some stories
Firstly, I’m am personally of the opinion that the onus to ensure a nonviolent encounter with the cops is squarely on the civilian. It’s not hard, just treat them like any other stranger. I think is is a shame that cops are paid and trained so poorly, specifically because that eliminates the best and brightest from pursuing it as a career… And there are few jobs in this country holding the level of responsibility that an LEO does. Standards are way too low IMO, but they have to be to fill the positions.
Second, yes to the violence (only witnessed gun violence, never involved), and yes to seeing what the people and culture is like in shit neighborhoods. I do not fault first responders one bit for their prejudices… In many places those are called instincts.
I’m mostly speaking from the perspective of many people I know. They aren’t wrong necessarily. IMO they are just seeing things as they should be, instead of how they are.