After Action Analysis: June 10, 2020

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Transcript

Hey folks, welcome ,welcome. Welcome to the Law of Self Defense After Action Analysis Show June 10, 2020. Come on in, folks.

I am attorney Andrew Branca for law, self defense. Thank you, thank you very much. Greatly appreciate that. Law of Self Defense, where we try to make you as hard to convict as you make yourself hard to kill winning that legal fight as well as winning the physical fight. Of course, winning the physical fight must be the priority. If you don’t win the physical fight, not much else matters. But you don’t want to win the physical fight only to spend the rest of your life in prison, which is where we step in, to try to educate all of you with actionable law based plain English understanding. Have the rules of engagement for civilian use of force defense of yourself defense of others, defense of your property, highly defensible property and personal property.

So, we do these After Action Analysis shows every week on Wednesdays 2pm. Eastern time. And in each of these, what we do is we take some use of force event caught on video and we do a plain English legal analysis of that use of force event was that a lawful shoot and unlawful shoot exactly why in terms of actual use of force law and to help you understand how use of force law is applied to these real situations real use of force events that take place

This week’s show is going to be a little bit different we’ll still be looking at use of force events but less the kind of mano-a-mano events we normally cover. We’re going to be looking at confrontations in the context of riots.

Many of you know we’ve put together a specific course, a video that we’re working on, we hope to finalize that this week “Lawful Defense Against Rioters, Looters & Arsonists.” We’ve put out a draft version of this last week for feedback and commentary. I hope a lot of you got a chance to look at that. That draft video is locked down now. So now you would need to be a Law of Self Defense Member in order to access that video.

But we do appreciate all the feedback. We’re taking all that feedback, all the suggestions and incorporating them into a much expanded it’s really going to be kind of a mini-course, a two hour course on this subject “Lawful Defense Against Rioters, Looters & Arsonists.” And we hope to finalize that this week. Given the volume of feedback we’ve gotten in other videos, people have suggested it maybe in the next week, but within that timeframe, we expect to have this mini-course probably about a two hour course, fully completed. So if you’re interested in that, you’ll want to keep your eyes open.

Again, if you’re a Law of Self Defense Member, you will get this content this video for free. You don’t need to do anything. To access this, it’ll be available in your member area.

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Overview of Videos

So I want to share a few videos with you one is not from the recent rights. The first video I’ll share with you is from way back in 1992 in Los Angeles, and it’s the helicopter video of Reginald Denny getting removed from his truck and beaten badly in the street by a mob of writers. Now he’s beaten pretty good. There’s not much gore in that video, largely because of the video quality from 1992 is so poor, but you can certainly see that he’s taking a bad beating so violence is going to disturb you. This may not be the show for you. Also, that video does have audio so I won’t be speaking while the videos playing. It’s only about two two minutes segment.

But we can hear the helicopter pilot or newsperson. Whoever’s in the helicopter commenting on those events, so it doesn’t work when I’m trying to speak over video commenting. There is no profanity in the clip. So you don’t need to worry about that. But I’m going to play that clip for you, to give you a sense of kind of our foundational position and that is that this is what happens when you lose yourself to the mob, to the rioters, this is the fate that you’ve condemned yourself to.

At least, the possibility is now out of your hands and in their hands, the hands of the mob, not a great place to be.

So I’m going to show you that Reginald Denny video. I’m sure many of you have seen it, but it’ll refresh your recollection.

And then I have a couple of other videos to share more recent one is from Salt Lake City, I believe from this past May, where we have a bunch of rioters flipping a police car over. So what I’ll do is I’ll show you that video. in its entirety. Again, it’s probably a minute or two long. And then we have a series of still shots I’ve captured from that video that I think are kind of key moments in the course of the video that have lessons for us to learn and we’ll step through those still shots.

And then the last video we’ll look at today is the video of the man in Seattle who drives his car up to the mob gets attacked in his vehicle and shoots his attacker exits the vehicle makes his way to align the policeman I’m sure you’ve all seen this video. It’s being presented on the internet as this guy drove through a mob of people and shot peaceful protesters. As we’ll see, the reality is quite different. But again, I’ll show you that video in its entirety, actually, first I’ll show you the mini clip that’s being presented as propaganda on platforms like Twitter, and then I’ll show you the fuller length clip. And once more, we’ll step through still shots of that where I think we have the most important lessons to learn are the most important, most interesting tactical moments in that video.

And finally, if you stay all the way to the end, folks, if you stay all the way to the end, I’ll talk about an opportunity we plan to offer with respect to our video on lawful defense against rioters, looters and arsonists to be able to document what you learned from that video. In case you ever need to use that knowledge in court to justify your own defense against rioters, looters or arsonists, as well as the opportunity to get a certificate for having taken that exam. At the end of the video, none of this is required to watch the video. Especially if you’re a Law of Self Defense Member, you’ll have free access to the video but if you’re interested in being able to document that you actually saw the video or understood that content to the extent that you actually pass the final exam on it and received a certificate. That’ll be an opportunity I’ll talk about at the end of today’s show.

Reginald Denny, Los Angeles Riots, 1992

Okay, so with that out of the way, let’s take a look at our first video again, this is from LA 1992 in the aftermath of the Rodney King, arrest and beating in the course of the arrest, again, this is another violently resisting lawful arrest scenario as so many of these are. There were riots, particularly in LA, and they did not go well for one particular truck driver, Reginald Denny.

Now the video is going to open up with Reginald Denny already have been having been pulled from his truck. He’s on the street, he’s been beaten for a while he’s in pretty bad shape, and he continues to get beaten. He then gets stuff broken over his head. He’s obviously incapacitated, gets beaten, some more gets robbed. Of course, somebody takes his wallet. Nobody’s helping him at all.

And I think there’s a number of key lessons we can take away from that particular video. There is physical violence. There’s no gore to speak of. But there is physical violence. So if that’s going to disturb you, today’s show was probably not to show for you. And again, there’s audio here no profanity it’s the commentary from the helicopter pilot or dude in the helicopter who’s making the video and kind of steps us along what’s happening. So here we go with that.

Helicopter narrator:

So folks, here’s a situation from South Central drivers of automobiles and trucks that enter this area can expect to Oh, look at that. Terrible and there’s no police presence down here. They will not enter the area.

That’s right. This is attempted murder.

No, there’s there’s no, there’s no shutting down Florence. Let’s shut Florence Boulevard down. That’s the answer.

We’re gonna tell the LAPD to do that now tell LAPD to shut Florence Boulevard down in Normandy because people are still driving through here.

That’s right

That’s right Ross.

Ross, Ross.

Okay, he’s, he’s moving. He’s a lot of blood gushing from the from the man’s head. someone standing there taking a picture taking a videotape of the man laying on the street, but nobody’s helping them.

Now they’re checking this gas tank and boy if they shut that gas tank, well …

Unbelievable, South Central Los Angeles we’re seeing a dark day here in Los Angeles. The LAPD is nowhere to be found. I feel very frustrated or used to picking his pockets now. I okay, I think we just took around. I think we just took a round …

Okay, there we go. The joys of a riot. So what do we learn from that particular videotape?

Well, one is nobody pulls you out of your vehicle folks because they have your best intentions in mind. That’s a bad day coming. It’s reasonable to infer that of a mob is pulling you from your vehicle. The outcome is going to be much like Reginald Danny’s outcome.

You won’t be defending yourself against one person. It will be a mob of people attacking you from all sides. opportunities. If you don’t have a weapon, you’re done. Frankly, if you do have a weapon, the tactical situation is extremely poor. If you’re being attacked by a mob of people, and they insist on attacking you, and that’s their call to make, it’s not your decision to make. a handgun, for example, is going to be of limited utility if you’re being attacked by 15 or 20 people.

Another lesson is they don’t stop beating you until they get bored of it. They’ll continue to beat you. I stopped the video at that point, but it goes on for several more minutes. At one point Reginald Denny  gets up on his hands and knees. He’s trying to recover from the attack, and somebody runs up and kicks him in the head like they’re punting a football. So, if you’ve ever seen a cat toy with a mouse, that’s the nature of this beating here, it’s just an enjoyable pastime for them and until they get bored, the beating will continue.

Not only will they not provide help of any kind, but they’ll rob you in the process.

The other lesson we can learn is that nobody is coming to help you folks. There are no police coming to help. You are on your own period. And, of course, we see that with the rioting occurring today as well.

And of course, another lesson we learned is you don’t have to have done anything wrong. Reginald Denny did nothing wrong. He did not beat Rodney King. He did not run over a protester. He was just driving this truck in his normal course of business. And had this happen to him.

You think he expected to get pulled from his truck, get beaten, have stuff broken over his head, have his head punted down the football field when he got into his truck and went to work that day? I don’t think so. I think he just found himself in a bad situation, the same kind of bad situation we could find ourselves in.

So folks, if you’re ever going to be making decisions, you’re facing rioters and you’re in your vehicle and you’re concerned about this possible outcome. This kind of outcome should inform your decision making in self-defense, you know, now these are stakes that you’ll be facing the threat, the real threat you’ll be facing.

Even if your attackers are not armed with weapons per se. They’re armed with impact weapons, fists and feet or impact weapons. And of course, in this case, we saw opportunistic weapons being used things being broken over Reginald Denny’s head, those are always available folks. And you can expect those to be used against you as well.

If this kind of knowledge is going to inform your decision making and self-defense, if this will be part of your narrative, self-defense framework, I used force against those people, I shot those people if that’s what it came to. And my use of that force was reasonable because I have this knowledge. If you want to introduce that narrative in the court, you’ll need to be able to demonstrate that you possessed that knowledge at the time you acted in self-defense, you need to be able to document your knowledge. And I saw Sean Sorrentino, hey, Sean, friend of mine, asking document this like by commenting?

Folks, unfortunately, for that purpose, the way we produce our content on Facebook is we do it live, we leave a replay up for about a day. And then we pull that content off Facebook. And then it’s only available on our Law of Self Defense website for our Members.

So all your comments here are lost, folks, they are not saved for eternity unless Facebook were willing to dig them up on your behalf, which I wouldn’t count on. So I would look for other ways to document your knowledge, generally.

And for these kinds of shows, in particular, of course, great ways to be a Law of Self Defense Member and then you have a place to comment there and have continual access to the content.

So that’s Reginald Denny.

Flipping Salt Lake City Police Car

So the next video I’d like to step through involves a Salt Lake City police car being flipped by a crowd. I’m just going to start with a screenshot of this event. And what we see here is the police car. In this case, it’s presumably empty.

But folks, what I want you to imagine here is that this is your car, and you’re in it. And it’s not just you in it. It’s you’re in it with your child, you’re in it with your spouse, you’re in it with an elderly parent. Okay, because that could well be the case. And it’s funny when we run people through our, our very high-end simulator, self-defense simulator system, when we do our live classes, I often see the defender the student running through the simulator, being extremely patient about their use of force.

And I asked him afterwards, I said, Well, obviously you felt like you had the luxury of being patient. And that’s awesome. We don’t want you to shoot people you don’t feel you need to shoot. But would your reaction have been any different if you’d had your child with you or your spouse with you or your parent with you?

And almost invariably they tell us they would have been much more aggressive in the use of defensive force. Had they been in the company of someone They feel they have a duty to protect. And then I always have to ask them. But don’t you have that same duty to protect yourself? Are you not equally deserving of defense? As is your child, your spouse, your parents? Don’t those people need you.

So when we look at these videos, I’d like you to imagine that it’s not just you in your car, because we all feel at some level that we’re mortal, the worst could never happen. But we’re also always scared about harm coming to those we love. So imagine you’re not by yourself these threats as they occur. These events as the they occur, are occurring not just to you, but to your loved ones who are with you in the vehicle.

So we start with the still photo and what we see here. It’s a little tricky to see. Let me pull it up in a broader manner. There we go. So what we have is we have the police cruiser, let’s presume you’re in it with your kids, your spouse, your parent, you’re stuck in traffic so you can’t proceed forward of the cars are blocking you and we have three protesters crouching down on the passenger side of your car, you can just barely see the top of their heads. They’re not attempting to breach the vehicle. They’re not threatening you with weapons.

Is this a deadly force threat? And you might think that it’s not. But I think as we’ll see, as we watch the video, this very, very quickly becomes an extremely deadly force threat. So let me pull up that video.

This one should not have audio. I believe I stripped the audio app if you hear audio and the video other than me talking, feel free to mute just in case there’s profanity if that’s important to you. But because there’s no audio or ought not be I should be able to talk over this one. So what we’ll see in the video is it’ll start a few seconds before this still photo here, we’ll see a group of quote unquote protesters, approach the vehicle and they bend down, grab the bottom of the vehicle and begin attempting to flip the vehicle up that will attract others a group of people will come.

They’ll struggle for a bit but eventually they will get the vehicle flipped up and will Follow events from there. So I’ll just let the video pretty much roll through. And then I have some still shots I’ve taken that I think provides some particular lessons that are useful to us.

So here is that video.

So the grabbing the car, more people approach dropping their science grabbing the car. They’re not very strong people. They’re not very good at this. I presume they’ll get better. Like, I just doesn’t understand physics. And they’re rocking the car rocking the car, they’re not having much luck.

But up, the car goes up. They’re getting it, push, push. And remember, you’re in this car with your child, your spouse, your parent, and the car is up.

Now liquid is being splashed all over the bottom of the car, the muffler. We don’t know what that liquid is. Let’s imagine you’ve just been driving so your exhaust is hot. And they continue to beat the car, express their outrage I’m going to let the video keep rolling because the camera moves around to the other side and something interesting happens.

We have a particularly well prepared protester show up. Okay, video, let’s go. So we’ll rotate around to the other side of the car by the windshield. Here we go. Everybody’s very happy with themselves. Beating the window, the back window of the car. We’re winners. Look at us. It’s finally this good purpose for escape born.

Now imagine again, you’re in this vehicle. This is you in the vehicle with your child, your spouse, your elderly parent.

Then this dude walks up with some form of incendiary device and throws it in the vehicle, FOOM we’ll see the smoke come out. And the video ends at about that point.

So now what I’d like to do is step through some still shots here that I think have some important lessons for us.

What is this still shot. So this is the point in the video, when they have maybe six or seven or eight people on the car, they’re finally getting it to lift up off the ground. So this is they struggled before this for several seconds, trying to get a grip or figure out how to do this. I’m sure they’ll do better the next time. But this is the point at which the car actually begins to lift.

And how long does it take before they actually get the car on its side? Well, it takes about 11 seconds folks from when the car starts to lift up to when it’s on its side.

Eleven seconds is not a lot of time. Folks for making decisions, especially if you’re making those decisions for the first time. It’s not a lot of time for executing those decisions, especially if you’re executing them for the first time. And if you’re executing them for the first time in that setting, so I saw a recent post by Greg Ellifrits, who you may know from his company’s Active Response Training.

He’s a, I believe he’s retired now, retired police officer, Greg does great work, I strongly encourage you to take a look at his website, activeresponsetraining.net, a lot of great columns or a lot of free content. Very, very good stuff. Big fan of Greg’s work.

He had a post recently about the subject being trapped in your vehicle surrounded by writers, looters protesters. And a lot of his suggestions were as you might expect, tactical in nature. And my expertise is not tactics, but I mentioned only because I thought this is an interesting point, something to think about, and he recommended actually not having your seatbelt on in that situation because, and there’s good reasons for it right? You might need to exit the car quickly, you might need to access a weapon quickly.

And I’m not saying Greg’s wrong, I but other questions come to mind. So, for example, well, how do you know when you’re in the situation that somebody else in their vehicle trying to escape an attack at high speed is not going to T-bone your car, in which case you probably like to have your seatbelt on.

And if the reason you have the seatbelt off is because you need the seat belt off in order to access your personal defensive weapon. I’d suggest you’re doing that wrong. Whatever your personal defensive weapon is, if you’re carrying it routinely in a vehicle, in which you’ll be seat belted, you need to be able to access and deploy that weapon while you’re wearing the seatbelt. Because you may not have time to unbuckle and get that weapon into play, if you actually need it.

So I would encourage you this if you carry your gun in such a way that your seatbelt keeps you from accessing and presenting that gun, you need to figure something out, folks carry some other manner, at least while you’re in the vehicle. So that you can both have the seatbelt on for its protective purposes, as well as be able to defend yourself with your personal defensive weapon should have come to that.

So one thing we learned here is when that when you feel one side of the car start to lift, you have less than 11 seconds before your car is up on its side. And frankly, if they’ve done this three or four times as I expect they will in the future, you probably have four or five seconds. If they have a group of seven or eight people who know what they’re doing because they have modest experience. That car I’ll go over fast and this is a big, heavy police car. A lot of us drive cars a lot lighter than this one.

And another thing to think about is once this car is on its side, as it is here, remember, you’re in this vehicle, you’re in this vehicle with your child, your spouse, your elderly parent, how do you get out of this vehicle?

Are you able to chin your way up out the passenger side of that vehicle now that it’s flipped up on its side? When was the last time you did a chin up? You do anything that looks like that level of physical exertion. Can your child do it? Do you send your child out ahead of you, and then follow so you can help lift the child out? In other words, present your child to the mob first? Or do you get out first and then hope that you can pull your child out while you’re being attacked by the mob? This is an absolutely horrific position to be in.

I think most people are going to have extraordinarily difficulty getting out of a car in this position. Remember, your own side of the car is against the street. You’re not getting out this way. You don’t have to lift yourself up, seven or eight feet across the width of the car, climb out of the car, get to the ground. That’s hard enough to do if you’re by yourself in facing and attacked by a mob. Really almost impossible to also get your child, your spouse, your elderly parent out of the car.

And that’s all you face all of that hazard before you run into this lovely young woman who’s spraying some kind of liquid all over the bottom of the vehicle all over the hot mufflers. Is that gasoline? it? I don’t know. It doesn’t look much like gasoline. It looks pretty bulky to me. But it’s not within your control whether or not it’s gasoline. Right. It’s within the mob’s control, whether or not it’s gasoline, and if you’ve been driving your vehicle and those mufflers are hot, that may be enough to ignite gasoline all by itself. And if it’s not, we know that there are people there with matches and lighters who are more than willing to set stuff on fire.

Now you’re trapped in the car, not just yourself, but your child, your spouse, your parent and the cars on fire. How do you get out now? Take a look at the next photo. This is where the nice gentleman with the incendiary device shows up some kind of incendiary device, maybe just a smoke grenade, maybe taken from police supplies perhaps or maybe it’s some kind of homemade device.

But in any case, most of these devices make smoke because they get hot, really hot, which again means if there’s a gasoline soaked environment that’s going to set the vehicle on fire.

Is there any way to know that this is not an outright explosive device? That’s not up to you, right? You don’t get to choose the smoking device they throw into your vehicle. Even if it’s not a actual explosive device, look at all the smoke this thing puts out and you’re still trying to get yourself your kids, your spouse, your elderly parent out of the car.

Folks, this is the threat of being attacked by the mob. When you’re trapped in your vehicle. This is what you need to be aware of is the rest that you need to mitigate when you’re acting in lawful self-defense.

Seattle Man Stopped by Crowd, Shoots Attacker

Now the next video I’d like to share with you is from Seattle. It’s the gentleman drives through the crowd is how it’s being presented and shoots peaceful protesters. And in a sense, that’s the best, the best propaganda is literally true in a sense, they just leave out the relevant context to understand what was actually going on. And we can see that they do that here quite aggressively because there’s a version of this event that’s been playing on Twitter. And I’m going to show you that video just so we can juxtapose it with a more comprehensive video that I’ll show afterwards.

This video again, should not have audio, but what we’ll see is the shooters car is basically stopped at some kind of makeshift barricade, not much of a barricade something that could be easily driven over and he gets out of the car with a gun, and he runs around the back of the car and he runs into the crowd and eventually, as we’ll see later, he runs up to a pool. leased line and seeking apparently safety. But this is the video we’re being presented. And what’s important about this is where the video starts and where the video ends, particularly where it starts. So let me play that for you.

So here we have the guy still in the car, he’s surrounded by people kind of loosely, he’s already fired to shop by now he gets out of the car, gun and hand runs around the back of the car. points the gun around a little bit, stay back, stay back. I presume he’s saying words to that effect, walks into the crowd around the corner. And again, we’ll look at snapshots, snapshots of this so that’s the part I wanted to show you that where this video starts, is he’s still in his car. The shot is already been fired. Although they don’t tell you the shots already been fired.

The suggestion is supposed to be that he was in his car, not much was going on, and he got out with a gun and decided to shoot people. When we watch the full video however, we get quite different stories.

So this full video is a little odd because I spliced together video from three different sources. So we’re going to see a version of this that begins earlier than what we just saw from a different camera angle, almost the same angle but elevate it. So someone in the building is shooting down with their camera at the scene, then we’ll pop back into the video from this perspective, and then we’ll have yet a third view at the very end as the gentleman’s being brought into the police lines.

And the first thing we’ll notice is we’ll see his car actually still driving down the street. Now the narrative is he’s car was driving down the street, he was driving through spectators as if he was running them over through protesters rather, as he as if he was milling them then with this car, in fact, the road he’s going down is rather sparsely occupied by protesters. Some of them are attacking his vehicle. He doesn’t just plow through the barricade into the dense crowd of people. He In fact, decent accelerates at the barricade. So he’s not running anybody over with this car.

Then he has an attacker essentially breach the driver’s window of his car, I believe the windows open so the window doesn’t need to be broken, but someone’s attacking him through the driver’s window of the car. That’s when he fires a shot. And it’s only after that point after the attack into his vehicle, when he fires the shot, it’s only after that point that the earlier video we just saw begins. So this is the more comprehensive view.

So let me pull that up for you. Again, there should be no audio here to worry about three different camera angles elevated. Then back to the original clip we were just watching, a little bit longer, and then a third camera perspective. So here we go.

So here we see his car coming down the street. Clearly not running anybody over, but not making people happy, slows down, stops at the barricade here he’s attacked in this car window. Shot fired and then we see him get out of his car like we just saw a moment before. That’s the angle we were at previously.

We’ll see him get out of his car. Here. Anytime, sir. He’s got his gun in hand walks around the back of the car, stay back, stay back, walks into the denser crowd around the corner. Just kind of casual walking pace, not as much of a hurry. But when he’s about 20 feet into the crowd, we’ll see him suddenly accelerate forward. Right about here, there he goes, starts running, and he’s probably running to the police line ahead of him.

The third angle he tells him, Hey, I just have to shoot somebody. Hands up, hands up, and they pull him into the police lines. By the way, this gentleman appears to my eye to be light skinned black person, not that I care, but of course, the media would like to portray him as a white person, much as they did with George Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic,” so we always have to watch out for that kind of nonsense.

So, a few things I’d like to highlight from this video is as the car is driving down the street, before he reaches the barricade, he’s already being attacked. So there are protesters in the streets striking his vehicle with weapons with clubs. So that obviously would be reason for anybody in the car to be frightened about being attacked by the mob. Their vehicle is already being attacked so well before he gets to the barricade. He’s already subject to attack.

It’s also noteworthy that this is not some kind of white supremacist at Charlottesville purportedly driving into the crowd in order to use the car as a weapon against them scenario. He clearly is not trying to hit people. There’s plenty of people he could hit with his vehicle.

He doesn’t even run through this BS barricade which he could easily do. The people holding this very lightweight barricade or the either side of his vehicle, he could simply run through the barricade. He doesn’t do that the brakes he slows to a stop, which of course, locks him in position where he can now be attacked.

We see that in the next video clip there, a man aggressively approaches the driver’s side door and begins, it appears, punching him through the vehicle. This is an unlawful and forcible entry of the vehicle.

This occurs in Washington State. Washington State is not one of the states that has a legal presumption that you’re reasonably fearing an eminent deadly force attack, if someone forcibly unlawfully breaches your vehicle so you don’t get the benefit of that legal presumption. in Washington State.

But you may well get that legal presumption in your state depending where you live. You may get that legal presumption where you live. So in essence, that legal presumption gives you three of the five elements you need for a justification of deadly defensive force if someone’s forcibly unlawfully entering your vehicle, which is certainly happening here.

And it’s at this point that the driver decides, alright, this is bad. I’m facing now a deadly force threat. And of course, presumably, the next step is they beat them and then get them out of the vehicle with the consequences we could expect from the Reginald Denny scenario.

In this case here we have the gunshot bang, and a bunch of people clear away from the vehicle, particularly the guy who was shot by the way he shot in the arm. So he’s well enough as he’s being led away to be talking to cameras and telling his story about what happened. Of course, it’s just good luck on his part that he wasn’t shot in the face and killed right there. I very much doubt the gentleman the fire shot was seeking to shoot him in the arm.

But even after the gunshots fired, not everybody runs away, this vehicle is still under attack. We see in the red circle there, there’s still someone on the other side of the car attacking the vehicle.

And again, the point here is to think of this not as a young, healthy, athletic man with a handgun defending just themselves, you’re in this vehicle, not by yourself with your child, your spouse, your elderly parent in the vehicle. So you’re not just defending yourself, which obviously complicates this guy’s strategy.

What if that had been his circumstance, right? He decides to abandon the vehicle, seek shelter in the crowd, seek police help, apparently, or at least take advantage of police help when he saw the opportunity to do so. Are you going to be able to do that if you’re with a small child or an elderly parent fleet like that, I think would be much more difficult.

But in any case, this vehicle is still being attacked even after the driver has been compelled to shoot the guy fighting him through his driver side window, then the driver finally gets out.

This looks interesting it looks to me like he’s actually clearing a malfunction of his hand gun here, hand on the slides appears to be on the slide cycling the slide, which would be a normal way of clearing many malfunctions pretty good default thing to do the gun stops making loud noises to cycle the slide that’ll clear a lot of stuff that’s going wrong on everything but a lot. Which makes me wonder or at least raises the issue of it’s not it would not be surprising if he had some kind of slide related malfunction, right because he’s in confined quarters. shooting from a kind of a seek up position probably so the guy fighting him through the window can’t get a hold of his gun. Many people don’t practice that it’s quite easy for the slide to get found on clothing or seatbelts or anything in the car. So it’s not so much

And this might happen if you’ve never shot a car while seated in the driver’s seat of a vehicle, I encourage you to find an opportunity to do that either take a class that teaches that or start shooting IDPA matches or USPSA matches where they have stages where you’re literally they have a range car, hopefully, not someone’s actually working card because those get shot, but arranged car where you’re actually engaging targets from the passenger seat of a vehicle.

So it’s not the first time you’re drawing your gun from that seated belted position, not the first time you’re presenting the gun over a steering wheel, not the first time you’re leaning sideways in the seat a bit so you can get things aligned on the targets outside of the car. You don’t want the first time you’re doing those things to be when someone’s fighting you through the driver side window of your vehicle. And of course, it’s also useful to know how to clear those malfunctions expeditiously should one occur to you.

Then the guy travels around the back of the car, the side of the car. He’s kind of jabbing the gun out a little bit very long magazine and then hang on, by the way. And he’s kind of pointing it in a very casual manner. And I, of course, I’m not trying to mind read, I don’t know what’s going through his head. I presume he’s telling people to stay back. It looks to me, frankly, like a bit of grandstanding. Now, I don’t know if that’s true or not. He’s very casual and cool and his demeanor. Maybe it’s not the first time he’s had to shoot people like this, I don’t know. But if I were a prosecutor, I would look at this and maybe try to make an argument that this guy doesn’t look scared to me. He looks like he’s fine. He just wants to be threatening people with a gun.

And the reason I raised that is because this kind of arguments been made by in the northwest before many of you will know the case of Michael Strickland. He was kind of a citizen journalist on the right, went to an auntie for protest. He was known to them they identified him They threatened him with violence. He pulled out his gun pointed at them. So he was fearing a apparently and eminent deadly force attack, there was a sufficient disparity of numbers to justify that kind of fear I would suggest. Some of them have the usual flags on poles, which of course, are really impact weapons.

But here’s what really complicated Michael Strickland’s defense because he would be charged with various counts of aggravated assault, or other aggravated battery. He hung around, he didn’t expeditiously flee the area, as you would if you were facing a deadly force threat. Maybe in his mind, he thought these people don’t have the authority to chase me away. I’m exercising my first amendment rights and so forth. And that could all be true. But if you’re going to claim I pulled my gun and pointed at somebody because I believe they were about to kill me, it doesn’t look like you really believe that if you remain in proximity to that crowd when you don’t have to.

Another complication for Michael Strickland, of course, was that his case was being heard by the tribe of the people who attacked him. So the Police are at least the people who control the police, the judge the jury, all those people are from the same social mill view as the protesters in the street, they are not on the right, like Michael Strickland was. So keep in mind your conduct is going to be evaluated by other people. And if they’re inherently biased against you for political reasons, that’s not going to help your defense.

That’s got nothing to do with the legal merits. But it reflects the reality that the criminal justice system is not some computer or algorithm where you put facts and evidence in one side crank handle and get justice out the other side, all these decisions are made by people.

Someone’s mentioning that Strickland had a bench trial and a jury trial. That could be that could be the case. I don’t know, I don’t recall, to tell you the truth, but it doesn’t matter because the judge is pulled from that same social mill you as well. So you think the gun was the thing to judge was second amendment self defense friendly. I would think not, not in Portland, the City of Portland.

All right, then the gentleman starts walking through the crowd. He’s rather walking rather casually through the crowd. Now, of course, he’s turned a corner. Many people in this crowd won’t know that he was the guy who just jumped out of a car after shooting one of their fellow protesters, maybe he’s just trying to blend in. At some point, he has the gun put away, presumably re-holstered, it’s out of sight when he approaches the police line, we’ll see doesn’t then still have the gamut sight.

So maybe he’s trying to just blend into the crowd. He’ll be hard to find in the crowd by the protesters who were around the vehicle as well. So it could be a protective measure just trying to blend in.

But at some point, he then accelerates rather aggressively, and I presume it’s because he sees the line of police blocking the road a little further up. Let’s see. Here as indicated in this red rectangle. If I can get that image to pop up, there we go. So he sees up at the head of the street there. There’s a line of police officers, we can just see their legs over here. And he rushes up to those police officer. So presumably he’s looking for security.

And as he walks up, he tells them, Yo, man, I had to shoot somebody garbled, garbled I can’t make it out my car. So he’s telling the cops I just have to shoot somebody. His hands are up, His hands are empty. Presumably he’s got the gun put away someplace out of sight. This is the way you want to approach police if you need to approach them. With your hands in plain sight. Remember, these cops are prepared to be attacked. Force has been used against them police officers have been killed already in these prosecutions. And so you want to make sure you’re as non-threatening as possible. So here he’s doing that great.

In about a second. he messes it up because in about a second now I presume what’s happening is he saying, hey, somebody shot up my car, he’s got his hands up, the cops are waving him forward. He thinks the communication is over, he thinks he’s been identified as safe, that he’s not a threat to them, and he drops his hands to his waistband. This is a bad idea, folks. He’s still approaching the police. He drops his hands to his waist. This looks like somebody’s potentially reaching for a weapon. That’s why the cops start shouting hands up, hands up. They don’t want to have to shoot this dude, but they don’t want to get shot.

If you’re this dude, this is an excellent way to get yourself shot. Be approaching police in a threatening situation. Tell them you’ve just chopped somebody so they have reason to believe you have a gun and then lower your hands to your waistband. Do not do that. That is an extraordinarily bad idea.

I see their questions popping up in the comments. I will cover those before I close out for today.

So I mentioned earlier, we have this video we’re finalizing now lawful defense against riders, looters and arsonists. We made a draft of that available last week. So I’m sure many of you have seen that. If you’re a law self-defense member, you can still see the draft. It’s both available as a blog post. Last week’s After Action Analysis Show is that draft video, and it’s available in your member area as well.

And, of course, we do these videos we produce this content as we produce all our content so that you can be as hard to convict as you are hard to kill as prepared to win the legal fight as you are to win the physical fight. And all this kind of content that we teach is what the law refers to as specialized knowledge.

So, we’re all presumed to have common knowledge right? Fire is hot ice is cold knives are sharp.

But specialized knowledge is knowledge that the common person doesn’t have. You only have specialized knowledge if you’ve acquired it through specialized education. training or experience, and that specialized knowledge, especially if it’s self-defense related can be critical to the reasonableness of your decision making and actions and self-defense.

Essentially, when you share your self-defense narrative with the police or your lawyer or court or jury, you’ll be saying, hey, sure I shot that guy. But my actions were reasonable because of, and part of the reason could be this specialized knowledge that you’ve acquired because you’re able to recognize threats or self-defense dynamics because of your specialized education, training and experience that someone who lacks that specialized knowledge would not have been able to use as the basis for decision making in self-defense.

So, if, if that specialized knowledge was why you made those decisions, why you took those actions and self-defense, and you want to be able to explain that in court, which of course, is what you’ll want to do. You must have possessed the knowledge at the time you acted in self-defense. Obviously, if you acquire that specialized knowledge at a later time, it could not have informed your decision making. in self-defense at the moment you were having the fight because you didn’t know it, then well, if you’re going to claim that you possess that knowledge, at the time you acted in self-defense, you better be able to prove it, you better be able to document you had that knowledge.

And a great way to do that, of course is to document your training, save the syllabus from your classes, save your certificate, save your notebooks, all very important.

Now, again, we made this “Lawful Defense Against Rioters, Looters, and Arsonists” video in draft form, we made it freely available to everyone we’re going to continue in its finalized form, it’ll probably be a couple of hours in length. It’ll be really a mini-course about as long as our Defense of Property course.

And by the way, we’re running a sale on our Defense of Property Course right now. And if you take advantage of that sale while it’s running, it’s 65% off more than half off our Defense of Property Course. If you take advantage of that right now you’ll also get access to the final version of our “Lawful Defense Against Rioters, Looters, and Arsonists” video so that’s another way to get free access to that video.

Even if you’re not a Law of Self Defense Member, although you ought to be a Law of Self Defense Member, so I just thought I’d mention that if you’re interested in that Defense of Property sale, you can access it by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/property

So a bunch of you will get free access to that finalized mini course “Lawful Defense Against Rioters, Looters, and Arsonists” and one way to document your training with respect to that video would simply be to take your own notes watching that video that’s perfectly appropriate. That’s one way to go. Certainly we tell people who have our book to you know, annotate the book, underline things, highlight things, make notes to yourself, put dates in the margins. All of that is documentation of when you acquire that knowledge.

Of course, it is subject to attack if you’re claiming, well I took notes at the video How do we know when those notes are really made really written It’s kind of self serving.

So we do have, we will have, we don’t have it yet, coming up an option for all of you to consider who do watch that video and think it worth documenting the opportunity to take a brief final exam, it’ll probably be 10 questions. If you pass the final exam, you’ll get a certificate of completion. And that will be a third party documentation that you learn those lessons.

Lessons like a car can be flipped in less than 11 seconds by half a dozen or so protesters. So when you feel your car rocking, you knew you only had 11 seconds or less to make a decision in self defense.

That’s the kind of quantifiable actionable knowledge you want to be able to document because that’s the kind of quantifiable actionable knowledge that will play a role in your decision making in self defense, the use of force and self-defense.

So we don’t have this available yet. I’m only mentioning it now because it will be available.

So if you’d like to keep your eyes open for that, make sure you’re on our email list. Perhaps the best way to be on our email list that doesn’t cost any money at all is to sign up for our free infographic sign up to download it. I mean, it’s a free download just a PDF, you can get that by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/elements

In the course of downloading that you’ll provide us with your email and you can be sure you’ll be informed of opportunities like this final exam and testing for that mini course on “Lawful Defense Against Rioters, Looters, and Arsonists”. So, you have third party documentation of that specialized knowledge should you ever need to apply that knowledge in court.

Okay, folks, so let me take a moment now to scroll through your questions.

Sean mentions the simulator is way more stressful than you’d imagine it to be. It’s really shocking folks. And in fact, it’s changed how I teach some of my content. It’s amazing because the video just presents a video, there’s obviously no real threat. The student who’s the defender has an infrared laser, fake pistol, sometimes also an infrared OC canister, they can’t possibly get harmed unless they trip over their own feet. And the video is only about 30 seconds long typically.

And at the end of that 30 seconds, we have them turned our back to the simulator screen and tell us what they saw what they did, why they did it.

And they can’t, and the reason they can’t is the amount of stress they’re experiencing. You can see their breathing, their respiration is up, their heart rates up, their hands are shaking.

They can’t remember what they saw. Or they remember seeing things that weren’t out there.

They can’t remember what they did, or at least they can’t remember kind of the timing or the sequence in in which they did it.

And if you can’t remember what you saw or what you did it’s really hard to explain in the law based way what your justification for your decisions were.

And this is in a totally artificial threat environment you can imagine what the stress must be like in the real fight. It makes that decision making all that much more complicated.

Hey, Travis, there’s my writing buddy Travis.

TC good to see you.

Hey, Art. Art is a Law of Self Defense Instructor Program Graduate who actually then went on to law school. So I think he’s just finishing up his third year right now.

Yeah, so if you were in the car, would you have time to burn rubber and get out of there.  Maybe, in this particular situation because the car was actually parked and it didn’t appear to as another vehicle in front of it.

But we see many of these situations in which the road is blocked. And there’s rows of cars in front of you and there is nowhere for your car to go. You could bang it against the other cars around you, but that doesn’t mean you’re going anywhere. So if the option to flee with the vehicle exists, that’s certainly a self-defense option that should be considered, vacate the premises as much as possible.

By the way, when that gentleman walks up with the incendiary device, to throw in your car, he’s landing it by the hood of your car, you’re in the vehicle, you’re in the passenger seat. You’re looking at that through the windshield, can you engage him with your handgun with deadly defensive force? I would suggest absolutely, he’s got that smoking item in your car. Clearly, he intends to throw it into the vehicle that is a reasonably perceived deadly force threat. engage him through the windshield. Don’t expect your bullets to go straight coming out of the windshield.

By the way, bullets go weird directions when they hit glass. And windshield glass is pretty tough. Another good reason to take a vehicle defense type course where they might actually have to shoot through a windshield so you can get a sense for that dynamic.

Why are we not allowed to kill anyone who blocks us? Because you can only kill people who are presenting an imminent threat of deadly force death or serious bodily injury. You can’t kill someone who’s merely blocking your way in the absence of that kind of deadly force threaten. Now that could be blocking you and presenting an imminent deadly force threat in which case then you have the justification for the use of deadly defensive force, assuming the other conditions of self-defense have been met.

Hey, Mike from Fairport, New York, Mike, I grew up in Dix Hills, New York, not all that far from you. I don’t think I presume that’s on Long Island.

Yeah, James says notice how the guy who in the black vehicle who shoots the attacker gets out of the V gets out of the doorway of the vehicle very quickly. That’s good. It would be interesting to know what kind of training he’s had of any Yeah, the attacker was quite tall and muscular. That was a, you know, that was a real fight. It wasn’t some little college girl yelling at him through the window.

Tammy says maybe he limp-wristed the gun. Yep. lots of reasons we can get that kind of apparent slide malfunction.

Yeah, Scott says notice how the gunshot didn’t bring the police to the victim. There are no police folks to police for all practical purposes. In this case, the police were around the corner in a line. They certainly heard the gunshot I would have to believe maybe not I guess depending on how much ambient noise there was. It was kind of loud. The gun was fired inside the vehicle. And the apparently open driver side window was away from the officers. So maybe not.

But it doesn’t matter. Either they heard it, and they didn’t come, or they didn’t hear it, and they didn’t come. Nobody’s coming to help you.

Let’s see Scott says, prosecutor could use that against them. Do they need that many rounds just for self-defense? I don’t see it, Scott. I mean, presuming of course, it’s not some kind of weapons law violation in that state that he’s not violating some kind of magazine capacity ban that would raise its own issues. That wouldn’t necessarily destroy a claim of self-defense, but it could be used to argue against the defenders reasonableness. He’s a law breaker, right?

But assuming we don’t have that kind of issue, there’s no magazine capacity limit in that jurisdiction. How many rounds you have in your magazine is not going to be really relevant to the use of force event, how many rounds you put into the person attacking you can be relevant. Because the more rounds you put into them, the less it looks like reasonable self-defense.

Strictly speaking, the law says you can keep shooting as long as you keep facing an eminent deadly force threat. If that takes one round. It’s one that takes five or 10 or 20 or 30 rounds, then that’s what it takes. But it’s much easier for a prosecutor to argue that you used excessive and unreasonable degree of force. If you’ve put 20 rounds into somebody.

In this case, that’s not really an issue and he appears to have fired only in the one round. [Garbled] says he was an SO with the IDPA Nationals. Well, thank you for that, I was an SO at maybe the first five or six IDPA Nationals, before IDPA had an SO certification, by the way, we were just using our RO certifications from USPSA in those days.

But yeah, the nationals are always a great affair. He says they had a stage where we had an overturned truck on one stage, I assume you mean completely overturned, like on the roof, and the competitor was required to shoot from the prone while inside the truck. Yeah, I think that would be frankly an easier tactical situation than the one we saw here with the vehicle up on its side, because much easier to get out of the vehicle on its roof assuming you can get through the way Windows, then a vehicle up on its side.

Sean asked did I see the video of the attacker after the shooting? I did see it. I just didn’t bother including it for today’s show. He says directly he punched the driver. Yeah, it’s pretty obvious in the video, he’s punching the driver. You can see his arms flailing in a punching motion, which is an excellent way to get yourself shot.

Okay, folks, it’s been about an hour. So I will start to wrap up on this point.

I will mention just one last time we’re are having our sale 65% off our Defense of Property Course it’s a two-hour course on DVD supplemented by state specific defensive property statutes, jury instructions, court cases from all 50 states so it’s specific to your state, more than half off 65% off and when you take advantage of that you’ll also get access to the final version of our mini course “Lawful Defense Against Rioters, Looters, and Arsonists” and you can get that 65% Defense of Property discount and the “Lawful Defense Against Rioters, Looters, and Arsonists” by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/property

Alright folks, that’s this week’s After Action Analysis Show. I hope you enjoyed it. We do it every week at 2pm Eastern Time. 12pm Mountain Time, which is where I am in Colorado.

I hope you bookmark that, put it in your calendar.

Join us every week, and until next time, stay safe.

–Andrew

Attorney Andrew F. Branca
Law of Self Defense LLC
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