News/Q&A Show: Jan. 28, 2021

Welcome to this episode of our ONLY open-access content, our weekly News/Q&A Show. A transcript of the show is (or soon will be) available below my signature, for those who prefer to read rather than view. Also, Law of Self Defense Members can access the show in audio form in the members-only Law of Self Defense Podcast.

In today’s News/Q&A Show for January 28, 20210 we touched on a broad range of questions submitted for the show, as well as questions submitted live, including:

NEWS

• North Dakota lawmakers set sights on ‘stand-your-ground’ legislation
• Dad fatally shot when confronting daughter’s cyberbully
• Portland Mayor Pepper-Sprays Man After Argument Over Masks
• George Floyd Motions:  “Additional Evidence”
• Affidavit: Baggage claim sticker led police to suspect in homicide of victim found in suitcases
• Brazilian Gun Video (Surprise!)

Q&A

• Unusual complexity of the proposed Arkansas Stand-Your-Ground law?
• Why couldn’t TN lawyer who advised on making murder look like self-defense be charged with conspiracy?
• What burden is on the defense in a self-defense immunity hearing?
• When does expert testimony have to meet a Frye or Daubert threshold for admissibility?
• How can an angry text message that results in deadly force affect self-defense of sender or receiver?
• PLUS Bonus questions from the live audience!

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A transcript of the show is available below my signature, for those who prefer to read rather than view. Also, Law of Self Defense Members can access the show in audio form in the members-only Law of Self Defense Podcast.

CCW Safe:  Our Sponsor

Now before we jump into the substance of today’s content, I do, of course, need to mention today’s sponsor, CCW Safe, a provider of legal service memberships, what many people mistakenly call self-defense insurance. They in effect promise to pay their member’s legal expenses if their member is involved in a use of force event.

And those expenses start big and get bigger, fast, folks. For example, imagine a case where you were threatened, you displayed your gun, you didn’t fire a shot didn’t hurt anybody—and now you find yourself charged with aggravated assault with a firearm, typically a 10-year felony.

If you’re charged with aggravated assault with a firearm, you’re looking at a retainer to your lead counsel on the order of $30,000 to $50,000. And that’s just for pre-trial work, folks, that’s not for going to trial. If it’s a killing case, where you’re charged with manslaughter or murder, you’re easily looking at $100,000 or $200,000 pre-trial expense, and just multiply that for the trial.

So, if you don’t have that kind of money stuffed in your mattress just in case you’re compelled to defend yourself and your family, it can be useful to have a financial partner standing behind you to make sure you have the resources you need to fight the legal battle, the way you want it fought—as if your life depended on it. Because, really, it does.  And that’s what CCW Safe offers to do.

There are several companies out there that offer similar services. I’ve looked at all of them, as you might imagine, and I found that CCW Safe is the best fit for me personally.  I’m a member of CCW Safe, my wife Emily is a member of CCW Safe.

One of the biggest reasons I favored CCW Safe over other similar offerings is that many of those others simply don’t provide the level resources you need for an adequate legal defense. If you’re looking at a “self-defense insurance” offer that caps out at $150,000 or $250,000, that’s simply not enough for a murder or manslaughter trial if you’ve killed someone in self-defense, as I’ve already discussed. In contrast, CCW Safe promises to pay what the defense costs, period, with no such cap.

And what if you lose a trial and you have to appeal. CCW Safe covers you on appeals again, with no cap. These other companies often say well, we’ll cover you up to the limit of the cap on an appeal. But of course, you’ll have spent all that money at the trial itself. So effectively, there is no coverage for an appeal.

So be aware if your plan that you’re looking at or already have has that kind of cap. I know $250,000 sounds like a lot of money, folks, and it is a lot of money, but not in the context of a criminal defense in the murder or manslaughter case. Read the fine print, folks, and understand what you’re getting—and not getting—from any such offering you’re considering.

Having said that CCW Safe is the best fit for me, whether they are the best fit for you is something only you can decide. But I do encourage you to take a look at what they have to offer by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/ccwsafe

And if you do decide to become a member of CCW Safe, you can save 10% off your membership at that URL http://lawofselfdefense.com/ccwsafe, using the discount code LOSD10.

Enjoy the show!

Remember:

You carry a gun so you’re hard to kill.

Know the law so you’re hard to convict!

Stay safe!

–Andrew

Attorney Andrew F. Branca
Law of Self Defense LLC

Law of Self Defense Platinum Protection Program

IMPORTANT:  We encourage civil and reasoned debate among Members in the comments.  That said, comments reflect the legal opinions of those who authored them only, and no comment should be assumed to reflect the legal opinion of, or be assumed to be shared by, Attorney Andrew F. Branca, except those authored by Attorney Branca.  Law of Self Defense LLC does not systemically moderate comments for legal correctness, and we suggest that all comments be viewed with an appropriately critical eye and a grain of salt.

Nothing in this content constitutes legal advice. Nothing in this content establishes an attorney-client relationship, nor confidentiality. If you are in immediate need of legal advice, retain a licensed, competent attorney in the relevant jurisdiction.

Law of Self Defense © 2021

All rights reserved.

TRANSCRIPT

Come on in everybody. Come on in. Welcome to the Law of Self Defense Q&A Show for January 28 2021. Come on in.

If you’re watching this live on social media, Facebook, elsewhere, please feel free to comment your city and state that helps provide me with some geographic context. If you could like and share, or whatever is appropriate on the particular social media platform you happen to be using, please feel free to do that as well. That helps us grow the Law of Self Defense community. We all know that this subject matter is not beloved by social media. So we have to try to fool them into making our content more widely known.

For those who don’t know I am attorney Andrew Branca for Law of Self Defense.  Thank you very much, as always very pleased to be here.

This weekly News/Q&A Show is the only piece of content we produce at Law of Self Defense that’s freely available, open access to everyone, you don’t need to be a Law of Self Defense Member to access this content. Most of our content is members only, but every Thursday at 4pm Eastern time we do our Law of Self Defense News/Q&A Show live. We do it live on Facebook Live, and on our membership page. Afterwards, we do keep a recorded replay of this show available. So if you can’t make the live show, you can catch the recorded replay on both Facebook and the Law of Self Defense blog.

And starting this year, we’re also making this one show, not our other members-only content, which is available in its own members-only podcast form. But we’re making this one show available also as an open access podcast on Spotify, and Pandora, and on Apple Podcasts, and other major podcast platforms. To access our newly launched “Law of Self Defense News/Q&A Podcast” just click the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/freepodcast

So if you use any of those platforms for podcasting, and you’d like to be able to access this once a week open access live News/Q&A Show as a podcast.  Of course, our Law of Self Defense Members will continue receiving this in their members-only podcast along with all the other content that we do.

So, of course, as the show suggests, it’s the News/Q&A Show. So we cover use of force news events, and then questions that have been sent in to us. Those questions could be sent in beforehand. Our members, our Platinum members have a platinum-specific Q&A form they can use to submit questions. Anyone else can submit questions to us simply by emailing them to show@lawofselfdefense.com.

And before we sign off today. I’ll also scroll through the comments. So any questions that are submitted live, time permitting, we do try to keep the show to no more than an hour. I’ll address questions that were submitted in the content.

So feel free if you have questions, drop them in the comments at any time, I won’t have a chance to take a look and see what those questions may be until near the end of the show. But I will scroll through the questions for that purpose.

Now for those of you who may be wondering whether or not you want to stay for the entire show, let me give you an overview of what I know we’ll be covering in terms of news events.

• North Dakota lawmakers set sights on ‘stand-your-ground’ legislation
• Dad fatally shot when confronting daughter’s cyberbully
• Portland Mayor Pepper-Sprays Man After Argument Over Masks
• George Floyd Motions:  “Additional Evidence”
• Affidavit: Baggage claim sticker led police to suspect in homicide of victim found in suitcases
• Brazilian Gun Video (Surprise!)

So those are the news topics we’ll be covering in more detail in terms of questions that have been sent in ahead of time. So these are the questions I know we’ll cover before we get to whatever live questions the live audience might have submitted.

• Unusual complexity of the proposed Arkansas Stand-Your-Ground law?
• Why couldn’t TN lawyer who advised on making murder look like self-defense be charged with conspiracy?
• What burden is on the defense in a self-defense immunity hearing?
• When does expert testimony have to meet a Frye or Daubert threshold for admissibility?
• How can an angry text message that results in deadly force affect self-defense of sender or receiver?
• PLUS Bonus questions from the live audience!

So those are questions we’ll definitely answer plus whatever live questions all of you submit during the course of the show.

CCW Safe:  Our Sponsor

Now before we jump into the substance of today’s content, I do, of course, need to mention today’s sponsor, CCW Safe, a provider of legal service memberships, what many people mistakenly call self-defense insurance. CCW Safe in effect promises to pay their member’s legal expenses if their member is involved in a use of force event.

And those expenses start big and get bigger, fast, folks. For example, imagine a case where you were threatened, you displayed your gun, you didn’t fire a shot didn’t hurt anybody—and now you find yourself charged with aggravated assault with a firearm, typically a 10-year felony.

If you’re charged with aggravated assault with a firearm, you’re looking at a retainer to your lead counsel on the order of $30,000 to $50,000. And that’s just for pre-trial work, folks, that’s not for going to trial. If it’s a killing case, where you’re charged with manslaughter or murder, you’re easily looking at $100,000 or $200,000 pre-trial expense, and just multiply that for the trial.

If you don’t have that kind of money stuffed in your mattress just in case you’re compelled to defend yourself or your family, it can be useful to have a financial partner standing behind you to make sure you have the resources you need to fight the legal battle, the way you want it fought—as if your life depended on it. Because, really, it does.  And that’s what CCW Safe offers to do for its members.

There are several companies out there that offer similar services. I’ve looked at all of them, as you might imagine, and I found that CCW Safe is the best fit for me personally.  I’m a member of CCW Safe, my wife Emily is a member of CCW Safe.

One of the biggest reasons I favored CCW Safe over other similar offerings is that many of those others simply don’t provide the level of resources you need for an adequate legal defense. If you’re looking at a “self-defense insurance” offer that caps out at $150,000 or $250,000 for criminal legal defense, that’s simply not enough for a murder or manslaughter trial if you’ve killed someone in self-defense, as I’ve already discussed. In contrast, CCW Safe promises to pay what the defense costs, period, with no such cap.  Read the fine print, folks, and understand what you’re getting—and not getting—from any such offering you’re considering.

Having said that CCW Safe is the best fit for me, whether they are the best fit for you is something only you can decide. But I do encourage you to take a look at what they have to offer by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/ccwsafe

And if you do decide to become a member of CCW Safe, you can save 10% off your membership at that URL http://lawofselfdefense.com/ccwsafe, using the discount code LOSD10.

NEWS

So first, we start with news items that have come to my attention over the prior week involving some aspect of use of force and explore those.Then we’ll jump into the Q&A section for the second half of the show. The Q&A will initially focus on questions that have been sent into us beforehand, either from our members using their member Q&A Form, or anyone can send us questions for our consideration to show@lawofselfdefense.com. And once we’ve worked our way through the questions we’ve lined up for the show, I’ll take a look through the comments on our membership dashboard and the Facebook Live programming and see if I can pull up some more questions to answer before the end of the show.

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s jump into our news items that we want to cover with all of you today.

North Dakota lawmakers set sights on ‘stand-your-ground’ legislation

One of the news items I want to touch upon is North Dakota is setting its sights on stand your ground becoming a standard ground state. I know many of you will be shocked to learn that a state like North Dakota would not already be a standard ground state. But it’s not. It’s a duty of retreat state. And there is a bill now working its way through the legislature to become standard ground let’s House Bill 1193 for those who are interested, and I will embed a link to that bill in the text version of today’s content.

By the way, for those of you who prefer to read rather than watch or listen, we do provide a written transcript of every one of these News/Q&A Shows over at the Law of Self Defense Blog. We leave these particular blog posts open access for everyone. So anytime I mentioned us having a link to something that’s where you would find that link over on our blog in the transcript version of today’s show.

So, North Dakota is attempting to become a standard ground state in the legislature. If they do become a standard ground state, they will be the 39th standard ground state but the media often makes it seem like stand your ground is some aberrant or minority position among the states. It’s not the large majority of states are standard ground states.

We talked last week about Arkansas becoming a standard ground state Arkansas would be the 38th assuming it becomes law as everyone expects it will.  The bill is passed the Arkansas State Senate it’s going to the house where it’s expected to easily pass and the governor’s republicans will probably signed the bill.

North Dakota may well be next after Arkansas, in which case we’d be left with only 11 duty to retreat states in America. And that’s a good thing.

Of course, as usual, you can count on the media to be the propaganda arm of the anti self defense anti second Democrat. They describe the North Dakota lawmakers who are advancing the standard ground bill as a group of ultra conservative North Dakota lawmakers that would loosen the law on using deadly force and self-defense.

The media writes that House Bill 1183 would allow anyone to use deadly force against an assailant without attempting to retreat from the situation. That’s true. As far as it goes. Of course, what they fail to mention is that for that use of deadly force against an assailant to be lawful, you still would have to be the innocent victim of an imminent deadly force, unlawful attack upon your person and your perception of that attack would have to be that of a reasonable person.

The media apparently would like the state to retain the privilege to put you in jail for the rest of your life, even if you are the innocent victim of an imminent deadly force attack. If somehow they can argue that you might have had a safe avenue of retreat, so hopefully North Dakota will join the large majority of states and becoming the 39th standard ground state in the nation.

Dad fatally shot when confronting daughter’s cyberbully

The next piece I wanted to cover and this will tie in with one of the questions that were sent in to this is a really tragic case. A father in Texas was fatally shot when he was confronting his daughter’s cyber bullies. So the father was upset the daughter had been cyber bullied over social media by I presumed a classmate appear for months, 7, 8, 9 months.

And this is no joke, folks, for us adults can shrug this stuff off for teenagers. It’s really traumatic, especially when these days and especially during COVID. When so much social interaction is virtual over social media, I’ve no doubt that the cyberbullying was traumatic, genuinely emotionally traumatic for the daughter can’t have been any fun for the father either.

And the father decided to do something about it, went to the other party’s property, went to their home, got into an argument and got himself shot and killed in the process. He leaves behind five children, folks, a father of five, no charges have been filed against the shooter yet, which of course is not definitive of whether or not the shooting was lawful or not. But it’s indicative, of course, the matter is expected to go before a grand jury.

But here’s the problem, folks, when the father goes to the other person’s house, and he’s doing it, why he’s doing it because he’s upset, he’s angry, his emotions are spooled up, we can’t allow ourselves to get put in positions where emotions either the other person’s emotions or our own emotions are going to get spooled up.

One of the possible outcomes of such an event is dying. And maybe one’s death would be lawful use of force by the other party, maybe it wouldn’t. But that doesn’t matter all that much to the dead person.

Also, when you go to the scene of the fight, when you go to the fight rather than the fight coming to you, it rarely looks like self-defense to anybody. We’ve all heard the expression won’t be none. If you don’t start none. You go to that fight folks, or what’s his father dead certainly looks like he went there prepared to fight, at least get into an argument on someone else’s property at their home. That’s not a favorable form for winning a fight, either tactically or legally, there are lots of favorable legal presumptions for the property owner dealing with an apparent trespasser or intruder.

And we could all imagine how the verbal interaction here probably went right with an angry father who loves his daughter, who he sees being traumatized for months by the cyber bully. Folks, this kind of conduct is awful. It’s terrible. But what it’s not, is an imminent threat of unlawful violence. And until you’re encountering that the threat or use of force or putting yourself in a situation where you may be obliged to threaten or use force, especially deadly force is just not the smart move.

Portland Mayor Pepper-Sprays Man After Argument Over Masks

Next, a New York Times article, unfortunately, I have a link to the New York Times, feel free not to click it ,again, there’s links to all these news articles in the text version of today’s content over at the Law of Self Defense Blog.

But in this article, it reports that the Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who we’ve all become familiar with as the guy who let an Tifa burn his city down, indeed supported them in their apparent efforts. immorally If nothing else, by the way, Portland’s kind of odd, the mayor also serves in this context as a police chief.

So all these stand down orders were right from Ted Wheeler, somehow he got elected a few months ago, reelected a few months ago. So Portland, hope you’re happy you got your guy. I’m glad I don’t live there.

But in any case, Mayor Wheeler was apparently in a restaurant eating with a friend. And he was approached by a third party, a man who owns some kind of dairy business and who was upset about Wheeler’s, who knows, either the Antifa policies or the COVID policies, whatever the case might be, he was angry, verbalizing to Wheeler his anger at the fact that Wheeler was not wearing a mask while eating at the restaurant was not he claims social distancing from his dinner companion or lunch companion.

And apparently the confrontation got hot enough that Ted Wheeler, the mayor, decided to pepper spray this guy in the face. There is audio of this event, frankly, I’m not going play it because it’s not very informative. It’s rather boring, except to the extent that the man who is pepper sprayed is talking fairly normally afterwards. And that’s not a bad dose of pepper spray.

But it does raise the question. Under what circumstances is the use of pepper spray as a defensive tool lawful and advisable? What conditions have to be met before you can use pepper spray and self defense?

And the truth is, pepper sprays a non-deadly form of self-defense it could be used to stop an apparent reasonably perceived threat of mere non-deadly harm meaning Almost any degree of harm. So to the extent the man who got pepper sprayed, got in Wheeler’s face and was conducting himself in a threatening manner, and it doesn’t need to require necessarily an explicit threat. It could be demeanor or it could be clenched fists, it could be very much in personal space. And apparently this guy was within a foot of Wheeler, which is well within someone’s personal space.

If Wheeler can articulate that he had a reasonably perceived fear of imminent harm any virtually any degree of imminent harm, he’s likely justified in using that pepper spraying in self-defense.

Now, Wheeler, I expect might be a lawyer, maybe he’s read my book. But he told the police who arrived at the confrontation, quote, “I became imminently concerned for my personal safety,” which are the right words, right.

Now, the words themselves are not magic, there would have to be an articulation in an evidence based way of why he had, why his imminent fear for personal safety would be a reasonable one. Of course, the standard to which you or I might be held by the Portland Police Department is probably a higher standard than we might expect the effective police chief of Portland, to be held by the Portland Police Department.

But nevertheless, he articulated a reasonable approximation of the legal standard. So this may well have been a perfectly lawful use of pepper spray by Mayor Wheeler, whether you like him or not, and certainly I don’t think much of him. But the law ought to be the same for all of us.

George Floyd Motions:  “Additional Evidence”

Another event that was in the news, a member of the Law of Self Defense Community was kind enough to send me a court order from the George Floyd case. Of course, George Floyd was the gentleman who expired while resisting lawful arrest by a number of officers. Those officers have now been charged with various forms of felony murder. And so they’re all going to trial and the preparations for trial and now taking place.

And part of those preparations for trial is a lot of pre-trial activity, where evidence is offered, essentially, the party, the states and the defense attorneys for the officers have to inform each other and the court of the evidence they would like to submit during the trial itself show to the jury. There’s a lot of evidence, of course, that’s directly relevant to the events, and that’s almost invariably admissible.

But there’s always are often also evidence that’s more circumstantial or contextual, not necessarily related to the events themselves, but that provide a broader context to understand how or why those events occurred. So this is additional evidence that’s being offered, and has to be offered for the approval of the court before it can be admitted as evidence in court. And of course, it can be contested by the other party, whatever evidence you want to offer.

And this order was an announcement by the judge that essentially, he’s not going to allow virtually any of this evidence that either the state or the defense requested.

And frankly, most of the evidence offered by the state appears really irrelevant or petty. For example, with regard to Officer Chauvin, the state wanted to offer evidence of eight prior instances of Chauvin using various restraint techniques, presumably the same restraint technique he used on George Floyd, I guess, to show that this is some kind of pattern of behavior, these eight instances occurred over a five-year period, which is hardly frequently, eight times over five years.

But frankly, I don’t see the point even a Chauvin was using the technique every week, this knee on the neck restraint technique was taught, trained and approved by his department at the time, he used it on George Floyd.

So it can’t have been wrong from a legal perspective if his department trained him and approved the technique for use in precisely this type of scenario. So I don’t really understand where the state thought they were going with this.

And even more petty, one of the other officers is Officer Tao, I guess you would pronounce it Thao. And they had a number, I think it was nine or 10 pieces of additional evidence they wanted to submit against Tao, the state did eight of those involved. All occurred in a four-month period in 2012, April through July 2012, seven years before the George Floyd event, so hardly proximal to the actual event.

And they were all instances of Thao’s FTO, his field training officer, so Thao would have been a brand new cop, basically in a probation period, under the supervision of a field training officer before he became a full-fledged police officer.

And there were eight instances in his four-month period in which his FTO had some complaint about Tao. Frankly, given the nature of the relationship and the very short period of time in which these all occurred. This strikes me is more illustrative of some kind of personality. flicked between Tao and his FTO than it does anything wrong with Tao, especially how long ago it occurred, and how these complaints effectively disappeared once the FTO was no longer in the picture. So again, it seems very petty to me.

There was one piece of evidence offered by the defense, however, that the judge also rejected, which I think is likely to be reversible error in this case, if the judge insists on rejecting it, I think I made a slide of that particular evidentiary offering. I hope I did I meant to, it looks like I did not. Let me see if I can pull it up very quickly, for all of you to see, because this is a little lengthy and it might be more interesting to hear it rather than see it. Okay, bear with me, folks, this is what happens when you have a live show. talk amongst yourselves, and I’ll see if I can’t pull up this slide. I’m sure I can. And it looks like that worked. So here we go.

So here is the evidence that the defense on behalf of Chauvin and presumably the other officers would like to submit so the jury can see it and that is that evidence of Floyd’s arrest by the Minneapolis Police Department on May 6 2018, during which Floyd allegedly swallowed large quantities of controlled substances in an attempt to avoid arrest, allegedly acting in a diversionary behavior, such as crying and acting irrationally while interacting with police and Floyd’s subsequent admission to the Hennepin County Medical Center for treatment for accidental quote unquote, accidental drug ingestion.

And of course, the implication here is that this was not accidental at all, that Floyd consumed those drugs during the arrest to avoid being caught with the drugs. I mean, Floyd was a convicted felon, it would not be good for him to be caught with drugs.

And I think exclusion of that evidence is going to be reversible error, because that’s precisely the narrative I expect these officers to offer, in defense at trial against the felony murder charges against them and the fact we didn’t kill Floyd, Floyd killed himself by ingesting a three times fatal dose of fentanyl, with the concurrent with our arrest of him. And that’s not just speculation that those were the toxicology results from the medical examiner. Floyd had in his blood a three times fatal dose of fentanyl. But not it’s not just in this instance, it’s also we have a prior instance, which makes this a pattern of behavior.

So that’s extremely relevant to the defense narrative. It offers an explanation for Floyd’s death, that’s independent of the actions of the officers themselves. not excessively prejudicial, given Floyd’s admitted history of drug addiction, prior arrests for drugs, drugs in his blood at the time he died. And, of course, this prior event itself. So I’m going to in the text version of today’s content, I’ll embed this court order so you can read it for yourself. It’s not enormously interesting, but I like to provide the original sources for this kind of stuff. And I think that’s going to be a profound mistake on the part of the trial judge to exclude that particular piece of evidence.

We’ll see what happens, of course, it’d be excluded in the officers get convicted, that would be a basis for them to appeal their conviction. But keep in mind, folks that conviction and appeal of a conviction is not a do over of the trial. at trial. All the presumptions are in your favor, you’re presumed innocent until proven guilty, if you’re convicted, and then you have to appeal you may have great grounds for appeal, but it’s presumed that the conviction against us legitimate all the presumptions now run against you.

It’s an uphill fight all the way on an appeal. So you don’t want to be at an appeal. Unless you couldn’t get an acquittal. If you are an appeal, it’s good to have good grounds to that appeal. And I think this exclusion of that particular evidence of Floyd’s prior, ingestion of drugs during an arrest and needed to be hospitalized as a result would be extremely helpful evidence and good grounds for an appeal if it’s excluded, as so far this trial judge is doing.

Affidavit: Baggage claim sticker led police to suspect in homicide of victim found in suitcases

Another case I wanted to touch upon was not really the use of force case, but it’s one of those how stupid can a criminal be cases that I just had to share it with all of you and that is a gentleman, a drug addict, another drug addict amongst a group of drug addicts.

So one drug addict killed another of the killer, then chopped up the body of his victim, stuffed it into a suitcase and left the suitcase. by the side of the road. I believe this was in Boston, my old stomping grounds. Unfortunately for the killer, it was his own luggage. And he left the luggage tags from his last trip on the luggage, which, as you might imagine, greatly facilitated the ability of the police to track him down.

And once they found where he lived, of course, they got a search warrant. And of course, they found a ton of blood, what the media called an excessive amount of blood, on a couch, in the bathroom, in the bathtub, and so forth. I don’t know how much blood needs, you need to see that for it to be excessive, but I would expect that’s not very much. On the other hand, if you’ve chopped up a body and stuffed it in a suitcase, I expect there’ll be plenty of blood to show.

Brazilian Gun Video (Surprise!)

The last thing I want to share with you is not so much a news item, but a good friend of mine, best friend best man at my wedding. Retired federal law enforcement agent sent me a interesting video. I’ve done I’ve muted the audio on this because the videos from Brazil so we can understand at least I can understand what you’re saying anyway. And it’s not important to the point.

But what the video shows is a young man wearing a T shirt and a baseball cap black t shirt. His hands are raised in a surrender type position with his hands by his shoulders. Imagine him being asked to lift his t shirt so you can see if he has any weapons around his waist. He does that. And then we get a neat little surprise. So let me play this video for you quickly. See how this goes. So he surrender shirts up. But look at this. What do we have here? It’s a pistol, a pistol that he has in a sufficient grip to actually work the action and fire the pistol.

Surprise, surprise, surprise. I’ll the video is short enough that I’ll see if I can share it with you again. Here’s a second run of that same video. Show me pull up your shirt. Let me see if you have any weapons. Okay, dude, you’re cool. What’s going on around here? Oh, look at this could. Bang, bang, bang.

Now, a couple lessons from this, folks. One is, any of you who spent any time in competitive shooting sports, will know that hands at the shoulders is not a surrender position, folks, that’s a ready to shoot position. It’s very, very quick to get your hands on your shoulders to any weapon that’s around your waist. Most people who compete at a reasonably high level can present a gun from in the waistband or anywhere in the waist position, really, and discharged first round in well under a second and a half, often under a second.

So that is not a “I’m unable to hurt you” position. This is I’m ready to put a bullet into you in something under a second position. One of the dangers of holding people at gunpoint, so the police can arrest them, folks, the goal of any violent interaction involving a normal law-abiding citizen is to survive that interaction.

If the bad guy will run away, that’s a win, folks. Don’t feel any obligation to hold anybody for the police, you’re probably not trained to do that. And the risks are extremely high, and counter to the core mission of surviving the confrontation. So don’t be holding people at gunpoint unless you have no other option is my tactical recommendation.

And unfortunately, a lot of bad guys are very proficient at violence and very proficient at presenting weapons in a manner you will not like and again, also action tends to beat reaction. Don’t put yourself in that kind of dangerous situation unless there’s really no other alternative.

Get a Taste of our Members-Only Content!

Alright folks, next we’re going to jump into our questions for today and the ones that were sent in and any that you have asked live, we’re about halfway through the show. And that’s particularly good timing.

Before we do, I’ll mention again that this is the only open access content we produce each week is this weekly News/Q&A Show we do every Thursday 4pm. Eastern Time, live on Facebook Live for our members in their member dashboard. And then later available as a bonus open access podcast on Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Podcasts.

But we produce a lot of other content every single week, folks, we do produce content almost every day of the week. That content is available only to our Law of Self Defense Members. To give you a sense of the kind of stuff that we covered just this week here are examples of the Members-only content that went out in video, text, and podcast form this past week:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog

We covered a case out of Chicago in which a man who shot someone in the back of the head is claiming that he did so in lawful self-defense.  The prosecution, as one might imagine, is struggling to imagine how self-defense can fit the facts of this case.

In fact there ARE circumstances in which it would be perfectly lawful to shoot someone in the back of the head, with no warning whatever, and we explore those legal boundaries in this Members-only blog post, video, and podcast content.

http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog

We also covered the case of a Tennessee lawyer who has managed to “murder”—or, at least, cause “serious bodily harm” to his legal career by apparently advising a woman on how to murder her ex-boyfriend and father of her child, and make it look like self-defense.  Worse, he did this in public—and not just in public, but on social media (Facebook).

As you might expect, the Tennessee bar generally, and the Tennessee Supreme Court in particular, didn’t think much of this conduct, and the lawyer in question ended up having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Indeed, a very bad four years, during which his license to practice law is either suspended or on probation.

Again, we covered the legal boundaries here, and how they were crossed (and how they stopped short of, say, criminal conspiracy).

http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog

We also did an analysis of a mob-on-patrol-car attack that took place a couple of days ago in Tacoma, WA, with the result that the Tacoma officer drove his vehicle through the attacking mob to a position of safety.

The predictable reaction by the mob and its supporters is, naturally, to be aghast and to demand that the officer be charged with crimes as serious as attempted murder.  In today’s content we’ll share some videos of that event with you, and explain why the officer was entirely justified in his conduct.

http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog

And we covered a case currently being argued in front of the Wisconsin Supreme Court that involves the question of whether an unlawful intruder who commits a nighttime breach of a home, and then kills the homeowner when confronted, might have committed that killing in lawful self-defense.

The trial court said, “No way,” and refused to instruct the jury on self-defense, with the result that the intruder was convicted.

When the intruder appealed that conviction, however, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals just this past summer said, in effect, “Well, maybe, the killing of the homeowner could have been lawful self-defense,” reversed the conviction, and ordered a new trial with a self-defense instruction.

The state appealed that decision, and now the matter is before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which heard argument on the case earlier this week.

If that kind of content is of interest to you, the only way to access it is to be a Law of Self Defense Member. Fortunately, Membership is very inexpensive, it’s only about 30 cents a day, about 25 cents a day if you sign up for a year.

And even better, you can try out Law of Self Defense Membership for two weeks for just 99 cents. We have a trial membership 99 cents for two weeks. If you decide in that two-week period that it’s not for you rarely happens. But should that occur, just ask us for a refund, we’ll give you 200% of your money back. And as they say, if you like what you see, and you do decide to stay a member, it’s only about 25 or 30 cents a day to be a member after the trial is over.  You can learn more about that 99 cent, two-week, 200% money back guarantee trial Law of Self Defense Membership by clicking here:  http://lawofselfdefense.com/trial

QUESTIONS

Unusual complexity of the proposed Arkansas Stand-Your-Ground law?

Okay, so now let’s dive into the questions that were sent in to us over the course of the week. One of those had to do with Arkansas. And last week, we spent some time talking about as I mentioned earlier today, Arkansas becoming a Stand-your-ground state.

And someone asked is Arkansas going to be a assuming the legislation becomes law? Will it be a hard standard ground state or a soft standard ground state, so most standard ground states or soft standard ground states? What that means is that you don’t have a legal duty to retreat.

So the prosecution can’t argue to the jury that they should deny you self defense as a justification for your killing of that person. Because you you violated a legal duty to retreat. If you’re in a standard ground state, you don’t have a legal duty to retreat. So they can’t make that argument.

But in most standard ground states, the soft standard ground states the prosecution can attack your failure to take advantage of a safe Avenue retreat from the flanks. And they do that by arguing to the jury that, ladies and gentlemen the jury sure there’s no legal duty to retreat. But a reasonable person in the circumstances, the circumstances this defendant found himself in a reasonable person would have retreated. He had a path of safe retreat. And one of the requirements of self defense is that you conduct yourself reasonably by not taking advantage of that safe avenue of retreat. This defendant didn’t violate the legal duty, but he did act unreasonably. And therefore, you should deny him self defense because he failed to act reasonably.

So it’s a roundabout way of attacking you on your failure to take advantage of a purported safe avenue for treat. Those are the soft stand your ground states that typically allow that argument. There are about half a dozen or so hard standard ground states, the hard stand your ground states do not allow that argument. They don’t allow it because they prohibit the jury from even considering the possibility of retreat in determining whether or not your use of force was reasonable. Since the jury is not allowed to consider retreat, it would be inappropriate and not permitted for the prosecution to argue about the issue of retreat in front of the jury. So the hard stand your ground states really take avoidance off the table period.

Now, I’ve looked at the Arkansas standard ground legislation and there is no hard prohibition on the prosecution referring to a possibility of retreat. It merely says there’s no legal duty to retreat. So that would characterize Arkansas as a soft stand your ground state, assuming the legislation gets adopted.

But more to the point. In reading the Arkansas standard ground legislation, I noted that they have an unusual number of conditional requirements on qualifying for stand your ground.

Now, when we consider the, you know, 30-something stand your ground states, about half of those are standard ground by statute. So there was debate in the legislature and so forth.

But about half of them are standard ground by court decision often court decisions dating back more than 100 years. California, for example, as a standard ground state, there is no standard ground statute in California, so don’t bother looking, you won’t find it. But California has case law court decisions going back to the 1800s, making clear that there’s no legal duty in California, no legal duty to retreat in California.

Now, in the states that are standard ground by court decision, it tends to be just a blanket statement, there is no legal duty to retreat if you are otherwise acting unlawful self defense. Very simple, very straightforward, no conditions. Other than that you were otherwise acting in lawful self defense, which of course, you’d have to be doing to qualify for self defense anyway.

The other half roughly half a standard ground states that are standard ground by statute, often in this debate process in the legislature, conditions begin to be added to stand your ground. So you don’t automatically qualify for standard ground. You continue to have a legal duty to retreat, unless you meet the conditions of the stand your ground statute.

And the most common ones are that you’re lawfully present where you happen to be when you defend yourself, so you’re not a trespasser or otherwise unlawfully present. And another common condition is that you’ll not be engaged in unlawful activity. And that second one, of course, is an attempt to exclude standard ground privileges from an armed robber, right. We don’t want him to claim stand you ground privileges. And both of those conditions are included in the Arkansas statute.

Now I should mention the Arkansas statute was attempted a couple years ago and failed. So this is a reattempt. And it looks like in the reattempt, they added additional conditions. And some of them are really redundant.

So for example, and they have different conditions for non-deadly force, self defense and deadly for self defense.

So for non-deadly for self-defense, the conditions are the usual ones, you have to be lawfully present wherever you are, you have to be not engaged. Well, that’s more specific than not engaged in criminal activity, you have to be not engaged in criminal activity, giving rise to the use of force, which would be for example, you’re committing an armed robbery. Well, that gives rise to the other party’s use of defensive force against you, that would exclude you from standard ground.

But they also include not engaged in criminal activity in furtherance of gang activity. Well, I guess if you’re not a member of a gang, you don’t need to worry about that. But it’s interesting that they decide I have not seen that in other stand your ground statutes.

Now, if a stand your ground statute has a general prohibition against being engaged in unlawful activity, well, then you don’t really need something as specific as criminal activity in furtherance of gang activity, you’re covered already.

And then in the context of deadly force self defense, again, the stand your ground has the usual conditions, lawfully present. Also, you have to reasonably perceive an imminent deadly force threat. Well, that’s just a condition of self-defense period, deadly force, self defense. You have to have not have been the initial aggressor or provoker with intent, again, just a normal condition of self defense generally, that you’d have to meet anyway to qualify for self defense at all.

But then they have these very specific categories of criminal activities. You can’t have been committing a gun possession felony at the time. So you can’t be a felon in possession. Now you could be a felon in possession and still have self defense privileges, but you wouldn’t have stand your ground privileges you would have required that legal duty to retreat.

You can’t have been engaged in again activity giving rise to the use of force like a robbery, you can’t have been engaged in criminal activity in furtherance of gang activity can’t have been engaged in criminal activity in furtherance of gang activity.

Presumably you could be engaged in other criminal activity, not gun possession, not giving rise to the use of force not involved in furtherance of gang activity and still qualify for self defense. Sorry for stand your ground. But anyway, I thought those specific very specific conditions in the Arkansas law were rather unusual. I haven’t seen that degree of specificity in most other standard ground states.

Pennsylvania does have an odd one, their stand your ground one of the conditions to stand your ground privileges, being relieved of the otherwise existing due to retreat is that the person against whom you used force displayed a gun or some other form of weapon and they didn’t do that? It doesn’t trigger standard ground privileges, which is also an odd condition.

Why couldn’t TN lawyer who advised on making murder look like self-defense be charged with conspiracy?

Okay, so another question that came in is last week, I talked in respect to that Tennessee lawyer case where the Tennessee lawyer was advising a woman on Facebook on how to make murder look like self defense. People ask, Well, why–first of all, people were shocked that it wasn’t just disbarred, folks, it’s almost impossible for an attorney to get outright disbarred. There’s only one way to really guarantee you’ll be disbarred. And that is, if you mess with client money, you’re going to get disbarred. But anything else, almost anything else, it’s almost impossible to get disbarred. So the fact that his license was suspended was about as far as we could reasonably expect this to go.

But people ask, Well, why couldn’t he be criminally prosecuted? Wasn’t this conspiracy? Wasn’t he conspiring with this woman to commit a murder? And the answer is that, technically speaking, almost certainly not.

So conspiracy requires, the crime of conspiracy requires more than just talking about committing a crime. It requires that so you have to be conspiring to commit a crime. But it generally also requires some overt act, some affirmative step and advancement of that crime, there has to be something beyond the talking.

So you might be talking with a buddy, hopefully not you, hopefully, your let’s pick your drunk brother-in-law, is conspiring with his buddy to rob a bank, and they’re sitting around having a drunken conversation about how easy it would be to rob the bank, not a conspiracy until they take an affirmative step. Say, they case the bank out, they acquire the weapons, they acquire a vehicle to use, they steal license plates, something in advancement of the actual effort beyond speech is genuine, required.

That didn’t appear to happen here. So if this lawyer had said, Hey, I’ll provide you with an alibi, for example, and does so, or something along those lines, I’ll provide you with a weapon if you don’t have one, and provides her with the weapon, and makes affirmative plans to provide the weapon males the weapon to her, even if it’s intercepted by law enforcement, then we’d have arguably conspiracy.

Of course, she’d have to be in on it, too. If she didn’t know that a gun was mailed, she’s not participating in that affirmative step. But if she did know, she asked for the gun to be mailed, turned up in the mail, that that would be an affirmative step, then we’d have a criminal conspiracy to commit murder.

What burden is on the defense in a self-defense immunity hearing When does expert testimony have to meet a Frye or Daubert threshold for admissibility?

Then we had a question come in from a platinum member Dee, Dee G., is the name of our Platinum member. And she kind of conflates a couple separate issues.

So one has to do with self defense immunity, self defense immunity. Many states have self defense immunity provisions that enabled you to seek a finding a determination of whether or not your use of force was self defense, without having to go to a full blown trial, you can do it in a pre trial hearing. You can argue your case and self defense before the hearing judge and of the hearing judge accepts your argument. He can grant you immunity from prosecution or from civil suit much less expensive, much more time efficient way to get a determination of legal self defense for your use of force, then the months or even years or hundreds of 1000s of dollars of trial might take.

But she asks, what does the defendant have to do under those circumstances? Does the defendant have to produce evidence to support self defense? And could the defense and prosecution argue over whether self defense has been proven? And the answer is yes to all of that and more.

So when you request a if you want to argue self defense at all, anywhere, pre trial or trial The defense has the burden of production to produce some minimal amount, at least more than zero evidence in support of each of the elements of self defense. If they can’t do that, then the use of force couldn’t have been self defense as a strictly technical legal matter if there’s zero evidence to support a required element of self defense, it couldn’t have been self defense, there’s, there’s no evidence. So you have to have more than zero evidence, not a lot, but more than zero, to be able to argue self defense at all, ever.

Now, even for a pre trial immunity hearing, you would need that to credibly get the hearing. But once you’re in the hearing, now, typically you have to the defense has to prove self defense by a majority of the evidence or preponderance. So you really have to come up with substantive evidence to present to the judge to convince him, it’s more likely than not that it was self defense and therefore legally justified, and not the crime that the prosecution is alleging it is.

In some states, the standards a little different in Florida, the burden is on the state to disprove self defense. At a pre trial, self defense immunity hearing by clear and convincing evidence is the legal standard. But nevertheless, there has to be substantial evidence in support of self defense, if you’re expecting to be granted immunity by that hearing judge.

And fundamentally, that responsibility, of course, has to be on the defense, it’s in the interest of the prosecution for that evidence not to exist and support a self defense, then they win the immunity hearing. Right. So whatever the legal standard might be, the real burden is on the defense to produce that evidence in support of self defense for immunity hearing.

Dee’s second question, she she frames it in the context of self defense immunity again, but it’s not really a self defense immunity question. But really, it’s an expert testimony question. So she asks, she asks, in the context of self defense immunity? Would that be a time the self defense immunity hearing for the defense to bring in experts, expert witnesses to testify in support of the defense narrative of self defense? And if so, do they have to meet various legal thresholds for admission of that expert testimony that, arguably, perhaps scientific testimony and can the prosecution contest those experts that she mentioned the Daubert Challenge.

Daubert was a court decision that set some legal standards for for the admission of technical expertise and older standard called the Frye standard, also, a court decision dates all the way back to 1923.

These thresholds exists because we don’t want Voodoo science admitted as evidence in court, right. We want the whatever the expert testimony is, is to meet some minimal thresholds of credibility. Frankly, I think the thresholds that are set are ridiculously low. It’s things like the more modern Daubert standard is, is there a peer reviewed science on this?

Many of you may not know, but I did my graduate education in science at Harvard, in molecular biology and virology and Immunology and lots of other hard sciences. I’ve read a lot of peer reviewed papers. And I can tell you, not just me saying this, studies have been done about half of peer reviewed, science can’t be replicated, meaning it’s B.S., it’s nonsense. So the mere fact that something’s been peer reviewed, to only a legal professional would believe that the fact that something’s been peer reviewed means that it actually has technical or scientific merit.

But nevertheless, we need some kind of standards. This these are the ones that courts have come up with.

And the answer to these question is will if you try to admit this kind of expert testimony at a self defense immunity hearing, must meet these thresholds. And is it subject to challenge by the state as not having met those thresholds? The answer is yes. Not just in a self defense immunity hearing, but anytime you want to introduce expert testimony is subject to these thresholds and subject to challenge by the state anywhere, anytime.

Now, for those of you who are interested in this, understanding the Daubert threshold, the Frye threshold standards for evidentiary standard for admission of evidence in the text version of today’s content, I will link to a very good review of these standards very brief, but very good review. So you can learn more about the details of these if you’re interested.

Daubert Versus Frye: A National Look at Expert Evidentiary Standards

How can an angry text message that results in deadly force affect self-defense of sender or receiver?

Then we got a final question from a firearms instructor Doug out in Minnesota and he asks a much about a scenario much like the bullying scenario, the cyber bullying scenario I already described. If Person A sends antagonizing text messages to Person B to the point where Person B while carrying a gun then confronts a and things escalate to a deadly force event. What are the consequences of a having sent that provocative email message?

Well, it doesn’t help B because if B is the initiator of physical force, The first person that threatened or use force, he’ll lose that element of Innocence and he’ll lose self defense, so lose the self defense justification.

The best he can hope for then is some mitigation of what might have been a murder conviction. Under doctrine, like imperfect self defense, or a doctrine of voluntary manslaughter if the text message is seen as a reasonable provocation, he lost his mind essentially, could not form the specific intent for required for murder because he was so outraged by this text message.

The problem with the manslaughter option is for any kind of voluntary manslaughter, where you’re claiming reasonable provocation, the court also considers whether or not there was a cooling off period between the provocation and your use of force. And the text message is almost certainly going to involve a cooling off period.

Maybe not. I mean, you can imagine a scenario where two people are in the same bar texting each other. So they’re physically proximate to each other. But most often, you know, someone will say, send a mean text message from one location, the other person’s in the other location, before they’re proximate, they have to close with each other. That would be a cooling off period that would diminish the voluntary manslaughter argument, the reasonable provocation argument.

So the fact that B who killed a was provoked by a text message is not going to help him with his self defense argument, the most you can hope for would be that mitigation.

Now, what if A ends up killing B? Well, A could have a problem with his self-defense argument, even if B was the initiator of force, because the prosecutor might argue that the text was a provocation with intent. The text was intended to provoke B to launch a deadly force attack on a cell that a would have an excuse to kill B.

Provocation with intent is, again, a loss of that element of Innocence, and therefore a loss of self defense.

So that’s how these kinds of communications can affect each party’s claim. Self Defense.

PLUS Bonus questions from the live audience!

All right, those that’s all the prepared content I had for everybody. Let me walk through. Let’s see the comments from our members first. Thank you guys. Sorry, I was a little late today. We’ve I looked at the wrong clock. We have a clock in the house that is a little bit slow. I’ve got to fix that after the show.

Steve asks, with respect to the George Floyd case, the trial judge decided to exclude that prior event of George Floyd ingesting drugs is that subject to interlocutory appeal.

So for those who don’t know, interlocutory appeal would allow for the defense to immediately appeal that decision to the higher level court the mid-level appellate court, in effect, the authority, the supervisor of the trial court, there are states that allow that Florida frequently allows that, which is great, because if there’s a dispute of this source, especially in evidentiary dispute, you can get it resolved immediately before you even have to go to trial.

The alternative is to go all the way through the trial, which can take months or years and then have to appeal on that issue, which can take months or years. So much, much more time efficient if you can do this immediate interlocutory appeal immediately. But some appellate courts don’t like it because they feel they’ll become a wash in appeals on every evidentiary ruling from a trial court. Most of which the truth is won’t turn out to have been very important.

So unfortunately, my expertise is really use of force law across all 50 states, I’ll humbly claim that as an area of expertise. But the criminal procedure law for all 50 states is beyond my knowledge. So if we have a local attorney who’s proficient in the criminal defense procedure for that jurisdiction, who’d care to comment on that, I’d love to hear it. But off the top of my head, I’m afraid I don’t know.

But that’s how an interlocutory appeal would work. It would allow the defense to argue that point before the trial judges authority, the higher level court and perhaps get that decision overturned and be able to admit that evidence of Floyd prior drug ingestion, ingestion at trial before the jury as they’d like to do.

Okay, now for that that was all the members comp questions.

Now, let me scroll through the Facebook. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. Thanks for your support. Don’t forget, folks, I’m going to put this back up because this is still relatively new for us. But we do now have our podcast version of today’s show and that is that you can find that at http://lawofselfdefense.com/freepodcast.

Now when you go there, it’s just going to list all the various podcast providers that are hosting this news and q&a show as a podcast, again, it’s Apple, Google, Spotify, Pandora, iHeart. Lots of others, get direct links to those if you’d like to be able to get the show as a weekly podcast, that would be the way to go, the search function may not find us. So if you go to Pandora and search “Law of Self Defense”, we may or may not come up. But if you go to this URL, http://lawofselfdefense.com/freepodcast, there’ll be a specific link for each of these podcast providers that will take you to our show. So you can describe.

Let’s see.

So Ken asks, in the context of stand your ground and duty to retreat, he says, well, it’s a little confusing, because one of the requirements, the required elements of self-defense is that the threat you’re defending against is imminent, meaning immediately about to happen.

Another element could be that you have a legal duty to retreat. But isn’t it true that if you’re facing an imminent threat, it would not be by definition, safe to retreat, so you’d be relieved of that legal duty if you met the condition of imminence. And if you don’t meet the condition of imminence? Well, you failed that required element of self defense. So don’t you lose self defense anyway.

And that’s a perfectly logical and reasonable way to look at this.

What happens is in real world use of force events, they tend to be much more murky and cloudy than we’d like to imagine. And sometimes the facts are such that the prosecution merely finds it more advantageous to argue what’s essentially the same point under the umbrella of eminence or under the umbrella of stand your ground. It just depends on how he thinks he can best frame that narrative.

The threat wasn’t yet imminent, or you had a safe avenue of retreat, both of those narratives may be based on exactly the same underlying facts. But the prosecutor feels one would be more compelling to the jury than the other. What stand your ground really does is take away that second narrative. Now he’s going to argue that point it has to be under the umbrella of eminence.

This may not be how a computer would run the criminal legal system, but this is how it works with human beings.

And then with conspiracy, Donnie asks on Facebook, well, if there has to be affirmative step, does it have to be? Do all the parties have to take a step or just one? I believe it’s sufficient if a step is taken and the other parties are aware the step has been taken. So, imagine half a dozen people decide to blow up a building with a fertilizer diesel fuel bomb. One of them says, Alright guys, that’s the plan. I’ll go out and get the fertilizer and diesel fuel, and he does, assuming the others know that he’s taking that affirmative step. That’s a sufficient affirmative step for them all to be engaged in criminal conspiracy.

But if he decided to do that independently and didn’t tell them, I don’t see the basis there for criminal conspiracy, or if half of them knew he was going to get it, and he got it and the other half didn’t. The half that new would be engaged in criminal conspiracy. The others were just talkers.

Alright folks, right at the top of the hour, so it’s time for me to wrap up. Thank you all again, for your time. As always, I greatly appreciate it. We do the show live every Thursday, you can get the podcast version, open access, no cost. At http://lawofselfdefense.com/freepodcast, tell your friends and family that’s the best you can do if you like this content.

And until next time, just remember if you carry a gun so you’re hard to kill, that’s why I carry a gun so I’m hard to kill, so my family is hard to kill. You also owe it to yourself to make sure you know the law so that you’re hard to convict as well.

Alright, folks, until next time, I’m attorney Andrew Branca for Law of Self Defense. Stay safe.