News/Q&A Show: Nov. 19, 2020

Welcome to this episode of our ONLY open-access content, our weekly News/Q&A Show. 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.

In today’s News/Q&A Show for November 19, 2020 we touched on a broad range of questions submitted for the show, as well as questions submitted live, including:

NEWS

• Louisiana convicts being released, granted new trials, now that unanimous jury verdicts required
• Media gets Stand-Your-Ground wrong again–it’s not just Florida, it’s 36 states
• AP reports Kyle Rittenhouse released on $2 million bail

Q&A

• If I strip attacker of their weapon and use it against them, lawful or not?
• If I pretend to have a gun and threaten to use it, is there legal liability?
• When can I refuse order by police to hand them my weapon(s)?
• Why would a self-defense defendant take a plea deal?
• What to say to 911 in aftermath of use-of-force event?
• Explained: Excusable homicide v. Justifiable Homicide v. Imperfect Self-Defense
• Could Rittenhouse be pardoned by President Trump?

Be sure to mark your calendar to never miss a News/Q&A Show–they air LIVE every Thursday, at 4pM ET of the Law of Self Defense Members Dashboard, our Facebook page, and our Youtube channel, and playback recordings are available on each of those platforms.

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!

Two-Week Law of Self Defense Trial Membership: Just 99 cents!

If you enjoy this kind of content and would like to get more, I’ve got great news—you can try out Law of Self Defense Membership for two weeks for a mere 99 cents—even better, in the unlikely event you decide it’s not for you during those two weeks, let us know and we’ll refund not just 100% of your money, but 200% of your money.  That’s a negative risk offer, folks.

Really, it’s hard to imagine why you anyone wouldn’t try  out Law of Self Defense Membership for 99 cents for two weeks.

Now, after the two-week trial, membership does go to the normal cost, which is still a very low, ~33 cents a day, less than $10 a month. Obviously, if you don’t feel the content we provide is worth 33 cents a day you shouldn’t become a member but I would hope that most of you would agree that it is, especially the content you won’t be able to get moving forward unless you’re a Member.

Plus, as a Law of Self Defense Member not only do you get access to our great Law of Self Defense content, you also get commenting member’s only chat and commenting privileges at the Law of Self Defense web site, so you can continue to participate and learn past the end of any LIVE show.

You can learn more about our 99-cent, 200% money back guarantee, two-week membership trial by clicking the image or link below:

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NEW & FREE: Law of Self Defense Mini-Course

The other big piece of content we put out. So far this week is something brand new from us. It’s a free mini course on Self Defense Law. Many of you watching this show have taken our full day Law of Self Defense advanced course seven hours of instruction. We’ve taught it personally, hundreds of times all over the country. More commonly, these days, we teach it once or twice a year as a webinar, we just had a webinar advanced course a month or so ago. That’s a full day course, seven hours and it’s a fire hose of information. It’s obviously a big commitment of everybody. And of course, it costs money to attend that course, what we’ve done is we’ve created a very concise, abridged version of that course, a four module mini course on many of the most important topics covered in that full day course, each module is about, I think they average 10 to 15 minutes in length. So it’s something just under an hour’s worth of content. But it touches on the peaks of information, the mountain tops of information you need to know obviously, we can’t go into the same depth in an hour that we can in seven hours. But it provides you with the most important pieces of information you need to know.

And then it offers you the opportunity to dive deeper at considerable savings if you’d like to dive deeper with our more advanced courses, but the mini course itself is absolutely free. You can take advantage of that by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/freecourse

OK, folks, until next time …

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

 

TRANSCRIPT

Hey everybody, welcome, welcome. Come on in to this week’s Law of Self Defense News/Q&A Show for November 19 2020. I am of course attorney Andrew Branca. Thank you, thank you very much. Always greatly appreciated, very kind of all of you. So come on in, folks, come on in.

This is our weekly News/Q&A Show, we generally do it every Thursday at 4pm. Eastern time this week, of course, we’re doing on Friday, because of a slight emergency on our end just today, which got taken care of No worries, no worries, happy to only have to push it back a day. This is the only content we produce on a weekly basis that is open-access, meaning you don’t need to be a Law of Self Defense member to enjoy this content. It’s free to everybody.

And we do this of course, every week is an opportunity to expose the broader public to what we do at Law of Self Defense, which is a law practice that focuses exclusively on use of force law, meaning defense of yourself, defense of others defense of property, it’s all we do. To my knowledge, we’re the only law practice in the US that has that particular focus, and to provide a lot of educational informative information on the Law of Self Defense to all of you to help you be more actionable and decisive in defending yourself and your families from criminal predation.

So in our News/Q&A Show, of course, we’ll share some any interesting use of force events that have been in the news. Frankly, the news is still completely occupied with political stuff from the election, which seems to swamp everything else, but we do have a couple small stories to share with you. Then we will answer your questions.

Now a bunch of questions have been sent in ahead of time. Those of you who are Law of Self Defense Platinum level members have your own Platinum level form for submitting questions. Those get answered directly by me either privately if you prefer or on the show prioritized above all other questions. Everybody else can send in questions to us by email at show@lawofselfdefense.com. And we’ll consider them for inclusion in the show as time permits.

Those of you who are Law of Self Defense Members on any level, I encourage you to participate in the show using the stream on your member dashboard. There’s commenting capability there and again, member questions get prioritized above all others.

If you’re joining us on Facebook, welcome, welcome. Please hit that share arrow at the top of the comments screen that like thumbs up, let a friend or to know that you’re enjoying the show so they can join us as well. And if they can’t make the live show at 4pm Eastern Time, or if you ever can’t make the live show you can also still catch the playback recording of the show either on Facebook or on the http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog where it will remain open access for some time anyway. So let your friends know they can catch either the live show 4pm Eastern Time on Thursdays or they can catch the playback recording and the http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog or on our Facebook page at http://facebook.com/lawofselfdefense, also our YouTube channel and sometimes other places as well but our webpage law self defense comm Facebook and YouTube should certainly have the record or playback of this particular weekly News/Q&A 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. 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.

Okay, back to our News/Q&A Show. Now of course we have our own membership, as I mentioned here at Law of Self Defense, either standard membership or Platinum-level membership. Standard membership gets you access to all the member content that we produce through the course of the week, the month the year, which is a ton of content.

To give you an example of the kind of content we’ve delivered to our members just this week earlier this week we did a and all this content is delivered as a written blog post as video much like you’re watching now, and also as audio for on our last off the fence members only podcast if you like podcasting

Earlier this week, we did a blog post on a court decision involving the legal doctrine of imperfect self-defense. So perfect self defense is a normal self defense. The legal defense of self defense is successful, it relieves you of all criminal liability, your use of force was simply not a crime. So there’s no criminal liability.

Imperfect self-defense is a variant. It’s not really a legal defense in the sense that it can’t lead to an acquittal. But basically it says Hey, if you had a genuine good faith belief that you were acting unlawful self defense, but a court determines a jury determines that belief was genuine. But objectively unreasonable, you can’t get acquitted, you don’t qualify for perfect self defense. But you may qualify for imperfect self defense and be able to mitigate what would have been a murder conviction life in prison without possibility of early release to a manslaughter conviction, perhaps 10 or 20 years, maybe early release after a third of that time for good behavior. Still have a life again. So manslaughter conviction sucks, unless the alternative was a murder conviction.

So that’s how imperfect self defense works. This happened to be a case of a woman who stabbed a I guess I’ll call him a boyfriend, under circumstances where it appeared to her that she had a genuine good faith belief in the need. She was facing a deadly force threat. He was an arm she stabbed them once, once with a knife, not very well, you wouldn’t think very deep a couple of inches was enough to clip his aorta. And that was the end of that.

So that court decision appellate court decision talks all about the legal doctrine of imperfect self in that context.

That Law of Self Defense Members-only content is available at the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog

Then we had surprisingly really another case in our next blog post, also covering imperfect self defense. This case was interesting because here the defendant was arguing imperfect self defense as if it allowed him to create his own elements of self defense, his own version of self defense.

That’s not what imperfect self defense does. imperfect self defense says, hey, these are the elements of self defense. You have to genuinely in good faith belief those elements exist the actual elements, not some fantasy elements you may have in your head. Those actual elements, you must have a subjective belief they exist. If that subjective belief is unreasonable, but you did believe in the actual elements well, then you may qualify for imperfect self defense.

Have you had a vision of self defense in your head that’s completely independent of what the law allows for? Well, sorry, that’s just not a legal defense at all. So we covered that blog post as well.

That Law of Self Defense Members-only content is available at the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog

And then a blog post that just went up a few minutes ago, is on a very interesting court decision that came out of the Georgia Supreme Court just in the last couple of weeks, November 2 2020. It involved a the arrest by three officers of course, as it seems common in these cases, three white officers arresting a an unarmed but non compliant black male suspect, under circumstances in which I think To their surprise, as much as anybody else’s he died. They did use a taser to attempt to force compliance and he died. They were all charged with felony murder predicated on aggravated assault predicated on unlawful imprisonment, as well as involuntary manslaughter predicated on reckless conduct predicated on simple assault.

So there basically each of those three deputies is facing charges, two counts of felony murder, two counts of involuntary manslaughter. And they sought from the trial court before the trial pre trial, self defense immunity. And were granted self defense immunity and the prosecution thought that was a bad decision appealed it up to the Georgia Supreme Court, and the Georgia Supreme Court has vacated that self defense immunity grant. So now those deputies have to go back to court, try for self defense immunity again, or end up going to trial on those felony murder and involuntary manslaughter charges.

And so in this post, and video and podcast, we talked at length about self defense immunity, how it works in general, how it works under Georgia law, and the specific factors in this case that led to the granting. And then the removal of self defense immunity and what’s likely to happen. In fact, our analysis was so detailed, we actually have to break this one up into two parts, because it’s well over an hour worth of content.

So we have Part One went out today, to our members, part two will go out, maybe tomorrow, maybe Monday depends on how quickly we can get the post production done before this evening.

That Law of Self Defense Members-only content is available at the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog

Now, that’s all content that only our members get folks. And we do that kind of thing every single week, every week of the year, every year of our lives. So we’ve been doing it a long time, we focused exclusively on self defense law since about 1997 or 1998. And we expect to continue doing it for a very long time.

So if you’d like to kind of more detailed analysis beyond the News/Q&A Show, I would encourage you to consider giving Law of Self Defense Membership a shot. It’s very inexpensive to be a standard member, it’s about 33 cents a day, less than $10 a month for hours and hours and hours every month of World Class Self Defense Law, expertise all translated into plain English.

And even better, you can at least try it out for two weeks for just 99 cents. And the view for any reason decide you don’t want to stay a member that’s fine. No questions asked. We’ll give you 200% of your money back. And if you do decide to become a member, and virtually everyone decides to stay a member, it’s still less than 10 bucks a month, folks. So you can try out that trial membership for two weeks 99 cents by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/trial

All right, with all that housecleaning out of the way.

So during today’s show, I’ll talk about a couple news items that’ll answer questions that we’re sending ahead of time, then I will address questions as they arise in the comments. So if you have questions, and you’re watching live, if you’re watching the recording, folks, I’m not going to see your comments because I don’t look at them retroactively. But if you’re watching this live on either our member dashboard or their loss of defense Facebook page, and you have questions you’d like answered, put them in the comments if we have time before the end of the show. I’ll do my best to answer those.

First, a couple news items.

Louisiana convicts being released, granted new trials, now that unanimous jury verdicts required

There wasn’t much really a couple interesting things that came up was I saw a couple of cases in which people in Louisiana in particular, we’re either being released from prison, or we’re seeking new trials because of a change in Criminal Procedure. And for those who don’t know until recently.

Most of you probably understand believe that if you’re a criminal defendant in the trial to be found guilty, the prosecution has to convince the jury that they have proven each and every element of the crime with which you’ve been charged beyond a reasonable doubt. And they have to convince the jury unanimously meaning every single member of the jury, for felonies typically 12 jurors, some states allow six jurors for felonies, but they have to convince every juror that you’re guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

And if there’s even one juror that’s not convinced beyond the reasonable doubt, you end up with a hung jury with a mistrial. There’s no verdict. Now that happens the prosecutors free to try you again. But at least you’re not convicted yet. At least you’re not going to prison yet. Although of course, you may still be held in jail for the success of trial. That depends on the circumstances of the case. But at least you’re still in the fight.

There were two states traditionally, that were an exception to that requirement of jury. unanimous unanimity. And those were Oregon and Louisiana. And then those two states, you could be convicted by a super majority of the jury. So 10 of 12. That was a 10. Person jury, five of six was a six person jury. So you didn’t need the unanimous jury.

And let me tell you from the perspective of a criminal defense attorney that sucks, one of the biggest things we have going for us in a criminal defense is the requirement that the prosecution has to convince everybody every single person on that jury, that means if I can raise a reasonable doubt, and even one jurors mind, we have a hung jury. And we don’t have to conviction that’s a win, as far as I’m concerned, not as big a win as an acquittal granted, but it’s a win compared to a conviction.

Within the states that allow for Super majorities where the prosecution only has to convince 10 of 12. Now, I have to convince raise a reasonable doubt, not just in the mind of one juror, but in the mind of three jurors, which is as you might imagine, potentially more difficult to do. So I’ve never been in favor of the split jury permissions.

Now that said the Supreme Court has forever said that as far as they’re concerned as but juries fine if the state wants to do that. That’s up to the state. That’s not a violation of the US Constitution. And the US Supreme Court had that decision had that position right up until this year.

In April 2020 they handed down a decision Ramos v. Louisiana, where a majority of the Supreme Court ruled that Nope, we’ve changed our minds from now on if you want to convict someone of a criminal offense, at least a serious misdemeanor or felony, it has to be a unanimous jury conviction. Well, obviously that changed the rules.

And Louisiana for example, people were being convicted tend to by juries, often for you know, very serious crimes life in prison. But now there’s a new standard, they if they were being tried today would have to be for 12 of 12 jurors unanimous jury, so we’re seeing some people get released from prison.

I’m betting, presumably claiming Lee purportedly on this basis, hey, they were convicted 10 to 12 sentence life in prints tend to since life in prison, if they had to do it today would have been 12 of 12. They served 30 years in one case, let’s let them out.

Now, the cases we’re seeing getting released right now are kind of sympathetic cases. So one of them was a woman, Edna Gibson. In 1986, she stabbed her husband, she had claims of domestic abuse. But a lot of these cases, spousal abuse cases are cases in which the spousal abuse may be genuine, and may have driven the killing of the spouse. Typically, it’s the woman killing the husband.

But under circumstances that don’t fit the traditional framework for self defense, so the husband was passed out or asleep. And the abused wife stabs them or shoots him or pours gasoline on him and sets them on fire. All kinds of interesting ways to kill your spouse, I guess, if you want if you’re sufficiently motivated. But in those instances, the the woman who killed was not facing an imminent threat of harm, maybe a future threat, certainly a past threat, but not the eminent threat that traditional self defense requires.

So they couldn’t get acquitted on the basis of self defense to get convicted. But as you might imagine, there are arguably more sympathetic cases then, you know, other killings that were unlawful may seem to be so one of these cases recently Edna Gibbons she was killed, her husband stabbed them was convicted, sentenced to Well, she actually don’t know how long her sentence was. But she’d already served 30 years when the state of Louisiana decided to release her because she had been convicted on the 10th to basis.

A more recent case involved. The football player Will Smith, those of you who are football fans may know he was played for the Louisiana, I guess the saints right. And he was killed in a road rage traffic confrontation cartel has shot him and killed him. Colonel Hayes was convicted on the 10th to vote by the jury. He’s now seeking a new trial because of the rule change.

And if you don’t know the history of this, and I can’t say I know the history, this is just what I’ve heard. I haven’t looked into it personally. So and sometimes what obviously what you’re told about history is incorrect. But the argument has been that these split jury provisions were based while out of racism by Confederate states that were arguably suddenly discovered that we’re having to allow black people on juries. And they didn’t want a black suspect to be not convicted, because there was one, for example, black jury and the suspect juror on a jury, I should say. And so they allowed for supermajority as opposed to unanimous jury convictions anyway.

That’s not allowed moving forward. I think we’ll see more cases where people are getting new trials or being released prior to especially the life sentences that were convicted on the tend to do basis.

Media gets Stand-Your-Ground wrong again–it’s not just Florida, it’s 36 states.

We had another interesting case. Not very interesting, but it’s just another reminder that if you read stories about use of force law in the media, they’re almost always wrong. This was a case in which a, a politician in Florida happens to be democrat had sent online threats to several prominent republican politicians, including the governor DeSantis, the Senator Rubio, Scott, I guess, is the other senator in Florida. Anyway, she sent them all online threats, and they reported it and she’s been charged with sending online threats.  And that part’s not that interesting. There’s crazy people everywhere.

What’s interesting is the news story that wrote about this, of course, they had to bring up stand your ground, which of course is completely irrelevant, anything to do with this story. But if you mentioned Florida and use the force law, the media feels compelled to bring up stand your ground, which they described in the following way.

Unique to self defense laws in other states, the Florida standard grand statute does not require a person to retreat before using deadly force to prevent bodily harm to themselves or others or to prevent a felony, close quote.

Well, it’s not unique to Florida, folks, it’s the majority position in America, the large majority states, about 75% of states are stand your ground states, they do not impose a legal duty to retreat before you can use force in otherwise lawful self defense.

There’s only about 14 states that impose that legal duty to retreat. If you’d like to see what they are, you can point your browser to http://lawofselfdefense.com/retreat And that has a list there. But imposing a duty to retreat is not the position of 49 states as this quote unquote, journalist would suggest its position of a mere 14 states. That’s it, folks.

Okay, let’s get to the questions here. And we had a couple come in from one of our Platinum members, Lorraine, and very interesting questions. So very happy to answer those.

If I strip attacker of their weapon and use it against them, lawful or not?

One of our questions is if I disarm an attacker and then use that weapon that I took off the attacker, whether it’s a gun knife, bat, whatever, against him or her, would that flip the situation making me the attacker?

Great question. So the answer is, of course, I’m going to say it depends. But the the analysis is exactly the same as it is for any other use of force event. So when you’re being attacked by that person, the question is, before you can use force and self defense, are you facing an imminent unlawful threat of force, and we’re wanting it to be deadly force than imminent unlawful threat of deadly force?

If you are you’re privileged to use deadly force and self defense, assuming of course, all the conditions of self defense are met, like if you have the condition to retreat and so forth? Well, that same analysis applies if the conditions flip. So someone’s coming at you with a raise to bat they’re screaming, they’re going to kill you. You have no real ready means to to retreat, say they’re within a few feet. And somehow, I don’t know, they tripped over their own shoelace, they dropped their bat and now you have the bat. If you use the bat to attack them, are you now the aggressor in a second fight?

Well, the analysis is the same before you can use force against them. Do they in that moment, represent an imminent threat of deadly force harm? Or have they lost that ability because you’ve taken away their bat or acquired possession of their bat. Sometimes, when they lose the bat and you pick it up, circumstances have changed enough that they’re not any longer a credible or reasonably perceived eminent threat of deadly force harm.

Sometimes they are still, you could imagine a large man with a bat attacking a woman. He trips over shoelace drops the bat, she picks it up. Maybe she’s a very small woman hundred pounds. He’s 280 pound guy, is he still a deadly force threat if he continues to attacker with that size disparity, despite the fact that he’s unarmed and she’s got a bat, I’d argue, yeah, not that hard for him to take the bat away from her again, so he could potentially still be a deadly force threat, her use of the bat would still be self defense, because it would meet those conditions. She’s still facing imminent threat of deadly force harm from him.

But what if the conditions were reversed? What if it was 100 pound woman attacking a 280 pound man, she’s got a bat. She trips over her heels, let’s say to be sufficiently sexist, I guess. And she drops the bat he picks it up. Now this 280 pound guy has the bat. Can he use the bat against her and have that be lawful self defense? In other words, is she still having lost to him possession of the bat? Is she still in imminent deadly force threat to him?

Probably not. Probably he does not need to use deadly force against her to defend himself because she’s no longer absent the bat and given the size disparity in his favor, an eminent deadly force threat to him so the analysis is always the same.

Before you can use force against another person in that moment. Do they still represent imminent threat of unlawful harm. And then of course, the element of proportionality requires us to assess the harm what the degree of harm whether it’s merely non deadly for force harm, in which case, we can only use non deadly force and self defense, or whether it’s deadly force harm, in which case we can use deadly force and self defense, the other conditions self defense, presumably, having been met, it’s always the same analysis.

What’s complicated is not the self defense analysis, per se, folks, there’s only five elements to a claim of self defense. And by the way, if you don’t know what those are, if you’re new here, because you’re watching it as free content, we have a handy dandy infographic you can get doesn’t cost a penny five elements of Self Defense Law infographic, it’s just a PDF download, folks. You can get that at http://lawofselfdefense.com/elements, it lists the five elements provides a brief description, because if you don’t know that you can’t understand anything else about self defense.

So when I talk about these five elements, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you’ve never been exposed to them. These are the five elements of self defense in all 50 states, folks, at least only up to these five.

So the good news is there’s not 500 there’s not 50. There’s only five, it’s not that complicated. The legal framework, what’s complicated is the real world, the real world is messy. Facts are messy. fights are dynamic circumstances change. So it can get complicated to try to apply those five elements to that messy, complicated dynamic world, which is what we try to help do with all of you. In all the content we prepare at law, self defense, calm.

If I pretend to have a gun and threaten to use it, is there legal liability?

Laureen asks another excellent question she goes in. She says in a previous show, you mentioned the potential legal Jeopardy created when brandishing, quote unquote, a weapon to change the behavior of a potential attacker would simply telling the attacker that I’m armed, concealed carrying or with a knife also put me in jeopardy I presumption means legal Jeopardy, please include scenarios where I’m actually caring, and not actually caring, but lying about caring.

So, what Lorraine’s referring there to is, I’ve mentioned frequently in the past, that the moment you put someone in imminent fear of physical harm for the purpose of changing their behavior, which is what you’re doing when you’re threatening to use a weapon in self defense, right, you’re saying stay back, I have a gun, I’ll defend myself or you’re displaying your gun, or you’re putting you’re pulling your jacket back so they can see your gun. All of that is threatening someone with harm for the purpose of changing their behavior.

Now, you can justify that as lawful self defense, and therefore not criminal conduct, if you meet the conditions for self defense, but the point is, the moment you’ve engaged in that behavior, you’ve put someone in fear for the purpose of changing their behavior. Once you’ve done that, now, you’re in a position where you may well have to raise that legal defense of self defense to justify that conduct. Before you do that you haven’t even arguably committed a crime.

Once you’ve done that you’ve checked all the boxes for aggravated assault, the felony crime of aggravated assault, and if you did it with a weapon, aggravated assault with a weapon, which is certainly a felony everywhere, if it was a gun, that might be a gun sentencing enhancement. So you could be looking at up to 20 years in prison in many states, because the crime of assault is simply the putting of another person in imminent fear of harm, aggravated assault, putting that other person in imminent fear of death or serious bodily injury. Well, when you threaten someone with a gun, you’re doing that.

Now, if you’re threatening someone with a gun, because the conditions for lawful self defense have been met, well, then you could be justified in having maybe done what would otherwise be unlawful conduct. If you do that, and you’re kind of doesn’t meet the conditions of self defense, well, then it’s just just normal, aggravated assault with a firearm and you’re looking at a very serious criminal charge.

Most of the cases I personally work on are aggravated assault with firearms cases, because they’re normally law abiding people have never been in trouble with the law a day before in their lives, but they have a concealed carry permit. They have their gun in their person, they get frightened, they go to the gun. And it’s ambiguous to the prosecutor whether or not the conditions for self defense have been met. So they get charged, you want to prove it want to prove self defense do it at trial, which of course is enormously destructive and costly, sometimes financially ruinous for this poor defendant. But that’s what can happen that’s within the prosecutors discretion.

So the moment you make someone else aware, you have that weapon for the purpose of changing their behavior. You’ve opened the door for a prosecutor bringing a charge like that aggravated assault with a weapon that you now have to justify a great cost and risk as conduct justified as lawful self defense.

Now, what if you actually do even need to show the person the gun, whatever you’re carrying concealed, but you never display the gun, you never show it to them? You just say hey, I have a gun. I’m prepared to use it. Well, have you created in that other person’s mind? A reasonable fear of imminent death or serious bodily injury? Yes, you have, assuming they believe you, right? I mean, if they don’t believe you, it doesn’t matter.

But what counts in terms of the crime of aggravated assault is that your conduct creates a reasonable apprehension in the other person’s mind. It doesn’t matter whether or not they see the gun, what matters is whether or not they reasonably have that ever apprehension of imminent death or serious bodily injury at your hand.

In fact, because all that matters is the reasonable apprehension, you don’t actually need to be able to carry out the threat. Say you have a gun on your person, but it’s a toy gun, it’s a plastic gun can’t possibly hurt anybody. And that’s what you’re displaying. And that puts that other person in reasonable apprehension of immediate death or serious bodily injury.

Have you committed an aggravated assault? Sure you have, because what matters is not what you’re actually capable of doing. But what their reasonable apprehension is, if they perceive that toy gun is being real, well, then they’re reasonably apprehending imminent death or serious bodily injury. And that’s aggravated assault, putting someone in that fear.

What if you don’t even have a plastic gun? What if you have no weapon at all, and you just lie about having a weapon?  Well, if a reasonable person would believe your lie, then you’ve committed that aggravated assault folks, because again, what matters is their reasonable apprehension, their reasonable perception of the threat. So yes, you can commit aggravated assault without having any weapon at all on your person.

Now, prosecutors always have more cases to try than they could possibly take to trial are always prioritizing. There’s always lots of plea bargaining going on lots of charges dismissed going on. And they tend to prioritize the cases that are easier to win, it’s easier to win an aggravated assault case in which there’s a weapon and evidence. So if you don’t have any weapon, it doesn’t mean you can’t be charged doesn’t mean you don’t have the legal risk, but it may be a reduced risk. Because there’s no actual weapon and evidence and it’s just a less attractive case to a prosecutor.

Of course, folks, I would suggest that there’s almost never a reason to be totally disarmed almost anywhere. So something to think about it. I’m not advising anyone to break the law. Most states have some kind of weapons law, and I would suggest you abide by those laws to avoid weapons law problems. But it’s generally possible with forethought to be armed to at least some degree under almost every circumstance. Alright, so hopefully, that answered Lorraine’s question, excuse me.

When can I refuse order by police to hand them my weapon(s)?

So I actually have two related questions here once I’m Alan, once from anonymous. They’re basically asking the same thing. So Alan’s asking, he says, I have a license to conceal in my state. What if a police officer demands to take control of my weapon? Are there circumstances in which I can refuse to be disarmed by that police officer? So that’s Alan’s question.

Anonymous basically asked the same thing. So he lives in a state, while armies will say it’s the state of Florida. That’s the only state that has the act by this particular name, but they have an act called the Baker Act, many states have a similar act. But the Baker Act is really if someone fears that you may be dangerous to yourself or others, they can call the police and the police will come out and talk with you. And they agree that you appear to be a danger to yourself or others, they can arrest you and lock you up from for some certain period of time, during which in theory, you’ll be talked to by a psychologist or counselor or something to make a determination of whether you’re actually dangerous to yourself or others.

In a sense, it’s not dissimilar from red flag laws. But I think in many important respects, it is I mean, the threshold for locking up a person and the due process rights that triggers are substantially greater when locking up a person than when simply seizing someone’s guns, for example. And there are circumstances in which someone is genuinely a threat to themselves or others.

Now, I think another way the Baker Act calls and and I’m speaking anecdotally here, not from the source as a source of authority by any means. But in my experience, I’ve been involved in Baker Act cases and red flag law cases. And in my experience, Baker Act cases are most frequently those calls are being made usually by family members that are genuinely concerned they have a parent they have a child who they feel may be suicidal, for example, they don’t know what to do.

They have somewhat more control over child but not a parent. They don’t want their parents killed themselves, I think their parents just temporarily in a bad way, if only they could secure their safety for 24 or 48 hours, maybe they could turn things around, they make that call, the sheriff comes out, Sheriff agrees the person appears to be under considerable emotional stress, may well be a danger to themselves to get Baker acted, they get locked up for a period of time.

Now, obviously, when they lock you up, you can’t bring your gun with you. So you’ll be disarmed in the process if you are carrying a gun.

Contrary to the Baker Act, I think a lot of red flag laws tend to be abuse calls. So someone’s just mad at you and ex girlfriend and ex wife. And they just make a fictitious complaint that you’ve made said something threatening, and the cops come and take all your guns away. So certainly I’m not a fan of red flag laws by any means. Because I think they completely lacking due process. But I don’t want to get off on that sidetrack.

The other question is if you have a license to carry and say you’re stopped for a traffic stop, or some other way approached by a police officer, maybe there’s been a call of a crime committed by someone who matches your description, right? your age, your hair, your clothing, cop sees you right, you’re someone who matches that description, I’m going to go talk to that guy makes a stop has reasonable suspicion that you may be involved in the crime based on the description he received. So he can make a Terry stop when he’s making Terry stop, he can disarm you for purposes of securing the safety of himself and others during that stop.

Now, maybe he doesn’t have reasonable suspicion, in which case a Terry stop would not be authorized. Maybe he just doesn’t like the way you look. Who knows. But it’s something less than reasonable suspicion that you may have been involved in a crime. Technically, in that circumstance, he can’t disarm you.

But what if he wants to anyway? Or what if you’re part of a traffic stop? And these tell the cop Hey, I’ve got my concealed carry permit, I’m carrying a concealed carry. And the cop says why I want your gun. While we’re going through this traffic stop.

Let me ask you, folks, does it really matter? Whether you have the right to not be disarmed in that circumstance, from a practical perspective? Because there are factual circumstances in which you would have the right not to be disarmed. Are you going to have that argument on the side of the road with an armed police officer who mistakenly or not believes he has the legal authority to disarm you,

I don’t think that would be very prudent, I’m not planning to get into any gun fights with police officers on the side of the road, just because they may be ignorant of where the boundaries of their legal authority is. If I have rights to assert in that circumstance, I’m going to do them after the fact. I’m certainly not also going to get into a gunfight with an officer who’s who’s doing a Baker Act call, or frankly, even a red flag call.

Not in that moment, I’m going to assert my rights for sure. But I’m going to do it in a setting where it’s not likely me or my wife, or my kids behind me, are going to be lit up, because I got myself into a gunfight with a police officer who doesn’t know where the legal limits are. So I would suggest that it’s less important to worry about where the nuance lines of the law are, let your lawyer handle that after the fact than it is to I mean, hopefully recognize the fact that you’re not going to be willing to get into a gunfight on the side of the road, or standing in your front door over the what might very well be terrible decisions by that officer.

Why would a self-defense defendant take a plea deal?

Okay, Bob sent in a question about an old case a few years old. It’s been working its way through the system. So this was a case out of at Northern Arizona University involving a kid called Steve Jones, a kid 18 year old freshman kid to me. And he and a friend or two were walking down the street, they got into a confrontation with some other college students, a different group, let’s call them some kind of beating began to take place. I’m recalling the facts just from recollection. So I may not be completely clear in the details, but the facts aren’t important for the the key point I want to hit here. So there’s a confrontation between these two groups of students.

Steven Jones, the defendant, in this case, runs away gets a gun, a handgun comes back I believe it was a Beretta comes back and starts firing shots and the ends up killing one of the other group and severely injuring at least three others. In fact, one of them I think, was very badly crippled, may have killed himself later, but very badly crippling three the others gets arrested.

Steven Jones does after the fact gets charged with one count of first degree murder three counts of aggravated assault and his argument is basically defense of others defensive self so when he ran away, his friend was stuck behind, still getting a beat down, disparity of numbers, likely to suffer serious bodily injury, deadly force attack, so he went and got his gun, came back to defend his friend and of course at that point is also defending himself right from a position Effective, deadly force speeding. So that was his argument, defensive self defense of others, of course, the thing that looks bad as you achieve the position of safety, and then you armed yourself, and he came back to the fight. So I’m sure that’s what attracted the eye of the prosecutor.

Also, of course, the damage that was inflicted now, I mean, we all know, people get gun start getting fired, people get hurt pretty bad, they get killed, they get maimed. But in theory, I suspect I should say if he’d fired, you know, shot once and the crowd had dispersed, and it was a modest injury to somebody, or maybe no injury, maybe the shot, Miss completely, it would have been a less attractive case to a prosecutor.

But when you have, you know, the public in the community was pretty much screaming that, hey, this kid murdered someone and maimed three other young men with their whole lives ahead of them. It’s a it’s a case with a lot of political energy that’s attractive to a prosecutor. So anyway, they charged him with first degree murder, three counts of aggravated assault for the three other kids he shot and his he argue self defense, defense of others at trial, and it gets a hung jury.

Now, if he gotten convicted, he would surely have been sentenced to life in prison without possibility for early release. But he gets a hung jury. So he’s not convicted. So the prosecutor announces immediately, well, we’re going to try them again, put them in front of another jury. And probably, if he had hung jury 10 times, the prosecutor would retry them again. So it’s going to be a never ending process, unless he can get an outright acquittal.

And the question sent in from Bob was, Hey, I was watching an old 2020 program, TV news program, about this case, and learned that this defendant after he got his hung jury that we’re going to prosecute him again, he took a plea deal. Why would he take a plea deal? If he got a hung jury? In the first trial? Why wouldn’t he just get we tried again, and go for another hung jury or go for an acquittal? Why would you take a plea deal which guaranteed him jail time, prison time? Right?

Well, there’s a lot of reasons for doing that. First of all, the plea deal wasn’t a bad plea deal. Now, I know a lot of people instinctively recoil at the idea of taking a plea deal. But, folks, it all depends on the legal risks you’re facing. In this case, the legal risks were just short of capital punishment, the rest of his life in prison without possibility for early release.

So what was he offered, in turn, he was offered six years, prison time. So he’s 18, it might have been, he might have been 20. By the time this happened 21, by the time he took the play, 21 is looking at six. If he does the whole sex, he’s out when he’s 27. From my perspective, still young man, and he might well not do the six, might get released as little as a third of the time for good behavior could be out in two could be out in three or four. That sucks. And it’s a felony conviction. I believe he took the plea on manslaughter. So still, a serious felony conviction will have that his whole life. Never get rid of that lose all the rights that come with being convicted of a felony.

But he’s not spending the rest of his life in prison. So when you’re offered that kind of deal, it’s hard not to take especially when you consider the unbelievable costs involved in defending yourself in a murder trial, as I talked about, at the very start of the show, these killing cases, murder manslaughter cases can easily hit a couple hundred grand before the trial, just pre trial expense.

So imagine you’re going through that first trial, what percentage of your resources and in this case, of course, probably his parents resources? What percent of your resources are you willing to spend to try to avoid spending the rest of your life in a cage? Probably a very high percentage, maybe more than 100%? Right? Maybe you beg, borrow and steal every penny you can get from family friends, wherever GoFundMe to raise as much money as you possibly can for that legal defense.

And then you spend all that money and you get a hung jury. Folks, that’s a win, for my perspective, not as good a win as an acquittal, but it’s a win compared to a conviction. You’re not going to prison for the rest of your life, then deal. You still in the fight. But the prosecutor says Well, we’re gonna try you again.

Well, if you spent 150% of your resources on the first trial, what do you think you have left for the second trial? Probably not anything. And we’d all like to think we live in a world where the amount of resources you can bring to a legal fight doesn’t influence the justice you get or the legal outcome. But folks does, there’s a huge difference between a $300,000 or $400,000, legal defense and a 30 or $40,000. Legal Defense, they’re not the same things.

So if you ended up with a hung jury after spending a couple hundred grand, and now you have nothing left, you’re going into the second trial with 20 grand you think the legal outcome is going to be better? Probably not. And then they offer you a six year plea. I tell you, that’s hard to say no to.

So, I was not at all involved with the case. I was interviewed by the case for some news outlets long crime, cable TV news and such, but I had no personal involvement with the case Other than that, but I imagine that what was was what was going through Steve Jones head when he got that plea offer. Let’s see a couple questions. I’m just gonna knock out real quick because I can’t really answer them.

What to say to 911 in aftermath of use-of-force event?

So Johnny asks, I’m a platinum member, could you give us advice on what to say? Or not to say, if we ever have to call 911 after a self defense event? Johnny? I can’t really answer the question. Because in our, in our full day law, self defense advanced course we spend over an hour talking about nothing but interacting with the police in the aftermath of the use of force event. It’s it’s a very detailed, nuanced, complicated topic that I couldn’t possibly answer in a q&a format. So listen, if you’re interested enough to be a platinum member, and I greatly appreciate your support, I would just urge you to make sure you take advantage of the opportunity to do that last self defense advanced course we have it on DVD we have streamed, that is the single best way to get that education, I just couldn’t possibly do it in the q&a format.

Explained: Excusable homicide v. Justifiable Homicide v. Imperfect Self-Defense

J[m says discuss whether excusable homicide is included within the doctrine of imperfect self defense. So, again, I’m just going to do this quickly. If you’ve been exposed to this before, it’ll sound very familiar. If it’s all new to you, it’s probably not that helpful. If you’re a Law of Self Defense member, you’ve seen me write blog posts and do videos and podcasts on these topics a lot, so it ought to be familiar to you.

But these are these phrases, excusable homicide, imperfect, self defense, justifiable homicide, these are all distinct legal concepts. So when something is justified, it’s free of legal liability. So it does not carry legal liability. When something is legally excused. It does not carry legal liability. So either justified, whatever justified homicide, or excused, whatever, excused homicide. They’re both killings that are free of legal liability.

But they do differ in an important way, a justified homicide, and we’re talking in legal theory here, but a justified homicide. The concept behind that is homicide in which the outcome was a social good. So a rape victim kills her rapist, a armed robbery victim kills the armed robber, in lawful self defense, justified self defense, it’s better for society that the innocent victim survived and the criminal aggressor died. That was Those were the only two outcomes right? One of them had to live, one of them had to die. It’s a social good that the innocent victim of the crime died. That’s what makes it justified.

Excusable homicide is different. It still carries no legal liability. But it’s a killing that’s relieved of legal liability under circumstances where the outcome was not a social good. But were we are relieving liability anyway. And this might be an example, A good example is the insanity defense. So someone goes clinically insane, there’s something wrong with their brain there. They imagine that the person they’re looking at is an alien from Mars who’s going to destroy all life on Earth, and they shoot it in their heads, they genuinely believe that’s an alien creature that’s going to end human life on Earth, and they shoot it.

So from a mental state perspective, they’re not killing a human at all. Right? That’s what they believe. Of course, they’re wrong. They’re insane. They just killed a human. In fact, they just killed a pediatric, pediatric oncologist. Is that a social good that an insane person killed someone who saves children from cancer? Of course not. That’s a terrible loss of society. So it can’t be justified. It’s not a socially good outcome, but it might be excused because society might say, listen, it’s terrible that happened. But we’re not going to hold the killer responsible because they were genuinely insane at the time they committed that act. So that’s an excusable homicide, it’s not a good outcome, but it nevertheless will not carry criminal liability.

Imperfect self defense is completely different and perfect self defense, as I said earlier, is where a person has a genuine good faith belief that the elements of self defense have been met justifies their use of force. But their belief is unreasonable, irrational, and because it’s unreasonable and the belief has to be reasonable to qualify for perfect self defense, because their belief is genuine but unreasonable, it can’t qualify for perfect self defense can’t qualify to quit their use of force to relieve them entirely of legal liability, but it might mitigate their crime from being one of murder life in prison. Without possibility of parole to being one of manslaughter 10 years 20 years possibility early release after a third of that time and so forth.

Okay, I think I went through all the questions on our list. Let me take a look at the membership site.

AP reports Kyle Rittenhouse released on $2 million bail

Someone mentions AP is reporting that Kyle Rittenhouse has been released on $2 million bail. Well, that would be good news for Kyle Rittenhouse. Certainly everyday he was in prison he was in danger of being murdered in prison, I hope he has a safe place to go to assuredly as condition of release, he will not be lawfully permitted to be in possession of weapons. So I hope he has people around him who are prepared to defend him the the lunatics are out there.

Let’s see. I think that’s about it from the membership comments, let me take a look at our Facebook page. Okay, roll up to the top, I’ll take a sip.

And while I’m doing that, folks, I’ll remind all of you, if you like this kind of content, I would urge you to consider a trial Law of Self Defense membership. It’s extremely inexpensive. 99 cents gives you access to all our membership content for two weeks, if you decide to cancel within that two week period, no questions asked will give you not just your money back, but 200% of your money back. It’s a negative risk proposition, folks. If you do decide to stay a member, it’s only about 33 cents a day, less than $10 a month for hours and hours of this content every week, every month every year.

And our goal, of course is translate all this legal ease into plain English. So it’s actionable for you. So you can be more decisive in defending yourself and your family in the physical fight, because of your confidence that you’re doing so well within the legal boundaries, and to make you hard to convict. I mentioned earlier that for a prosecutor to convict on a self defense case he has to disprove self defense beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s a very high threshold. easy to do. If the defendant hands the prosecutor what he needs to get that conviction to disprove self defense beyond a reasonable doubt, hard to do.

If the defenders’ use of force was so well within the legal boundaries, and it’s very difficult to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt. You make yourself hard to convict them if you’re hard to convict. Prosecutors do not like to take those cases to trial. They have so many cases that are easy wins on their desk. The hard cases get de prioritized as a general rule. That’s what you want. You want to be the lowest priority on that prosecutors desk. That’s how you get charges dismissed. Worst case, that’s how you get a favorable plea deal.

So you can try out law self defense membership again at Law of Self Defense comm slash trial, just 99 cents 200% money back guarantee, by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/trial

All right, let’s look at Facebook here. Hey, well, hey, Oscar from Texas. And Lorraine, I hope you got your questions answered. Lorraine. Let’s see. Thank you, James. James says anyone participating here on Facebook needs to get a lot of self defense membership always appreciated. Christmas is coming, folks. You could do it. You could do it. for friends and family to just think about it. We should set that up. We should set up some kind of gift cards. I’ll have to talk to my staff about it.

Could Rittenhouse be pardoned by President Trump?

David asks, could Rittenhouse be pardoned by the president before the trial concludes? Well, he’s not charged with any federal crimes. My understanding is the President can only pardon for federal crimes, not for state crimes. So Rittenhouse has been charged with state crimes the governor of the state, I guess it would be Wisconsin, right. I presume that’s a democrat governor. What are the prospects the governor of a state’s going to acquit someone who the media is characterizing as a murderer of protesters? So no, I don’t believe we’ll see any pardon from anybody for concreteness.

I hope he gets a good legal defense. I mean, I’ve spoken to his legal team, very informally. I’m not part of the legal team, by any means don’t want to create that impression. We’ve discussed it but nothing’s come to any decision. The balls in their court on that. But certainly He is a very prominent, very legally capable, very well financed legal defense, which is I mean, it’s almost all you can hope for in this kind of situation.

So all right, well, those look like all the questions we may wrap up just a couple minutes early today, which will make up for some of the last week’s stuff. So folks, if that is out of the way I will just remind all of you before we go, first of all, we do the show every Thursday 4pm. I know today’s Friday, normally Thursdays 4pm. Eastern Time, feel free to join us. It’s the only content we do that’s open access. You don’t need to be a member of Law of Self Defense but it’s the only content we do that’s open access. If you like it, you have friends and family who would benefit from learning more about self defense law, the way that we talk about it, please encourage them to take advantage of this free showing on Facebook, recordings on Facebook and on YouTube and on the Law of Self Defense membership site stays free on all of those.

Again, this is how we grow the law self defense community, it’s really the only way we do it is word of mouth. So if you like what we have to offer, please let others know encourage them to expose themselves to it as well. And then they can make the decision of whether or not being a member is a good option for them.

In the meantime, remember as always, folks, if you carry a gun for personal protection, if you carry a gun so you’re hard to kill, that’s what we’re really talking about right? That’s why I carry a gun so I’m hard to kill so my family’s hard to kill. Well then you also owe it to yourself to make sure that you know the law so that you’re hard to convict Alright folks, I’m Attorney Andrew Branca with lLaw of Self Defense. Until next time, stay safe.