News/Q&A Show: Sept. 24, 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.

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.

CCW Safe:  Our Sponsor

Now before we jump into the substance of today’s show, 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, aggravated assault, where you were threatened, you displayed your gun, you didn’t fire a shot didn’t hurt anybody. You’re looking at a retainer to your lead counsel in the order of $30,000 to $50,000. And that’s for pre-trial work, folks, that’s not for going to trial. If it’s a murder, case, 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, 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 personally a member of CCW Safe, my wife Emily is personally a member of CCW Safe.

Whether they’re 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.

In today’s News/Q&A Show for September 24, 2020 we touched on a broad range of questions submitted for the show, as well as questions submitted live, including:

• What does “good faith withdrawal” mean in the context of “regaining innocence”?
• What is the best way to communicate a desire to stop fighting?
• Holding a deadly force attacker who has dropped weapon at gunpoint.
• How to articulate reasonable fear if defended against a mob attack?
• Importance of documenting training to ensure admissibility in court.
• Thoughts on Breonna Taylor case turning out to be another fake BLM narrative?
• Why are no-knock warrants increasing in use?
• Best way for CCW to avoid being shot by a cop?
• If in traffic stop, do you provide CCW along with license?

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:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/trial

Law of Self Defense ADVANCED Live Online Class:  Sat., Oct. 3

This is the LAST webinar-based ADVANCED Live Online Course for at least the next six months, folks, so if you miss this one it’s really going to be quite a wait until you can attend the next one.

Are you SURE you won’t need to defend yourself or your family or your property before the next class comes around? Are you SURE you can wait another six months before learning the actual legal boundaries for the use of defensive force? Especially given our increasingly violent and dangerous world?

Perhaps best of all, as a Law of Self Defense Member you also get the benefit of saving $50 using our early-bird registration discount. That discount has expired for the general public, so they’re paying $199 for this October 3 ADVANCED Live Online Course, but as a Law of Self Defense Member you still get the discounted registration of $149.

Don’t let this opportunity pass you up, folks—this is must-have knowledge if you want to be as hard to convict as you are hard to kill.

Act NOW by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/advanced

In the meantime, stay safe!

–Andrew

Attorney Andrew F. Branca
Law of Self Defense LLC

 

TRANSCRIPT

The law of self defense content you’re about to enjoy is presented for general educational purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice. If you are in need of legal advice, consult competent legal counsel in the relevant jurisdiction.

 

Hey folks, welcome to the Law of Self Defense News/Q&A Show for September 24 2020.

This is the one show the week we do that’s open access, not limited to law of self defense members. So welcome all of you. Of course, we do this for selfish reasons, in part to give those of you not yet members of the law, South fence community, some exposure to what we do. And hopefully you like what you’ll see and you choose to become a law self defense member. For those who don’t know, I am attorney Andrew Branca for law, self defense. We can do better than that. Come on. Yay. All right, thank you very much. Really appreciate it. For those watching the show live, especially on Facebook. For example, if you could click that thumbs up like button that share arrow that helps fool Facebook into sharing news about this program more broadly. B

y the way we do do this program every week, every Thursday 4pm Eastern time. We do it live on our law, self defense Facebook channel, live on youtube live on our membership dashboard. So if you’re a law, self defense member, we encourage you to participate there, comment ask questions there, those do get priority over the more general social media platforms. For those who may not know I’d lost off the fence we do. As you might expect Self Defense Law that’s all we do is legal practice. use of force cases been in defense of self defense of others and defense of property. To give you sense for the kind of stuff we’ve been doing over the last week for our members, you might be interested in some of the content we’ve done earlier in the week.

On Monday, for example, we did a show on when use of force is otherwise unavoidable. This was based on a special prosecutor review of a police use of force case in which an officer shot a female driver of a car during a traffic stop. She apparently threatened that she had a gun that she intended to use the gun and reached under the seat as if to get a gun raised up as if to point the gun and that’s when the officer shot her. The special prosecutor bizarrely claim that while it looks like the use of force was lawful by the officer who’s a good shoot so to speak, from a legal perspective, but it might have been otherwise unavoidable. And we discussed in that post the silliness of such a statement, and its utility only for political and not for legal purposes.

On Tuesday we asked why so many of these claimed cases of POLICERACISTMURDER!1111!1 turn out to be utter fabrications, and ask who benefits?

On Wednesday, we did a post on the counter propaganda video released by attorney Linwood he’s one of the attorneys representing Kyle Rittenhouse. It’s about 11 minutes of video giving essentially the defense version of events. The video strikes me as extremely consistent with the facts as we know them to exist based on actual evidence as opposed to the propaganda of the BLM and Antifa activists, rioters, arsonists so well worth watching. We provide that on Tuesday, of course you should approach to that video is you should approach any of these issues with critical thinking. So ask yourself, Is there actual evidence to support these particular claims? You don’t want to be gold by either team in these arguments?

On Thursday, we again did a post on asking in the exposure of yet another one of these false claims of self defense if there’s so much police racist murder. Why do the activists keep making up these claims and this is particularly poignant in the grand jury findings and kind of the sudden release of new not really new, but newly exposed information in the Brianna Taylor case. The grand jury, of course, just released its decision yesterday to not indict at all to the three officers arguably implicated in Taylor’s death, the three officers serving a search warrant that resulted in Brianna’s death and to indict the third officer only on recklessness charges, having nothing to do with Taylor’s death, whatever. So we discuss the merits of those claims. And also point out the extremely consistent by extremely consistent I mean, 100% amount of the time that a use of force narrative pushed by Black Lives Matter turns out to be absolutely false, a blatant lie, a complete fabrication, and this is true of every one of these Black Lives Matters. narratives of use of force that’s been pushed to my knowledge and as you might imagine, I follow these cases pretty closely.

So if that kind of commentary legal analysis expertise might be Something that you find interesting, I would encourage you to take the opportunity to try out Law of Self Defense Membership, you can do it very inexpensively 99 cents for a two week trial, folks, you get the same level of access as any full member at that level. And if you do decide to be stay a member, and most people do, folks, they decide to stay, they like what they see, membership is still dirt cheap. It’s only about 33 cents a day, 995 a month. But again, you can try it out for two weeks for only 99 cents. And in the unlikely event you don’t like it if you decide to cancel, I’ll give you back 200% of your money, folks. So something to keep in mind.

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:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/trial

CCW Safe:  Our Sponsor

Now before we jump into the substance of today’s show, 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, aggravated assault, where you were threatened, you displayed your gun, you didn’t fire a shot didn’t hurt anybody. You’re looking at a retainer to your lead counsel in the order of $30,000 to $50,000. And that’s for pre-trial work, folks, that’s not for going to trial. If it’s a murder, case, 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, 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 personally a member of CCW Safe, my wife Emily is personally a member of CCW Safe.

Whether they’re 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.

So we had a few questions sent in today I want to address before we come to the questions that may be asked live during the show, although as time permits, we’re happy to do those two. Let me pull up my question sheet here.

First of all, folks, I do want to mention something odds been happening here at law self defense HQ recently, I’m getting a bunch of inquiries, offers, I guess the other people would put it offers to provide me with sponsored guest posts. People want to write blog posts that I will put on law, self defense on our blog for our members for the public. And presumably while they say that they’ll pay me to put their content on our blog, folks, we don’t do that. We don’t do sponsored guest posts.

There are a few people out there who have they asked if they could write a guest post, I would be happy to let them because I know them personally. And I know they’re eminently qualified to write on Self Defense Law, types of content, I’d be honored to have their contributions, we certainly would not charge them for that. And anybody willing to pay us money to put a post on our blog. While it’s like who was writing, Dangerfield said, some well-known old school comedian, they wouldn’t want to be a member of a club that would have them folks, if we need to pay it for your blog post. We don’t want it. So don’t bother offering I just have to keep saying no.

Also, I don’t want to buy your web domain folks. People keep contacting me asking me if I want to buy things like excessive force calm, not interested. I’m just a small town lawyer, folks. I’m not an internet Maven. So I encourage you to look at to others for things like purchasing your domain.

Okay, so let me get the first question that was mailed in.

This is from Thomas M. He emailed. By the way, folks, if you’d like to send us questions for next week’s show, or any future show for our consideration, you can always email those to us at show at law of self defense calm show@lawofselfdefense.com.

I encourage you to focus on use of force law, not gun law, we don’t do gun law. So questions like what kind of license do you need? Where can you carry a gun or other kinds of weapons? We don’t do that. We do law governing when you can or cannot use that weapon in defense of yourself to defensive others or defensive property.

So Thomas M has mailed in a question. He asks. I realized hypotheticals can spiral quickly out of control and completely lose relevance. But I’d like to ask a couple of questions. One is about good faith withdrawal.

Good faith withdrawal folks has to do with regaining innocence. So say for example, you were the initial aggressor in a confrontation. You were the first person to threaten or use force in a confrontation. You lost your mind momentarily you shoved somebody makes you the initial physical aggressor in that confrontation. Normally, if you’re the initial physical aggressor, you lose the element of innocence, a required element of self defense and you lose self defense. I guess this is as good a time as any folks, when I say things like you lose the element of innocence, and you don’t know what I’m talking about.

Any claim of self defense has up to five elements. That’s the good news. There’s not 500 it’s not 50. There’s only five up to five legal elements of any claim of self defense. They are innocence evidence, proportionality, avoidance, and reasonableness. If you’re not familiar with those, I urge you please download our five elements of Self Defense Law infographic, it doesn’t cost a penny. It’s a free pdf download, you can get it at law of self defense comm slash elements. It provides a brief description of each of these five elements of self defense.

If you don’t understand these folks, you can’t possibly understand anything about Self Defense Law. I don’t care what you think, you know, or what you’ve been taught. Unless it’s been framed in these five elements, you don’t have a genuine understanding of Self Defense Law.

Do yourself a favor, get this free infographic, five elements of Self Defense Law, at lawofselfdefense.com/elements, doesn’t cost a penny.

http://lawofselfdefense.com/elements

So back to the topic. Normally, if you’re the initial aggressor, you can’t claim self defense, you lose the element of innocence, and therefore you lose qualification for self defense. But it may be possible for you to regain innocence. And one of the common ways that states allow you to regain innocence is by withdrawal and communication. So you may have been the initial aggressor.

But now you say no, no, sorry, I don’t want to fight. I don’t know what happened. I lost my mind. I don’t want to fight. And you physically withdraw, and you effectively communicate your desire not to fight to the other party. Now for the fight to continue what has to happen, if you’re withdrawing, and you’ve communicated your withdrawal for the fight to continue, the other party has to pursue you. And if they do that, they effectively become the initial aggressor in a second fight. In that second fight, they’re the initial aggressor, you’re the innocent party, you can justify your use of force in that second fight as self defense, assuming of course the other elements of self defense are also met. But you’ve regained your innocence for purposes of that second fight.

Now, you’re still on the hook for the first fight. Folks, if you committed say, a simple assault or simple battery in that first fight, then you withdraw, communicate, regaining innocence doesn’t work retroactively. Yet, you’re still responsible for that initial simple assault or simple battery, but you have regained your innocence for purposes moving forward.

Now, the question about withdrawal in communication is that it has to be a good faith withdrawal. That’s what Thomas’s question is here. What do we mean by a good faith withdrawal. What that means is you have to genuinely in good faith want to stop fighting. So it can’t be simply a tactical withdrawl. All of you who shoot the the most popular pistol sports uspsa idpa, you’ve been on stages where they have you shoot a target a few times. And then they have you moved to another position where you have to do some kind of reload, idpa, tactical reload, for example, or reload with retention. And then you have to engage some other targets.

So if you’re withdrawing simply for the purpose of getting a more defensible position, but to continue the fight, or to reload your weapon, top off the gun but continue the fight, then you’re not withdrawing to not fight you’re withdrawing to continue fighting from a better position. T

hat doesn’t mean doing that is unlawful, necessarily, it may be perfectly lawful under the circumstances. But withdrawal for purely tactical reasons with an intent to re engage in the fight is not a good faith withdrawal, for purposes of regaining innocence.

So if you want that withdrawal to count for purposes of regaining innocence, if you were the initial aggressor, or you could be made to look as if you were the initial aggressor, and you want to be able to counter argue that even if you were the initial aggressor, doesn’t matter. You can still claim self defense because you regained your innocence. It’s very important that your withdrawal look like a genuine good faith withdrawal, that you genuinely want it to stop fighting.

That’s what you were attempting to do when you withdrew, and that it doesn’t look merely like a tactical withdrawal. Now, whether it’s one or the other, of course, it’s going to be the judgment call of other people, right, other people, the investigators, the judge the jury.

So make sure that you make your conduct as clearly appear as good faith withdrawal as possible, you don’t want to the more it looks marginal or ambiguous, the more likely it is that those other people making that judgment call are going to decide that it wasn’t a good faith withdrawal, you don’t qualify for regaining innocence. Therefore, you can argue self defense as a legal justification for your use of force.

The other part of regaining your innocence by withdrawing communication is not just a good faith withdrawal, but also the communication you have to communicate to the other party effectively your desire to withdraw and the fight. If they don’t know you’re trying to in the fight, then you haven’t regained your innocence. So what’s effective communication Meanwhile, the best way to effectively communicate that you want to withdraw and then the fight is to do it verbally and loud. One is it makes an unambiguous Second, the louder you are, the more likely that witnesses will hear you, those witnesses could testify at trial about your communication, they heard you say you don’t want to find it anymore.

That’s all to your good. generally good guy, cases of self defense don’t get into trouble because there’s too much evidence in the case, they tend to get into trouble when there’s too little evidence in the case. And their claim of self defense begins to look ambiguous or fabricated. Generally, more evidence is good for us. So if you’re loud and verbal, more likely witnesses will hear you, that’s all to the good.

But in most of these cases where innocence is regained, it’s quite common for the communication to actually not be verbal. Because of the kind of chaotic nature of these kinds of fights, it’s more common for the communication to be what’s called constructive. And this would be physical conduct that’s consistent with the desire to withdraw. For example, if you turn and run away from the fight, well, that’s conduct that’s constructively communicates, you don’t want to fight anymore, you can simultaneously run away and still be wanting to fight. Right, that doesn’t make any sense.

Now, having said that, the very common way of communicating withdrawal is constructively through physical contact. Again, that’s not the best way. I mean, if you can do that, that’s awesome. Anytime you can run away from a fight consistent with safety, that’s all to your good, but the best way to do it, because turning physical movement can still look ambiguous. The best way to do it is if you can physically and also verbally and loud as I’ve already described.

Let’s see, Glenn, Glen K, one of our Platinum members at loss of defense. So we have two levels of membership at loss off the fence once one is our standard membership at nine $9 95 cents a month. The other is our Platinum level membership, which includes in its current version, not just heightened access to our content, but also our Platinum Protection Program, which guarantees my availability to be on your legal team if you’re involved in the use of force event. And at no additional cost. Normally, when I consult on a case it cost several thousands of dollars.

But our Platinum protection members get my legal consultation at no additional cost. If you’d like to learn more about our Platinum protection program, you can do that at law of self defense comm slash platinum. The reason I mentioned it now is that we have a special q&a forum that we provide to our Platinum members where they can submit their questions to me personally directly. They’re guaranteed to be answered. We’ll either answer them on the news and q&a show or remember, we would prefer a private answer. We’re happy to do that as well. And this is one of those that came in from a platinum member a question.

Glenn says there was a case recently reported in the news about an 85 year old man who’s fatally stabbed in Michigan and then a concealed carry holder held the perpetrator the stabber at gunpoint until police arrived.

One of the comments around that case was what happens if the aggressor the knifer drops the knife and just walks away with the person holding my gun point be authorized to neutralize him, presumably Glenn’s asking if they’d be authorized to shoot him?

Well, of course, it becomes a much more ambiguous case than a clean case of self defense. So the threat is now apparently largely over. So one person has been stabbed the victim let’s say they’re dead so they can’t be harmed anymore. The guy with the knife, still holding them the bloody knife in his hand, but presumably not presenting an imminent threat to the person holding them at gunpoint if he were presenting an imminent threat to the person holding them at gunpoint. Presumably the person holding them at gunpoint would shoot them.

So the fact that the person holding them at gunpoint has not shot him suggest he’s the person with a knife is not yet at least imminent deadly force threat. So what happens if the guy with the knife decides to just drop the knife and just walk away? Does the person holding the gun point? Are they privileged to shoot that person walking away? In terms of Self Defense Law? The answer would be no.

Even defense of others law in the absence of an imminent deadly force threat to another person, you can’t simply shoot somebody. That’s not a lawful use of force. You’re not defending anybody if they’ve dropped their knife into simply walking away. Now there may be privilege to hold someone at gunpoint under citizen’s arrest legal framework. But I caution that citizens arrest laws vary enormously from state to state, Self Defense Law, defense of others law, defense of persons law is about 80%. The same across the 50 states, which is good news.

Citizens arrest is nothing like common across the 50 states. Every state applies its own rules. Some states don’t even have a statutory Self Defense Law, many don’t. So they have old common law, citizens arrest. And in any case, there’s really no such thing as a modern citizens arrest law, because whether it’s common law case law, Court made law, or statutory, almost all the citizens rest laws are decades old, sometimes 100 hundred and 50 years old.

We all know about the Ahmaud Arbery case in Georgia, where two white men purported to be making a citizen’s arrest, or at least exploring the possibility of a citizen’s arrest, when they stopped a mod are Bray who depending on what you believe, was either just a black guy jogging or was reasonably under suspicion of felony burglary. So they purported to make an attempt to make a citizen’s arrest. Arbery charged one of the men fought them for a shotgun got shot and killed in the process. Those men are charged with felony murder predicated on an unlawful false false imprisonment.

Georgia has a fairly clear citizens statute. Frankly, I think the conduct of those two men, the mcmichaels falls within Georgia’s self citizens rights statute. But the statute dates from the Civil War. I mean, it’s something like 150 years old, at its when it was first established, only very modest tweaks in the interim. And so it was created during a different era, a different culture, a time when, frankly, there were many places in the country that didn’t have professionalized police departments. So normal citizens were effectively the law enforcement for their community, and would be expected to act much like law enforcement. That’s not the case today, folks, and it wasn’t the case in this jurisdiction there. There is professional as law enforcement in most places near the modern culture, our culture, expects you to call the police before you start taking people at gunpoint.

Now, in any case, to my knowledge, I’m not aware of any citizens arrest law that allows for the dead the use of deadly force in making that citizens arrest. At most, you can use non deadly force and making a citizen’s arrest. Now, whether or not the mere pointing of a gun under the circumstances qualifies as non deadly force is another area of use of force law that varies enormously across the country, some parts of the country merely holding someone at gunpoint, you’re not actually shooting them is deemed to be a non deadly use of force, other parts of the country, anytime you’re pointing a gun at someone, it’s they treated exactly the same as if you were shooting them, It’s a deadly use of force, in which case, of course, you need to meet the much higher conditions to justify the use of deadly force.

Were it me and I found myself under circumstances where I was holding someone at gunpoint, and then they apparently disarmed themselves, and we’re walking away, I probably just be a good witness before, certainly before it started shooting people, even them. Because I wouldn’t want to trust the rest of my life and whether I was going to spend a large part of it in in the cage with unpleasant people on having shopped this person, and whether that would qualify for citizens rest purposes or whatever.

Now, of course, if that person turns and attacks you, well, then it’s simply a defensive person’s analysis of self defense analysis. And the question comes back to whether or not they will represent a deadly force imminent deadly force threat at that point in time. And that’s just the straightforward five elements of self defense analysis.

Another question from a comment to one of our blog posts so from a member of law self defense member because only members can comment on our blog posts over the law self defense website.  Also, he mentioned he was actually responding to someone else’s comment so it’s a little convoluted but the the initial question had been well, how do I communicate to others the in a mob environment so I defend myself in a mob environment and of course, this was triggered largely largely by the Kyle Rittenhouse event, but I’m being threatened in a mob. Maybe not by something like a gun, which is explicitly deadly force, but a disparity of numbers or opportunistic weapons like a skateboard or generally circumstances that may be ambiguous. How can I communicate To others the reasonableness of my perception that that arguably ambiguous situation was in fact an imminent deadly force threat.

And Matthew here, one of our members had had said, well, you can rely on your personal knowledge with things you know, you know, a skateboard to the head is no less deadly force than a baseball bat to the head, for example, certainly true. Rocks, blunt, blunt objects. Anything can be a deadly weapon can be used as a deadly weapon depending on the manner of its use.

So some of this is just common knowledge. But some of this would be more like specialized knowledge, especially if the circumstances were such that you weren’t yet being struck. But say the person was coming at you with a raised bat or race skateboard or raised rock. And they were 10 1112 feet away, but closing proximity. You might want to argue for example, the tool or drill Well, sure, they weren’t on me yet, but they were going to be on the me unless I did something to protect myself because the person armed with an impact weapon can from a distance of Tueller says the tool or drills as 21 feet, be upon a defender before that defender can draw their pistol from a service holster and effectively get center mass hits. That’s the core lesson of the chiller drill.

Well, if you want to use knowledge of the chiller drill, as part of the basis for why your perception of a threat was a reasonable perception, the Tueller drill specialized knowledge. So generalized knowledge is things we all know fire as hot knives are sharp, things like that. specialized knowledge is knowledge that we don’t possess unless we’ve learned it through specialized training or education, and the tool or drill would fall into that category. And specialized knowledge that informed your decision making in self defense is admissible as evidence in court can be very useful for ending up with an educated well informed jury.

Because normally, your jury isn’t going to know anything special ,folks. They’re just normal people, they’re not gonna know anything about guns or self defense or terminal ballistics or the tool or drill. They’re not going to know anything like that, unless you can educate them on it.

And it is possible to get specialized knowledge that you claim informed your decision making in self defense admitted as evidence in front of the jury so they become educated. Normally, you would do that by bringing in an expert witness who has expertise in these kinds of use of force, doctrines, and realities.

But here’s the catch if you want to introduce specialized knowledge into evidence on the grounds that that knowledge is what informed the reasonableness of your decision. At the moment, you have to act in self defense, you need to be able to demonstrate that you possessed that knowledge at the time you acted in self defense. Obviously, if you didn’t know this thing, if you didn’t know the tool or drill, for example, at the moment you acted in self defense, well, then knowledge of the tool or drill could not have influenced your decision making could not have been part of what made your decision reasonable if you were not in fact aware of it if you only learned about the tool of drill after the fact, which means you need to have documented this specialized training, the specialized expertise, the specialized education, so that you can prove that you possess it at time you acted in self defense and didn’t just learn about it later.

Now, when it comes to documenting this kind of knowledge for this purpose, you don’t need a lot of proof that you knew it. Basically, you need more than zero proof that you knew it. But you do need that more than zero proof because the prosecution is going to object obviously, the admission of this kind of evidence is harmful to the prosecution’s case. So he doesn’t want it admitted. He’s going to object and to overcome that objection, you need to be able to demonstrate you possess the knowledge at the time. So if you take classes you get those certificates. Save your certificates, folks. If you get a educational materials, get a syllabus, get handouts, save those handouts.

If you read something like my own book, The Law of Self Defense, 3^rd Edition. Don’t just read it like the romance novel, it’s intended to be read it like a textbook, underline things highlight things put dates in the margins. Anytime I autograph a book for anybody, I always autograph it and put the date on which I’m autographing the book.

All of that is more than sufficient to document you possess the knowledge at the time. But you do need something like that you need more than zero evidence, or a challenge to your claim that you knew at the time might be effective by the prosecution, then the evidence gets excluded. And that can be really bad, folks. If the reason you use deadly defensive force against that guy with a baseball bat, is your knowledge of the tool or drill and then you’re not allowed to share the knowledge of the tool or drill with the jury. That could really your inability to explain why your decision making was reasonableness could really undermine the apparent reasonableness of your decision making. And that’s not a position you want to be in. So make sure you document Your knowledge, any analogy you think might be relevant to your decision making and self defense.

Okay, let’s see. I think that is all the questions I had that were sent in ahead of time. So let me scroll through the questions. See if we have any hear from our members on the member dashboard at loss, defense Comm. Not immediately, but if anybody wants to put some in, that’s fine. I’ll check back again in a moment. I’ll flip through the Facebook questions.

Sean Sorrentino asks on Facebook, now that the grand jury evidence shows that every single part of the social media case was utterly wrong. What are my thoughts? My thoughts are, Shawn, I think I mentioned this at the beginning, that anytime you hear a use of force narrative, this premise that America lives in a state of systematic, unaccountable murder of black people, whether by law enforcement or by white people, or whatever the case might be, anytime you hear a Black Lives Matter narrative of use of force, that narrative is a lie. Every single time 100% of the time, zero exceptions.

If Black Lives Matter is telling you what happened about the use of force event, you must assume they are lying through their teeth until proven otherwise. Now, I will caution Of course, there are people have good intentions who gets suckered.

Not everyone who talks about these cases is lying. Even if there are promulgating false information. A lot of people have good intentions. get suckered in by these lies, believe the lies get taken in I would exclude from that the media. I think the media gets, you know, they get fooled deliberately. I mean, they’re willing participants and this promulgation of false information. But there are a lot of people out there who are they don’t believe they’re, they’ve been lied to. They don’t believe they’re communicating lies, although they are. They just don’t know it. They’re promulgating these false narratives not out of malice.

But because well, propaganda works, folks. If propaganda didn’t work, people wouldn’t do it. And Black Lives Matter knows the buttons to push. And by the way, folks, all of these, I don’t care which one you might point to, and I would be happy to debate any of them. But all the way back to Trayvon Martin, to Michael Brown, to Philando Castiel, to Tamir Rice to Sandra Bland, I don’t care which of these cases you talk about. And of course, most recently, Jacob Blake, George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, they are all lies, every single one is a lie if the narrative being promulgated is that they are examples of systemic, unaccountable murder of black people, they are lies.

Now what Black Lives Matters loves to do, journalists in particular love to do this is they’ll take all these false cases of systemic and accountable murder of black people. And they’ll string them all together in a laundry list, they’ll just read you the list of names, as if a collection a laundry list of false narratives somehow makes the underlying premise true. It just makes for a list of false narratives, folks. So whenever you see this laundry list of names that’s supposed to represent purported systematic, accountable murder of black people in America, you know, you’re being lied to when you get that list. So just be on the alert for that. It’s, it’s always a lie.

If someone has a contrary example, I would love to hear it. Maybe I should make that as a separate business put up 100 bucks, I’ll put up 100 bucks. We’ll debate it on the facts, the law and the evidence. Because I’ve yet to come across any of these cases where it’s true, that there’s been systemic, unaccountable murder of black people, whether by police or anybody else, it’s always a lie.

And by the way, folks, you should ask yourself, who benefits from this, whose benefit from promulgating these lines that results in innocent people being murdered and named in the streets, police being assassinated, city centers being burned down race relations, which were doing just fine until Black Lives Matter came along? And now we’ve lost decade’s worth of constructive building in race relations in America. For what for these false stories, these false claims? Who benefits from this? It’s not you. It’s not me, someone’s benefiting. And that’s why folks now that Brianna Taylor is over, guess what, next week, or the week after or the week after that, we’ll have another Breanna Taylor. We’ll have another George Ford. We’ll have another Jacob Blake. We’ll have another of these narratives false narratives a systemic unaccountable murder of black people in America.

Why will we get another one? Because they work folks, for certain values of work, the values of work that are important to the people pushing these false narratives, these false narratives are effective for their purposes. And as long as they’re effective, we’re going to get more than you don’t have to get more of these false narratives. Believe the last one, get taken in again, by the last one, and I guarantee you’ll get the next one. As much ally as the last one. If I come across as feeling strongly about the manner, you might understand why.

Okay, folks, well, this might be a relatively concise show. Let me check back see if there’s any more questions that people have popped in.

Okay, here’s a good question. James, one of our law, self defense members asks over to dashboard. Why have no knock search warrants increased so much? First of all, I don’t believe they have increased I think they’re, in fact, much less often used today than they have been in the past. I’m not sure who keeps records of that. So I’m just speaking anecdotally, from what I happen to see in the practice of law. I believe the constraints on no knock warrants are greater than they used to be.

Now, I will say, my personal and professional opinion is that no knock warrants are bad public policy, except in the most extreme of conditions and extreme conditions. I would suggest, for example, a hostage situation where if you gave notice, if you knock, they kill the hostage, well, obviously, then you just have to break in, you take the door down. But in, in most circumstances, most typical law enforcement, drug enforcement type of circumstances, I think, no knock warrants are a bad idea.

And not because they don’t have utility. They do have utility. That’s why we use them. For example, in drug dealing, if you knock and that gives the drug dealers an opportunity to flush their drugs down the toilet, while then by knocking, you’ve defeated the purpose of the warrant. So that’s utility, a value for the no knock warrant. But you can’t only look at value, we need to look at benefits and costs, we need to look at upside and downside.

The upside is if you can just kick down the door and you don’t have to knock, maybe keep them from destroying the drugs before you get there. The downside is it primes for situations in which we have cops kicking down the wrong doors, they get sent to the wrong address, or different people live in that apartment now. And there’s somebody in the apartment who maybe they don’t hear the announcement that it’s cops coming in, they think it’s a home invasion. Maybe they do hear the announcement. But sometimes home invaders pretend to be cops that happens to and I happen to think that the downsides of no knock warrants, under almost all circumstances, except the most extreme, outweigh the benefits of no knock warrants.

There are benefits, there are downsides. I think the downsides are greater.

So I would very much discourage the use of no knock warrants. I think that generally speaking, they’re bad public policy, we should not use them. The fact that I feel that way about it, maybe many of you feel that way about it, however, doesn’t change the fact that right now they’re lawful. And as long as they’re lawful police executing a no knock warrant are acting lawfully. They’re allowed to do that. And they’re doing it over the signature of a judge. That’s how they got the warrant. And granted, that’s maybe not the threshold we would like it to be. But nevertheless, it’s until it’s made unlawful. It’s lawful. We may not like it. We may think it’s bad public policy, but it’s not a crime by the officers.

Of course, in the Breonna Taylor case. There’s been a lot of miscommunication on this issue. The facts are the officers were given a no knock warrant, because it was a drug raid. That’s typically the context in which no knock warrants are allowed for the purposes I already described. But they chose not to take advantage of that privilege. So they were not required to knock and announce, but they did knock and announce and we know they knocked in announce because there’s an independent witness from the apartment next door who heard them knock and announce so they they went above and beyond what they were required to do in this Brianna Taylor warrant case.

So they they were free to just knock the door down. They didn’t do that. They did announce now the person inside not hear them. I don’t know how would we possibly know they the shooter? The guy who started the gun fight person inside the apartment actually shot and very seriously, almost mortally wounded. The only cop to actually make it into the apartment, an artery in his leg get shot right in the groin area. That’s not a great place to get shot, folks. That’s a good way to get shot dead. That guy says Well, I didn’t hear them say they were the place and that could be true. I don’t know.

It’s one of the downsides of no knock warrants is we can end up in new situations. The cops could do everything right. Everything lawful, and the people inside the house could be doing everything right, everything lawful, it could be a wrong address, they could genuinely think they’re being victims of a home invasion. a gunfight erupts, people got killed, shouldn’t have had to have been killed. That can all happen and they could all be lawful. The homeowners use a defense, the force can be lawful. The cops breaking in the door can be lawful.

It’s all mistaken. People are making lots of mistakes, but none of those mistakes are crimes. And unfortunately, no knock warrants kind of prime. The circumstances for that kind of awful, but lawful exchange of deadly force to occur, which is one of the reasons I don’t like them as a matter of public policy. But I don’t believe the number of no knock warrants is gone up to answer James question. Hopefully not.

Can you talk about how to avoid being shot by cops as a CCW this comes in from Alexander on Facebook. Yeah, don’t present an appearance of being an imminent deadly force threat to the cops.

That’s generally why police shoot people is because the people they shoot present as an apparent imminent deadly force threat doesn’t mean they were in a deadly force threat. That’s not what the court the law requires. To justify shooting another person. What the law requires is the appearance the reasonable appearance of an imminent deadly force threat. This accurately describes what happened in the Philando Castile case. For example, Philandro Castile was a passenger in a car during a traffic stop the cops talking to Philando over the driver who was a woman, I believe, if I recall correctly, Philando was in the passenger seat.

Philando tells the officer Hey, I’ve got a gun, and then starts reaching first pocket now Philando would say he was reaching first permit. When Philando told the copy of a gun, the cop said all right, that’s fine. But whatever you do, don’t reach for it. And then falando casteel starts reaching for his waistband. And the cop says Don’t do that. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. Don’t do that the COP is screaming at him not to apparently be reaching for a gun, and ultimately the cop to his own pistol and shot falando Castillo killing him.

Now for one narrative. Philandro Castile is a guy with a pistol and a concealed carry permit, and he’s just reading reaching for his permit to give it to the gun. That could be true. I don’t know. First of all, there’s no way for the cop to know that’s true, right? I mean, criminal suspects say things that are untrue all the time to police during traffic stops. But it’s also true that to the officers perspective, he knows this person has a gun because the person has told them he knows guns are typically kept around waistbands, he knows he’s screaming at this guy not to reach for his waistband repeatedly. And the guy continues to do it. That officer could have a reasonable perception of an imminent, imminent deadly force, right? It’s not. It’s not an unreasonable position to take, especially in the context where the cop claims Hey, I shot up in self defense, the prosecution has to disprove self defense beyond any reasonable doubt. That’s a hard threshold to overcome in those cases.

Frankly, it’s not uncommon for cops to shoot each other. There was a school shooting in West Texas five years ago, six years ago. What happened was a young girl came to school with a rifle shot one of her classmates then killed committed suicide. Of course, she killed herself in a closet or something. Nobody knew she was dead yet. All they knew was active shooter at the school. People were being shot. Law enforcement from all different agencies start swarming into the school.

Two of them were plainclothes officers, if I recall correctly, one of them was Border Patrol and other was another federal agency. I don’t remember the name of it. But these two cops in playing close with their guns out saw each other and one of them shot the other. Now that’s just a mistake. I mean, he didn’t shoot him out of malice. He shot him because he was coming to an active shooter situation and there was what appeared to be an active shooter. So it’s not uncommon for cops to do this to each other. And that doesn’t make it a crime. That just makes it an accident, assuming the perception was a reasonable perception.

So if you don’t want to be shot by a cop, don’t present yourself as an imminent deadly force threat. Keep your hands in sight. Don’t be reaching for a weapon. If you’ve got a weapon, get rid of it, drop it as quickly as possible, so that you minimize the prospects that you’ll be reasonably even if mistakenly reasonably perceived as a deadly force threat to the officer because if you are perceived that way, you are extremely likely to get shot.

Stephen pelisse on Facebook tells me Philando was the driver. The video was mirrored Yeah, that could be Steven, thanks for that heads up. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, Mike says that’s exactly what I’m asking my driver’s license. I hand over my CCW at the same time.

That’s not necessarily a bad idea. I’m not sure. I mean, we don’t do gun law here. We don’t do permit law here at law self defense. We do use a force law.

Certainly if you’re in a jurisdiction where you’re obliged to tell the officer that you’re lawfully carrying concealed, like in Ohio, for example, you may as well hand over your permit. You’re about to tell them you got a gun anyway, I can tell you, I’ve been pulled over in circumstances where I’ve been carrying concealed in jurisdictions where I was not obliged to report that I was armed. And I didn’t, just because I didn’t want to escalate things, anything more than a routine traffic stop.

Had I been asked to get out of the car, I certainly would have told the officer before I got out of the car that I had a gun on my person, I don’t want the cop to discover the gun by accident, that would be bad. But I’ve never been asked to get out of the car during a traffic stop. So it’s just never come up. So I think what is best, under different circumstances, I have to leave to your best judgment.

Obviously, if the law requires you to report, then, you know, the law requires you to report

I don’t have a bunch more to say about that.

So here’s another interesting point.

So Steven, who mentioned that the Philandro Castile video was reversed, married, also says Philandro was also on video using marijuana shortly before this incident. So he was it was unlawful for him to possess the gun, whether he had a concealed carry permit or not.

And that may be true or not true. I have no idea. But I can tell you this, it’s irrelevant to the officers use of force decision making when the officer didn’t know that Philando had smoked pot a few days before. So that knowledge could not have informed that lack of knowledge could not have informed the officers decision making the officers decision making was being informed by the information he actually possessed the Philando had a gun and what he perceived Philando doing apparently reaching for the gun.

That information that cop did not know could not be relevant to his use of force decision making. It could very well be relevant to whether or not Philando was in fact lawfully privileged to have the gun but that that does not play a role in the lawfulness of the officers decision to fire the shot.

Yeah, so Ken, Granada here on Facebook says How can you keep yourself from getting shot by the police don’t answer the door like the guy in Arizona.

This was the case we covered a week or two ago. Two police were called to an apartment late at night Stark there was apparently are purportedly or it was claimed some domestic thing going on who knows the truth certainly the cops showing up to the scene don’t know the truth. They only know what they’re told when they totally go to respond to the scene.

The door opens up there’s cops on either side of the doorway. The man is standing now in the open doorway from inside of the apartment. And he’s got a gun in his hand and a flashlight in his face from one of the cops. The cop with the flashlight, starts yelling gun to that effect. Our hands hands hands I forget the exact but he was alarmed obviously. Unfortunately, the second cop was effectively behind the suspect. All he could really see was his partner’s violent reaction. alarmed reaction to the circumstance, he drew his own gun and shot the apartment dweller.

Now it appears that the facts were that the apartment dweller was showed up to the door with a gun because it was late. Maybe it’s a dangerous neighborhood. And he wanted to answer the door armed is there’s nothing strictly speaking illegal about that. He didn’t do anything unlawful. But he presented himself as an apparent deadly force threat to the officer or by extension to the second officer who actually shot him from behind with imperfect but based on the circumstances, all the information he had to work with.

So you don’t you look folks I carry again, for personal protection, I have my entire adult life. I’m a gun guy just like all of you. But with that comes responsibility of making sure that you don’t present yourself in such a manner that you appear to be an eminent deadly force threat to somebody because that is a good way to get shot.

Okay, let’s see. I’ll go through the questions one more time to see what’s popped in. And other than that, we’re right at the top of the hour. So good timing, folks. Congratulations. I always appreciate it. When you guys help keep me on track. Before I do close out while I give you a last opportunity to put some questions. I do want to remind all of you that very shortly, October 3, we’re having our last Law of Self Defense ADVANCED Course. On Saturday, October 3.

Law of Self Defense ADVANCED Live Online Class:  Sat., Oct. 3

This is the LAST webinar-based ADVANCED Live Online Course for at least the next six months, folks, so if you miss this one it’s really going to be quite a wait until you can attend the next one.

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I’d folks I think that is just about it. I don’t see. Brian asked Where can I find a fact based description of the events surrounding the Brianna Taylor shooting? Brian, we just put up a post on it today. I won’t say it’s comprehensive, but it includes, you know, the Attorney General. In Kentucky just an hour long press conference, about three minutes of that hour long press conference is really all you need to know about these events. In order to understand that the officers acted lawfully. I’ve taken the three minutes that’s relevant to that hour long press meeting and put it in the blog post today, you’re commenting on the membership site. So I know you’re a member. So I would urge you to take a look at that. If you have more questions after that. Just ask them in the comments. So that blog post, I’m sure other people share the same questions. I’ll be happy to answer it then.

Oh, James, I guess who asked about why are no knock warrants increasing? Says he’s quoting a criminologist at some University saying they’ve increased from 3081 to 50,000 2005. And that information is from Wikipedia. Well, frankly, James, I’m not prepared to spend a lot of time commenting on anything that’s sourced to Wikipedia. Or frankly, some unknown academic, I would need to actually look at his methodology and I don’t have the time or interest to do that.

And it wouldn’t change my opinion anyway. I think no knock warrants are generally speaking, bad public policy and should be strongly discouraged except into the most egregious of circumstances.

Okay, folks, all right. In that case, I will begin to say goodbye. Remember, you carry against your heart to kill that’s certainly why I carry a gun so I’m hard to kill my family’s hard to kill. Make sure you also know the law so that you’re hard to convict Hi, folks. I’m attorney Andrew Branca for Law of Self Defense.

Until next time, stay safe.