Audio of Podcast
Podcast Summary
When you carry a gun, it's easy to assume the people you run into will react the way you would. That assumption can get you hurt or land you in court. The person in front of you may be drunk, high, injured, scared or simply angry, and their choices may make no sense to you.
Host Shawn Vincent is joined by CCW Safe instructor Steve Moses, Don West, CCW Safe's National Trial Counsel, and John Hearne, a law enforcement veteran and firearms and self-defense instructor. Together they talk about building an accurate "mental map" of how a situation might unfold, and leaving room on that map for people who aren't thinking clearly.
Hearne describes a mental map as your picture of how reality will play out. It's usually less dramatic than people imagine: he says roughly 90% of the time, drawing the gun quickly and confidently ends the problem. He also reminds listeners why they carry: not to impose your will on others, but so others can't impose theirs on you. His quick test: who is going to die in the next three seconds if I don't act?
Steve explains why confronting strangers over small things is risky. People are raised differently and react differently, and some see any hint of passivity as an opening. Hearne compares it to throwing snowballs off a mountain. Most won't cause an avalanche, but each one could. "Don't take that invitation to step into their bizarro world."
The panel then walks through two cases that began with pounding on a front door. In Dearborn Heights, Michigan, Ted Wafer woke around 4 a.m. to violent pounding at his doors. Expecting a break-in, he opened the door with a shotgun and killed Renisha McBride, a young woman who had been in a car crash and was likely looking for help. Hearne points out that Wafer's mental map left no room for someone needing help, and that you can talk to someone through a closed door. He also suggests replacing the screws in your exterior doors with high-quality 3-inch deck screws so a door is much harder to kick in.
In the Charles Dorsey case, a man visiting the house next door came to Dorsey's door by mistake after midnight. Dorsey told him to go to the end of the driveway and called police, then unlocked the deadbolt while waiting for police. The man forced his way through the knob lock, and Dorsey shot him. Dorsey was never charged. Don notes that neither homeowner did anything clearly wrong, but neither did everything right. Had the deadbolt stayed locked, the man would have had to break the door down first. Hearne adds that he likely would have realized then that he was at the wrong house. Steve adds that retreating to a defensible spot, like a corner of a bedroom, buys time to sort out who is coming in. As Hearne puts it, "Distance gives you time, time gives you options."
The conversation then turns to the road. In Lapeer, Michigan, a driver turned back to continue an argument and pointed a revolver at another driver, expecting him to back down. Instead, the other man grabbed a crowbar and attacked. Steve explains why that reaction may not be as strange as it seems: some people have had guns pointed at them before, and it doesn't scare them the way you'd expect. In Davie, Florida, a Marine veteran apologized for cutting another driver off. The other driver came at him with a gun anyway, and both men died. And Alexander Weiss, discussed in Lesson 6, was dared to shoot by a man who told him to go ahead and do it. Don's reminder: "That would be the wrong decision to actually fulfill their wish."
Hearne's advice for a fender bender: you still need to stop, but call 911 right away so everything is recorded. If the other driver comes out yelling, be ready for a different path than swapping insurance information. A good mental map, he says, includes those decision points, not just a picture of what might happen.
Don ties it back to the courtroom. If you ever have to use force, you'll need to explain your thinking. "If you can explain what you were thinking and why, and if it was reasonable to you, it's much more likely it's going to be reasonable to them."
Steve closes with the key point: "They may not and probably don't think like us. And so anything we can do to not exacerbate the situation, we need to be working on that the entire time if possible."
In our next episode, Lesson 14: don't leave a place of safety to confront a threat.
