If you own or carry a firearm for self-defense, then you are an armed defender. An armed defender is willing to protect themselves or others from a serious physical threat by using force, including deadly force, if required. Bluntly stated, an armed defender is willing to kill in self-defense—but that is not the goal of personal protection. Firearms instructor Steve Moses says, “The objective is not to kill that person. Unfortunately, if you need to stop that person as quickly as possible, stopping them with a firearm can cause death.”
The problem for armed defenders is that not every self-defense scenario justifies the use of deadly force. Legally, your use of force must be proportionate to the threat you face. The most controversial cases we’ll explore throughout The 36 Lessons involve defenders using deadly force against unarmed attackers. While fists and feet can maim and kill, the true nature and severity of the threat posed by an unarmed attacker can be ambiguous. Meeting an ambiguous threat with a firearm creates difficult legal challenges. Criminal defense attorney Don West says, “If you are the one who is armed, and you’re dealing with an unarmed person who is extremely aggressive, even if they are physically capable and truly threatening, you are still at a disadvantage legally.” The problem of using a firearm against an ambiguous threat is something we call “the armed defender’s dilemma.”
Homicide investigators, prosecutors, judges, and juries often look unfavorably upon people who “bring a gun to a fist fight.” Craig Douglas, a retired undercover narcotics cop and founder of the self-defense training organization ShivWorks, says, “Many people, when they start their journey, they get a pistol, they start carrying it, and that’s the only tool they have for solving problems, and then every problem looks like a ‘shoot’ problem.” Armed defenders who want to protect themselves while minimizing the legal jeopardy associated with using deadly force must develop other skills for managing potential threats.
One of the skills armed defenders can develop is situational awareness, which allows them to identify and avoid potentially hostile situations before they become life-threatening. Armed defenders can learn to de-escalate a confrontation using verbal cues—a skill Craig Douglas calls “verbal jujitsu.” Legendary lawman Chuck Haggard preaches the benefits of OC spray (pepper spray) as an effective, less-lethal tactic for deterring attackers. These are just some alternatives an armed defender can use to thwart a potential threat before resorting to deadly force. We’ll explore these alternatives in the lessons ahead, but what’s more important than the specific tactics is the self-defense mindset that informs them.
Claude Werner, a retired Army captain and respected firearms instructor, says, “Our goal in personal protection is to force a break in contact. We want them to go away, or we want to go away. One or the other.” Claude’s concept of breaking contact with an aggressor helps armed defenders adopt a self-defense mindset designed to prevent what he calls “negative outcomes.” Being prosecuted or convicted of murder for defending yourself is a negative outcome. Killing an unarmed stranger who turned out not to be a threat is a negative outcome. Of course, being killed or maimed at the hands of a deranged attacker is a decidedly negative outcome.
As we move through The 36 Lessons, we’ll explore dozens of self-defense encounters that ended with negative outcomes. I’ve been told that a wise person learns from their mistakes, and a wiser person learns from other people’s mistakes. In self-defense, the consequences of making a mistake include death and prison. The stakes are too high for armed defenders to learn from their own mistakes, so it’s better if we study the mistakes of others so we can understand their hard learned lessons. You’ll discover there is no shortage of controversial self-defense shootings to learn from.
From a tactical perspective, Steve Moses says, “Breaking contact can be anything I do to cause a pause in the action to the extent that I can create distance, or get behind a barrier in a room, or drive off. If that’s not available, it may be that I have to take action, whether it’s verbal or physical, to stop that person from making contact with me.” For Lesson 1, we’ll explore three self-defense cases that span the spectrum of tactical options that Steve describes. First, we’ll go to Clearwater, Florida, where an armed defender was able to “cause a pause” in the action, but failed to take that opportunity to end the confrontation. Then we’ll go to Dallas, Texas, where an off-duty police officer breached the protection of a closed door and walked into a preventable tragedy. Finally, we’ll go to North Carolina, where an armed defender shot an attacker after making multiple attempts to break contact, and we’ll see how his efforts affected the jury’s verdict at his murder trial.
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In 2018, at a convenience store in Clearwater, Florida, Michael Drejka confronted Britany Jacobs for improperly parking in a handicapped parking space. When Jacobs’ partner, Markeis McGlockton, came out of the store, he saw Drejka arguing with her, standing a few steps away from Jacobs’ open driver side window. Security camera footage shows McGlockton walking swiftly towards Drejka and violently shoving him to the ground. As Drejka scrambles to a sitting position, McGlockton steps closer, looming above him. Prone and unable to escape—fearing McGlockton would press the attack—Drejka draws his pistol and points it at his attacker’s chest.
The security footage reveals that once McGlockton sees the pistol, he takes a few steps backwards. McGlockton’s demeanor changes. His threatening posture melts away. Drejka pauses for a moment, and then he fires a single round. Mortally wounded, McGlockton clutches his chest and scrambles into the convenience store. There, a second camera captures him falling to the ground, where he dies at the feet of his five-year-old son.
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri declined to charge Michael Drejka, citing Florida’s stand-your-ground law—although he did express reservations at a press conference where he told reporters, “I’m a big believer in this adage that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. This case may be an example of that.” He also referenced the security footage that showed Drejka pause before firing. “That pause gives me pause,” he said.
Sheriff Gualtieri didn’t get the final word on charging Drejka. After the press conference, Gualtieri turned the investigation over to State Attorney Bernie McCabe. McCabe found evidence that Drejka had frequent disputes at the convenience store and that he had threatened other drivers in the past. The State Attorney felt Drejka had been looking for a fight, and Markis McGlockton finally gave him one. McCabe charged Drejka with manslaughter.
A year later, Drejka stood trial for the shooting of Markis McGlockton. The jury deliberated for six and a half hours. After the first hour, as a juror later told reporters, the panel was split. However, after watching the 11-second surveillance video “at least two or three hundred times,” jurors settled on a unanimous verdict: guilty. Juror Timothy Kleinmann said, “He had time to think, ‘Do I really have to kill this man?’ And no, he didn’t, but he chose to.” An alternate juror who witnessed the entire trial said, “The defendant had enough time to make the decision that once he saw the victim retreating, that he did not have to pull the trigger.” Another alternate juror agreed and told reporters, “I think he had the opportunity not to kill him.”
For an armed defender, breaking contact often means creating the opportunity to avoid killing a potential attacker. When Drejka pulled his pistol and pointed it, McGlockton stepped back. Drejka’s defensive display of his firearm ended the attack. He successfully broke contact. As Steve Moses would say, Drejka “caused a pause” in the action. But Drejka failed to take advantage of the break in the attack and fired anyway. It was a mistake, and the jurors agreed that mistake made him guilty of manslaughter. The judge sentenced the 49-year-old defendant to twenty years in prison.
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On September 6, 2018, a little more than one year before her high-profile murder trial, off-duty Dallas police officer Amber Guyger returned home, exhausted after a 14-hour shift. She parked her vehicle in the four-story garage adjacent to her apartment building, walked down the hallway, and found the apartment door unlocked. She heard shuffling inside. Concerned, Guyger entered the darkened apartment and encountered a “large silhouette.” She issued commands, but the intruder did not respond. He came toward her. Guyger fired twice, striking the man once in the chest.
The recording of Guyger’s 9-1-1 call captures her horror as she realizes she accidentally entered the wrong apartment. Amber Guyger didn’t shoot an intruder; she was the intruder. She miscounted the floors in the parking garage when she parked after her long shift, and she mistakenly entered her upstairs neighbor’s apartment and fatally shot 26-year-old Botham Jean in his own home. During the 9-1-1 call, Guyger pleads with dispatchers to send EMS. She repeats 19 times: “I thought it was my apartment.”
Emergency responders took Botham Jean to a nearby hospital, where he succumbed to his wounds. After a three-day investigation, prosecutors charged Guyger with manslaughter. Later, after the story of a white police officer shooting an unarmed black man in his own home made national headlines, a grand jury indicted Guyger for murder. On October 1, 2019, a jury found her guilty, and the next day, they sentenced her to 10 years in prison.
At her criminal trial, lead prosecutor Jason Hermus cross-examined the former Dallas police officer when she took the stand. According to reporting by The Dallas Morning News, the prosecutor asked Guyger, “When you aimed and pulled the trigger at Mr. Jean—shooting him in center mass, right where you are trained—you intended to kill Mr. Jean?”
“I did,” Guyger replied. It was the wrong answer. The goal of self-defense is not to kill an attacker; it is to break contact.
Guyger probably didn’t mean that she intended to kill Botham Jean. The prosecutor had once served as a police officer himself. He would have known that police training teaches officers to aim for center mass with the intent to stop the attacker, not to kill them. That may be what Guyger meant, but it’s not what she said, and now, because of her testimony—and myriad other mistakes—she’s a convicted murderer.
Had Guyger adopted Claude Werner’s mindset of breaking contact, she likely wouldn’t have entered the apartment when she heard movement inside. Opening a door to confront a potential threat is the opposite of breaking contact. When she took the stand at her criminal trial, Guyger told jurors, “I was scared whoever was inside of my apartment was going to kill me.” Prosecutors argued, however, that once Guyger suspected someone was in the apartment, she could have backed away and used her police radio to call for support. If she had taken a moment to pause before entering the apartment, she might have recognized she was on the wrong floor. Rather than BREAK contact with a potential threat, Guyger decided to INITIATE contact, and it resulted in the tragic death of an innocent man and a 10-year prison sentence for her.
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As a consultant for CCW Safe, I had the opportunity to assist during jury selection for the Stephen Maddox trial. Stephen faced murder charges for fatally shooting Kelly Wilkerson on the night of October 17, 2015. Don West, as National Trial Counsel for CCW Safe, served as an advisor to the local attorneys who defended Maddox’s self-defense claim. In the subsequent years, I’ve met Stephen and talked to him about his experience. Stephen encouraged me to use his story to help other armed defenders learn the lessons from his shooting.
Stephen Maddox, a husband and father, worked as an executive at a global logistics company. On weekends, Stephen embraced his role as a founding member of the Raleigh, North Carolina Chapter of the Kings of the South motorcycle club. A former member of the club, Kelly Wilkerson harbored a grudge against Stephen stemming from a trivial disagreement over the club’s rules. Wilkerson’s grudge festered for months until it erupted in violence on an autumn night at Bob’s Convention Center during the Queens of Chrome 10th Anniversary Motorcycle Rally.
Trial testimony revealed that Wilkerson started the altercation that eventually led to his death. His own wife testified that around 9:15 that night, Wilkerson saw Stephen enter a restroom. As Wilkerson moved to follow Stephen, his wife grabbed him by the elbow. “Don’t do this,” she said. “Let this go.” But Wilkerson went anyway. Stephen said he encountered Wilkerson on his way out of the restroom. At six-foot-two and 290 pounds, Wilkerson completely blocked the door. Stephen said, “I’m right here. What are you going to do?” Wilkerson answered with his fists. The fight quickly went to the floor, where Stephen found himself pinned beneath Wilkerson’s substantially larger frame.
Several men intervened and pulled Wilkerson away, allowing Stephen to flee. Shortly after the first attack, Wilkerson caught up with Stephen and, once again, fought him to the ground. Stephen escaped a second time thanks to bystanders who came to his aid.
After the second attack, Stephen retreated to his motorcycle. “My mind was racing,” he testified at trial. “I was exhausted. My body and mind were somewhere they had never been before.” The violent encounters left him physically shaken. He said his legs felt like rubber, and he didn’t feel he could safely ride his motorcycle. Driving away wasn’t a safe option. Stephen initiated a 9-1-1 call, but hung up abruptly when he thought he saw a friend approaching. Not long after, alone and fearful that Wilkerson would find him again, Stephen armed himself with a .44 revolver that he kept in a locked saddle bag on his bike.
Stephen’s fears proved well-founded when Wilkerson rumbled up on his motorcycle. After Wilkerson dismounted and rushed toward him, Stephen fired two shots. They didn’t stop Wilkerson, who tackled Stephen to the ground a third time. Don West, noting the physical disparity between Stephen and Wilkerson, says, “It was clear Maddox couldn’t take Wilkerson without a weapon. Stephen would be done for.” Unable to fight his way free, Stephen fired the remaining three rounds at point-blank range, hoping to break his attackers’ grip. It worked, and he escaped around the corner of a building, re-engaged with 9-1-1, and reported the attack and the shooting.
Wilkerson died of his wounds, and ultimately, Stephen was charged with murder. At trial, prosecutors told jurors, “This was a man on a sink and destroy mission to kill Kelly Wilkerson.” The jury did not buy it. After just two hours of deliberation, twelve jurors voted unanimously to acquit Stephen on all charges. Despite the picture that prosecutors tried to paint, Stephen never intended to kill Kelly Wilkerson; he simply wanted to stop the attack and get away. Thanks to the help of bystanders, Stephen managed to break contact with his attacker twice, but during the third attack, with nobody to intervene, Stephen realized he had exhausted all of his options, and only then, he resorted to deadly force.
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Don West says, “I can tell you as a criminal defense lawyer, if you have made the effort, if you have looked for an escape route and taken it, if you have done some things to attempt to de-escalate, including the use of less-lethal force, and that evidence gets before a jury, then the jury may say, ‘Well, shoot. He did everything he could do, and it was unsuccessful, and what choice did he have in that situation?’”
A North Carolina jury looked at Stephen Maddox’s actions, and they decided the defender did everything he reasonably could have to avoid the fatal encounter with Kelly Wilkerson, and they found his use of force justified. Conversely, a Texas jury saw that Amber Guyger missed every opportunity to avoid the catastrophic misunderstanding that led to the death of Botham Jean, and they branded her a murderer. Michael Drejka managed to cause a pause in the violent attack he incurred, and a Florida jury decided that his failure to capitalize on that break in contact made him guilty of manslaughter. Tactically, each of these defenders could have done things differently to produce a different outcome. However, had Michael Drejka and Amber Guyger adopted the same break-contact mindset that governed Stephen Maddox’s actions, they would likely have avoided the shootings that led to their convictions.
Steve Moses says, “Any attempt to break contact on your part goes a long way towards disambiguating the situation. ‘Does this person actually have the intent and ability to kill me?’” If the answer is “no,” a defender should be able to escape safely. If the answer is “yes,” then an armed defender can decide to use deadly force with more confidence. Don West says, “From a criminal defense lawyer’s standpoint, anything that you have done to avoid, to break contact, to de-escalate—to use something less than deadly force as your first choice in this confrontation—simply looks good in court.”
The solution to the armed defender’s dilemma is using avoidance tactics, de-escelation techniques, and less-lethal force to break contact with a potential aggressor before resorting to deadly force. As an armed defender, committing to a mindset of breaking contact reduces the chance you will have to take a life, and it might be the decisive factor that protects your freedom should deadly force become unavoidable.
