Shawn Vincent:
Hey everybody, I’m Shawn Vincent. Thanks for tuning into the podcast. We’ve made it now to episode eight of our 36 Lessons for Armed Defenders. Today, we’re talking about the idea of “Don’t Get Emotionally Hijacked.” It could almost just as easily be our “How to Avoid Road Rage” podcast. We’ll talk about how that kind of passion gets sparked, and how road rage can also spill out into other avenues of an armed defender’s life. We’re joined as always by Don West. He’s National Trial Council for CCW Safe and a veteran criminal defense attorney. Also, our friend Steve Moses, who is a well-regarded firearms instructor. Let’s get right to it. Here’s our discussion about how to avoid becoming emotionally hijacked.
So we’re moving along on our 36 Lessons for Armed Defenders, and we’ve just completed kind of a two-part discussion about what we’ve been calling the window of justification. The idea is that in a dynamic self-defense scenario, when you’re facing an aggressor, there’s a moment where the ability, the opportunity, and the intent of the aggressor align, where an armed defender may very well have a reasonable belief that they face the imminent threat of great bodily harm and death, which is the threshold for the justification of the use of deadly force. And so there is a period in confrontation where it might be true that a couple of those things are in place, that maybe that there is an intent and an ability from an attacker, but maybe the opportunity’s not yet there yet—like they’re too far away or they’re behind a barrier. And our Lesson 6 was Don’t Shoot Before the Threat is Imminent.
So if all those three things haven’t come together, the window of justification hasn’t opened yet. And we illustrated some cases where armed defenders made mistakes by firing too soon in anticipation of that third piece of the stool coming into play. And then in Lesson 7, our last episode, we talked about what happens when perhaps all three of those elements came together, the window of justification opened, but before it was required, something happened. The attacker changed positions. They saw that you had a gun, and they retreated. Whatever it was, one of those elements falls out, and you’re no longer facing the immediate threat of great bodily harm or death. The window closes, but we’ve seen armed defenders, and I think very sympathetically and naturally get swept up in the moment, and they shoot too late. They shot after the window had closed.
Steve, tell me if you agree with this from what we’ve seen: I have a hypothesis that a lot of the people who shoot too soon do so because they are not confident in their abilities, and they let fear get the better of them. I think some people who shoot too late, maybe, have a gap in their training, but also because they let anger or some sort of desire for revenge override their decision-making.
Steve Moses:
Yes, that all sounds reasonable to me. I mean, I think it’s very important to be confident in your skills. I also think it is very important to have a plan in place in advance, which means: I’ve given some consideration as to what may happen, how I should deal with it, perhaps. I’ve sought training, so I do have a plan in place if something like this happens, and if I have the accompanying skills that I know that will allow me to respond quickly with a handgun and then assess what’s going on, I think the chances are that someone’s going to feel like they might need to respond too early have been significantly diminished.
Shawn Vincent:
Yeah. That’s why we made Get Training our lesson number two. It’s so fundamental, and I think this is a great example of where that comes into play. Don, you take a lot of phone calls from folks who have just been in a self-defense event—or had some use of their firearm—and have legal concerns. So Don, you’re in a position where you take a lot of phone calls from members or from folks who have just had an incident, and I know—I’ve sat next to you for some of those phone calls—and I know that sometimes … Well, let’s just face it, justified or not, there’s a lot of emotion going on at that moment when someone’s experienced this.
Don West:
Yeah. They’re still feeling the emotion of the moment. They’re still processing what happened. They’ve got this rush of adrenaline, typically. They don’t really necessarily know all of the details. In fact, I find, as is commonly noted with some of the research, that they get facts wrong, they’re mistaken about some of the important stuff, where they fill in things that didn’t happen with things they thought did. It’s a highly charged emotional moment for sure. And that’s sometimes minutes or even hours after the incident itself when I talk with them.
Shawn Vincent:
And so Steve, you introduced me to a term that I thought explains this phenomenon really well—when there’s a visceral emotional response that overrides somebody’s logical thinking. Remind me what that term is and how you came about it in your work.
Steve Moses:
Well, I mean, if you’re talking about being emotionally hijacked, that is one of the terms that I’ve used, and that is that something has occurred that has caused you to disengage your rational brain and instead turn the controls over to your emotional brain. And these are all terms I got from John Hearn, in which you’re kind of in a mode where it’s freeze, fight, or flight. And if you don’t have an opportunity to engage your rational brain and ask yourself, am I really in danger, or am I about to do something dangerous, or it could possibly turn out to be unlawful, then you’re subject to making some mistakes that you and your family may very well pay for the rest of your lives.
Shawn Vincent:
So you said some terms there that I really responded to it’s freeze,
Steve Moses:
Fight.
Shawn Vincent:
Or flight.
Steve Moses:
Yes.
Shawn Vincent:
Tell me about … I think I know where you’re getting at with the freeze because I think we’ve encountered some cases where there was a clear opportunity for the defender to really just turn around and run away or somehow make a strategic egress, but there’s something about, you called it frozen feet before, Don.
Don West:
Yes. Yeah. I think I got that from Steve, maybe at one point. Yeah.
Shawn Vincent:
Tell me about frozen feet, Steve.
Steve Moses:
Well, that is one of the key responses that we have anytime that we view ourselves as being in danger. And freeze in itself is not necessarily a bad emotion, and people’s lives have been saved by freezing in situations in which they spotted a predator including even people and they know we just inherently know that predators are attracted to motion and by freezing we diminish any emotion we are less likely to be spotted if indeed the person or someone else wasn’t looking at us at the very moment. The problem with freezing is, if we don’t have anything else to draw on, whether it is flight or fight, then people may be paralyzed and unable to do anything different. And in many instances, you see people freeze, it’s something they do, and you will see people literally, who they know that mean harm to them, walk straight up to them and successfully assault them
Shawn Vincent:
Yeah, that’s fascinating. And then flight seems obvious enough, and I think there are a lot of times where we wish the armed defenders that we research or interact with had fled if they could have safely done so. But Don, there’s something in some folks that we’ve studied that triggers that just makes flight seem unacceptable to them. They get caught in some other loop.
Don West:
Yeah. And I think this part of the discussion is really important, maybe in some ways to distinguish from that sort of, what would the word be, automatonic, a brain-driven reaction that you have very little if any control over, at least at the moment. Now, maybe more training and experience and dealing with the kinds of situations that may trigger that kind of response will help you manage it better. But I think what you’re talking about with the guy that just won’t back down or the guy that thinks he has to teach the other guy a lesson, to me, that’s a different kind of emotional hijacking. I don’t think that’s necessarily brain stem-driven. I think that’s ego-driven. I think that’s the guy that forgets his training, that forgets why he is … what the purpose of self-defense is to start with, and loses track of concepts of de-escalation, and avoidance, and the goal being to break contact.
Instead, the emotionally hijacked aspect of that is, I think, they become overwhelmed by the emotion of it and respond irrationally. They may even know they’re responding irrationally, and maybe they think the other guy may respond irrationally too, up to a point, until they can both shake their fingers at each other and walk away having proven their point, whatever that is. We see that day after day after day in our road rage-type cases. You see a guy who is clearly emotionally hijacked if he’s the one following the guy so he can give him a piece of his mind. If he’s the guy putting himself at risk of harm, putting himself in a potentially deadly situation in order to prove his point or to win the day, that’s in my mind the real, real danger of being emotionally hijacked in that ego context.
Steve Moses:
If I could talk a little bit more about flight. These same peoples that will engage in altercations with other people because they’ve been enraged—if they were attacked by a charging pit bull, a bear, or a car was about to strike them, they would opt for flight. They would make an attempt to get away from there. But one thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that the reason you are not leaving there is because you don’t recognize the situation that you are about to get in is actually dangerous and it may seem like, okay, it’s not going to be any big deal here, but by the same token, if violence breaks out and you use a gun against another person, or they use it against you, the consequences of that are very serious and so they don’t take into consideration. What I’m about to get in can have these long-term ramifications that can affect my personal freedom, my financial freedom, and my health or even my life.
Shawn Vincent:
Isn’t there some pride baked into that? Isn’t the distinction between running away from a fight with a grizzly bear and running away from a fight with a guy pride? Because no one’s going to make fun of you for turning down … not standing your ground against the grizzly bear, but if it’s your neighbor, for example, or some jerk on the highway that … I see you respond there, Don. Pride steps in here, doesn’t it?
Don West:
That’s what it seems like to me. And I’m as subject to the emotional burst in a road rage incident like anybody else. In fact, I’m pretty thankful that we’re doing this kind of stuff and have been doing it over the years because it’s given me pause. I think about it a lot more. I actually temper my reactions. I’m a whole lot slower at making a gesture or at honking the horn or putting myself in a situation where I’m vulnerable simply because I know, having taken those calls and talked to you guys, just how truly dangerous it can be. Not that it always will be, and you may feel like you’ve proven your point that you’re the better driver at the end of it. On the other hand, the person may very well block you in somewhere, get out of the car, and come at you. I’ve seen all of those scenarios.
I guess that’s what you’re saying, Shawn, and I think that’s what I’m trying to reinforce, is that there’s sort of an ego trap. Isn’t that what pride is in many ways? The notion that you are trapped by your own ego to respond in an ego-driven way rather than in the mindful self-defense, the self-defense mindset that we talk about, which is to save yourself, to avoid the conflict whenever possible, and to go home safely.
And all of this ego-driven, “I’ll teach you a lesson,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is counteractive to that and counterproductive and results in these kinds of emotionally explosive cases that, if they don’t result in somebody getting hurt, almost always results in somebody going to jail. And I assure you in most road rage cases, the guy that goes to jail is the guy that had the gun, no matter how good a driver he is and how wrong the other guy was to yell at him or to pull up alongside him and roll down the window to give him a piece of his mind. The guy that displays the gun is the one that’s going to go to jail with few exceptions. Obviously, that’s not always the case, but that’s the pattern that quickly develops when you introduce a gun to a verbal argument.
What makes it really, really complicated, of course, is that in these road rage situations, both people are armed with deadly weapons right off the bat in the sense that they’re both driving motor vehicles, which clearly are and can be a deadly weapon depending on the manner in which they’re driven and what the intent is. So there’s always that aspect of it as well, which I think in the minds of many people that stay engaged and continue to pursue this, is that they are claiming that they were threatened with the deadly weapon, to wit, the car, as opposed to something else, and their response is to pull alongside the guy and display a firearm to tell them to back off. And that typically is a problem.
Shawn Vincent:
Steve, I saw you nodding to a number of things that Don said there.
Steve Moses:
And I think some of it goes beyond ego, and it’s just an inherent code of honor that we have seen not only in our nation and our civilization but others in that if someone affronts you, most especially in front of others, even if you are scared and you know better, you know better, you will go ahead and engage. And Doug Deaton has talked about that in many instances over in Plano where people have felt like they’ve been dishonored and literally were bringing a knife out and stabbing other people to death crying the whole time because they really didn’t want to do it, but they knew that their code of honor called for it and they weren’t willing to bring that kind of perceived shame on themselves or their families.
Don West:
There’s something to that, isn’t there? That’s very, very real. How many kids have been shot and killed over scuffing someone’s new shoes? That sort of disrespect. Isn’t that the other side of the code of honor? You can’t get away with disrespecting me because that’s who I am, and I won’t let you make me a lesser person. It’s all that external ego stuff.
Steve Moses:
Yes, it is.
Shawn Vincent:
But Don, if not armed defenders, who’s going to tell all these jerks what bad drivers they are? I mean, someone has got to tell these people …
Don West:
They certainly had it coming, didn’t they? And that’s the interesting … They do absolutely. Everyone I’ve yelled at or waved two in a road rage type scenario clearly had it coming. I’m clearly the better driver, always have been the better driver, and I just needed a chance to prove that, but more importantly, to make them acknowledge it. I think that’s really what you’re trying to do here, is make them acknowledge that yes, they were wrong, and that you are the superior driver. Thank you very much!
Shawn Vincent:
Last week we tried to record this podcast and I had a technical glitch, so we had to postpone it to this week, and I was driving home still a little annoyed that we’d had the technical problem and we didn’t get the podcast recorded, and I’m at this intersection that’s known to … people behave poorly at this intersection. And I drive an SUV, a Subaru Forester that is this forest green, and I’ve learned that it makes my car camouflage, especially in my neighborhood where there’s a lot of landscaping, a lot of trees and shadows, and I just know it—that people literally pull out having looked my way, didn’t see my car because they pull out and they look back and they see me and their faces show that they had no idea that they were pulling out in front of me. So I’ve actually decided I’m going to, when my lease is up, I’m going to buy this and have it painted orange, which matches my logo and is the most conspicuous color that I’m willing to drive.
As a result, it has made me an extra-defensive driver because I’m looking for people to make mistakes in front of me, and there was this car at this intersection, and I thought there was a chance that he didn’t see me, and he didn’t. He pulled right at me, and I was able to stop in time. I think because I was anticipating it, otherwise I would have just creamed into this guy, and I thought: had there been an accident, it would have been absolutely his fault. If we called the police, they’d look at it, and he’d get the ticket. I could probably claim against his insurance, however that breaks down, it’d be his fault. But I thought about how little consolation that would be compared to the colossal pain in the ass that I was now going to experience in having to … First of all, I’m late to getting back home, where I already told my wife “I’m coming home early, let’s have dinner.”
It screws up my whole night. I have this big insurance nightmare. There could be a personal injury suit that comes out of it, whether it’s my fault or not, I have to be involved in, and all that could take days, weeks, or months to sort out. And if there was a way that I could have seen it coming and tapped on the brakes and avoided it, how great that was. And also for the other jerk who was driving like a moron, right?
And because we had just come from about to record this conversation, and I had all these things in my mind—as mad as I wanted to get instantaneously at that, I just thought, “Oh, I’m getting emotionally hijacked. I need to not worry about this guy. I’m just going to let him go.” And by the time I get home, I’m not going to think about this guy again until a week from now, when I have to actually record this podcast, and it just came back up.
It was truly because of all the work that we’ve done together that has actually made me a calmer driver, because I can say, because I’ve had that moment where I’m like, “This guy needs to be told.”
Don West:
Isn’t that really the key to all of this, in many ways: a self-awareness of sorts? As you were talking, Shawn, it reminded me of a scene from that movie, was it Fried Green Tomatoes? Kathy Bates in the parking lot? Was in it in the parking lot. And she’s being harassed by this young, cute girl who gives her a hard time for being old over a parking space or something. And Kathy Bates’ response was to repeatedly ram her car and tell her, I may be old, but I have good insurance. I have better insurance.
At the risk of repeating myself, I know I’ve told this story before, but not lately. I was trying a lethal, a deadly force self-defense case a few years ago, and during jury selection, we were talking about gun ownership and whether you have a concealed carry permit, and what you think overall of guns, and if you carry one, how you carry it and where you carry it and that sort of thing.
This actual case I was working on occurred in the parking lot of a nightclub. It wasn’t a road rage type case, but the gun that was used in the lethal incident by my client was in the car. So that’s where he retrieved it from during the incident. We were just talking generally about views of self-defense and views about firearm possession and use, and such. And I was talking to a prospective juror about his knowledge of guns, if he carried a gun, and he assured me that he was very pro-self-defense, very pro-Second Amendment, and that he regularly carried a handgun. I asked him if he had one in his car. He goes, “Oh my God, no. No, I would never have a gun in my car because I don’t want one so close to me while I’m driving.” That he knows himself so well that he could not stop himself at that worst possible moment of opening the glove box and grabbing it and ruining his day and perhaps his life.
So he knew himself well enough that he knew he would be emotionally hijacked in the right kind of situation and that he was taking that extra precaution not to be armed so as not to allow that momentary emotional flash to turn into some sort of arrest or tragedy or what have you.
Shawn Vincent:
I’m going to lean on that story and twist it into something that Steve’s taught me through our conversations, and that is … I’ll bet you those are folks who keep the gun in the glove box or the console, right? And here’s where I’m getting at and it ties into the emotionally hijacked thing. A concealed carrier who carries the firearm and has it on them, even if they’re in the car, is somebody who’s trained constantly to understand what it takes to make that firearm ready, and they can do it quickly, and the making it ready is the using of it in a lot of ways. We’ve talked about the difference between defensive display, and we’ll talk more about it in very-soon-recent-to-be-had episodes. But I think there’s a different mindset there where a lot of the …
We’ll talk about like the Gasser case, where Ronald Gasser chased down Joe McKnight in New Orleans after a road rage incident, somebody cuts somebody off. It doesn’t even matter who, and they went back and forth. They were caught on police cameras all down this highway until they ended up at a stoplight at a busy intersection, and Gasser actually gets out of the car and goes and approaches McKnight … No, actually the other way around. McKnight gets out of the car at Gasser’s invitation, comes and leans in the window, and then Gasser decides that that was threatening, and he had his firearm on the seat next to him and he shoots McKnight with the firearm.
I guess what I’m leading up to there is, at some point in that road rage incident, he thought, “I might need my gun for this guy.” And he pulled it out of a bag or a glove compartment or somewhere, and he set it there, whereas I don’t think somebody who carried concealed regularly and had on body carry is going to make a moment where like, “Well, let me take it out and get it ready in case I need it.” It’s a different mindset. I see you nodding your head, Steve.
Steve Moses:
Actually, it’s very common. It’s very common. I don’t need a gun except when I’m out in public, and then under what circumstances? If you ask them that, “Well, I don’t know. I might be robbed in a parking lot.” And I’m like going, “Okay, okay, what else?” Well, I might be carjacked and then, “Well, how do you view this will take place?” And in most instances, people don’t think about it. It’s just, “Well, when I see it, I’ll know. ” And so when a situation like this happens, they’re like going, “Maybe this is one of those scenarios in which I need a gun, I’ll go ahead, and I will make my gun available to me. ” And then this guy goes walking up. I think you’ve probably already kind of set yourself up for potential failure.
Shawn Vincent:
Well, and you talk about having a plan and thinking through it, and I really keyed into something you said there, “Oh, I need this for parking lots.” And remember that Michigan case that we had that we studied, where the guy had actually sent a picture of this Smith & Wesson he had bought to a friend via text and said, “For gas stations” was the idea. He thought, “Oh, there’s a lot of crazy encounters from gas stations. I might need to be armed to protect myself sometime.” So he did, and then lo and behold, weeks or some months later, but not years, he shoots somebody in a parking lot. He actually came back to the parking lot to confront this guy, who had been a bad driver and cut him off coming in the parking lot the wrong way, went down the street a little bit, thought “that guy needs to be taught a lesson,” and he came back around, that guy got a crowbar and attacked him, and he ended up shooting him.
But I think what you’re saying, Steve, is he had a vision of why he’d need this gun, and when something remotely close to that happened, whether consciously or subconsciously, he made that vision a reality.
Steve Moses:
Yeah, this is showtime. He was expecting something to happen, and maybe something did that was not necessarily a violent overtur and responded to that. It was not unlike the shooting in Austin, and I think where the … Well, call him an armed defender was talking about, and I think even texting people or maybe posting that he needed a handgun because he might need to use it against protestors. And indeed he did, and he got charged with murder. I believe he was pardoned, if I’m not mistaken, by our current Governor Abbot. But look at all he went through, but I think he set himself up to fail.
Shawn Vincent:
He had documented that he imagined it. And Don, we have another case too. George Alan Kelly, out on the borderlands, had written a little novella about a rancher who shoots drug cartel people who come across the border on his land and explains his justification to the sheriff. And then what happens to him, but he sees some people crossing his land, and he by all counts, shoots one.
Don West:
A real compelling case. Yeah, got to feel bad for him. He’s minding his own business, trying to be a rancher. He and his wife lived on this huge piece of property, but it was close enough to the border that some of these drug traffickers and human traffickers would run through his property on the way to some other place. And his story to the police after he shot … Well, it’s interesting. It’s not even clear that he shot and killed one of these traffickers, but a trafficker was found dead on his land, and he had been shot in the back. And he had fired his gun in their general direction to run them off, as opposed to shooting at them. The evidence, and the way it was preserved, and frankly, the extent of the investigation left more questions, I think, than answers on how the actual shooting took place.
But what you’re talking about, Shawn, is in the face of all of that, he was a pretty sympathetic guy, and then it turns out that he’d written this novella where he had imagined this entire scenario, and he becomes the armed crusader against these guys. And I don’t know how that played into any prosecutorial decision. I don’t think it was ever offered into evidence. If I’m not mistaken, didn’t he wind up going to trial and the jury being hung, and they decided not to retry him? I think he went completely through the gauntlet.
Shawn Vincent:
I’ll check. I actually think he was acquitted.
Don West:
Ah, okay.
Shawn Vincent:
I’ll check for our readers, and I’ll add a little note at the end. But I think that was one of those scenarios where that jury just knew what was happening at the border, and we’ve seen these happen before. It’s sort of a jury nullification where, by the book, he probably wasn’t justified in his actions. But, I don’t know if the prosecutor could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was his bullet that got that guy. And even if it was, I think that jury had had enough, and they weren’t going to send that guy to jail for that specific incident, and he was acquitted.
Don West:
So that’s the concept of jury nullification, which essentially means that, while the jury may actually believe the accused committed a crime, they aren’t willing to convict that person of that crime in this situation. So they collectively decide …
Shawn Vincent:
As opposed to gubernatorial nullification, like in the Perry case that Steve brought up. Yeah. I mean, that happens, but man, you don’t want to bet on that, do you, Don? That’s not a good legal strategy to hope the jury’s going to feel sorry for you if you act outside the window of justification. And that guy, from what I read, probably spent close to a million dollars on his defense, which was, I think, his life savings. He was old and retired, and I think his last golden years were just completely turned upside down by having to go through that legal ordeal.
Don West:
I think in some ways you could say, Shawn, that case does have an aspect of being emotionally hijacked. I think some of the decision-making he made was questionable because he got emotionally involved, that it clouded his judgment of how he should react to this particular threat. Even if these guys were actually a threat to him, he could have done things so differently that would have, I think, made it clear that he wasn’t intending to commit a crime. He didn’t intend to shoot anybody, and that he was, in fact, the victim. I think it got complicated and somewhat convoluted, and I agree with you whether he got a jury nullification and was acquitted or whether there were enough jurors that were simply not going to convict him, that they hung the jury, and the prosecutor ultimately got the message that it’s not worth retrying. I don’t know.
Steve Moses:
Well, I think luck may have had something to do with it, being that it was on the border. If indeed he was the shooter, he used an AK-47 7.62 by 39 round, highly penetrative round, and the bullet was never recovered. The bullet may have ended up on the other side of the border. And then the second thing is there’s a good chance that perhaps the people who were with the victim also had guns, and I think we may have talked about that with sloppy gun handling, getting fired upon, turning around, and running. There could have been a person behind the guy. There were also some possibilities that I assumed the defense attorney brought up or could have brought up
Shawn Vincent:
Don, you’re very kind in the way that you, when you’re pretty sure I’m wrong, don’t rub my face in it. It was, in fact, a mistrial. The jury couldn’t come to a verdict, and the judge ended up dismissing the case with prejudice.
Don West:
Ah, that means the end of it can’t be retried. A hung jury and a mistrial typically can be retried as many times as they want until there’s a verdict one way or another.
Shawn Vincent:
The judge shut the door on that. But I think where I got that detail wrong is I believe the people who held out, that weren’t going to come around, were the jury nullification kind of folks who just weren’t going to, just weren’t going to convict this guy.Don West:
That makes perfect sense to me. Yeah.
Shawn Vincent:
But I guess the point is: that’s a nightmare. And when we’re talking about the emotionally hijacked, I think part of the argument you have to think in this case was: Did he fire at those guys because he was afraid of them, or did he fire at them because he was angry that here’s another bunch of people illegally trespassing on his property, probably committing a crime? And I think it’s fair to say that often there’s both. I think fear, reasonable fear, and anger, and then even unreasonable fear, can all be present when you’re facing a threat.
Don West:
Exactly. Yeah. An example of that kind of being emotionally hijacked is when the store clerk who’s just been robbed shoots the robber in the back as the robber’s trying to get away. No threat anymore, no legal justification for shooting a fleeing convenience store robber, but they at that point are so consumed by their own anger and the fear that they had just been experiencing that they have that moment or the guy that successfully defends himself. Is it Ersland, the fellow from Oklahoma City, the pharmacist?
Shawn Vincent:
Jerome Ersland,
Don West:
Yeah. Yeah, who incapacitates the young teenaged robber and then, some minutes later, shoots repeatedly—-and you have to figure that’s out of anger. It’s no longer fear, but it’s got to be anger, revenge, what have you.
Shawn Vincent:
After, as you said, he chased his partner out the door and shot at him as he ran down the street.
Don West:
And those are extreme cases, but I just hope that people think about that. We each have our own version and our own susceptibilities and vulnerabilities to being emotionally hijacked, whether it’s the everyday common stuff about raising kids and what they can do to you sometimes, how they can get on your last nerve and you make decisions you wish you hadn’t made at some point—all the way to the life and death scenarios of when you’re confronted by an assailant and attacker of some sort or just some idiot motorist who’s also having a bad day and wants to ruin yours and put you in that situation where you do the damage to yourself. I mean, how do you explain that you follow some guy for four miles as self-defense? Because if you think about it, you’re going to have to explain that somehow if you and this guy connect and somebody shoots somebody else. You’re going to have to explain how this was part of you defending yourself when you’re chasing this guy down the road for 10 miles.
Steve Moses:
Don, was that the same guy who claimed stand your ground after chasing the guy? I believe there were these two guys who chased a guy, and then when he stopped, they stopped, he came out of his car, and they both shot him. And I believe we discussed
Don West:
That. You’re talking about that serial or that crime series, right?
Shawn Vincent:
No, this was. It’s a recent news article where …
Don West:
That was Camp Swamp Road. It was the name of that article, and that was referencing a true crime podcast series, and that was one of the end episodes because you’re exactly right, Steve. That last episode that was referenced was when the case wound up actually in civil court on a self-defense immunity proceeding, and basically the whole thing got displayed to the public, including tens of hours of recorded phone calls that really revealed the thinking of the two guys in that. Yeah, that’s actually fascinating. That’s a very interesting true crime series to listen to
Shawn Vincent:
What I enjoy is that our conversations start to bleed into other topics that we’re going to explore in more detail in a little bit. But look at that: what happened is because … the second self-defense case I ever had a chance to work on was actually a case where a guy got attacked in his own front yard, had his tooth locked out of him and then chased after the guy and the guy ran from him, the guy got cornered at a fence, turned around and then our guy thought, “Oh, this guy’s going to beat me up again.” And he pulls his gun, and he shoots him, right? He chased after him, but then the argument that we tried to make, and this is a really tough argument to make, was that there are separate incidents going on throughout this whole exchange, right? And if you want to go back, who was the first aggressor who committed the first crime?
Like in the Michael Drejka case, it was McGlockton who shoved the defender to the ground, committed the first crime, but then the situation changed. In the Drejka case, McGlockton, when he saw the gun, backed up, and he made a gesture that he was retreating and that the fight was over. And I think if we’re talking about being emotionally hijacked, Drejka had a lot of feelings that overrode his rational mind that he felt like this guy had it coming, and he pulled that trigger when he knew, and I think the jury felt that he knew the moment had passed.
Well, now our guy in my other case I’m describing to you, he survived the first attack, but now he thinks he’s got the upper hand, and there’s that … you talk about a freeze fight or flight. I think Claude Warner gave us a great conversation about that sort of predatory instinct to chase when somebody runs, and humans are not immune to that. And if you’re in a confrontation like that and your emotions are high and someone runs, there is a … I’ve known a couple of people who came home and caught burglars in their house and decided to chase them down in the street, or at least tried to, not thinking about, like ta dog, not thinking about what they’re going to do when they catch the car, right? They don’t … Well, you can go have a fight, you can go beat up this criminal who’s coming into your house middle of the day, and for what? What are you going to accomplish? Is this going to be terrible? But you don’t think about that when that happens, that chase instinct pops in, but then the circumstance can change again, right?
So he went from a victim of a crime to a participant in melee, and then when he lost the upper hand, he pulled out a firearm and used it. And you will talk about one of our lessons is: you can’t be the first aggressor. One of our lessons, separate from that, is don’t follow a threat once you’ve broken contact. The reason anyone would do any of those things, I think, are generally because they’ve been emotionally hijacked.
Don West:
Steve, how can people get better at that at not allowing themselves to become emotionally hijacked? Is it just something you need to think about and work out on your own—that you somehow then appreciate it and understand it, and you put it in your toolkit? I’m not going to let myself get emotionally hijacked. Is there actual training? Are there classes people can take or books they can read? How can we help people understand themselves better so they don’t inadvertently or unwittingly be driven by the instincts and genetics of hundreds of thousands of years, wind up in that situation where they make really bad legal decisions that put them in both physical and legal jeopardy?
Steve Moses:
Well, in my opinion, the best way to do that is to constantly be looking for articles, information, books, and podcasts such as this one, and understand what has happened to other people. That is, we learn from indirect experience, not direct experience. And the other thing is, and you know I keep beating this dead horse on training, is training, and some of it is doing some don’t shoot exercises in which you have a limited amount of time, you have a timer, you have a limited amount of time to say fire six rounds. And then as soon as you hear the second beep, you stop immediately, and you understand that you are constantly looking for an off-ramp in order to get out of this situation.
And the other thing, too, is just really have a good understanding of what the consequences are. If you are charged with a misdemeanor, like a class A misdemeanor or a felony, what can happen to your family, what you are voluntarily exposing yourself to. And finally, look around and ask yourself, do you enjoy your life? Do you want to keep what you have going? Do you want to maintain being employed? Do you want to keep your family, your wife from being upset, from your children of having the stigma that my father is a criminal, and take all these things into consideration, and then every time that something happens that goes ahead and kind of trips your trigger, think about it. And I have been in that situation twice in which, I’m just like, there’s just those, all my options are appearing right in front of my head, and then the results next to it, and I’m like, “Nope, nope, nope, nope.” Suck it up, walk off.
Don West:
So when you’re in that situation, when you’re in that moment, you just have to ask yourself that one question: Is this worth it?
Steve Moses:
Do I feel lucky? And of course, in many instances, it’s not. It’s not. But thinking about it in advance and always, always think about what you have to lose and …
Don West:
Is it worth it? You start checking the list, right? Is it worth it to lose my job, lose my family, go to jail, perhaps lose my life, perhaps just the trauma of hurting someone else that you don’t need to hurt. All of that stuff is ever-present, especially in these cases that are so highly charged emotionally. You don’t know how it’s going to go. You don’t know how it’s going to end. It can go any which way, and it very well and most likely won’t go the way you expect it to. I think that’s a pretty fair assessment.
Steve Moses:
And one of these things, for instance, you went ahead, and you got emotionally hijacked, and you started an action, recognize as quickly as you can that, “Oh, I don’t want to do this. ” And take immediate visible physical action to indicate, “Okay, I’m no longer involved in this. I’m leaving. Sorry, sir, I’m leaving.” If they follow you, say, “Sorry, sir, I’m leaving. Please don’t follow me. ” And again, we go back to this whole thing about when you truly are in danger of serious bodily injury or death—do they have the ability, do they have the opportunity, and do they have the intent? And if they continue to press you, well, then you need to be ready for whatever involvement that you are in to continue. But by the same token, in most instances, you can get away from the situation. And sometimes getting away from the situation doesn’t involve flight in its purest form.
It’s just that walk off, drive off, create distance, visible signs, “I don’t want any part of this.”
Shawn Vincent:
What you said about off-ramps, Steve, I think, is really big. If you’re a concealed carrier, an armed defender, when you’re in situations where your Spidey senses are tingling, and you start to sense, “Oh, this is a spot where I could potentially need my firearm.” That’s at the same time when you should start to be looking for, “How do I not be here now?” Do I need to go down that hallway? Do I need to go up those stairs? Is there another moment that’s better than just right now to do it?” Okay, so this guy’s starting to pick a fight with me. Do I have to win this fight, this verbal jarring, or just like you said, “Hey man, you got it. You’re right, I’m wrong.” And it doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong; it’s the result that works.
And you’re talking about all those consequences, Don, losing your job and missing your family. I just don’t want to be late for dinner most nights. I just want to get where I’m going and beyond this thing. And it’s the mindset, and where in the 36 Lessons we are, we’ve already done the nuts and bolts, and now what we’re really establishing are all these lessons that talk about your mindset.
The logo for Armed Defender’s Dilemma is a little maze that’s unsolvable. There’s no path through the maze. The only way is around it. And I feel like a lot of … when you get in this tit for tat road trage stuff, or someone calls you an asshole and you want to tell them back, or you’ve been disrespected, or they scratched your car, or stole your lawnmower—I don’t care what it is—you get caught up in this loop where you’re in this maze now, you have this argument with somebody, and you feel like you got to win it when you just have to stop, Don, think about the consequences, reset what your life goals are, remember what they are, and just be like, “No, this is an argument.” Even if it’s not, you don’t really think it’s going to end up being a violent encounter, just a bad verbal thrashing, just I don’t want it.
I don’t want it to potentially open it up to … and any argument you get into when you’re an armed defender has the potential of turning into an armed conflict. That’s just the truth.
Don West:
Well, Steve hit it right on the head. He said you start checking off the list of potential outcomes, most of which you can’t really control, especially in a highly emotionally charged event of some sort. You can simply ask yourself the goal, and remind yourself of the goal of self-defense. You remind the idea of breaking contract, of avoiding, all of those lessons and rules that you know that form the fundamental core of what you’re doing and why you do it. And as you get to each one of those and break it down, I really think you can simply ask yourself the question, “Is it worth it? Is it worth it to risk my job? Is it worth it to risk my family’s security? Is it worth it to risk my life just to win an argument or to put that guy in his place?” And I think people who are responsible concealed carriers, responsible gun owners, pretty quickly if they make themselves think about it, are going to decide no, it’s not. It’s just not worth it to take that additional risk to win your point.
Steve Moses:
Well, just remember that you’re basically fighting with two persons, not only that guy, but yourself—kind of taking it back to the emotional brain and the rational brain. John Hearn, like I said, we need to have him on a podcast sometime as a guest. I think I’ve said that now about three times, but just being able to go, “Oh, you’re about to lose it. Think about the consequences.” And the fact is, if you have a plan in place, it doesn’t have to be a complex plan, but it is: I’m going to look for a way to disengage from this. I’m going to try to de-escalate this. If it means, like we talked about earlier, “Sir, I am so sorry, just forgive me. I’m out of here.” And then get out of there.
Shawn Vincent:
And like what you say about having the plan in place, part of the plan can be that I’m not going to have needless arguments with jerks.
Don West:
And if the other guy isn’t the jerk, it could be you. There’s going to be at least one jerk in every argument like that.
Shawn Vincent:
If you don’t know who the jerk is here, you’re the jerk. That’s good. And juries don’t like jerks. They tend to convict jerks if they can.
Don West:
Yeah. And you may need them to nullify it, right? You may need that nullification. So don’t make it harder on yourself. Don’t need the juror …
Shawn Vincent:
You need at least one of them to get you that mistrial, right?
Steve Moses:
And you know, one thing else, guys, I always think about is—these guys that are always angry, they’re always mad—their lives aren’t very good. They’re upset. They’re agitated about things all the time. They’re living with people that probably don’t like them. Their lives aren’t great. People who get easily angered all of the time, being angered all the time sucks. Being angry just even for a little bit sucks. And so these people have to deal with their own lives. That was one thing that really benefited me from my stint as a reserve deputy constable with some of these people that were so disrespectful is just that your opinion, it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t need your respect.
Shawn Vincent:
All right, everybody. That’s the podcast for today. I appreciate you listening through to the end. Our next lesson is going to be number nine, which is Maintain Situational Awareness. We’ll have that out to you next month. Until then, be smart. Stay safe. Take care.
