Bringing a Gun to a Fist Fight

 Here's a case that I recently had in a debriefing:

Woman and new Boyfriend go to pick up Woman’s children at ex-Husband’s apartment.

Boyfriend stays downstairs as Woman walks up to the second-floor apartment to pick up her kids. Woman enters ex-Husband’s apartment and an argument ensues. Woman kicks ex-Husband during the argument which is so heated that a neighbor across the hall comes out on the landing to investigate as Boyfriend comes up the stairs to the landing as well.

Boyfriend stays outside of the apartment as Woman exits apartment and both of them descend the staircase to the ground level.

Ex-Husband comes out of the apartment and confronts Woman and Boyfriend at ground level. Shoving match ensues between Boyfriend and ex-Husband which escalates to a fight.

The fight goes to the ground with ex-Husband on top of Boyfriend. Ex-Husband is described alternatively as “50 pounds heavier” and “twice the size” of the Boyfriend.

Boyfriend, attempts to draw his licensed handgun from a waist pack while shouting to the ex-Husband to “Get off of me”!

Ex-Husband begins struggling with the Boyfriend over the handgun. Boyfriend manages to retain the handgun, disengage himself from Husband and stand up. Witnesses report that Boyfriend points the handgun at Husband and begins backing up yelling, “Don’t make me shoot you, don’t make me shoot you!”.

Police Officers arrive on scene at this time, command Boyfriend to drop his handgun. Boyfriend holsters his weapon, and grounds the waist pack.

Situation is called Code 4 at this time.

The result of this incident is that Woman and Boyfriend are both arrested and jailed. Woman is jailed for assault, Boyfriend for a myriad of weapons charges as well as assault, attempted aggravated assault, and threatening and intimidating. When you first review this incident, it would appear that Woman might have a tough time beating the assault charge, but Boyfriend did nothing wrong and was reasonably in fear of his safety from a clearly larger man who attacked him.

Not knowing all the details of the incident, it would appear that the thinking for the arrest and prosecution are twofold:

1. Woman and Boyfriend gave up certain elements under the law for invoking protection under self-defense statues by going over to the Ex-Husband’s apartment. In other words, officers on the scene asked “Who lives here?” Ex-Husband probably says something like “I live here and they both came over and attacked me – and he brought a GUN!” I’ve seen a similar incident where a man went over to a neighbor’s house to complain about their dog. When the dog owner attacked the visitor and the visitor defended himself, the visitor ended up facing charges because it’s difficult to prove that he did not go over to the neighbor’s house to start a fight. Even when witnesses corroborate that the Boyfriend retreated to the ground level of the apartment building, the fact remains that Boyfriend and Woman initially went to the ex-husband’s residence. Remember that a man’s home is his castle.
2. Boyfriend brought a deadly weapon – and he was wearing it on his person. This demonstrates to some that Boyfriend was either expecting trouble or was looking for it.

Some interesting aspects of this incident for consideration:

• The fight “found” the Boyfriend, even though it appears that he was not pursuing it. Although he was armed (legally in this case) he never entered the apartment and he retreated when the Woman came out. You might find yourself in a situation which is spiraling out of control due to nothing that you have done. You might not be able to disengage from a violent encounter even when you are trying desperately to.
• Surprise, surprise, the fight ended up on the ground. The obviously larger man probably felt he could press his advantage by wrestling the smaller man to the ground. Or, the smaller man could have sought to protect himself by instinctively clinching with the ex-Husband. Or, they might have simply tripped over each other during the fight and fallen. There are a number of ways you might end up rolling in the dirt, but reality shows us over and over that a large percentage of fights end up there. You might be a great standup fighter, but it is imperative that you know how to protect yourself in a grappling situation.
• You can’t bring a gun to a fist fight. Sorry to all of you high-speed shooters out there, but the law really frowns on gun-toting citizens engaging in fights with unarmed citizens – and then pulling your gun on that unarmed person. It’s all about reasonable force. If you are one of those people who opines, “I’d rather be judged by 12 than buried by 6!”, you’re almost certain to be judged by those 12. Here’s where it gets difficult, if you are an able-bodied man, you cannot generally use lethal force to defend against non-lethal force. Yes, lethal force can be used if a reasonable person would believe that it is necessary to avoid death or serious injury. But, I’m telling you, if you are fighting an unarmed person and you end up pulling your gun, there’s a good chance you are going to jail.

To further illustrate that last point, here’s another recent case:

Hiker, a retired school teacher, is out in the woods in a National Forest with a walking stick and his legally carried 10mm semi-automatic handgun.

Dog Owner is also out walking his three dogs in the woods. The dogs are not on leashes and Dog Owner is not armed.

Both parties’ paths near each other. The three large dogs (one is a Chow and another is a Labrador) see Hiker and bolt toward him barking and snarling.

Hike is immediately alarmed and he draws his pistol and fires one shot into the ground right in front of the dogs who are about 3 feet in front of him, stopping their charge.

Dog Owner, seeing this and presumably thinking that one dog has been shot or sensing that the Hiker’s next action could be to shoot the dogs, runs towards Hiker screaming, “I’ll kill you, you son-of-a-bitch!”

As Dog Owner charges closer to Hiker, Hiker shoots Dog Owner once, twice, three times in the chest. Dog Owner dies from his wounds. Forensics show that Dog Owner was 8 feet from hiker when hit with the first shot, 4 feet when hit with the second shot and a mere 6 inches away from Hiker when struck with the third shot.

Obviously, the Dog Owner must have absolutely flying as he charged Hiker or he would not have been able to close the distance so quickly even while being hit three times with a 10mm, a cartridge that is reputed to be hard-hitting and flat-shooting.

Can you guess the outcome? That’s right, Hiker is charged with second-degree murder. Dog Owner was unarmed. And, here’s two other sticky points for the Hiker:

1. If he was so afraid of the dogs, why didn’t he actually shoot them instead of firing a warning shot?; and
2. He was carrying a walking stick, why didn’t he use this weapon of lesser force first instead of immediately resorting to deadly force?

As you can imagine; everyone who knew the Dog Owner testified that he was a gentle man incapable of violence and how he regularly volunteered at the animal shelter because he loved dogs so much.

The defense countered with the argument that Hiker was actually facing multiple opponents with the Dog Owner and the three dogs. Hiker testified that Dog Owner had an incredibly enraged look on his face and that his fists were clenched, leaving him know doubt that the Dog Owner intended to make good his stated intention.

The prosecution and the community were outraged. This was a kind soul whom was shot for no other reason than the love of his dogs – and besides, he’s not here on this earth to provide another version of the story, is he?

Fortunately for the defense – and to the prosecution’s chagrin – it turns out that the Dog Owner had a fairly extensive record of violent behavior and a couple of the dogs had records of aggressive behavior.

So it appears at the time of this writing that Hiker will be exonerated. I will also venture that Boyfriend will either have his charges dropped or reduced dramatically.

Let’s contrast the Boyfriend case with another real-life case that is similar, yet has dramatically different consequence:

Sister is in the middle of a divorce with soon-to-be ex-Spouse with the usual custody and visitation disputes. Sister asks her Brother to accompany her to Spouse’s house to pick up the kids.

Sister goes to door, Brother waits on the public sidewalk next to the car which is on a public street. Spouse has major problem with the visit by Sister and storms out of the house to the street threatening both Sister and Brother.

Brother, puts up his hands in a non-confrontational posture and asks the Spouse to not curse in front of the kids. Spouse takes a swing at Brother who ducks the swing, goes to a clinch and then slams the Spouse to the ground with a takedown. Brother disengages, gets in car and leaves with Sister and kids.

Police follow up after the disturbance and no charges are filed.

I believe the lesson here is simple: you MUST have unarmed combatives skills and non-lethal force options available as well as weapons or lethal force skills.

But the simple lessons are usually the hardest lessons to do. It’s much, much easier and efficient to use a firearm to defend yourself than it is to learn and implement realistic and effective empty-hand methods.

People constantly ask me if there is “something” they can buy which will allow them to protect themselves. Yes, you can buy a myriad of objects which fall into the categories of impact weapons, edged weapons, chemical weapons, energy weapons and projectile weapons.

You also get the type of person here who says, “I don’t need self-defense training, I have my trusty (fill in the blank with gun, baseball bat, hatpin, Ninja key ring, etc.)

But, as we’ve seen in the above examples, plus many more that happen every day, weapons are not the end-all, be-all. There ARE circumstances that would allow an armed person to use lethal force against an unarmed person, but they might be fewer in number than you think. You need to talk to someone who is knowledgeable about the use of force laws in your municipality, county, and state.

Back to the lesson of this article -- you need employ the lawful amount of force to match the level of the attack.

One of the reasons I chose the first two cases is that, at first reading, they appear to warrant the use of deadly force. And, indeed I feel that ultimately deadly force (or the threatened use of it) was probably justified in these cases. However, law enforcement, the courts and the community will not look kindly on you when you employ deadly force. In fact, you will probably be attacked for your use of force and you won’t be hailed as a hero.

Yes, train with your deadly force options. Train smart and train hard.

But, don’t forget your empty hand skills, your grappling skills, and your less lethal options like pepper spray, walking sticks and flashlights. Odds are you are going to employ these more frequently than you will ever use your deadly force options.

Plus you will save your family the financial and emotional heartache of protracted legal and civil action against you.

Brad Parker