U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- We start with this news report from West Chester, Ohio as reported by local station WXIX Fox 19.
You are at home early Saturday morning. You’re taking a shower and you hear your girlfriend scream. You leave the shower and go see what is happening. You are attacked by your girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend who has entered your home. You fight him off. He grabs your girlfriend by her hair and her arm, and then he drags her outside. You get your handgun and shoot your attacker. He lets go of your girlfriend. You and your girlfriend go back inside to call 911.
You put your gun down as the police arrive. You pull on some clothes and give the police a statement. Your girlfriend also makes a statement to the police. Emergency medical services take you and your attacker to the hospital.
Your girlfriend stays at your home and watches over the two children inside. Later, you find out that your attacker died of his gunshot wounds. He was 20 years old. You are not charged with a crime.
Comments-
This is a nightmare out of a Hitchcock movie where you’re attacked in the shower and then you have to go hand to hand with someone before you’re dressed. Let’s look first at the things our defender did well.
I like that our defender owned a gun. I love that he got out of the shower and answered his partner’s screams with actions. That is much better than yelling “What is it, Honey?” and keep showering. It sounds like the defender was getting beaten up during the physical attack. He ran and grabbed his firearm. He shot the attacker in low-light conditions, and stopped shooting when the attack stopped. He stayed at the scene, called 911, and gave a brief statement to the police. His injuries went beyond the first aid delivered by EMS. The defender required hospitalization for “lacerations”. The medical report of your treatment provides additional evidence that your were attacked.
There is a lot of information we don’t have in the news story. Let’s replay the morning of the attack as if the readers at Ammoland were the defenders.
First, you or your partner takes out a restraining order against the abusive ex. You have your doors and windows locked at night. Because you have children in the home, you also have a motion detector inside your home. You wake up when you hear the sounds of breaking glass and the alarm system going off. You grab your gun and turn on the lights. Your family hides in the bedroom and now you lock the bedroom door. Your partner calls 911. The kids hide in the bathtub in the master bathroom, exactly the way they practiced during your home defense drills. Your partner gets their gun while you push the dresser against the bedroom door. Both of you are now away from the door and crouched down behind the bed. Your guns are drawn and the police are on their way.
Your cell phone is sitting on the bed and you stay on the call with 911. The police arrive while the rejected-lover is trying to force his way into your room. He is arrested for violation of a protective order, home invasion, making terroristic threats, DWI, and for two counts of threatening the safety of a minor. The attacker goes directly to jail because of the protective order.
The good news is that you don’t have to call a cleaning service to remove blood stains. The great news is that you don’t have to give statements to the police while you’re standing there in the nude. Instead, you call a 24-hour locksmith to repair your door. You call your lawyer and give him a brief statement. You set up a time for you and your girlfriend to meet with your lawyer the next day. Now, you clear your head by taking your family out for an early breakfast.
Besides reading the columns at Ammoland, where would most people learn best practice to defend themselves in their home? I suggest you take a class. The NRA, the USCCA, and other independent instructors have put together the necessary materials. I guarantee that you are already doing some of the things they suggest in those classes. I bet there are also inexpensive things you could do to make you and your family safer. What works for me probably isn’t the best plan for you, your family, and for your home.
Do you know what to say to the attacker and what to say to the police when they arrive? When the police arrive, both of you are going to say something like this:
I called you. That man broke into my house. There is the broken door and there are the holes in the wall near my bedroom where he punched the walls. I’ll cooperate with your investigation and swear out a complaint, but right now I’m going to talk to my lawyer so I have help filling out a complete report.
Do I really need a lawyer?
I study several of these events every week and I am going to call a lawyer. I’ll call my lawyer if there is the slightest doubt, and then he can tell me to stop bothering him.
Here is an example why we’d call. This weeks news story said you went out to meet your attacker while you were armed and you believed that he was not armed with a firearm. At the moment you fired, your partner was near the attacker, but given the dim lighting, you can’t swear that the attacker was in direct contact with your partner. The attacker was facing away from you and he was not attacking your partner at that moment.
We think we are protecting our loved one, but there is also evidence that indicates we were the aggressor. Yes, he attacked us in our home, but that attack ended when he ran away. We were the ones who closed the distance to the attacker and started a fight that ended in his death. That means we lose our rights of self-defense because we made an aggressive act rather than backing away. Yes, the attacker grabbed our partner. Now explain why the intruder was an immediate, unavoidable and lethal threat when he was standing in our front yard facing away from us.
I hope you see the problem. I am not trying to prove how much I know about self-defense. In fact I’m admitting that there is so much to know that I want professional help. Details matter, and I don’t practice self-defense law for a living. That is why I want my lawyer to write the police report for me.
Never lie to your lawyer, and it helps to have one to call before the police are on your porch. You probably heard that you should have a lawyer in your concealed carry class.
-Rob Morse highlights the latest self-defense and other shootings of the week. See what went wrong, what went right, and what we can learn from real-life self-defense with a gun. Even the most justified self-defense shooting can go wrong, especially after the shot. Get the education, the training, and the liability coverage you and your family deserve.
About Rob Morse
Rob writes about gun rights at Ammoland, at Clash Daily, at Second Call Defense, and on his SlowFacts blog. He hosts the Self Defense Gun Stories Podcast and co-hosts the Polite Society Podcast. Rob was an NRA pistol instructor and combat handgun competitor.
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