degree with deadly force. Such overreaction will land you in serious legal trouble.
In practice, you will usually want to respond to an assault with a degree of force sufficiently, but not greatly, superior to that with which you are threatened. There are two advantages to this “slightly greater” degree of force doctrine:
• It places the defender in a more secure tactical position.
• It discourages the assailant from continuing to attack and escalating into a position where lethal force is required.
Some self-defense experts throw out the phrase, “It’s better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.” Though the sentiment is accurate—we would rather risk prison time than a cold grave—it trivializes the problem. Never forget that if you are found guilty in a jury trial, you will be spending a whole lot of quality time in a confined environment with unpredictable, dangerous neighbors who may be less than friendly when you interact with them. You may also suffer consequences with others in the community, facing challenges from family, friends, employers, and those you wish to interact positively with on a daily basis.
While you should never let fear of legal consequences keep you from surviving a violent encounter, you must keep your wits about you at all times.
Good people tend to make good decisions. These decisions can always be refined and the decision-making process can be improved, but usually people don’t trip themselves up much in the process; they trip themselves up in the explanation.
Having justification is not enough. I.M.O.P. by itself will not get you out of trouble. Because self-defense is an affirmative defense, it falls on you to explain. You must be able to articulate exactly why you made each decision—why you needed to become involved and why you used exactly the level of force and even technique that you used.
There are two drills for this. One is simple. Go to YouTube. Watch real fights. Then pick out exactly why it was or wasn’t self-defense. Look at all the times the guy who walked away could have been fine if only he had kept his mouth shut. It was clearly a mutual fight but both thought they were defending themselves. There are times when a pre-emptive strike would have been justified, and prudent, and others where such actions land the perpetrator in jail.
The second drill, the articulation exercise, requires some background.
As we mentioned in the situational awareness section, you have a finely developed intuition. All humans do. Your senses perceive and your brain processes huge amounts of information, far more information than your conscious mind can handle. Because of this we get “feelings.” Hints. Little subconscious niggles.
Next time you get an intuition, a thought, or an idea, stop and explain it to yourself. The exercise is just that simple. And that difficult. When you see two people and think, “They are about to argue,” take the time to figure out what triggered that intuition. Body language? What specific body language? Did the voices change? How? Louder? Higher pitched?
This articulation exercise has two benefits. The first is simply the skill at explaining a fast decision. If you ever need to defend your use of force in court, it is likely that you will have made a decision very quickly, probably faster than conscious thought. And you may have to explain that decision to a jury.
The second benefit will affect your entire life. Intuition is a larger part of your brain, of you, than your conscious mind will ever be. The articulation exercise makes your conscious mind and intuition work together. It develops trust between two parts of your mind. Intuition ceases to be “mere” intuition but something you learn to trust. Not only will the drill help you to make better decisions faster, it will also help you understand and explain those decisions.
On September 23, 2002, at least ten people allegedly saw 18-year-old Rachel Burkheimer bound and gagged, lying on the floor of an Everett, WA garage shortly before she was taken out into the woods and murdered. None of them stopped to help. None of them even called the police. Legally, none of them had to. Many people simply will not get involved, even in cases of life or death. Are you one of them?
You need to seriously think about what you are willing to do, what you are not willing to do, and what you are willing to have done to you far before violence occurs. Such decisions cannot rationally be made during a dangerous encounter. There is a vast continuum of responses to take should you choose to intervene in a conflict—everything from moving to a safe place and dialing 911 to taking hands-on physical action. Intervention can be verbal or physical, encompassing the entire force continuum.
Spending some time thinking about when and under what circumstances you are willing to get involved is important. While scenario training can help prepare you for such decisions, when it gets down to brass tacks every situation you encounter will be different. It’s no longer a philosophical exercise. You need to know exactly what you are walking into to make a wise choice.
Start by evaluating what you have encountered. If your situational awareness is good, you might have several seconds, or possibly even minutes, to do this reconnaissance before you are forced to take action. If it’s poor you may have to take in the scene and make a decision in microseconds. Or it may be made for you. In whatever time you have, do your best to note combatants, witnesses, sources of improvised weapons, terrain, and other important factors so that you will know as much as possible about what you are up against.
The decision to get involved (or not) and at what level is paramount. Whatever choice you make can have lasting consequences. There is a cost in terms of physical and/or emotional well-being to taking action as well as to not taking action. Only you can decide. And you’ve got to live with that choice.
When I was twelve years old, I was walking to the bus stop after judo practice one night when four older boys stopped me. They quickly began to hassle me about the gi I was wearing, spitting on me, calling me names, and threatening to “kill” me. Verbal threats soon escalated to pushing and shoving, which was clearly evolving toward more serious blows. Although I probably stood a good chance of badly injuring one or two of them, I felt that there was no way I could win a fight against four kids, all of whom were bigger, older, and most likely stronger than I was.
Swallowing my pride, I did my best to ignore their expectorating and taunting while I tried to figure out a way to escape. As soon as I saw a car approaching, I shoved the nearest antagonist out of the way, shoulder-rolled over the hood of the vehicle, and darted across the street. The driver slammed on his brakes, stopping between where I had just run and where the bullies on the sidewalk had started to follow. While they were distracted by the irate driver, I hopped over a fence, ducked down another side street, and ran away as fast as I could. In a situation where I could not win, running was the best thing to do.
Once you make the decision to fight it is important to know why. What is your goal? Are you trying to control a situation or escape from a threat? Everything hinges on this. The strategy of control or escape will drive the tactics necessary
