The treatment for one illness may be fatally contradicted for another. So it is in medicine, and so in can be in law, specifically self-defense law. A classic example is the advice, “Say nothing to police except ‘I want to call a lawyer!’ after you’ve shot a criminal in self-defense.” Not talking to police is great advice for criminals, but not the best for those who have just been required by circumstances not of their own making to use force in defense of themselves or another.
As a young instructor I shared the advice of attorneys and even judges to not talk to police…until I became an expert witness in the late 1970s and saw how poorly that advice served those who had had to pull the trigger in legitimate defense of self or other innocent parties. In the early ‘80s I came up with the five-point checklist that I’ve shared with students and readers since.
You can find it here, in an eight and a half minute video I did five years ago with the late, great legal self-defense expert Marty Hayes, founder of the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network which last year was absorbed into CCW Safe.
If you’ve seen it before, please take the time to review – and of course, to comment.
Reminds me that I need to check with my neighbors about who has surveillance cameras that may have witnessed an incident unbeknownst to me.