Couldn't you use something less lethal?
Why a Gun?
By Kathy Jackson
For the most part, this Cornered Cat website is intended for people who
have already decided that firearms are something they are interested in,
or for people who are in relationships with gun owners. Although I am
very enthusiastic about educating newcomers, I'm not really interested
in trying to convince people who don't trust themselves around firearms
to do anything they are uncomfortable with or unwilling to do. I believe
the readers are adult, responsible human beings who are perfectly capable
of making their own decisions about what they are -- and are not -- willing
to do in self defense.
Nevertheless, I've recently had a spate of people asking me, "Why a gun?
Why don't you use some other, less violent, less lethal way to defend
yourself?" These are good questions, and they deserve an answer.
It's surprising to me, the number of people who think the purpose of carrying
a gun is to "kill someone." Most emphatically, it is not. Firearms are
indeed useful for defense, but their usefulness does not happen simply
because they can be lethal. Rather, they are useful because, to date,
they are the most effective (and perhaps the only reliable) means for
stopping a determined criminal attack before an innocent person is gravely
injured, maimed for life, or killed.
For those who would rather use a less-lethal means of defense, I absolutely
support your right to choose whatever tools or techniques you feel you
need in order to protect yourself. Kudos to you for your determination
to stay safe! Like you, I see that awareness, avoidance, de-escalation,
and deterrence are the absolute best first line of defense. Whenever possible,
the smart choice is to avoid situations which may make physical self defense
necessary. Stay away from dangerous people and places. Pay attention to
what is happening around you. Listen to the little voice that tells you
something might be wrong, and get away before trouble starts. Do not escalate
unpleasant encounters, but rather use your calm, confident demeanor to
remove yourself from the situation as quickly as possible. Use whatever
means you can contrive to convince the potential attacker that it is not
worth the effort it will take to assault you. Learn the body language
of empowerment and capability and use it. If you do get attacked and cannot
defend yourself physically, remember that negotiation, misdirection, and
outright lying in order to escape are all perfectly acceptable. If the criminal
just wants stuff, give him stuff; stuff is less valuable than human lives.
These simple, intelligent precautions can save you from a world of grief.
But when all that fails, what's left? Do we ignore the danger from a brutal,
determined, vicious assailant simply because we are afraid of the consequences
of an effective defense? Do we choose not to defend ourselves
to the uttermost because our best means of defense may result in the criminal's
death?
Here is what it boils down to, for me. If the attacker pushes the incident
clear to the desperate place where someone -- either the intended victim
herself, or the arriving officers who are armed with deadly weapons --
must make a choice between saving either the attacker's life or the victim's, I really
believe that the intended victim's innocent life should be the one that
is spared, without question and without hesitation.
If a criminal attacks me without provocation, why should he -- the aggressor,
the malefactor, the bad actor -- get to choose which one of us survives
our encounter? In initiating such extreme violence, the criminal has already chosen
that at least one person will die or be seriously injured as a result
of his acts. The law allows for lethal self-defense because wise people
through the ages have recognized that in some circumstances, literally
the only choice left for another person to make is whether the intended
victim or the person who attacked her will be the one to survive.
There is something else, something perhaps more fundamental. I say more
fundamental because at this point, those who are skeptical about the necessity
of using lethal defensive force may be thinking, "Yes, but isn't there some other way?"
And the answer is, not really. Not when innocent life hangs in the balance, and
the attacker is both aggressive and determined.
If there were another way, law enforcement officers would not carry firearms at all.
They certainly have other tools available to them; nearly all officers these
days are armed with bare-hands skills, batons, pepper spray, Tasers, and
less-lethal ammunition such as pepperballs and beanbags for their shotguns. Police
officers have radios and backup officers ready to rush to their aid on a moment's
notice.
So alternative tools exist. And every law enforcement
agency in America has a detailed use-of-force policy which makes it very, very clear
to its employees that lethal force is the absolute last resort, to be used only
in desperate situations where all other means of protection have failed or are clearly
unavailable. Those policies usually make it clear that neither the law enforcement
management nor its lawyers are exactly happy about having lethal force readily available
to ordinary cops on the street. And yet ... ordinary cops still carry firearms. Why
do that, when so many other tools exist, and when using lethal force is so often
a public-relations nightmare? Simply because experienced law enforcement personnel
recognize that in the most dire and desperate of circumstances, only a
firearm can reliably stop a determined and aggressive criminal.
So even though those less-lethal options do exist, and are used by preference nearly
all of the time, the vast majority of departments absolutely mandate that backup
(at least one other officer) must be present before a dangerous felon may be engaged
with any of these less-lethal tools. And what is the backup officer suppposed to
be doing? He or she is supposed to be posted in a defensible position (ideally behind
cover) with the firearm in hand and the muzzle oriented toward the threat. The backup
officer is prepared to use the firearm to save the other officer's life, just in
case the less-lethal method of dealing with the dangerous criminal does not work.
To save a life in case the less-lethal method of dealing with the criminal
does not work. Ponder that thought for a long moment, please.
Even with all the advantages they have, even with at least one other officer already
present on the scene, even with immediate radio contact with the 911 operator and
police dispatcher, law enforcement officers still do not trust their own
lives to less-lethal methods for dealing with a dangerous, belligerent criminal
unless they have someone armed and ready to defend them if less-lethal methods fail.
The individual officer is expected to delay contact with a truly dangerous criminal
until at least one backup officer is on the scene and prepared to shoot if necessary.
Of course, what the police need to do in order to fulfill their jobs,
I do not need to do as a private citizen. I do not need to seek out wrongdoers
and bring them to justice. That's not my job. As a private person, if
I am interacting with a criminal at all, it is because the criminal brought
the fight to me and attacked me without provocation. The criminal gets
the element of surprise, and he chooses when, where, and whether to attack
me. I may get to choose my response, but I don't get to choose the time
or the place. And I do not get to choose whether or not the conflict is
"worth" a human life; the attacker does.
Whatever form my response to the attack might take, it has to happen right
now and it simply will not wait for someone else to arrive on
scene. Unlike the typical police officer dealing with a criminal, the
ordinary citizen does not have the luxury of waiting to initiate contact
until the time is right. The criminal attacks with little or no warning.
The odds are already stacked against the intended victim, or the criminal
would not have chosen that time and that place to attack her.
Because ordinary people do not seek out criminals, our chances of being
criminally assaulted are significantly lower than those faced by a police
officer. But by the same token, if we are physically assaulted,
it is relatively more likely that the criminal will intend to maim or
kill (rather than to simply escape), and very much less likely that we
will have anyone else standing by prepared to protect us if our first
response fails. Whatever defense I choose to carry with me is very likely the
only defense I will have available when the conflict begins, and perhaps
for some time thereafter.
So. I'm not a police officer. I'm just a regular woman, and there's only
one of me. I've had some martial arts training, just enough for me to
realize that I'm a bit more breakable than the average, and just enough
to learn that the height, strength, and weight advantage enjoyed by a
typical male is considerable even with good training.
So what are the less-lethal options that I've rejected?
Because of severe asthma, I cannot safely use pepper spray. If I could,
I would probably carry it in addition to my firearm. (Read more about
pepper spray here.)
I've seen the "stun guns" marketed for ordinary people and they are a
joke, only slightly more painful than touching your tongue to a 9-volt
battery. They do not work at all unless you are in physical contact with
the assailant (a very bad place to be!), and their primary effect is to
annoy. I don't know about you, but I don't think it is a good idea to
annoy dangerous criminals.
Tasers are still somewhat bulkier than most defensive firearms, and have
the added drawback that you only get a single shot.
This problem becomes much more significant when you realize that Tasers
are also prohibitively expensive to practice with. If you miss, you are
reduced to scrabbling hand to hand with an armed attacker or with an assailant
who believed he could take you bare handed in the first place.1
If that single shot from the Taser does hit, you have exactly thirty seconds
to get so far away from the criminal that he cannot attack you again,
because as soon as the current from the Taser shuts off, the event is
over with no after-effects whatsoever. How far can you run in thirty seconds?
Is it further than an enraged criminal can follow?
Knives, of course, are lethal force. By the way, so are many of the most
effective empty hand martial arts techniques. An effective blow to the
groin can literally kill a man, as can a strike to the chest (not a great
strike point anyway), many nerve holds can kill, a kick to the knee cripples
a man for life and can kill him from blood loss, an effective eye gouge
blinds him for life if it does not kill him outright, a simple hip throw
can break an assailant's neck or back. The list goes on, but I won't.
You probably get the picture!
Some people recommend getting a personal alarm, which makes a loud noise
similar to a car alarm. If criminals attacked people in crowds, this might
be an effective way to get people's eyeballs and attention on what was
happening. More likely, though, is an attack in what
Marc MacYoung calls a "fringe area," an area outside the populated
center where the criminal can count on a slow but steady stream of potential
victims, and from which other people are unlikely to hear calls for help.
Because it is louder than a human voice, the personal alarm should help in such cases, except
for one minor little detail: have you ever in your whole life seen anyone running
to find the source of a car-alarm sound???2
Furthermore, (and this is the ironic part), what do we expect the passers-by
to do in response to such alarms? We want a knight in shining
armor to swoop to our defense, and use the violence we were not willing
to use on our own behalf. This seems morally suspect to me. As Sunni Maravillosa
points out, if I am unwilling to defend myself, what right do I have to expect
a stranger to defend me?
So what it boils down to is that the single most effective and reliable
means of stopping a determined criminal attack, a firearm, is also likely
to result in the criminal's death. That thought is horrible. But far more
horrible is the thought of an innocent person who lost her life simply
because some violent predator decided to amuse himself by killing her.
More horrible still is the knowledge that the criminal, unstopped, could
go on to attack the innocent again, and again, and again, with multiple
fresh victims abused and killed for the murderer's pleasure. A serial
killer survives and thrives in part because the only people who ever learn
that he is dangerous are the people who meet him at the very moment he
is most deadly, at the time and place of his own choosing when he violently
and unexpectedly attacks. Think of Ted Bundy, the Green River killer,
Coral Eugene Watts, the Nightstalker, Dennis Rader, the Bike Path Rapist,
the Central Park Rapist, and the Hillside Strangler. These serial offenders
could each have been stopped by just one intended victim who had an effective
tool to defend herself,and the mindset to use it if necessary. Although
each was eventually caught and brought to justice, at what cost to the
innocent did these predators continue so long undetected?
Not too long ago, I got into a little brouhaha with an online friend,
LawDog. You can read
the exchange over on
the LawDog Files. Although I argued with him (I'm "pax" in the
comments), he and I do agree on one essential: it's a heartbreaking shame
that
Meredith Emerson did not have and use a firearm to defend herself.
This young, strong, fit, capable woman, who had martial arts training
and a large dog, and who apparently had a very determined mindset, was still
unable to effectively defend herself from a serial rapist and killer.
The price she paid for it was horrific.
Should any woman ever have to pay such a price?