A surprise, violent attack is very difficult. The best thing is to practice avoiding and evading. Avoid going to high crime places, avoid being out late at night, avoid large groups (particularly those who are statistically likely to commit violent crime, like men, ages 16 - 25, etc…yes, it's profiling but it will help keep you alive). Avoiding is basically best practice, but I'm obviously not advocating living your life in fear. Just use some common sense, but don't discount the fact that crime can occur anywhere and at anytime. Some of these attacks occurred in broad daylight with other people around.UnderwaterMike wrote:(1) trying to figure out a practical way to deal with attacks like this
Evading is essentially getting away before the act can occur/complete. Lot's of people talk about just "knowing" something is out of place or saw the group beforehand and didn't like something about it (but didn't want to profile so they continued on), etc. We're talking about your life, get over the shame and listen to that little voice in your head. Do something to get you off the X right now. Most people don't because they don't want to feel like fools when nothing does happen. Get over it; if it doesn't look/feel right, do something. Anything you do causes the potential threat to start reacting vice acting. The react control loop is much longer than the act, that buys you time to get away. I.e. you're now in control because you are acting and they are being forced to react. Even if nothing occurs, that doesn't mean nothing would have occurred.
If all that fails, you need to escape with your life. That may mean any number of things including fighting back. In this case the original attacker demonstrated AOI to cause fear of death or grave bodily harm. At that point you can use deadly force if you believe it is necessary. How long that window exists and exactly what happens within it depends on the situation and you won't know that in advance (despite all the fun hypotheticals can be). As long as the threat is still imminent, which means continued justified AOI/fear, fight for everything you're worth and with anything you have because your life is worth saving.
Where people get into trouble is typically:
1. Using deadly force for something other than deadly force. E.g. warning shots and brandishing. This seems to be very common due to the myths that get peddled around in in popular culture; just shoot to injure or whatever. Don't do it. Leave the deadly force alone until you're certain you need it. Then use is it effectively until the threat stops being a threat (AOI/fear).
2. Using deadly force where it isn't justified. This is likely what our writer friend was talking about when he mentioned proportionality, but since he responded to comments which were only stated within the hypothetical situation where AOI/fear were already justified (at the instant+ of attack), I treated them as such. As stated, if someone is using deadly force (and blows to the head are reasonably deadly in this situation as evidenced that someone did in fact die as well as common sense), there is no requirement to only use "similar" deadly force. There is no, well you were attacked with only a 6" knife so firearm calibers up to 9mm are ok in unlimited rounds, but you only get two in .45. That's absurd and you all know that. Deadly force is deadly force, regardless if it comes from a fist, a baseball bat, a car, a firearm, a baton, whatever. What you can't do is shoot someone because they threw a water balloon (not frozen) at you. That would be un-proportional, but that's not what we were discussing at all in this thread (at that point at least).
Most people would reasonably view such an attack as potentially deadly. At the instant of the attack, the victim doesn't know why they're being attack, merely that they are being attack. The attack is so violent and coming from potentially a group of people that it is reasonable to fear for your life. Under those circumstances you would be justified to respond with deadly force. You could fight back with martial arts, you could draw a firearm, you could grab your taser, etc. You can continue to use deadly force until the threat isn't imminent. I.e. fear/AOI are no longer met.UnderwaterMike wrote:(2) get a feel for whether my expected reaction is misaligned with that of other people who carry.
In this specific attack, the victim was out cold and never had a chance to fight back. So anything beyond the initial attack is all hypothetical. The initial attack did satisfy AOI/fear and a deadly force response from the victim (if they weren't out cold) is warranted. For how long, under what details, etc is all unknown because it didn't happen. All you can do is hypothesize about may have happened next and evaluate that. Different hypothesis lead to different reasonable responses. Example:
1. The attacker realizes they didn't knock the victim out, but the victim is slow in responding (not trained, stunned, disoriented, etc.) and the attacker runs off. At that point, continuing to pursue a deadly force response will get you in jail.
2. The attacker misses because the victim was aware and able to dodge. The victim is now acting, not reacting, but the attacker is reacting. The victim, being trained/practiced as many people on here are, is fairly quick in responding with a firearm and is able to shoot several rounds a second. How many rounds are fired depends on how long the threat remains imminent (fear/AOI), but it wouldn't take many seconds before a significant number of rounds were expanded.
We could go round and round (we did) as to what exactly "happened" next, but the key question was did the original attack, justify a deadly force response from the victim. Yes, it did. Putting yourself in the victims shoes right as the attack happens, it's clear that it would be reasonable to fear for your life or grave bodily harm at that instant. The shorthand framework I like is AOI, but there are variations (IIRC, the AOI analysis was already explained way back at the beginning). Whether that reasonable fear via AOI analysis continues and for how long depends on what happened next.
