Tag Archives: carrying a firearm in North Dakota

What Concealed Weapons And Firearms Courses Are Wrong About

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I received concealed weapons permit training and firearms training in a couple of different states, with several different certified shooting instructors. In most states, in order to have legal justification to draw your firearm and use deadly force, you must believe that you are in imminent danger of great bodily injury or death. That is one of the simplest ways to phrase it.

In reality, if you were to shoot someone with your firearm because YOU believed that you were in imminent danger of great bodily injury or death, when the Police arrive, THE POLICE are going to decide if THEY believe that you were in imminent danger of great bodily injury or death. And, the Police are probably not going to agree with you.

The Police who arrive at the scene of the shooting to investigate, they are going to ask you why did you shoot this person. What made you believe that this person was attacking you? What did this person say to you? Did this person have a weapon? Did you see a knife or a gun? Did this person hit you or grab hold of you?

The Police may ask you, why didn’t you try to leave? Why didn’t you walk away? Why didn’t you run away. Why didn’t you push this person away?

I will give a simple scenario. Suppose that you are the owner of a jewelry store, a small retail shop. Your business is locked in the morning, with a “Closed” sign in the window, and the lights are all off. You arrive at the front door at 7:00 a.m. to unlock your business. You unlock the front door and step inside, someone who you do not know and did not see out on the sidewalk, runs from a concealed location and jumps in the front door before you can close it. This person grabs the front door and locks it. Only five feet separate you from this person.

If it was me who owned and operated this jewelry store, being 52 years old, sometimes not in very good health, and this person ran from a hiding spot and jumped inside behind me before I could shut the door, then grabbed the door and locked it, I would probably shoot them. What would you do?

The reason why I would shoot them, is because it looks to me like this person is going to rob me, and I don’t know if they have a knife or gun and if they are going to kill me. I also have no idea if I could prevail against them in hand-to-hand fighting. Since this person is only five feet away, I figure I have only one chance to save myself, and I must shoot now without hesitating.

Concealed weapons permit instructors advise their students to telephone the Police and say, “I would like to report an attempted robbery, the robber has been shot, I am the business owner.” This way, you are conveying on the audio recorded 911 call that you shot who you believed to be a robber, and you are notifying the Police that the person standing at this location holding a firearm is the store owner, not the suspected robber.

When the Police arrive, you are supposed to say something like, “I was unlocking my store, when I entered my business and tried to lock the door behind me, this person ran from a hiding spot, pushed his way in, locked the door, and came at me. I was in fear for my life and I shot him. I don’t want to answer any more questions until I have spoken to an attorney and have an attorney present.”

Most concealed weapons permit instructors and firearm instructors will advise students adamantly to not say anything else to the Police, as it will most likely harm you greatly. For instance, after the fact, after the robber has been shot, it may be apparent that the robber did not possess a weapon, knife, or gun at the time, but you had no way to know that the robber did not posses a weapon. So if a Police Officer asked you, did you see a weapon, knife, or gun, and you answer “No”, the Police Officer is going to believe in HIS mind, that the suspected robber was unarmed.

After the fact, the Police Officer may continue asking questions to determine in HIS mind, whether the use of deadly force was justified. The Police Officer may ask, is there a silent alarm in this jewelry store? Why didn’t you just back away and push the silent alarm button?

Are you beginning to see the difference between using deadly force because YOU believed that your life was in imminent danger, and the Police deciding if THEY believe that your life was in imminent danger? In this jewelry store scenario, if the suspected robber did not have a weapon, the Police are probably going to arrest you and take you to jail for assault with a deadly weapon or manslaughter.

When the Prosecutor is evaluating whether to bring charges against the jewelry store owner in this case, the Prosecutor may consider, “What would a reasonable person do under these same circumstances?”, because that is one of the ways that the prosecuting attorney and the defense attorney will present and argue this case.

But at a trial, three specific legal elements will be considered and examined to determine if the use of deadly force was justified, “Ability”, “Opportunity”, and “Jeopardy”, as explained at time mark 38:46 in Massad Ayoob’s video below:

In the scenario that I described above where I am the 52 year old jewelry store owner who shot the attacker, at my trial for manslaughter, examining if my attacker had the “Ability” to cause me great bodily injury or death, without a weapon, the answer is maybe, if my physical health and physical ability were much weaker than this attacker.

“Opportunity”? Yes, my attacker inside the jewelry store was only five feet away from me, he had the opportunity to hit, kick, and choke me.

“Jeopardy”? Was my attacker behaving in a such a manner as to indicate that he was going to inflict great bodily injury or death? The answer is Yes, No, Maybe. He ran inside the jewelry store from a hidden location before I could close the door behind me, and he grabbed the door and locked it. What does this indicate? It indicates whatever a trial jury can be persuaded to believe.

In summary, if I as the jewelry store owner had shot this attacker who I believed was there to rob me, because I believed that I was in imminent danger of great bodily injury or death, the Police who arrive at the scene to investigate might not agree with me, and place me under arrest. If a Prosecutor brought criminal charges against me, at a trial, in order for this shooting to be justified, the three criteria of “Ability”, “Opportunity”, and “Jeopardy” must be met. I would have a difficult time persuading a jury that the attacker who possessed no weapon, had so much more physical strength and ability, that there was “disparity of force”.

Overall, if you watch the entire 1 hour 46 minute video of Massad Ayoob, you will see that there is much more responsibility and accountability required when carrying a firearm. You will very likely face arrest, time in jail, complicated and drawn out legal process, tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs, incarceration in prison, and civil lawsuits if you shoot someone in self defense.

My Foolishness And Lack Of Planning Leading Up To The Shooting In Mott North Dakota

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In yesterday’s blog post article I wrote about stopping to read a road map at 12:10 a.m. in the small town of Mott, North Dakota, and a derelict person coming up to my vehicle. Mott, population 800, is in the middle of nowhere, with no businesses open past 10:00 p.m., and no one driving around or out on the street at midnight.

Earlier in the day I had taken my .32 caliber Beretta pistol out of my pants pocket and placed it inside the center console of my truck. When I stopped in Mott at 12:10 a.m. to do a Google search on my phone for a street map that showed how to keep driving west on Highway 21, I planned on getting out of my truck to urinate before I continued driving.

I had not seen any vehicles or people for the past 30 minutes while driving, or anyone when I stopped at the crossroads of Highway 8 and Highway 21 in Mott. I didn’t think that there was anyone around, because I didn’t see anyone. As I was looking down at my phone screen and typing, I glanced up briefly and saw a strangely behaving person about 75 feet away walking towards my vehicle. I was startled, and I immediately took my truck out of park, and drove away, even though I didn’t know where I was going.

Like I wrote in my previous blog post article, I was unnerved. I watched this person in my truck side mirror while I was driving away, and they were stumbling around like they were drunk, high on drugs, or had something mentally or physically wrong with them, or a combination of these things.

It’s possible that this person was just drunk and walking home from a bar that had closed. I don’t know. Some people reading this, not having been there, might want to tell me that maybe this person’s car broke down, maybe they needed help, did I ever stop to think about that? Yes, I thought about all kinds of possibilities about what this person could have been doing. There was nothing good about this situation.

For more than the past several years, I have been reminding myself to not stop for hitchhikers, to be more careful about stopping to help people, and to pay more attention when I get out of my vehicle when I am far away from home.

Many times while driving on an interstate highway in very rural North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, or Arizona, I will see someone walking on the side of the highway out in the middle of nowhere and I consider stopping to give them a ride. As I slow down and pass them, most of the time when I look at these people closely they are walking with an abnormal gait and they are very disheveled, like they are a mentally-ill homeless person, which they probably are.

In the past I had worked for a couple of years with developmentally disabled, brain injured, and mentally-ill adults. I have been attacked, and my co-workers have been attacked by some of these people, and had to deal with these people when they are in crisis. It can be very dangerous and trying dealing with developmentally disabled and mentally-ill adults. I have to think and remind myself, do I want to stop and get into an altercation with someone on the side of the road that I can already see is showing signs that there is something wrong with them?

Most of the time, if I see a person walking on the side of an interstate out in the middle of nowhere, I call 911 to report that there is a person walking at this mile marker on this interstate that appears to need help, because they are many miles from anywhere. I don’t want anyone to die from dehydration or hypothermia, but I don’t want to stop and get into an altercation with someone because I am not able to help them or do what they want, such as give them money, or drive them to so-and-so’s house.

A similar thing is stopping to help people who appear to be having car problems. The last four times that I have stopped to help people with car problems, all in North Dakota, I have regretted it tremendously, because these people had a lot more wrong with them than car problems. These people that I stopped to help were bad, trashy, drug-addict, low-life, criminal people from Seattle or Coeur D’ Alene.

So I keep having to remind myself to think twice before I stop to offer a ride to hitchhikers, or stop to help people who are having car problems, AND to not get out of my vehicle without my pistol on my person, and my phone in my pocket. Because, what if I get out of my vehicle to help these people, and they run and jump in my vehicle and take off with it, or hit me on the head, or shoot me, and leave me laying there. Now, instead of me stopping to help someone stranded out in the middle of nowhere, out in the cold, now I’m stranded out in the middle of nowhere, in the cold, freezing, with no phone because I left it in my vehicle that just got stolen from me.

As I was driving away from the derelict person who had approached my vehicle in Mott while I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on surrounding me, I was angry and upset about this situation. I don’t know what this person’s intentions were. I don’t know what they were going to do.

I looked at my passenger doors and they were all locked, luckily, they could have just as easily been unlocked. What would I have done if this person had opened my truck door suddenly, or gotten into my truck suddenly? I would have certainly assumed the worst, and reacted as if my life was in danger. However, if this person did this, they may have just been drunk and not had bad intentions.

If I had gotten out of my truck to urinate, and this derelict person had snuck up on me, surprised me, bumped into me, grabbed me, pushed me, I would have assumed the worst, I would have reacted as if my life was in danger, but if they were drunk, in their mind they might have thought that they were just playing around, not intending to harm me.

This could have turned out very badly for me, and for the person who approached my vehicle. I wasn’t being very alert. It might have been a better idea for me to have taken the interstate, instead of the rural, dark, not clearly marked highways.

Something else that is very troubling, is that in the moment of being surprised and frightened by someone opening my truck door, climbing into my truck, or grabbing hold of me outside of my truck, and me reacting with the belief that I am being attacked, after the fact, Law Enforcement is not going to see it like I believed what was happening in that moment.

I would be asked, did this person have a weapon, did this person have a gun, did this person have a knife? Did this person say that they had a gun or a knife? Did this person say anything threatening to you? What made you believe that your life was in danger?

In some states, the act of car-jacking is considered to warrant the use of deadly force to defend oneself. However, in many states, including North Dakota, just because someone attacks you, this in itself does not justify the use of deadly force to defend yourself. There has to be the ability and likelihood that your life was in peril, that the attacker had the ability to, and was going to take your life.

Though in my surprise and fright, in the moment that someone suddenly got in my vehicle or grabbed hold of me I would have believed in my mind that my life was in danger, if it later turned out that this person had no weapon, was merely drunk, likely had no murderous intent, I could have been criminally prosecuted for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon or manslaughter. But had I not been surprised by a drunk derelict person at 12:10 a.m. I wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.