Get Real Self Defense Podcast
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Get Real Self Defense Podcast
Ep #19: Understanding the Legal Labyrinth of Self-Defense with Tom Grieve
What if your social media posts or even your choice of clothing could be used against you in court? How well do you understand the fine line between social posturing and asocial violence? With the insightful guidance of Tom Grieve, an ex-criminal prosecutor and a leading criminal defense attorney in Wisconsin, we step into the intricate crossroads of self-defense and the legal system. Together we dissect how everyday choices may factor into court proceedings and emphasize the crucial role of education and training in preparing for both physical and legal self-defense battles.
Would you know when and how to call 911 in a self-defense situation? We delve into the pivotal role of this emergency call, examining the narrative that might be constructed by law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges when you decide to dial those three life-saving numbers. We also shed light on the potential legal repercussions of not making that call and share invaluable steps to ensure your legal protection. An in-depth look into the world of consent in self-defense, the definition of a deadly force threat, and how consent plays into battery charges further equips you with the knowledge to safeguard your rights.
Our exploratory journey doesn't stop there. A serious, no-nonsense look at the Castle Doctrine, Stand Your Ground Laws, and the common misconceptions and ignorance in self-defense law is in order. Ever wondered about the implications of intervening as an armed third-party or the consequences of firearm modifications and Second Amendment restrictions? We have you covered. And as we gaze into the future of the Second Amendment, we invite you to join us in understanding the shaping court decisions and what you can do to protect this fundamental right. Arm yourselves with knowledge as we navigate the legal labyrinth of self-defense.
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The reason why you're carrying a firearm, I hope, is that if, God forbid, you ever had to use one, you have it. And if your mind's already gone there, then we need to recognize, as I mentioned before, that there's two deadly force encounters. That one happens and is probably going to be over in seconds. That's the kinetic encounter right there at the scene. The second one started years before that, with everything you post in social media, everything you tell your friends, the shirts you wear. You know all of your lifestyle decisions, Because all that can be factored into a case against you. And that's again that slow-moving legal force encounter. Education and training is what you need to be able to compete and win across both of those domains.
Speaker 2:So, as a kid training in martial arts and cell defense, all I thought about was the kicking and punching aspect, what will happen when someone comes up to me? What I'm going to do in response. And that was about it, and I think most of us end up doing this more often than we'd like to admit. However, there are other especially important topics that need to be covered when it comes to self-defense, including the legal space, meaning more times than not, you may actually have to end up going to court and justifying your actions, even though it appeared that your life was in danger and therefore you were justified in your actions. So, as a result, in order to cover the legal topic of self-defense in depth, I brought on Tom Grieve from Griev Law LLC, and Tom also is a YouTuber covering legal topics on self-defense and Second Amendment, and he has a subscribership of 187,000 at the time of this recording.
Speaker 2:Tom is an ex-criminal prosecutor who now leads the largest criminal defense firm in Wisconsin, and he's a former instructor, competitive shooter and relentless Second Amendment advocate. He has also been interviewed and appeared in numerous media outlets, ranging from the New York Times Court TV, fox News, reuters, washington Post, national Public Radio, milwaukee Journal Sentinel and among many others. So, with that being said, guys, I can't think of many other people that I've been following in recent years and months that is a better suited person to walk through this journey of self-defense and the legal justice system than Tom Grieve. Let's get into it. Listen in as Tom helps us uncover what it means to use self-defense from a legal justification standpoint in the justice system. Tom Grieve from Griev Law LLC.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the Get Real Self-Defense podcast. Here you get your daily dose of personal protection discussion to help you be more confident and prepared to protect yourself and your loved ones. And now let's get real with self-defense Tom welcome to the show brother.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks, adam.
Speaker 1:Great seeing you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. First of all, when it comes to the episodes of podcasts that I've done so far, talking from law enforcement perspective, military perspective, civilian perspective I was really excited to have you on because one of the things that I think is completely underutilized by civilians as a whole, leading up to and including law enforcement and military, is the legal aspect of self-defense. I think people don't give it enough credit to anticipate and be preparatory in their mindset when it comes to legal. So, if we will for context and correct me from wrong, just so the audience and listeners know, the legal more or less definition of self-defense would be the justified use of force To protect yourself from bodily harm, injury or death. Is that correct?
Speaker 1:or not. I would say, for self-defense yes, and of course you can roll into it defensive third person. But yeah, I'd say it could be the use of either deadly or non-deadly force in order to stop or terminate a threat against you, physical threat against you, perfect.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that I want to define as well is one of the things that, for instance, people like Tim Larkin if you know who that is and some other different people who are self-defense proponents, talk about there being two types, if you will, of physical altercation, which is social posturing, and asocial violence. Asocial violence meaning, like Uvaldi mass shooting scenario, so on and so forth, versus social posturing, which is going to be the people nose to nose, chest to chest, the bravado, the domineering hierarchy battle that happens in society and across the animal kingdom. So, with one of the questions that gets asked to me quite a bit is the idea of is self-defense justified when someone, for instance, tells you hit me? I dare you to give context.
Speaker 2:I remember years ago as a pup watching the Ultimate Fighting Championship and of course it's for showmanship and, among other things, they're trying to get ratings, they're trying to get eyeballs. But there was these two fighters and they got nose to nose, chest to chest. They obviously have some training and experience because they're there and one of them goes hit me, I dare you see what happens I'm going to knock your teeth in. And some people think that when that person then hits them, they think that they are then justified to fight back and they're going to be okay because he hit me first. Is that true? What is the myth and what is the fact on that? Are you allowed to say something like that and then follow through? What does that look like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's actually a lot of things kind of tied together with that. So there's two different concepts. We've got the concept of self-defense, right, and let's just return to that for a moment. So you can use in the case of a deadly force scenario. You were privileged to use deadly force in order to prevent or to stop, you know, an attack that you believe is going to be reasonably imminent and it could be deadly in character, right? So you have to be in reasonable fear of imminent death or grave bodily harm in order to use deadly force to stop a deadly attack. So in that particular scenario, I'm taking your question to mean that we're probably not in deadly scenario land. Maybe we could be, but it's unclear at best, right? So let's kind of take that self-defense topic and now put that on the side for a moment.
Speaker 1:The other topic we need to deal with is a topic of consent. So any kind of battery charge, right. We go back to that classic bar fight or, you know, whatever the case may be, someone just walks up and punches someone else in the street. They're bruised, they're injured, maybe there's some lacerations or something like that. And typically, when we look at the elements for whatever prosecuting jurisdiction we have. You know the person intended to make contact. So there's a level of intent. That's our mens rea, the Latin term for knowledge. What's our, what's our mental purpose? Knowledge, criminal neglect, intent, something else. There you go. So, typically for battery charge, we have intent to make contact with, and there's usually some sort of level of harm, and typically there's a without consent. Okay, so how badly someone's injured will basically dictate, oftentimes, whether or not we're in some level of felony or some stripe of misdemeanor or maybe even some sort of forfeiture. Noncriminal violation is you well know, of course, working in law enforcement. The consent aspect, though, is an important aspect because, of course you know, I grew up playing ice hockey. Ice hockey has been known to have a collision from time to time. Football, all sorts of sports, there's collisions. The reason why those are not criminal acts of battery over and over again is because we've all consented.
Speaker 1:Now, sometimes you do see things. There was a famous hockey incident from 20 some odd years ago where hockey player just, seemingly unprovoked, just to attack someone on the ice with a hockey stick and just chopped him down, and I believe you're subject to criminal charges, if memory serves, because that act of violence transcended the game it wasn't part of. We're all stepping onto a field or, in my case, a sheet of ice and roll roll, agreeing that we're going to play this game and the rules of the game limits the violence at X, at this particular threshold, and if you you transcend that a little bit, okay, that's penalties, right. But when you take that to like 10 levels up, that's something else. So let's bring that back to your posturing scenario.
Speaker 1:So if you were going to punch that guy, you're going to have to argue one of those two or possibly both, right. And it's going to depend partially what law enforcement is going to come in and charge you with what you're most likely attack is going to be. If they go ahead and charge you with a battery charge is look, he consented to it. This is a consensual encounter, right? He said hit me. That's a license to, you know, hit the guy. So that would be in the event that they hit you with hit you, hit you with that battery charge. Your, your defenses may subject to your local laws. Always check your local estines. You may find those in that consent territory. But it's also the reason why prosecutors will, as you know, also go after you with something called disorderly conduct and charges like that where there may not be a consent aspect, namely that you caused a kerfuffle, you somehow precipitated it, it was avoidable, or whatever the case may be subject to the particular statute. So that's going to be kind of the back and forth and, frankly, some of the prosecutorial strategies to get around that back and forth on that side.
Speaker 1:When it comes to the self defense side, look, if you're going to hit someone, you're going to have to show why you were in reasonable fear of imminent death, the great bodily harm in the event that you're using deadly force, or the fact that you're still in reasonable fear of bodily harm or whatever the particular self defense formulation might be in your particular, your particular jurisdiction when we're talking about non deadly force. So how is that guy posturing? How is that going to mean imminent threat against you that he had to act against and, of course, the back and forth, and that's going to be pretty simple. The defense is going to say, yeah, he's going nose to nose, jaw to jaw, he's doing whatever right, maybe he's bigger, maybe he's stronger. You don't know how he's trained, you don't know how many of these guys surrounding you or his buddies, and maybe you didn't have an exit or something like that and you don't know if they're armed. So, hey, it just made sense to swing first and try to get out of there in that commotion, as opposed to, of course, letting them strike first or see what happens, and so all that's going to be there.
Speaker 1:I think, generally speaking, throwing the first punch is going to be a weak argument for self defense. I'm not saying it's never going to be there. Really, the context is going to feed the algorithm, if you will, of where we're going to wind up from a from a jury trial perspective, but more likely you're probably going to be, in that particular scenario, a consent based issue, but the prosecutor can usually get around that with a disorderly conduct charge. So there you go. I'm a lawyer. You asked me like a 20 second question, adam. I gave you, like the tumors or God, I don't know five minute answer.
Speaker 2:Sure, no, that's, that's perfect. And in fact, you actually moved into one of the follow up questions I had, which is almost the inverse, and you talked about hitting first. So there's a thing that a lot of self defense, self proposed experts, if you will, or people who are teaching it for a living, that like to claim that there are times where you can actually hit a person first and you named, you actually brushed on some of the factors for that. You know some people call it first strike, first strike situation or scenario. Can you just kind of go a little more in depth where that actually becomes justified? Because one of the things that we teach universally is the idea that you assess your environment, use your situational awareness to assess your surroundings, you try to deescalate, you try to escape, but then, if that escape is unavoidable, you know, are you justified to actually hit first, hit hard, hit fast, run to the house, so to speak.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you may be justified, but it's similar to and I don't want to keep broaching topics on you, but I'm just going to keep throwing things into the pot and see where it goes Sure, it's similar to using any kind of deadly force against an on armed attacker. It's going to be one of those things where we can certainly build a legal argument for it. It's going to be highly fact, specific, intensely driven by pre threat indicators, the context, the environment and all that kind of stuff. And, on a certain level, there's just going to be a lot of people that, no matter what, are never going to be able to get on board with the fact that you threw the first punch, you shot first or anything like that. There are just some environments where Han Solo is always going to be the bad guy. I guess we're going like 80s, 70s, star Wars, people not like you know, 2000s yeah, gross, no.
Speaker 2:Definitely. I think that's, you know, super true, in fact, because one of the things that gets thrown at me and I learned this early on from mentors is the idea of optics. Optics are super important because you know what's going on. The other person on the other end that you are in opposition with in this situation knows what's going on, more or less, but not everyone else who is a witness or paying attention, you know, is going to know what's going on and they're just going to see what they have, with no context, and so you know optics being super important. To give an example, I actually, when I was probably in my early 20s believe it or not, I don't look it, but I'm actually 32 years old and but in my early 20s, you know, I'm with my girlfriend now wife and we were walking.
Speaker 2:You know, we just got out of the car, leaving the parking lot to enter the city mall and as we're, you know, entering the city mall, there's commotion and you know this commotion off the side is probably one, you know, row over. I could see, you know, across the way, that there was a female on the ground, probably 15, 16 years old, and another female that was grabbed by a young male, probably a little bit younger than myself at the time, and he had grabbed her and he he then proceeded to punch her and push her down on the ground, and so, after that, though, he started walking off and heading towards the mall entrance, and for me, I sat there like one. I was taught you don't hit girls. That is you know what mama raised me on. You don't do that. And so part of me wanted to defend, quote unquote, their honor, their honor, in that situation. So I actually be like that, first for the guy to stop him, to confront him, to keep him there, and then realized, as I was approaching him, that the situation was over, there was no danger, there was no Problem.
Speaker 2:At that point, it pretty much ended those girls were getting up, dusting themselves off while this guy was walking inside, and I was actually going to create my own assault and battery situation, potentially as well. And then, when I was talked to by, like I said, my mentor, he said hey, you know, optics are important. You know what is it look like on the on the Monday newspaper, you know? Front page, if you will. So I definitely agree with the idea that there are going to be people who, just from perception, look at you and go no, you should have hit first, I don't care what it looks like, you know, I think that's super true. So one of the things that you, that you talked about, though and I think in some ways this helps avoid that risk is the race to 911. Could you clarify and define what the race to 911 is and how that would look like for somebody who had just defended themselves from someone who was trying to assault them at that time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you know, as my background is as an ex state criminal prosecutor and criminal defense attorney, and you know, here the largest defense from our state of Wisconsin, we have, at any point in time, maybe half dozen dozen self defense cases. You know it ebbs and flows, but that's a that's a pretty safe range, something like that I'd say. And there are all different stages of the case and there's a pretty steady thing that you learn, which is the cases where people do not call 911, either right away or at all. That puts extra problems on our plate. Okay, and I'm going to circle back around to the counter argument of don't call 911. But here's the argument to call 911. It's the optics, building on your earlier point, of what good guys do. Good guys, if the scene is safe, they hang around, they call 911, they take responsibility for their actions they're hopefully righteous and legal actions for what has happened. There's just the optics that bad guys, they run, they get away, they go to ground, all that kind of stuff. So you're cutting against the optics, just for starters, and the narrative of how law enforcement is going to view you for better or worse, right or wrong, how the prosecutor is going to view you for all the same reasons and, should it come to it, the judge and the jury. It's just starting a little bit on the back foot and again, there may be perfectly Great reasons. Maybe the scene wasn't safe yeah, get out of there, get safe, right. But again, just as kind of starting like a vanilla baseline case, call 911, stat Other problems.
Speaker 1:I've seen the cases where people do not win the race 911. Sometimes the bad guys, they call 911. If they're in a situation where they know that there's lots of cameras or someone else probably called, they may try calling 911. And, by the way, if they're a bad guy, if they just try to like Rob you or something like that, or burgerize your house, there's a pretty good chance that they've been through the system once or twice, not always. Sometimes you get teenagers on some sort of spree, trying to like go garage shopping, so to speak, stealing lawn mowers wherever they can find. Or you get a teenager twenty something year old, like drug addicts, who are just kind of breaking into homes out of desperation to get drug money. And I mean, I'm not sure what that is, desperation to get drug money, and I'm zero percent endorsing that as a lifestyle. I'm just saying there's a distinction between those people versus hardened criminals, right, and particularly the hardened criminal crowd. They're going to understand the buttons and the levers of law enforcement and I've seen this in any number of cases where the good guy chooses not to call 911, or they don't think the scene is safe, or maybe there's an incident in their car and they're driving to their destination. They figure, I'll just call, I'll call 911, I get there.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile, bad guys call 911. Calls 911 tells the opposite story of this guy just tried to rob me. Of course they get rid of the evidence, all that kind of stuff. I've got all sorts of stories about that. So again, the system is set up to respond and to try to bifurcate where possible good guy, bad guy, right, yeah, sometimes you get co defendants, sometimes you've been to enough situations, I'm sure, adam, where, yeah, there's really no good guys here. They're all just kind of shades of like from your decision making, right, but when guns come out we really try to find a good guy and a bad guy. That's the way our system really tries to operate and it's not always possible. But you want to make sure that by winning the race 911, that you're putting yourself firmly in that good guy seat.
Speaker 1:Now here's a bit of the counter argument, because we get calls all the time. So we're, we're statewide in Wisconsin. Wisconsin's home is a little city called Milwaukee. Some people call it kill walkie. For a reason, some of the most dangerous zip codes in the United States over the years have come from Milwaukee. Milwaukee is no stranger to just a lot of the problems that we think of when we think of large major cities.
Speaker 1:As a result, we get calls from people who had to use a firearm, whether that's just pull out to just pull out display, whether it's pull out point or pull out point, pull the trigger and they did not call 911. We call some people who say, hey, yesterday night I just shot at a guy who tried to rob me. Okay, did number one? Are you okay? Number two are you in police custody? Number three, kind of why aren't you in police custody?
Speaker 1:Did you call 911. Yeah, I'm okay. No, I didn't call 911. Why do you think I should? And you know, we kind of talk through it at that point. It's obviously up to them, it's not up to me. And the decision making matrix in those kind of neighborhoods can be very different than the decision making matrices in kind, of where I live and probably work with the police, and that's a little bit of a different world and it's a. It's a big part of the reason why a lot of self defense firearm uses if you just go by CDC statistics and elsewhere Are just frankly, not reported. Most of these people are not calling on one in my experience, that they just aren't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is true that oftentimes people think, hey, I'm okay, no harm, no foul, I can move on with my day, I didn't do anything wrong, I did the right thing.
Speaker 2:And then sometimes, or there, or maybe they're even worked up emotionally and mentally and they kind of go into you know, color code black in some ways where they just don't. They're so hyper fixated on the fact that it happened and they are trying to just recover from it that they don't actually go through the proper procedure. So let's actually breach that a little bit and go OK, you just got done with the situation, with a self defense situation. You talked about how there's good and bad for calling 911, not calling 911. So let's actually go into if, if Tom Grieve had to be in a self defense situation and let's actually go for you had to at the very least brandish your firearm in this situation. And now the situation safe what are you doing to make sure that you are legally covered and in a good position in that good guy seat, as you put it? What's the first you know set of things that you're doing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I mean I'm calling 911. For starters, that's what I'm doing. And another context question is going to be am I out in the woods somewhere in like northern Wisconsin by myself and I just I ran into some sort of like math, had junkie, or more likely, am I in some sort of suburban or urban setting or something like that? Right, but yeah, number one is I'm assuming the situation safe and it's clear that there's no ongoing threat, I'm going to be reholstering because I don't need another, whether it's responding officer or a another, good guy can still carry person.
Speaker 1:I don't need them perceiving me as a threat, because anytime there's a deadly force encounter, anytime there's an incident, there's really two deadly force encounters. You have the kinetic one that happens in the street, in the home and car, whatever the case may be, and then there's the legal one. A lot of people think of the justice system as a deadly force encounter, but when you're talking about a lot of guys, rain uniforms with guns, can put you away for life or worse, that's a deadly force encounter and it's just a slow moving deadly force encounter, but it's still a deadly force encounter. So you want to survive both of those and building your case to survive. The second one doesn't start with 911, starts with education and training, but it definitely continues by calling 911.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so let's actually get into that, because that's one of the major questions and in some ways, one of my major complaints about, I guess, the in particular let's just I'll just put it out there the gun community. I think that there's a lot of people who carry a firearm and maybe they're really good at carrying that firearm, but they end up not training past the firearm portion. I mean, for law enforcement, you have different levels of force that you can use and when it comes to you know the low levels of force, whether it be level one, level two and then deadly force, let's say, is level three. You have those. I guess, how do I, how do I put it best? You have all these other things that you're supposed to have training, experience to do.
Speaker 2:Is there something for civilians? Where is that enough to like, hey, hey, I can carry a firearm and that's good enough for me. Or is there an eight responsibility to enhance themselves in a legal perspective, of having that training and experience? Hey, I know, I know how to at least do some jiu-jitsu or some boxing or some other things where I can use other levels of force to stop that threat before it escalates to deadly force. You know I'm getting punched in the face, the guys on arm, but he's beating me up. I don't know how to defend myself, so I pull up my gun, I shoot the guy Right and you know. So is there is there any sort of, I guess, if you will, responsibility for civilian to have more than just firearms experience and training? Should they have those other, I guess, mid tier levels of training for use of force, continuum, or does that actually go against them because they have that training? Where the question then comes why didn't you use these other options with your training and experience? Yeah, can you touch on that a little bit?
Speaker 1:Yeah, one or two things in there. So number one is anything and everything can be used against you, right? If you get that black belt and taekwondo or jiu-jitsu or whatever it is that you've got, if you have that, they're going to say why didn't you use that? That's what I mean. That's going to be the argument. If you have an aggressive on reasonable prosecutor and let me be clear, there's, there's many fantastic, reasonable, level headed prosecutors we're going to understand why, if someone's trying to stab you, you trying to respond with, like, your yellow belt form, if you type Wando and a front snap kick, is probably not like your best move at that moment, right. But there's a lot of them who are not going to understand. These are the same people who you see comment like why didn't you shoot him in the, in the, the knee or something like that? Right, like these people are alive, they've got bar degrees in the occupied DA's offices.
Speaker 1:So, um, I just want to create that level of a little bit higher resolution on who we're dealing with and the fact that you're going to see some extraordinarily unreasonable arguments and positions coming from prosecutors. But I don't want to paint with a broad brush, understanding that there's a lot of great ones and there's a lot of scary ones. So, um, with that being said, look, more training, in my view, better period. That being said, um, work, kids, whatever else you got going on, maybe health issues, disabilities, you name it Getting a black belt in or the equivalent in every single martial arts discipline and carrying a firearm, a flashlight, a knife, a taser, a sap, a Billy club, you know like, like, I mean forget, forget. You know, a force continuum here, like this is like the ROY G Biv, at a certain point of like we just got the rainbow of force right.
Speaker 1:I feel like there's a trademark in there, the rainbow of force. But right, I mean the rainbow of force continuum is where that winds up going. There's always going to be arguments, and I've had, I've heard the opposite of you don't want to carry less than lethal, because it will invite those kind of questions of you have a taser, why don't you try using that? And of course you can flip that around and it's like well, if you've got a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. If all you carry is a gun, that's what's going to look like and the prosecutor will argue either side of that, depending upon what you have. So again, now a reasonable prosecutor. It's like heads I win, tails you lose. That's going to be kind of the gist of that.
Speaker 1:What I think is this number one you have a constitutional right to carry a firearm. You have an ethical responsibility to yourself, to your family and to your community to get as much training as you possibly can. In my Reckoning those are not mutually exclusive. I'm 0% taking away from someone's right to carry a firearm. I'm not saying don't carry a firearm at all. I'm just saying that the reason why you're carrying a firearm, I hope, is that if, God forbid, you ever had to use one. You have it. And if your mind's already gone there, then we need to recognize, as I mentioned before, that there's two deadly force encounters. That one Happens and is probably going to be over in seconds. That's the kinetic encounter right there at the scene. The second one started years before that, with everything you post in social media, everything you tell your friends, the shirts you wear, you know all of your lifestyle decisions, because all that can be factored into a case against you. And that's again that slow moving legal force encounter. Education and training is what you need to be able to compete and win across both of those domains.
Speaker 1:Because, I agree, Better to be judged by 12 and carried by six, Better to be judged by 12 and carried by six. But how about, you know, not carried by six, not judged by 12 or a hopefully a very restful, as much as can be? You know, we don't even get to charges or I'm on really good facts. That's what would be great in my world. And you, unless you're very lucky and we're allowing for the fact that someone like already attacked you. So you know you're luck. Yeah, Unless we're allowing for the fact that you're very lucky. I don't want to roll the dice on that. If I'm going to carry a firearm, if I'm going to take personal defense seriously, I'm going to carry the proper tools. And if I'm going to carry the proper tools, I need to know how to use them. And that means the proper hands on for those, and it means also knowing the law and being trained for to be able to handle those situations and the legal force encounters that follow.
Speaker 2:Sure. So, speaking of some of the laws, one of the common things that people bring up in, especially in the gun community, is Castle Doctrine. So, with the Castle Doctrine, can you kind of explain for those that don't understand what the Castle Doctrine is, and then where it applies for lethal force versus maybe non lethal force, such as hand to hand protection, and so on and so forth? Yeah, so again the seams are going to wander.
Speaker 1:The lines are going to and boundaries will kind of differ from state to state, but here's, here's the gist of it again, and now painting in broad strokes. So if we imagine the use of deadly force being privileged when you're in reasonable fear of imminent death and great bodily harm, right, or maybe it's immediate near state or whatever those the case may be, generally speaking, the Castle Doctrine can, depending upon how it's written, create a presumption of the law and the law and then create a presumption that if you're in a certain place, such as your home, and if a certain thing happens, like somebody has broken into your home or is in the process of breaking into your home, that illegal presumption is created that you're now in reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harm. In other words, I don't necessarily have to wait for the bad guy to like pull out the knife, say I'm going to kill you in charge, right. I don't have to wait for those shadowy shapes moving through my kitchen to present a weapon. I'm also not suggesting just shoot at shadowy shapes in your kitchen, to be clear. Okay, target, target identification, all the way. But that's the gist of how it function.
Speaker 1:Another way that I can see it somewhat interpreted and applied is a little bit of a stand your ground law in someone's home as to where it can work. It typically almost always works in your home, not necessarily at your friend's house or anything like that. By home, I mean, if you rent an apartment, it can probably work there as well. It can usually work not always if you're at a hotel and it's your room for the night and someone tries to break in, it often can work in your own automobile. It can often, but not always, work in your own business.
Speaker 1:What's your definition in your own business? Check your local listings. You have to be an owner, a manager, an employee, a family member of one of the above, don't know. Check your local listings and all that. And again, the spirit of all this, generally speaking, is animated by the concept that we're talking about people defense, not stuff defense. So if your car alarm goes off, you look outside your window in the middle of the night and some guys like stealing your Abba City, lighting that guy up to save your Abba City, that's not going to be a castle doctrine, that's probably not going to be self-defense. That's going to be something very different. That's going to be property defense. So that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about you being in these places when the abbeck begins.
Speaker 2:No, definitely. I think that to your point you know, if someone's stealing your CD out of your car, I mean there's nothing for you there, you're not in danger at that moment. Yeah, maybe your stuff's being stolen to some degree, but it's different than like maybe, let's say, your kid being stolen. That would be something where the level of force used or the immediacy or eminence of danger comes into effect. So, because of those factors, because you know a CD versus a child is different with cops, as you, as I know, you're aware, there's like a force continuum and factors that you look at to regulate how much force you should be using at that time. You know, to make sure that it's justified or not justified force.
Speaker 2:Is it a recommendation you know again broad strokes to have civilians looking at the force continuum the same way as cops, or do they have, I guess, a little bit more leniency because they're not certified in their state and don't have that training as far as how much force they use? For example, if there's a person with bald up fists coming towards me as a certified peace officer, how I would still try to use less force, the least amount of force necessary to stop that person. But if somebody with bald up fists comes forward in a civilian, then again we talk about that first strike scenario or whatnot, or maybe they grab them and push them away. You know, is it more lenient for a civilian, or should they look at it the same way as cops and try to see, like okay, and learn how do cops assess it? Like, can you kind of explain what you think would be best practice, if you will, for how to assess force?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that first off, we have to acknowledge that there may not always be the same deck of cards when we're talking about the use of force laws. So sometimes law enforcement in certain situations can be privileged because of they've. You guys have built up a whole science let's call it a sphere of arguments about if this, then that, If I'm trained to see this, then that could be perceived as a threat, and so forth. I would say that I as a citizen am not going to be getting the same benefit that out. In that respect, I think that there's long story short. I think there's going to be a lot of advantages cutting towards the officer to grant them additional options about when law enforcement can use force.
Speaker 1:I think there's also going to be other situations where law enforcement are going to see heightened scrutiny about the use of force. The same thing applies to Johnny Q Public on the street. I think that there's different domains and there's different contexts that will drive. If I was a defense attorney and if I saw the fact pattern, do I want my client wearing a badge or not? I would say probably eight times out of 10, I'll probably take the badge as helping me out. I think that's going to be a good way to get out of that. We're taking vanilla issues here. There's just lots of added factors that go in favor of law enforcement, which I'm happy to expand on, but that's my low resolution take.
Speaker 2:Sure. No, I agree with you in the sense that there's definitely going to be some advantages or, in some ways, a perceived benefit of doubt Not to put words in your mouth or misrepresent what you're saying, but what it sounds like is when it comes to evaluating force and whatnot. That's why it almost sounds like it's almost more important for a civilian to expand their knowledge base on how to use force and how to assess threats and utilizing situational awareness and de-escalation. Would that be a correct assessment or am I misrepresenting you?
Speaker 1:That's 100% right. If I did half the things that I've seen in police reports, I would have a criminal record, and that is 0% in attacking statement for law enforcement. Let me be clear. Let me expand on that. What I'm saying is that law enforcement has a different job than I do. My job is to go out to take care of my family, take care of my friends, take care of my community, but I have my work and so forth, my duties owed and so forth is going to be very different than an officer who has to arrest a suspect.
Speaker 1:If I see someone shoplifting, I can call the police or notify the store manager and walk away. I'm not going to have to figure out is this person armed? How do I take them to custody? Are they going to be combative? Are they on drugs and all this other kind of stuff? There's this whole sphere of doing something for officer safety reasons and a whole set of vocabulary that I see officers use in police reports of. I boy.
Speaker 1:What were some of my favorite ones over the years? I horizontally destabilized the subject on the ground. It's like okay, so you threw him to the ground. I obtained compliance with a defensive strike to the suspect's chest, it's like. So you punched him in the chest and he fell down, got it Again. Don't misread anything. I'm saying that is 0% attack on law enforcement. Law enforcement has a very dangerous job and, on a situation by situation, case and analysis, these could be 100%, be 100%, be justified. They could also be entirely wrong, just like civilians right, it all feeds from the context. But my point is this the context that feeds into me having a dispute turning into a physical altercation or perhaps worse, with someone as me being non law enforcement. The context that feeds into that is very different than if you, adam, have a badge, you're on duty, you're in uniform and now you're in an altercation. That's just a whole different context. That's unique, for the most part unique to law enforcement versus me.
Speaker 2:Sure no, and I think that's well said. It's interesting because you have, like I said before, there seems to be this kind of cultural stance, particularly in the United States, where guns good, guns bad. I'm going to have my firearm and I have the right to use it, I have the right to self-defense. Then you have the other side that's saying no guns, guns bad guns kill people. Therefore we need to take guns and criminals will follow the law. I don't know.
Speaker 2:You've breached on that subject several times. In fact, just recently, you and David Hogg decided to agree on the same subject or stance, which was kind of incredible. But as far as the culture, is there anything? I guess, when it comes to force, firearms and whatnot again keeping this broad culturally that you find is misrepresented in self-defense for civilians, they come in and they say, well, I did this and I did this and that's what I'm allowed to do, that Then your firm has to go. Sorry, no, why do people think that that is a thing you can do? Is there anything like that? Or is it mostly just ignorance and ignorance is bliss? Is it ignorance or is it some sort of misrepresented information that people then grab onto and take off running?
Speaker 1:All the above. It's deadly ignorance, it's misrepresentation People have, and it starts with the justice system. People have profound misunderstandings of how the justice system works, what their rights are, how to raise the right for an attorney, what does a criminal case look like? From A to Z, soup to nuts, front to finish, hollywood in the media has concocted a shared fantasy of sorts of this is what the justice system looks like. It's useful because it creates a very oftentimes compelling, fun and dramatic portrayal which if you've ever been to court, you know has no basis in reality sometimes, because court's usually pretty boring if you're there.
Speaker 1:There's all these misrepresentations about what an attorney can do, what we can't do, how that process all plays itself out. There's also lots of misunderstandings about the law. How many times have you seen someone post online shoot, shovel, shut up and stuff like that, and it's like, well, I'm gonna, there's a reason why I got the back 40, man, and stuff like that? It's like, yeah, you know, that's cool, I wouldn't be posting that, I wouldn't be thinking that Like. I think there's lots of problems with that. That's kind of the path to a felony record, like that mentality. And it's the world that we live in and that's where we're at right now, and I'm sure we've always been there to some degree or another, but no people. If you're not trained and educated in how the law works, what's gonna happen? If you're not properly trained on how to use and survive your tools during a deadly force encounter, your chances of surviving those deadly force encounters just went down and again, both of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I couldn't agree more honestly. The one of the things that I take issue with is and something that I found myself guilty with is I actually recently acquired a new firearm. It's my new. You know concealed carry if you want, you know if you will. And one of the things that I caught myself early on when I first bought it, was like I wasn't doing enough training with it. You know, not all guns are the same. You know, one firearm, if it's a Glock 19 or a Stig P365, it's going to be night and day difference as far as shooting and the recoil management. You know how you manipulate the gun, and so I had to kick myself a little bit and go gosh, you know I need to be practicing with it if I'm going to be carrying it. That's just important.
Speaker 2:So, but one of the things that I wanted to ask you is you talked about how the news media and Hollywood have kind of skewed a lot of the, you know, expectation versus reality when it comes to the court system and the justices as a whole, in particular self-defense, to give an example briefly, not that we need to go down this, but just to give some context of my thought.
Speaker 2:You know, you have Kyle Rittenhouse, right where his whole life was turned upside down. You know, a self-defense situation turned into a really high-profile national news, international news story. How much does and you talked about this, you know, shoot, shovel, shut up. How much does your social media presence and like what you do, what you say, factor into your after effects when it comes to self-defense? Because obviously people are going to comb through your life depending on the level of I guess you know a government interest when it comes to the crime. So how much should you know people be actually paying attention to their just everyday life and how they act or interact online, in particular when it comes to the legal side of self-defense?
Speaker 1:It's all can play a role. I mean, it can all play a role and it did in that trial. I think there were three different uses of social media and electronics that came up as part of that case where I'm sure I'm sure Kyle said I'd rather get that one back if I could, I'd play a couple mulligans here. And the way the prosecution tried to use it is they tried to use it as shaping what was really going on in Kyle's head and to try to shape the narrative about what was going on that night. Why was he there? What was he doing? And he was basically there looking for trouble and he was trigger happy and he wanted to shoot people and and he was just trying to get famous and on and on and on. That was the narrative. Obviously, the prosecution was trying to sell the jury and they used some of the pieces in that puzzle his social media, and it's basically it's like starting the game with you know, yeah, other team, why don't you, why don't you get the ball to start both the first half and the second half? Let's do that and I'll I'll spot you a few fumbles along the way. Let's like like that's. That's just kind of the easy way of conceptualizing this. They're they're unforced errors.
Speaker 1:And look, I know what people are going to post in the comment section, which is well, I've got my first amendment right? You do, and there's 0%. Am I taking away from that? However, the prosecution is going to use that against you. That's not my fault, that's not Adam's fault. Okay, that's the truth and I'm sorry if you don't like that. That people can use what another person says and does against them in court happens every day. If you don't like it, my suggestion is don't do it and not saying that's fair, but that is the way it is.
Speaker 2:No, I agree with you. Again. The funny thing is that there's people out there that think, oh, I have, if you will, my right to say things. You know, there's political correctness, there's all these different, you know. So there's there's people that then, because they see political correctness, they then go. I'm going to just say whatever.
Speaker 2:And you know, even if it shocks the, shocks the system, and that to me, is actually in some way strategically speaking, you know anti, you know you when it comes to legal, because some of the things you say, obviously, if not everything, will be used against you, like you said. And so, even if you are quote unquote allowed to say it doesn't mean you should say it, you know. And so, as far as it all goes with you know, I want to kind of move over for to this other scenario where, let's say, you, you are not the one defending yourself, it's actually a third party, someone that you're not associated with. Is there any time where you, you know, are you allowed to do anything, intervene, or should you just be a good witness? What does that look like? When it comes to the, you know, just like you're minding your own business. You see somebody, they're having an altercation, someone's getting the tar kicked out of them. Do you intervene, do you not? Do you stay out of it? What does that look like?
Speaker 1:Well, there's a handful of things. Again, you have to survive the kinetic encounter, you have to force, you have to survive the legal encounter. So when you're talking about third party intervention like, let's say, we're at a Walmart, because just fictionally that or maybe not so fictionally, that just seems to be where a lot of these examples play out. So the example I like to give is you're in the meat section, you're at the back of the store, whatever else, you hear some pew-pews come in from the front and you decide not on my watch, right. And you, you know, do your your your tactical strut, um, pass the hot pockets and uh, you know all that kind of good stuff, right. And uh, you get to the front and you see a guy at the gun. Is that another concealed carrier Just like you? What's he seeing when he sees you? Right? So we talked about before the concept of target identification. Well, again, there's going to be immediate threat that the second you pull out that gun, you might be confused as the bad guy. And I'm not saying don't pull out the gun, don't try to to, don't try to serve the good. I'm, I'm not suggesting that. What I'm simply trying to do is I'm trying to orient people towards the landscape of the risks and and problems of what happens here. All right, well, let's say that you do see the actual bad guy and you identify him. He's wearing a ski mask. Great, okay, Classic bad guy. Move right. So he's wearing a ski mask, he's, he's shooting at people and so forth. Great, you do. Shot, shot. We tend to think we're going to always win the encounter and just statistically, that's not always what happens. Sometimes you miss your gun, jams, whatever else the case may be. Bad guy turns, shoots you. Are you ready for that? Again, this is one of the liabilities in this, in this very real life situation. All right, let's say you shoot him, you actually hit him, he goes down Thread over. Just hypothetically, it's a Hollywood, stop right, you hit him, it's you know, he just falls over. It's like a Bambi situation. He's done whatever. Great. Also, not the way it works from real life. But fine, okay. Again.
Speaker 1:Now we're back to the first situation. Another guy comes around the corner, sees you're holding a gun. Are they gonna shoot you? You can ask the Arvada Police Department in Colorado, who of course had a mistaken identity situation when they shot the good guy who stopped a bad guy with a gun, with a good guy with a gun. These things do happen. These are not just hypotheticals that some lawyer on the internet is talking to you about. That's never gonna happen like this happens, okay. So these are all things you need to be thinking about and preparing yourself for so that you understand, I Hope.
Speaker 1:If there's anything, my call to action is get training, get education right so you know how to cover all that, because we're certain that we'll cover all that right here right now, but sure, and then once the scenario goes cold, bad guys down, it's clear, for whatever reason. That was our only threat, which again, never an assumption you can make. Okay, situation safe. Are you gonna reholster, call 9-1-1, all that kind of stuff. I mean, that's, that's the, that's the kinetic force encounter. Far more complicated when we're talking about defensive third person, particularly when we're talking about like a mass, a public mass shooter event like what I just gave you there. It wasn't like an, like a robbery, where we instantly know good guy from bad guy, all that other kind of stuff. It's complicated and it can get very messy very quickly, in every sense of the term.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of people don't appreciate the idea that fog of war, if you will, applies to scenarios like what you just shared. I mean where Mike Tyson would say you always have a plan until you get punched in the face. I mean it's just the same concept. I mean and and when you get, if you will, punch in the face with this, this situation where you have a mass shooter, everybody is gonna be struggling emotionally, physically, you know, like your respiratory system is gonna go off the charts, you're gonna be breathing crazy and you, some of you, or some of us, are gonna get tunnel visioned.
Speaker 2:You never rise to the occasion, as they say. You always default to your training. So, when it comes to Like, do you think this is, this is advisable like for me, I like to have on hand a safety vest. So, you know, as an officer, if I'm off duty, I like to have a safety vest on hand so that I can, if I need to, I can quickly throw it over, have my gun out. So then at least there's something to, I guess, if you will identify, is that a decent strategy or is that something that I should just say hey, that's not even Like. It doesn't seem that useful like. What do you think for that, personally I mean.
Speaker 1:I can see the use. It's just what you said. I can see the counterpoint, which is are you really gonna carry this around with with you everywhere you go into the store? Lord knows how a prosecutor is gonna be able I mean Jesus if they're already gonna be persecuting you while they're prosecuting you because you Went out and gotta conceal carry license and then God forbid bought a gun and then you stuck hollow points inside that gun. Wow, I can. I can imagine the field day and I have like faces and names that I'm not gonna give you of like local prosecutors who I find to be particularly unreasonable. I can only imagine the field day of what they would try to do with that.
Speaker 1:So I'm not saying it's a bad idea, never do it. I'm just saying I mean virtually every single thing you do, whether you choose to act or don't act, whether you choose to carry a firearm or not, what gun you carry, what you don't carry, how you carry it, how trained you are, how untrained you are. There's always a list of pros and cons on either side. There's just I don't know of a single, a single way or time that there is not a list of pros and cons in my mind. Some of those decisions are black and white. I will, I will. This is, like you know, like don't hit on like 20 to me if we're playing blackjack. Like I'm not hitting on a 20 when it comes to am I gonna carry a firearm, am I gonna get educated, am I gonna get trained? That's like not hitting on a 20 there for me and then it, you know, starts to like shade out into like yeah, you're gonna get some.
Speaker 1:You need some like close calls, where reasonable minds may differ and a lot of that may also vary depending upon the nature of what your jury pool may look like. What's the nature of your local law enforcement culture and how oriented are they gonna be to a Good guy using a firearm self-defense? That might be very different in a rural area versus a major metropolitan area, for instance, right, and, of course, what's the prosecutor culture? And that's, in my experience, less along the lines of politics than you might think. People, I think, automatically jump to the conclusion that if you're in some sort of like blue city, they're gonna be all like completely against you, and I would say that that's how the wind may start in my experience. But, conversely, those people know exactly like what's lurking on those streets right, so they understand the nature of the threat. You'll find some very reasonable people in there and you may find some very reasonable juries for you.
Speaker 1:And you go out into some more red areas where you may just kind of reflexively think, hey, this is gonna be a lot, a lot more pro-gun and it's like, well, is it?
Speaker 1:Because if the prosecutors bring charges, their witnesses are gonna be cops and if we're always gonna believe cops, if we're always gonna back the badge and all that kind of stuff and I'm not, I Don't take what I'm saying is disparaging, I'm simply playing out Frankly how this works in real life. Like, yeah, you could have a very red County and Are we gonna get the back the badge jury or we're gonna get the libertarian jury? I don't know, probably a blend of both, right and depending on where you're in the country, there are different types of red and and that will kind of shade out and grade in one direction or another and you can only hope that your prosecutors Are gonna be reasonable. Your cops are gonna be great. They're going to if you are silly enough to give a statement that they're gonna ask great questions Rather than doing kind of a sloppy, half-assed interview which I've seen before and it's caused major problems for my client. You know it's there. There's just there's so many variables to this. There's so many variables to this sure.
Speaker 2:So I guess the last, a Couple questions, one I feel like it could be fairly quick and it kind of goes to your point, which is you know I'm a firearms carrier and I want to, like, swap out my trigger, swap out my slide, booge out my magazine I got a magazine weld. You know all that kind of stuff. Is that ill advised? Like should you go with? Like you know you don't want the tack light and the in the you know Red Dot site and everything else that a lot of people like to get, which are all useful tools. Will that actually go against you? Again, you said everything can go against you. You've already established that. You've already established that a prosecutor will take a lot anything they can and run with it to paint that narrative.
Speaker 2:But you personally, do you carry? You know like, for instance, if you were to carry, do you carry things with, like red dots and and you know, flared magwells and all that kind of stuff, or do you prefer to carry the, I guess, out of the box? You know gun, so that you know it's just, that's the way it is. You didn't trick it out because you're intending to shoot anybody. You know you're not trying to shoot people better. You know does which one, which one do you kind of lean towards?
Speaker 1:that's kind of better for you legally, yeah, I carry on. Modified 1972 cold detective special, no nice, yeah. So I am okay with weapon modifications and again, I Realize, if you go back, even 10 years, and especially to go back beyond five or ten years, the popular culture, the cultural mainstream perception and this 2a community is like never modify your firearm. And if you're gonna modify it, like if you're gonna take a galak with a five point five pound trigger, put the eight pound New York trigger and like that's, that's the only modified in that direction. And they were, they were perfectly valid and good reasons and fantastic arguments, and everything I'm about to say is not to take away from why those principles were taught. To my mind, though, the prosecutors, who are the ones that you're worried about, they have just so radically overplayed their hand where they're gonna throw anything and everything against you. That, like you know what, if you need to use a weapon mounted light to get better target identification and isolation, like that makes sense to me, and we can we can Address that with an expert. Is there gonna be a price to pay with the juror because you look like you're out of like an Xbox game? Maybe Probably there will be, but Again, if that's what you need. God bless, okay.
Speaker 1:Yes, I do carry. I carry as religiously as I can. I I've been experimenting with with red dots and that kind of stuff. I have not gone any of the closed emitters and that kind of stuff. I'm still. I'm in that awkward transition stage. I'm like a 13 year old. When it comes to red dots, it's like, yeah, you know, I can see the benefit, I am shooting well with it. But by the same token, like I'm, I just find myself just dumb, reaching all the time for like a normal slide.
Speaker 1:I do carry a fairly modified firearm but the modifications Came courtesy of Langdon tactical in HKB 30 L E, s, k, l E M and I absolutely love this firearm and I used to be a huge Glock guy. For God, I don't know how many years that was like 15 years of being a Glock guy and I still am. I love Glock not taken away from Glock, but I've I've found myself pivoting as I've always been a Glock guy, I've always been an HK guy, I've always been a Glock guy. I'm a sick guy in the 2-2 series. You know that the 200s, the hammer fired 200s love those, particularly the older ones. But yeah, you know I, I just have certain things that I know work for me and I really like there's certain dimensions and rules I've learned that just carry better, at least for me and my dad bod. So I HKB 30 SK, l E M, just it's a, it's a pretty, pretty sweet ride for me nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right now I'm carrying the, just the Glock 43 X right now, playing around with that just because of the, the fact that you can. And then Washington changed its laws quite a bit with magazines when I wanted to get what was called the, the shield arms magazines. I don't know if you heard of them, but they where they removed the polymer and expanded it so you could get 15 and one.
Speaker 1:I talked to the inventor of them. Yes, I am familiar with those and I know a lot of them myself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that that's what I was going for.
Speaker 2:And then they changed their laws and it's like you know, I can't get more, and which is unfortunate. But the final question is this, and this one's more for me, but I think it might be beneficial to, you know, have the listeners kind of listen in and I've reached on this a little bit earlier. But In the federal government, with the Constitution, you have your Constitutional rights the second amendment, the first amendment, so on and so forth and States are allowed to be more restrictive to where they can protect the citizens even further than what's the Constitution allows. However, the second amendment is getting attacked left and right, with states I mean, new Mexico most recently, is like a big blatant overreach in you trying to quote unquote use emergency powers to suspend the rights of its citizens. Why is it that All the other rights like fourth amendment can be more restrictive in favor, but not the second amendment? What's the legal precedent for that? Are we ever going to see a change? You know, can you just kind of talk about it and expand on it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, how did we get here? I think is, in essence, a big part of that question. Well, I think I promise a very short history background. Okay, so I've got the Constitution, we've got the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments right, 1791, all good. What people oftentimes don't know is that those amendments did not restrict the states from doing anything. The bill of rights restricted the federal government from passing laws that would infringe on the first amendment, second amendment, all the way through the tenth. But your states, your states, could do virtually whatever they wanted. Those Amendments did not apply to the states. Is that changed in the late 1860s following the, the Civil War, where we got the adoption of the 14th amendment? 14th amendment then extended the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and all the other amendments to apply to all of the states. Okay, so it's like okay, well, late 1860s, we should be good to go, not so fast.
Speaker 1:There was a case and I look forward to any fact checked on the internet on this, but I want to say it was Cruikshank, with a C, like CRU, ick, sh, a NK. From memory. I want to say it was like 1872, give or take, which, and I'm happy to know the details of it. But the gist to it was this the US Supreme Court said no, the first amendment and the second amendment do not get incorporated to the states. So the first amendment wound up getting incorporated to the states. In other words, it applied to the states so that they could not Step on your freedom of religion, your freedom of speech. I want to say that was in the early 1920s. From memory I don't recall the case offhand, but I want to say it was early 1920s. And then of course we then had to go almost another hundred years to To within the last 15 years post heller, in the McDonald decision, chicago of a McDonald which then incorporated the second amendment to the Through the through the 14th, to apply against the states. Because remember, dc versus heller it's in the title DC versus heller. So when heller court said, yes, you have an individual right-handed gun and a lot of other key big deal Things, then the anti-gun argument is yeah, well, that only applies in Washington DC. Right, because we're not talking about states. They never explicitly incorporated the second amendment to the states. So then we had that McDonald and then just kind of on we went.
Speaker 1:But in the interim between 1872 and you know I the last 15 years there's been a fair amount of gun laws, there's been a fair amount of gun control and, as a result, there is a Political body and there is a political and governmental culture that has been erected to Regulate and see everything over. I mean, can you imagine if we had a, a bureau of speech, books, internet and all that kind of stuff, like like what we have with the ATF? We, we have all that now and we're now living in an era particularly post-brune, which Was the cherry on top of the trifecta of heller, mcdonald and brun. That was the culmination of that. Now we're in a post-brune world and I think it's really unclear to lots of people as to exactly how far the implications of the brune Court decisions are gonna go.
Speaker 1:What does this mean as far as state laws, federal laws, federal agencies, federal agency power? What's covered by the second amendment? Who are the people in the phrase? The rights of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, right? Does that? That mean felons, nonviolent felons? Does it mean, you know, adults under the age of 21 to an 1821? Are they gonna be allowed to purchase handguns from a, from a shop, from an FFL? Because right now they're prohibited under the 1968 gun control act. So More I remember reading statistic and we all know everything we read on the internet's true right. I remember reading a statistic that said that in the six months that followed the brune decision so Brune came out in June of 2022 in the six months that followed, more gun laws were struck down across the United States in that six months. Then the entire History of the United States combined up to that point. So I think we've got realistically probably about.
Speaker 1:So your Supreme Court just accepted the Rahimi case, which is really gonna fundamentally dive into the question of who are the people. It's not gonna address all of our questions, but it's gonna be the first case to really speak to that from the Supreme Court. I think we're gonna probably see. If I had a guess, maybe If I was forced to put my money into the middle and something I'll say the Illinois protect, protect Illinois Communities Act, which is effectively their you know, assault weapon ban and magazine ban I think that that might be my odds on favorite guess for what's gonna Go to the court to determine what types of weapons are protected, what types of weapons may not be protected. Are accessories like magazines? Are they protected by the Second Amendment, or are they not? I Think that we're. So we're doing this in 2023.
Speaker 1:I think in Four years maybe five on a push we could win or lose the Second Amendment. Still, this is super, super up for grabs, super up for grabs, and whoever wins the next presidential election May be able to sway the court one way or the other. The court that's gonna decide these outcomes and decide the future of the Second Amendment. But I think that if we get another, if we get another four, five, six and Especially, you get another decade, look, everything can be lost. Everything can always be lost because you can always chip away to rights through incrementalism and all that right, but it will take decades and decades to undo one way or the other, for better or worse. What will be up for grabs in the next five to ten years, especially the next five?
Speaker 2:That's. That's actually super sobering. I mean to think that that it's that up for grabs. I didn't realize it was that much on the precipice. I knew it was precarious, to say the least, but I didn't know that it was at that level. So I guess I actually have a bonus question to follow up with that. What should people, what should people be doing to, you know, prevent, you know that, you know Do they go to their, their local governments? Like, how does it? How does that work? What should people be doing to to ensure that the Second Amendment, which protects all the other amendments it gives it the teeth it needs, you know is preserved? Like, what should people be doing? I?
Speaker 1:Think you have to get educated, to get trained, you need to be a good ambassador, and I think that means that and this may sound a little strange, but I think it's really easy just to get angry when someone says something we know is crazy, like you don't need a gun, call the police, they'll be there to, you know, take you off to the morgue and toe-taggy up you know. Which is nothing against law enforcement, again, just, we all know it is what it is. You know, deadly force encounters over in seconds. Law enforcement will be there in minutes. Like, do the math right.
Speaker 1:But I think that we cannot just approach things with Shannabi infringed and a discussion that doesn't have a history of winning in cultural wars.
Speaker 1:I think that we need to approach this from a position of education, of knowledge, of respect, of Charity. I think that we need to be the ambassadors the Second Amendment deserves, and I think that the future Is going to hinge on, in no small part, how involved or what kind of face, so to speak, we attached to it. Because, let alone, we all know that the anti, the anti gunners, the civilian disarmament crowd will do everything that they can To put like an angry face on the whole thing and this is just about killing people and murdering people. And no, to my perspective this is. This is a face of empowerment, this is a face of love, of protection, of saving lives, not taking lives. And we have history and we have statistics on our side and we are doing a tremendous disservice to the Second Amendment if we just say shall not be infringed and act like that's the end. All be all folks. It's not. We can lose this.
Speaker 2:Wow. So, tom, at this point, because you have so much knowledge and background with the Second Amendment and with the law, where can people find you and learn more about you and and just be able to connect with you?
Speaker 1:Sure? Well, I've got a YouTube channel so you can check me out. Just look me up to put in Tom Grieve into your YouTube browser and you'll find it. Otherwise, youtube comm slash atty. Why that's the abbreviation for attorney atty? Why, tom grieve? G r I e v? E? We're always putting out content and it's always fantastic to talk to amazing people like yourself, adam, who not only through your past and present service to this country, in your community, but You're, you're a living example what you can be doing. You're out there, you're sinking your teeth into issues, you're spreading awareness, you're spreading the message. I guess the last piece I might get an angry text from Jared, from guns and gadgets or something, if I don't do this and if for some, you know, if he catches this get involved with local politics. Talk to your local politicians. Talk them to social media, call them. They have to log all this stuff, kind of stuff, right, letters, but again, come from it from a position of, of Respects and of education, not of anger and wrath.
Speaker 2:Excellent.
Speaker 2:Well, tom, thanks for being on. I can't wait in five years where we can maybe look back on this and talk about where things have gone, and maybe maybe sooner. With that, guys, just be sure to follow Tom. He's already given out the socials. You can also check them out in the description for both the podcast and for the YouTube as well. So, tom, thanks for being on. Brother, can't wait to talk with you again soon. Thanks, adam, you take care. Holy cow, what an episode.
Speaker 2:I had such a hard time not wanting to geek out and go into the weeds of the legal side when it comes to self-defense. That stuff fascinates me. The way that Tom breaks things down is very, very, very articulate and very well put together. It's very easy to digest and understand and he does this continually throughout all of his YouTube videos that he has on his YouTube channel. So be sure to actually follow and subscribe and share the content that he has on his YouTube channel, as that is one of the best places where you can get additional resources or context Of what he's explaining when it comes to self-defense and the legal side of things. So with that, guys, thank you so much for watching this episode of the get real self-defense podcast.
Speaker 2:If you enjoyed this video, please be sure to hit that like button, subscribe and share with your friends and family. And, on top of that, if you are listening, please be sure to hit that five star review and share it with your friends and family as well, and maybe just leave a comment on what you think about this podcast. Leave a comment on what you liked or did not like about the format that we've been doing so far. And with that guys, train today, protect tomorrow. I will catch you guys next time. Thank you, guys for watching. Bye, see you guys next time.
