Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense Quotes

“The experience left me with a very strong sense of just how destructive this simple, seemingly mundane tool can be. A knife never jams. A knife never runs out of ammunition; you rarely see a gunshot murder victim who has been shot more than a few times, but any homicide investigator can tell you how common it is for the victim of a knife murder to bear twenty, thirty, or more stab and/or slash wounds. “A knife comes with a built-in silencer.” Knives are cheap, and can be bought anywhere; there used to be a cutlery store at LaGuardia Airport, not far outside the security gates. There is no prohibition at law against a knife being sold to a convicted felon. Knives can be small and flat and amazingly easy to conceal. Anywhere”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“any community that does not police itself will be policed from outside.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“Recognizing and Responding to Pre-Attack Indicators.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“In the anti-gun Spokane newspaper, internet comments indicated that many people had the clueless idea that Gerlach had shot the man – in the back – to stop the thief from stealing his car. One idiot wrote in defense of doing such, “That ‘inert property’ as you call it represents a significant part of a man’s life. Stealing it is the same as stealing a part of his life. Part of my life is far more important than all of a thief’s life.”

Analyze that statement. The world revolves around this speaker so much that a bit of his life spent earning an expensive object is worth “all of (another man’s) life.” Never forget that, in this country, human life is seen by the courts as having a higher value than what those courts call “mere property,” even if you’re shooting the most incorrigible lifelong thief to keep him from stealing the Hope Diamond. A principle of our law is also that the evil man has the same rights as a good man. Here we have yet another case of a person dangerously confusing “how he thinks things ought to be” with “how things actually are.”

As a rule of thumb, American law does not justify the use of deadly force to protect what the courts have called “mere property.” In the rare jurisdiction that does appear to allow this, ask yourself how the following words would resonate with a jury when uttered by plaintiff’s counsel in closing argument: “Ladies and gentlemen, the defendant has admitted that he killed the deceased over property. How much difference is there in your hearts between the man who kills another to steal that man’s property, and one who kills another to maintain possession of his own? Either way, he ended a human life for mere property!”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“Thus, the great irony: the person who is prepared to kill if they must to stop a murderous transgression by a human predator, is the person who is least likely to have to do so.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“The gun is not a magic talisman that wards off evil. It is a special-purpose emergency rescue tool: no more, no less.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“Not because the police do – that would open us up to the “wanna-be cop” tar-and-feathering – but for the same reasons police do.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“more powerful calibers have historically stopped gunfights faster, and the sooner a gunfight stops the fewer innocent people get hurt or killed. The”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“to establish the active dynamic, indicate that you’ll sign the complaint, point out evidence and witnesses known to you…and then stop. Be polite. Do not raise your voice. I for one would answer subsequent questions with, “Officer, you’ll have my full cooperation after I’ve spoken with counsel.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“I will sign the complaint” is neutral and universal.) 3.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“Advise the police that you will sign the complaint.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“If you have harmed someone in self-defense, always remember that the active dynamic is not what you did to him, it’s what he was trying to do to you or another victim.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“Remember, for the private citizen, a duty to kill never arises, only the right do to so. Again… common sense.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“Deadly force must always be a last resort.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“The defense of necessity is considered a justification defense, as compared with an excuse defense such as duress. An action that is harmful but praiseworthy is justified, whereas an action that is harmful but ought to be forgiven may be excused. Rather than focusing on the actor’s state of mind, as would be done with an excuse defense, the court with a necessity defense focuses on the value of the act.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“a concept called the doctrine of competing harms. Some states articulate it under that terminology, but many describe it as the doctrine of necessity. The two are one and the same.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“The book explains – and, perhaps more importantly, photographically illustrates – death of human beings by all sorts of means. Gunshot, knife, bludgeon, stomping, strangulation, automobile collisions and auto-pedestrian strikes, death by fire, and more are thoroughly covered. When opposing counsel says of your opponent, “He only had a knife (or stick, or bottle)”… “He was unarmed!”… ”He was just driving his car!”…”He was only standing there with an ordinary can of gasoline and an ordinary Zippo lighter!”… …I would like you to be able to honestly say, “Counselor, in that moment I knew what he could do to me. My mind flashed back to pictures I had seen of someone stabbed/clubbed/stomped/run over/burned to death. I pictured my mother or my spouse having to identify me looking like that on a slab in the morgue, and I knew I had to stop him.” There”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“The desperate plaintiffs had even argued that it was negligence for a man who hadn’t qualified on the training range with his off duty gun to carry it at all, let alone use it, in light of the injury to the wrist of his gun hand. I was able to dispose of that with one of the shortest answers ever in my career on the witness stand: “He fired seven shots, and hit him seven times. Marksmanship is not an issue.” Our”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“Mister Ayoob, you’re normally paid for your testimony in cases like this, aren’t you? A: I’m paid for my time, sir. My testimony is not for sale. Q:”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“Disparity of force can take many forms. Force of numbers is one of the most common. A significant disparity of size and strength is another. Male attacking female, adult violently attacking child, and able-bodied attacking the handicapped also constitute disparity of force. So does highly skilled hand-to-hand fighter attacking the less-skilled. So does position of disadvantage, in which the law-breaking attacker has a huge tactical and/or physical advantage other than disparity of size, strength, or skill as the assault unfolds. Because”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“(By the way, yes, it’s TASER in all caps. It’s an acronym for Thomas A. Swift’s Electronic Rifle, believe it or not. Never let it be said that law enforcement and the industries which serve it are totally devoid of whimsy.) So,”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“The two-inch blade can penetrate four inches into such parts of the body, the four-inch blade eight inches, etc. Having”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“And never let those who judge you forget that since you were obviously close enough to your opponent to shoot him with your gun, he was, ipso facto, close enough to shoot you with his. If,”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“We must have reasonable fear of death or grave bodily harm when we employ this level of force. Reasonable fear is starkly distinct from what the law calls bare fear, which never justifies harming another. Bare fear is naked panic, a blind and unreasoning fear.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“but the most widely used and court-proven standard has been in use for decades: ability/opportunity/jeopardy. “Ability” means that the assailant possesses the power to kill or cripple. “Opportunity” means he is capable of immediately employing that power. “Jeopardy” means that his actions and/or words indicate to a reasonable, prudent person that he intends to do so and is about to do so.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“The set of circumstances that justifies the use of deadly force is a situation of immediate danger of death or great bodily harm to oneself or other innocent persons.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

“Unsettling and Troubling Symptoms.”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense