Those of us who own or carry firearms for defense naturally understand there is at least the chance of being forced to respond with deadly force to stop an imminent threat to our lives. While it’s not inevitable, we realize some person, some time, may force us to use our firearms to save our lives. Rather than live in a wishful bubble of believing the police or mommy or someone else will protect us, we accept the awesome responsibility of self-defense and the defense of our loved ones.
Now, you’re probably expecting exhortations of increasing your mastery over your self-defense tool: go to the range more often, dry fire more, attend more classes. You’ll never hear me argue against any of those proven options of becoming more competent with your firearms.
However, I’ve learned through life, from teaching civilians for almost 45 years and training police nationally for 40 years, that no amount of external noise can convince anyone to train more. My experience with both civilians and police is that 10 percent, maybe as much as 15 percent, will at least semi-regularly train on their own. The remaining 85 to 90 percent may practice once in a great while, but generally don’t practice at all.
Still, we possess firearms for defense, regardless of how much or how little we practice. Our defensive tools are intended to defend against someone whose behavior meets the threshold of making us reasonably believe that we are imminently threatened with death or serious bodily injury. Recognizing this imminently deadly situation must lead to our immediate defensive actions. Any pause in that decision process may result in our being wounded, or worse.
No matter our skill level—whether we are an elite shooter, someone who practices regularly or someone who only fired their firearm one time way back when—once we orient to the problem, it is our decisions that cause us to act; to draw or deploy our defensive tool, to aim it and pull the trigger. Anything disrupting that process of decision-to-action delays the timely reaction needed to stop the imminent deadly threat.
The most common reaction I heard from officers, upon realizing they were about to be in a shooting, was “I can’t believe this is happening!” I’ve also heard this too often from civilians who similarly saved their own lives from criminal attacks.
Rather than acting with certainty in a situation where tenths of a second can make a difference in survival, the first response is most often disbelief, a surreal distraction, an incredulity arising from your mind telling you what your eyes are seeing isn’t real. That first reaction amounts to hesitation. Any hesitation can negatively affect your outcome, even if the wavering lasts only a few moments.
Flip the Script
It was my responsibility to help those I was teaching to reasonably respond in time and on time with the force needed to save their lives. There was a need to help them adjust their expectations into a workable frame of reference matching their self-defense needs, the same as the needs all defensive-firearm owners have.
I began asking classes of veteran officers, “How many believe there is a possibility of your being murdered in the line of duty?” Half the class would reluctantly raise their hands, followed by a ripple of hands until almost everyone had their hands raised. Next, “How many have your ‘last wills’ in place?” It was not unusual for only two or three out of a class of 40 to raise their hands. Then the last question, “How many of you have written your death letters to your spouse and family?” (A death letter is a document that often starts with the line, “If you’re reading this, it means I’ve died, and I don’t want to leave this life without telling you …”) Generally, only those with prior military experience, especially those who had been in combat, would raise their hands.
Think about the implications of these answers. Police officers are more likely to be forced into a defensive shooting than an average citizen (although more citizens are involved in self-defense shootings than officers every year, a greater proportion of officers are involved in shootings due to the nature of their jobs and the fact there are far fewer of them). Cops know this, yet, there is a disconnect between their beliefs of a possibility of an attempt to kill them and their individual response if and when it happens. How would you answer those questions?
Let’s flip our script. First, accept we all die. I always find it interesting when folks commonly say, “If I die … ” as if there’s a choice. The more useful phrase is “When I die … ” That word-change alters how we generally view our lives. It also better prepares us for the possibility of being threatened by another person to the point we are forced to shoot. We also accept that we are not naïve enough to believe that “Good guys always win,” because they don’t. If you’re in a gunfight with rounds incoming, nothing is guaranteed.
Next, write those death letters. Take a day away from the family and do the hard work of saying goodbye. There’s no need to be melodramatic, just say what needs to be said. There may be tears, but that’s OK: Goodbyes are tough. What none of us want in our moment of dying is to regret not having said what needed to be said.
Get a last will and testament done. And while you’re at it, obtain an advanced-care directive for your medical wishes. Regardless of your age, you worked hard for what you have and there’s no sense in letting your state government seize half of your wealth because you died intestate. It’s easier on your family and avoids a real mess. And it causes us the hard work of facing, yet again, the inevitability of death.
Last, it’s time to “flip the script.” We possess firearms to save lives in anticipation of the last thing we want to do: being forced to shoot someone who is attempting to murder us or our loved ones. Rather than being in disbelief, what if the first thing to cross our minds is, “I thought this would happen!” Orienting in this manner cuts our decision time, creating a quicker transition into acting.
We also benefit by changing our expectations: rather than responding to a threat, we change it to dealing with a challenge. While “threat” language is necessary for our legal defense, “threat” as a motivator often creates disabling physiological and mental factors. When we rise to a “challenge,” our psychological processes use different, more beneficial pathways to get the job done.
Most reading this article are not professional, elite shooters. Unless we are living in a high-crime area or driving a patrol car, we are likely not living moment-to-moment in anticipation of a deadly assault. We accept at some level it might happen but, bottom line, we really don’t believe it will happen to us. And the truth is, most of us will likely not become involved in a gunfight (thank goodness). Yet, if we carry or own a firearm for self-defense, we must definitively orient ourselves—our mindsets—to the possibility that it may happen.
While practice and, better yet, training with our firearms can pay dividends in the outcome if forced into a shooting, it is our brain and decision-making process that must recognize an imminent deadly threat. Upon that realization, anything slowing the decision to immediately respond decreases our chances of success. The new mindset of, “I thought this was going to happen!” provides that transition. It signals acting, something we’re going to need to do to meet the challenge during such dire moments.
