One issue I have with a lot of concealed carry weapons courses is they do not teach self-defense and use of force like it is taught to police officers. A lot of people find themselves in trouble by relying on a vague understanding of the law and self-defense tactics, often mostly informed by popular culture, sometimes misguided politicians. Many of these things are flat untrue and unwise. Sometimes a strict reading of the law to get a wanted conclusion is used completely ignorant of case law and prior applications of that law or others that cancel or restrict it. Another issue is teaching self-defense law as protection from lawyers primarily, lethal assault second. Many of these courses advise tactics that sound good to make a lawyer to fail a character assassination, or mitigate negligence. In reality this advice makes you far easier to kill, sometimes to the point of being unable to prevent it, and the character assassination works anyway. My goal here is to share my approach where you are armed with knowledge so you can defend your life first and the lawyers have less ground to stand on to question that defense. I’m not an attorney. None of this is legal advice. Simply passing along my framework, previous experience, and training.
This framework is based on a premise that the in way you conduct yourself the use of force was absolutely necessary and anything inflicted on your opponent they chose for themselves. As in they involved you in the situation, you did not bring it on yourself or participate in the escalation of the situation. You also did not bring about the situation by pushing the edges of lawful behavior. The amount of force you choose is proportional and appropriate based on the level of force brought by your opponent. Understanding use of force as the police do and the legal framework surrounding it helps greatly with this decision making. Do your own due diligence on your own defensive and survival operating system, nothing is gospel. Even excellent resources such as Andrew Branca and Massad Ayoob. This is a very large and important topic that will take me several posts and it is still a 20,000 ft view of this topic and certainly not all encompassing. Hopefully it will give you a better idea of places to expand your knowledge and avenues to look into.
A term you will hear a lot in self-defense circles is the concept of a “gray shoot”. It’s a use of deadly force that is morally and/or legally iffy, though this will apply to more than just deadly force. It could be that morally it is very clean (white) but legally absolutely not (black), making it gray or vice versa. I think of it like mixing paint in those moral and legal categories, you want it as white as possible. A clean (white) shoot will generally, in Montana, end up with the police patting you on the back and no arrest, certainly no charges. Grey shoots in this state tend to come with a 10-15 year sentence of mitigated deliberate homicide unless there is a very very specific legal circumstance that makes that legal category very white.
In Montana citizens have the same self-defense rights as the police. To that end we also may apprehend/arrest a person for a crime that we have personally witnessed, and circumstances require their immediate arrest (such as escape would make identification and capture later with a warrant unlikely, which by the way also applies to police). We may even use reasonable force to apprehend the perpetrator, just like the police. MCA 46-5-502,MCA 46-6-506. Generally you should leave the apprehension up to the police whenever practicable. Sworn peace officers have better legal protection than you do, an expectation use of force and apprehension of criminals is part of their role in society, and more tools and training at their disposal to do so. However, outsourcing our protection and the apprehension of criminals entirely to the police is part of how our society has come to the place it has. Citizens are generally given far more scrutiny than police on use of force as the culture tends to think the citizens have no rights to apprehend or use force even though they in fact do. This popular culture issue creates a problem with the police, prosecutor, and jury, the law may be bent or ignored in order to create a desired outcome based on how the situation looks and the outcome desired by the authorities so it plays a certain way in the press (as in, you’re being made an example of to chill such behavior in the future by other citizens). There was a recent case in Missoula where some locals apprehended a suspected ANTIFA member they believed was attempting to incite a riot. One of them was charged with unlawful restraint and I am not aware of a resolution to this case . In Missoula I expect a conviction. Do consider any action you take may, or will, involve you being charged with a crime, possibly convicted, even if what you did was right. As such it is important to weigh the cost in time, money, loss of freedom and rights, and personal danger; to the benefit to yourself and society as you will be responsible for the bill. That bill may include your life if you make the wrong choice.
With that in mind it is to the advantage of the citizen to understand concepts such as the use of force continuum/matrix, reasonable person standard, “When Force Justified” MCA 45-3-XXX , and other related topics prior to a force engagement. This is critical as you may win the acute physical fight, but lose the battle with the authorities and/or press because your use of force was unjustified, mutual, excessive, or amoral. In Montana there is no duty to retreat from anywhere you lawfully are and defense of another as if yourself does apply.
Next week will be disparity of force and the pillars of justified force.