#fridayfundamentals
The CCW Safe https://ccwsafe.com/ series about my concept of Breaking Contact continues with Part 3.
https://ccwsafe.com/blog/34532
Part 2 of the series focused on situations where the concealed carrier initiated contact. Part 3 focuses on incidents where the carrier was initially approached and failed to take the opportunity to Break Contact.
I hate platitudes when they’re used in an attempt to simplify a complex topic into a sound bite. “Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six” is one of the most commonly parroted sayings in the firearms community. While many times we are presented with the optometrist’s question, “Which is better, A or B?,” decisions that are made in advance and are going to affect the rest of our lives seldom are binary. I like to think we’re smarter than parrots that have been trained to say one or two things.
As Shawn points out, the decision process has several more options.
When the goal is not necessarily to kill or disable a would-be attacker, a defender is open to other options that carry less legal risk and may produce more positive outcomes.
When breaking contact is the goal, sometimes it is better to disengage rather than attempt to de-escalate.
My personal paradigm is:
- Avoid
- Escape
- Confront
- Resist
Any attempt at de-escalation, even when benign, is a part of Confront. Disengage is part of Escape. Escaping is higher on my priority list than Confronting.
Similarly, in the Gerald Strebendt incident, he unnecessarily moved up the paradigm from Escape to Confront. A confrontation inherently carries more risk associated with it than an escape. As John Hall, former head of the FBI Firearms Training Unit put it:
Any encounter carries with it an element of chance.
My initial post about Breaking Contact (Part I) is located here:
The second is here.
If you would like to purchase my book, click on the image below. The detailed investigations and reports of incidents involving off-duty LAPD officers are very instructional for understanding the differences between Avoiding, Escaping, and Confronting.
tacticalprofessor 