Combat Mindset – Aftermath

Few are prepared for what to do after using deadly force. Even fewer recognize this planning is part of your combat mindset.

I find it peculiar that nearly every person with whom I discuss the topic has failed to mentally prepare for the aftermath and subsequent fall out from the deadly force encounter.  The simple fact is that this timeframe is literally the rest of your life.  Many people spend thousands of dollars each year preparing for an event we all hope will not happen, but if it were to occur, would last a mere 3-10 seconds; and I am being generous with that time estimate.  The simple fact remains that most are simply not prepared for what will come afterwards.

It is an unfortunate, yet very real, part of our modern law enforcement and legal systems that the person who calls 911 first is the complainant.  Since you have been busy defending innocent life, you may not be able to be the first to call.  However, you certainly need to make that call.  Have you prepared your mind for what you will say?  Have you practiced it as much as you have your verbal challenges to your assailant(s)?  Have you practiced how to make that 911 call using your cell phone?  Smart phones are a wonderful addition to the world.  The fact still remains that they can be more complex to operate.  If yours has the ability to make a direct 911 call without unlocking, do you know how to do this?

At the time when you will need your wits about you the most, your body will be starting to go through the process of calming down from your high stress encounter.  You may even experience a few physiological issues.  You may vomit, experience dry mouth, have a difficult time forming coherent thoughts, severe fatigue, shake uncontrollably and when things just can’t get any worse, now is the time that you realize that you may have lost bladder and/or bowel control.  These things are all normal and part of the human condition.  What is important to note is that having your mind prepared for the encounter and what will come afterwards can mitigate these things.  Preparation is the key and having an understanding of what will come your way will help reduce your stress levels as it is actually happening.

You will not be able to stop it from happening but understanding what is coming with your adrenaline dump will allow you to prepare for it.

Since you have spent a lot of time training with your firearm, studying tactics and developing your decision-making abilities, you are somewhat prepared for the gunfight.  That time paid off and you and your loved ones are still alive.  Now what?  You know you’re going to have to call 911 and you know you will need to interact with the local law enforcement.  How do you do this?  There are a lot of excellent works out there as well as quite a few highly qualified trainers ready to help you with these after the encounter actions.  The first that comes to mind is the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network.  What you must do is accept that preparing for the aftermath of the gunfight is just as important as preparing for the gunfight.  Most important of all is that you have a competent attorney available to you.

After you make your 911 call, the police arrive and you make a very basic explanation, the best thing you can do is shut up.  Not be belligerent, just respectfully explain to the responding officer that you are not prepared to make a statement and that you wish to speak with your attorney.  It really is that simple. Were you prepared?  Did you have your mind prepared to make a simple statement? The difficult part starts with your trying to find a suitable lawyer at 2 AM on a Sunday.  What you need is a pre-established relationship with a Firearms and Self Defense Attorney.  Not a criminal defense attorney.  Some will say that any lawyer will do in your moment of need, but I will disagree.  I seek out the best possible gear and training, why would I settle for a potential Lionel Hutz?  I stack the deck in my favor by having sought the advice of counsel back when I was establishing my decision-making parameters.  I continue to work from that stacked deck when I call that very same specialist after I have been forced into a deadly force encounter.  I even had that same attorney help me with what is best to say and do based on local precedent and included that in my planning and preparations.  Most importantly, I have my attorney’s card in my wallet and number stored in my phone.  I have prepared my mind to survive the initial onslaught of my post-shooting world.

I use the term “post-shooting world” because it really will never be the same for you, your family and your friends.  You will need to prepare your mind for a barrage of attacks coming from all directions.  In some cases you will expect them, but there will be some that may take you by surprise.  Understanding where these will be coming from gives you a chance to think it through ahead of time; to prepare your mind.

After you have used deadly force, you will need to survive in 5 areas.  Criminal court, civil court, the court of public opinion, your trial in the media and most importantly of all, the judgments you will receive from your friends and family.  Depending on the depth of your personal relationships, that last one could be truly devastating for you.  Fortunately, you are preparing yourself ahead of time so these things will not come unexpected.  Some, such as interaction with law enforcement and the criminal courts are unavoidable.

You will likely be arrested or detained. Use this time to your advantage and try to relax and get some sleep.

You are not going to talk your way out of anything so prepare yourself mentally and emotionally to be arrested.  Minimally you will be detained.  If things went completely wrong, there is a dead person on the ground and you caused that to happen.  Regardless of that person’s past, the fact still remains that you took a human life.  Society wants answers for such actions.  You need to prepare your mind so that you can convey to the officer that you are the victim and that you are not ready to make any additional statements.  You have done due diligence and developed a relationship with a lawyer.  Continue to be smart and assert your right to counsel.  They may attempt to compel you to make a statement, but the fact is that they know you are not capable of truly recalling what just happened.  Even law enforcement officers cannot be compelled to make a statement for 48 hours after a shooting.  Why should you be any different?  Use your prepared mind to protect yourself after the deadly force encounter as much as you did during it.  Know what you will say and practice it.  Prepare your combat mindset to realize that the fight isn’t over just because the bad guy(s) are wounded or killed.  In fact, the fight(s) have just begun.

Since the burden of proof is much less in a civil trial, you should expect to be dragged into court by your attacker or their family.  Greed is what makes man do what he does.  Man is inherently lazy and his need to fill his greed lust puts honest, hard working folks in the weak man’s crosshairs.  You are in that civil court because your attacker(s) made a bad decision.  Now they are asking you to pay for it.  All of this trouble is because you were prepared mentally and physically to defend yourself.   Luckily, in some states there are laws protecting those who use deadly force in a lawful and justifiable manner.  If yours is not one of them, are you prepared?  If insurance is available, are you covered?  Remember, this is the court where all the pieces of your life come out and will be used to paint you in the worst possible light.  All those bravado filled statements you made years ago will come out to haunt you.  That bumper sticker which reads, “Keep Honking, I’m Reloading,” was funny in the moment, but now it will be used to make you out to be some type of a nut with a lust for killing.  These things would be considered preparation failures.  Your combat mindset simply refused to accept that with the right of free speech comes the burden of free speech.  Take the time with your attorney to discover precedents in your area regarding civil cases.  Prepare your mind for the fight in a court that is anything but civil.  Understand that this may happen and seek out as much information ahead of time so that you can mitigate your risks.  Most importantly of all, keep you and your family secluded so that the media has a limited amount of ammunition to use against you.

Vultures! And you are the carcass on which they feed. Avoid being a tasty treat by giving them nothing.

Dealing with the media requires a lot of mental preparation.  You are going to have to accept the fact that you will not be free any longer.  Everywhere you or your family goes will be a circus.  Your email is done.  Your cell phone and home phone are lost.  Don’t even bother checking them.  All this will do is infuriate you.  What I can suggest as part of your planning is to create a generic email account that you can use to communicate with your lawyer and one trusted friend.  Let the information flow out through them as appropriate.  Whenever possible try to use the draft box method of delivery so that nothing is actually transmitted.  A disposable phone purchased and charged using cash only is an excellent way to get back in touch with people.  Just remember to block the number and never give it out to anyone but your attorney.  Limiting your media exposure will help you in court.  They are going to come up with and print the worst possible garbage they can think of.  Whether you are talking to them or not isn’t relevant.  Don’t be part of this problem.  Unfortunately you will need to take these same steps with your immediate family and maybe even some of your close friends.  All of who will be facing increased public pressure to speak out on your behalf.

Everybody wants to have an opinion and everybody wants his or her opinion to be heard.  To fulfill this desire many people are prone to embellishment.  Often this is done without forethought or intent to cause harm and is merely a form of self-aggrandizement.  When left to their own devices, these stories tend to fade away.  However, if picked up by the media and blown out of proportion by our, “if it bleeds, it leads,” news agencies, they can drastically influence public opinions.  A prime example of this is the Zimmerman case in FL.  Regardless of the facts, that case is being driven by public opinion and has spiraled completely out of control.  The personal actions taken by some in that case have made thing worse.  Luckily for us, it is a shining example of what not to do.  It gives us, along with many other cases, something from which to learn and harden our mindset.  Being prepared for the mis-quotes, half-truth and outright lies ahead of time will enable you to weather this storm.  Preparing your mind will help you prepare your family and friends for similar treatment.  Having planned ahead, you will have eliminated or mitigated as many of your skeletons as possible so nothing should come at you as a surprise.  It is not fair, but it is a fact.  You will be made out to be either hero or villain in the media.  In contemporary times, chance favors the man who prepares to be vilified.

Often times distant family and friends can get caught up in the media induced frenzy of misinformation.  Knowing this will help you to prepare for what will need to be done to save those relationships.   What must be done to prepare is for you to decide which relationships are important to you.  I understand that this sounds harsh, but at this point in your life you will be circling the wagons and there may be a limited amount of room in there.  Remember, when you began to develop your combat mindset you had to answer that tough question?  For whom are you willing to kill or die?  In this case, the outcome is not so final, but if you fail to prepare your friends and family ahead of time, you may very well doom those relationships.

By preparing your friends and family ahead of time you help them to begin establishing their own combat mindset.  More importantly, you can prepare your self by helping them understand that you may be out of contact for a while and that it is not personal.  Knowing that you have tied up those loose ends will permit you to devote your available resources to the fight at hand.  You will have a limited capacity of tolerance and patience.  Anything you can do to reduce the draw on those resources will be beneficial.  It may even help your friends and family by getting them to think about their own combat mindset.

You may be surprised when you discover those you thought to be friends hold completely opposite beliefs to your own. Close your mouth and move on. Better to learn this now than when you really need them.

During this part of the process, do not be surprised to find that some of those you considered friends really aren’t what you know them to be.  This may come as a shock, but it’s much better to find out now than when you really need them to be on your side.  After all, you are really not asking them for more than the benefit of the doubt and to refrain from speculation.  Every once in a while I’ll have a student come back to me after losing what they thought was a really close friend over these types of discussions.  While the loss was painful to them, they felt better knowing exactly who is on their side.  The last thing you will need after a deadly force incident will be trying to figure out who is helpful and who is hurtful.  Prepare your combat mindset to be ready for the fight.  More importantly prepare your mind so that the fewest possible things will take you by surprise.

As I have been writing these pieces about combat mindset, I have intentionally taken things outside of the box.  I have done this because surviving the deadly force encounter requires skill, intensity, concentration, training and an intense amount of mental preparation.  You must train your mind to the point where very little surprises you.  If you chose to think solely inside the box of tradition or convention, you will find yourself constantly being surprised by factors you could have mitigated had you prepared properly.  Use your visualization training time to prepare yourself for the aftermath of the event as much as you use it to prepare to make those life and death decisions.  Come to the realization that the worst thing you can do is to make no decision at all.  Being caught flatfooted while experiencing an error 404 places you at a severe disadvantage.  It’s a disadvantage that few live to tell about.  My student who came home to interrupt his home being invaded is still paying for a lack of proper mindset.  He failed to prepare ahead of time and got lucky.  His failure to prepare for what comes after the violation is haunting him even more.

Take the time to prepare your combat mindset for the full fight.  Understand that there is so much more to what you need to learn than just what happens in those few seconds of the actual encounter.   Seek out the experts and use their teachings to help you prepare. Prepare yourself and those around you for the fallout.  Prepare your mind to be ready and willing to react with ruthless and violent aggression when you or someone on your list is in danger.  Eliminate second-guessing and instill confidence by gaining knowledge.  Do these things now so a confident and educated person walks in your shoes.  Prepare your mind for combat.  Prepare your mind to survive.