Hello again everyone. Welcome to Washington Gun Law tv. I'm Washington Gun Law President William Kirk. Thanks for joining us. Hey, for those of you who joined us last month during the month of March for our statewide roadshow, thank you very much for stopping by and geeking out with us for a couple hours where we could teach you the laws of self-defense in Washington State. Now, for those of you who did stop buying geek out, you'll recall that I put a little slide up early in the program, so some caveats. One of the caveats was is I was going to teach you what you have the right to do. I was not going to be teaching you what doing the right thing was. That is something that you would need to work on with your tactical and firearms instructors. The other caveat I put up was, Hey, listen, there are three questions that I'm going to tell you right now.
Don't ask them. I'm doing that so that it saves you the embarrassment and it saves me from getting angry. The three questions that I put up there was, number one, can I shoot him in the shoulder? Number two, can I shoot him in the leg? And number three, how about a warning shot? And the answer just real quick for that is, no, no, and hell no. But there probably was a fourth question that I should have put up, and we're going to talk about it today because I'm still amazed at how many times I actually have this asked of me. So today, let's spend a few minutes. Let's talk about the laws of self-defense and let's talk about, no, you do not drag them back into the house after you've shot them.
Okay, before we get going too far down the road, we're going down proud to announce that this video is being brought to you by Right to Bear. That's right. Legal protection for self-protection. Listen, good lawyers aren't cheap. Cheap lawyers aren't good. You're not truly prepared unless you have right to bear back. You, you will always get an attorney answered hotline. So you will always have a confidential phone call. There are no cap limits for either civil or criminal defense. This covers all forms of self-defense. So from a fist to a firearm, from a fat lip to a dead body, you are covered. And you'll have some of the nation's most passionate two A attorneys in your corner fighting for you. And right now, if you visit my friends@protectwithbear.com and you use the promo code Wgl, you'll receive 10% off. Listen, you need to protect yourself so that you can protect them.
Visit my Good friends@protectwithbear.com. Okay, so here's what we are talking about. We are talking about this strange phenomenon, urban legend, that if for whatever reason you shoot a home intruder outside of your home, that the first thing you should do is drag them into the home and then call 9 1 1. Now, I have had that question asked with such frequency that I actually went out and went searched it all out in the internet to see is there some kind of crazy article out there? Is there some kind of insanity on Reddit, an easy place to find insanity where it says Yes, that's exactly what you should do. The truth is, I didn't find anything like that. What I did find, however, was a recent article from the truth about guns.com. If you're not geeking out on the truth about guns.com, we'll link 'em up down below, you should.
And they talked to two attorneys, two attorneys that I happen to know, a gentleman named Gilbert Ambler who practices both in Virginia and Pennsylvania, another gentleman named Evan Napan who practices in New Jersey. They had been asked about this scenario. They both gave very succinct, identical answers. And I'm here to tell you that I agree with what they're saying. 110, 100 20%. Okay? And here's what it is, is if you have fired upon a person, wherever that may have occurred, you are not going to drag the body anywhere. Lemme say that again. You're not to drag them back into the house. Okay? Listen, you may or may not be in trouble on pulling the trigger. You start dragging the body around. You start altering evidence or things such as that, yet you're going to find yourself in a lot more trouble. So what you need to understand about any time there's been a shooting is that the police will arrive and secure the scene.
Then the detectives start showing up and the detectives are going to try to recreate everything. And yes, they will rely in part on what people told them. But ultimately what's going to tell this story about what happened at a shooting scene is two things. Number one, ballistics. Okay? The second thing, blood spatter evidence. Now, many of you probably heard of ballistics. Not a lot of you have probably heard about blood spatter evidence, but here's the unique characteristic that they both have in common. You see, they're both based on physics, which is actually based on a principle known as math, which means that there is one correct answer and all the rest of them are wrong. And so when we start talking about the discharge of a weapon and striking another human being, and whether we have entrance wounds or exit wounds, or how many times they were shot and which direction were they facing at the time that the bullet penetrated 'em and things like that, ballistics can and will recreate all of that.
So it really doesn't matter what you tell 'em, they're going to recreate it with ballistics. But here's the thing I really need everyone to understand, is that blood tells an awfully long story. Now, people don't realize this, but there are people who can literally recreate crime scenes to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty by just looking at the blood spatter evidence. Now, what is blood spatter evidence? It's based on this principle. For those of you who've ever gotten a bloody nose and you stood there bent over, dripping on the basketball court, whatever it was, you will recall that it made perfect little circles every time the blood hit the floor. Okay? Why is that? Well, it's because when you consider the viscosity of blood, the amount of protein versus the liquid material, blood drops will drop in a perfectly spherical shape. And if it lands at a 90 degree angle like you're standing still and it's dropping straight down off your nose, then it will make a perfect circle.
Now, if you know that, you could then a look at elongated patterns to determine which direction they came from and at what angle that blood struck an object. And then you can start telling the difference between blood that came from a vein and blood that came from an artery blood that actually came from an object going through a person versus blood that comes off an object, which is striking a person. But despite the fact that you could tell all of that, you want to know what the easiest thing to tell is. It's drag marks. Candidly, you don't even need to go to CSI school to figure out drag marks and drag marks only happen one of two ways a person is shot. And then after they are bleeding out, they try to crawl to a location either to arm themselves or to call for help or to get away.
And you will see drag marks. Law enforcement can tell when a person themselves has drug themselves through their own blood, there's another type of drag mark, which is when after the person has been rendered unconscious or dead, someone drags their body to another location that creates drag marks also. And law enforcement can also tell what caused those. So the bottom line is this, if you're outside your home and you shoot a would be home intruder. You may or may not have a good shot. It's going to depend on what kind of danger you're presented with. Remember, we don't get to use lethal force unless we are an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury or a felonies being committed inside our home. In this scenario, we have shot the person outside of our home, so we're going to presume that they are a trespasser.
Now, are you under a duty to retreat? In most states, you are not under any duty to retreat from your property. However, I can assure you that if you have lawfully pulled the trigger and then you start messing around with evidence, you start dragging a corpse around. There could be not only criminal allegations that come from that tampering with evidence, creation of a corpse, things such as that, but now what attitude is law enforcement going to take when they're determining the legality of the initial shot? So moving forward next year when I do my tour, the four questions that I will warn everybody to not ask is, number one, can I shoot them in the shoulder? Number two, can I shoot them in the leg? Number three, what about a warning shot? And finally, number four, if I shoot 'em outside, should I drag them back in before calling 9 1 1 Once again, just to make sure that we're clear the answers to all of those are no, no, hell no, and absolutely hell no.
Listen, if you guys got any other questions about this or anything else related to what's left of our Second Amendment rights, you guys should know how to get ahold of Washington gun law by now. If you don't, don't worry about it. That information is down there in the description box. Finally, let's everyone remember that part of being the lawful and responsible gun owner, like we talk about all the time here, is to know what the law is in every situation, how it applies to you in any instance that you may find yourself. Until next time, thanks for watching. Stay safe.
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jSzBSZmmDs
Articles For Reference: (if applicable URL)
Credit: William Kirk, Washington Gun Law, Partner