Joe:
Road rage. A heated moment is boiling over and it's going to turn face-to-face and personal. At what point in time is it appropriate for you as the law abiding citizen to draw your firearm and maybe even ultimately use it in self-defense? What's going on guys? Joe Malone with James Training. I'm a retired MARSOC Marine and I now teach men and women how to keep them and their families safe against violence and violent crime, usually through firearms training. But I do similar stuff as well. Anyways, one of the biggest questions I ever get asked is, Hey, Joe, how do I know at what point in time when I'm dealing with somebody in a heated engagement, whether they're making threats or not, road rage incident. Let's say for example, in today's scenario, when is it okay for me to draw my firearm because I don't want to draw it too early.
Joe:
Because if you're in a state like Illinois where I'm at, that's aggravated use of a deadly weapon. There's no brandishing. It's as if you pulled the trigger but missed if you're in another state, it's still not something that you just want to do, but ultimately you don't want to be pulling it too late either. And so this is what I look for when it comes to confirming a threat before I actually engage. Now of our fourth weapon safety rule, there's four weapon safety rules. Guys, I did another video on that if you want. Want it. Shoot me a dm. I break it down into a lot of detail as to how you can never screw those up and if you never screw those up, you never have an issue. But the fourth level of safety was know your target. Consider the foreground and background. And this one has to do with the engagement process.
Joe:
How do we know our target hands, waist and face in that order? So for example, as we look here at this road rage scenario that we're going to be going over here in just a moment, we need to be identifying when somebody leaves their vehicle after they've been driving erratic, then they sides swipe you. Then they pull over on the shoulder in front of you, they get out of the car, okay? Totality of circumstances tells me that this person is already a threat. So if they're getting out of their car after they've already sideswiped me, I honestly might not even let them get to this point right here where you see them. Especially if I'm with my family. If I see their car door open, I'm probably going to hit the gas and if I can pull back into traffic, but if I can't run right into them, I'm going to run them over as they're exiting their vehicle.
Joe:
Plain and simple. Why? Because why else would they be getting out of their car after they just assaulted me and my family with a deadly weapon being their car? Now, all intents and purposes, we're assuming a lot here, I didn't do anything wrong. This person's a maniac. They sideswiped me. I'm just literally going about my day with my family, trying to get the kids home for nap time probably. And so that's the first consideration is, Hey, totality of circumstances, why is this person pulling over, getting out of the car? I'm going to probably hit them as I am pulling back into the highway. Or if I could just pull into the highway, just pull into the highway. Now, if that's not the case, and you find yourself in this type of a situation for a variety of reasons, maybe they have you boxed in or you didn't realize that they had pulled up.
Joe:
What we want to be doing is looking at hands, waist, face. We get locked into the eyes all the time as human beings, but the moment somebody is coming out of their vehicle, I could care less what their eyes and their face look like. I want to know what's in their hands, hands, hands, hands, hands of what? Kill people. That's why cops, whenever they show up on a hostile scene, what do they say? Show me your hands. That is what is ultimately going to kill you with the weapon. Now, waste is second. Why? Well, because if you look at this picture here, he's reaching behind his waist. We keep weapons around our waist, we conceal weapons around our waist, even if they're already in our hands, in our pockets, in our hoodies, things like that. So we want to know, hey, is this person reaching for something?
Joe:
Potentially if we don't see their hands or if we don't see anything in their hands, are they reaching for something potentially or do we identify that they have something on their waist that is obvious so that if they do begin to reach for it, we know that we need to stay locked onto that. And then lastly, his face or overall demeanor. Now you can see this guy's demeanor here. He's just walking like he's pissed. Hand behind the back, chest up, eyes, straightforward, locked right onto you. So this guy's obviously mad about something. What it is, we don't know. I think this takes place down in Brazil, but let's go ahead and watch this video and then I'll kind of break it down a little further to tell you when I would draw my weapon and when I would potentially use it, I deals, so I don't know if they're in a bulletproof car or something.
Joe:
And if you look at the windshield, it actually looks like that he may have shot at them prior to them pulling over. But let's go ahead, rewind this and take a look. Now he gets out the car, he is walking towards me. The moment that somebody is driving erratic, I've already got my weapon down on my lap finger, straight up and off the trigger ready to engage. If I see them pull a gun out on me, I pull over, he gets out the vehicle. Now I'm sitting here like this. If I can't pull off because of traffic and the highway and stuff, or from boxed in, I'm down here in this modified ready position where you can't necessarily see the gun right away. As he's walking towards me hands behind his back like that, I'm going to pull my weapon up and I'm going to engage this threat.
Joe:
Lots of things to take into consideration here. Are you alone? Are you with your family? Because if you're with your family, I might even exit the vehicle and try to draw his attention away from me and then shoot him while moving. That's one of the reasons why it's important to train while shooting, while moving. And if you guys want somebody to train with like that in the Chicago land area, JM training, we're located in New Lennox, we go shoot at a private property outdoor range. That is where you want to be guys, because nowhere else do you get to work with somebody like myself in such close attention and detail and get to truly grow your skills on something like shooting while moving at the same time anyways. Point is is that know your target hands, waist face. This right here in the totality of circumstances tells me that it's justified for deadly force.
Joe:
Is it reasonable to believe that this person is about to either cause me great bodily harm injury or kill me or somebody that I love? And I'm going to say yes based off the story that I just fed. You guys now know your target. Consider the foreground and background, what's in the foreground, the windshield. How does shooting through a windshield affect the trajectory of your bullet? Well, lots of variables there. What type of bullet are you using? What grain? What's the velocity? What's the caliber? What's the distance between that person and your windshield that is deflecting the round? Are you shooting from inside the vehicle outside of the vehicle? Is it the first shot, the third shot within a silver dollar size shot grouping? Because that's probably what we want to be looking to do, is we want to get multiple shots through the window within a silver dollar size grouping because that first shot very well could potentially be deflected very drastically, second, third shot possibly, but less and less.
Joe:
And then by the time we get to fourth, fifth, and sixth shot, it's very minimal deflection because that windshield's integrity is going to be so compromised that the bolts will usually travel through it pretty well. But again, how often do you shoot through windshields? Well, guess what? We do that over at chain training. We've got a windshield this weekend. We're having an elite defensive handgun course, and we're going to be shooting through windshields at the time of this recording, it's October 21st, so whenever you see it, go to Joe Malone training.com and hit up the calendar to see if we have any other courses like that coming up here soon. But I digress too. That's when I would be using this. That's when I would be pulling my weapon. That's when I would be aiming and that's when I would be shooting this guy in order to neutralize him.
Joe:
Of course, I want to watch out for the woman behind him. She doesn't appear to be much of a threat. She's probably mad, probably mad that this guy's even doing this, but yeah, that's my answer. What's yours? Lemme know your thoughts. Definitely wouldn't be letting him get up on my car and start shooting my car up. That's sad and crazy. Alright, everyone, lemme know if you agree, disagree, what other follow-up questions you have. You could also hit the gas and just run this dude over. But again, keep in mind if you're alone with your family, now you're giving 'em the opportunity to point that gun at you and shoot several rounds through that windshield before you do hit him. Understand how to get low below the engine block below the dashboard. If you are in a vehicle or if there's anybody in the backseat, they need to be getting on the ground type of low. And even then that's going to be pretty risky. But yeah, lemme know your thoughts guys.
Credit: Lethal Lifestyle TV