Of Interest: After You Shoot, by Alan Korwin

[Fred Fuller]

There's a stream of books and videos directed at shooters these days. I missed seeing this one when it was first published late last year (yes, I do live under a rock ) but ran across an ad for it in a recent issue of The American Rifleman. It seemed interesting, so I gave it a whirl on the old search engine and here's what I found.

After checking the reviews, my copy is on order...

lpl

ETA: No matter what you hear from this or that instructor, see on this or that video, or read in this or that book, IMHO you need to have a discussion with a practicing criminal defense attorney in your jurisdiction concerning legal issues in self defense. And you need to be carrying his or her card in your wallet...
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Publisher's information - http://www.gunlaws.com/AYS.htm

Interview with Alan Korwin on America Armed And Free Radio (AUDIO)- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMxNA7Qsdao NOTE- the interview runs about 49:34, conversation related to the book begins at about the 15:00 mark on the counter

Review by Chris Knox - http://www.thefreelibrary.com/After+You+Shoot:+your+gun's+hot.+The+perp's+not,+Now+What?-a0247740943 or http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/7573

Review by Roberert Farago, The Truth About Guns blog - http://thetruthaboutguns.com/2010/12/robert-farago/book-review-after-you-shoot-by-alan-korwin/

 

[Kleanbore]

After checking the reviews I think I will wait for your assessment, Fred.

 

[ObsidianOne]

I too have seen this book and am very interested in what information it may contain.

 

[sidheshooter]

Yes, do let us know what you think when you get your copy...

 

[Fred Fuller]

OK, my copy has arrived. Media mail (used to be 'book rate' as far as I know) is still slow...

Will get a review up when I finish perusing it...

lpl

 

[Fred Fuller]

OK, I'm done with the first reading - and there will have to be more. Likely I'll have to go over this one several more times before I'm done with it. Actually I don't think I'll ever be done with it, but that's the way some things go - this one (or another copy of it times X) is likely going to get a more or less permanent place on the bookshelf here. I have a feeling I'm going to be giving away copies of this book pretty regularly, as I have done with copies of Principles of Personal Defense for many years now. As a sidebar, my wife the retired university criminology professor was very impressed with this little book, and found it quite readable and thought provoking.

Worth noting - the author IS NOT an attorney, nor does he play one on teevee. He doesn't claim to be. He's a writer, and a pretty good one. And he talked to whole herds and flocks of attorneys in preparing this book. The breadth of opinion he encountered was pretty surprising. Or not, depending on how many attorneys you know.

My recommendation, in short - BUY THIS BOOK if you carry concealed, or own a firearm for home defense. There is a LOT of stuff in here you need to review carefully and work through on your own and with your attorney. A lot of this stuff could be critical to your legal defense, depending on the individual circumstances you encounter should your number ever come up on the big roulette wheel of life.

I tell people on a regular basis how unlikely it is that they will ever really need a firearm for self defense. Face it, the odds are that most of us will go for years and not have to have recourse to a defensive firearm, if indeed we ever do. Of course, I am also known for telling people it isn't the odds that matter, it's the stakes, as well as for telling people that the only way to have a gun when they need one is to have a gun available all the time. That's just the reality of the situation as I see it.

And the reality on the street is that LEOs are pretty much unused to encountering good guys who come up the winner in their turn at thug roulette. Think about it. Few LEOs run into actual good guys on a daily basis. They get crooks, thugs, grifters, crazy people, victims, rubberneckers and witnesses in vast numbers - but they almost never see a genuine good guy who has come out on top in an encounter with some lowlife. It's like a zoologist stumbling across some animal species that was supposed to be extinct, or an ornithologist seeing a species of bird they'd heard about once but had never seen before, and didn't know any other ornithologist who had ever seen one either.

And the same thing is true for the DA/prosecutor.

So don't be surprised if your carefully constructed fantasy about what happens after you shoot doesn't play out exactly the way you had planned. Oh, it might - lots of things are possible, and there are so many variables it's almost impossible to predict. But having things go just as you'd imagined might not be the best way to plan.

You see, you won't be the first stranger this LEO has seen, standing over a bleeding body with firearm at hand, who claims the shooting was self defense. Or the second, or third, or tenth. MOST of the murdering thugs LEOs encounter claim the shooting was self defense at some point in their initial encounter with the po-lice. As the quote from Marc "Animal" MacYoung (http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/) in the book goes:

Cops, DAs and attorneys hear the [self defense] claim all the time. After SODDI (some other dude did it) fails, claiming 'self defense' is what an aggressor/combatant/criminal does - you can damn near set your watch by it. This is why I say the self-defense pool has been peed in. The problem with a self-defense claim is that in 90% of the cases it wasn't. Odds are it was a consensual fight or an outright assault.​

Knowing this, would you be surprised if the LEOs who arrive at your scene are just a bit skeptical of your "good guy, self defense" claim?

And the same thing is true for the DA/prosecutor...

So, what DO you say? Oh how I wish I could tell you the answer to that one. My future would be assured.

The truth is I can't tell you, and neither can anyone else. There are just too many variables, too many possibilities, to adopt any degree of certainty. The aftermath of any self defense situation is a roll of the dice - anything you do or say might be the wrong thing. And anything you fail to do or say might be the wrong thing as well. There simply are no certainties to be found here, and I am not about to start offering any as if there were certainties to be found.

Except these:

* Buy this book
* Read it, and think about it carefully
* Share it with your attorney, and work to prepare each other to mount an effective legal defense if one is ever needed
* Join the Armed Citizens' Legal Defense Network (http://www.armedcitizensnetwork.org/) or an equivalent state organization, if one is available to you
* Prepare yourself to deal with Problem Two (the legal aftermath) at least as thoroughly as you prepare to deal with problem One (self defense)

Best wishes to all,

lpl

 

[sidheshooter]

Fair enough. Thanks for the review; off to order the book now...

 

[Frank Ettin]

I just picked up a copy myself.

 

[Kleanbore]

Slipped my mind until today--just ordered it. Thanks very much for the review and the recomendation.

 

[xsquidgator]

Thanks for the review - I just ordered a copy, too.

Big plus one on Armed Citizen's Legal Defense Network.

And I'll also make a plug for training, whether it's the NRA Personal Protection Inside/Outside the Home series, or something more advanced such as Massad Ayoob's LFU-I or MAG-40.
My only affiliation with MAG-40 is that I took the class, so I'm pimping the class solely on having had a great experience with this exact subject in that class. MAG-40 spends several hours talking about this subject and related ones (past just what do you do at the scene, but also how do you conduct yourself at the station house? Who do you call with your one phone call? What things does that person need to start in motion on your behalf?)

Classes and books like this one are the best way to learn about this crucial aspect of self-defense, if you're just a regular person not ordinarily involved in the criminal justice business.

 

[Kleanbore]

I cannot add to or improve upon Lee Lapin's review.