So if you carry a gun and have to use it for self defense, and it’s obvious self defense maybe with a witness of your spouse.
So my question is how best to handle the aftermath of a shooting. Provided you are poor. You don’t have a lawyer on retainer. You don’t even know a lawyers name. You got no money or valuables to sell to pay for one. And you don’t have concealed carry insurance.
So what should a person do in that instance? Talk to the police and tell them the truth?
I’d like not to make this a “you can’t afford not to have concealed carry insurance” type of thread. I for one cannot afford it. At least not currently, and I’m sure there are plenty of other folks that are in the same boat. I want a serious answer.
Most people will tell you to call a lawyer. It's not bad advice, but sometimes it fails to look into the nuances of the situation.
I'll preface this by saying that I'm a career law enforcement officer. I've seen justifiable and unjustifiable shootings in virtually every variety as I cruise into my third decade in this profession. Since we're talking about justifiable shootings in this case, I'll keep my comments in line with that assumption.
Let me give you an example of the first defensive shooting I can recall investigating in my career: three armed gang members broke into a person's house in the middle of the night. They were confronted by the armed homeowner, who won a three on one gun battle against the suspects. Two suspects died on scene, one escaped with a gunshot wound. The homeowner was unharmed. My state has a "make my day" / "castle doctrine" law. In this instance the homeowner was never even handcuffed, let alone arrested, let alone indicted. He cooperated with an interview, and didn't bother calling a lawyer.
I tell that story because I think it's important to illustrate that some shootings are so clear-cut in their legality that a lawyer wouldn't do much other than tell you not to go in talking like some macho idiot who enjoyed shooting the suspects. We didn't need a lawyer to tell him (or us) that his shooting was absolutely and 100% legally justifiable.
Now, let me give a more recent example of a situation where someone probably would do well to call a lawyer. We recently had an event where two parties exchanged gunfire between two different cars following some sort of altercation on the road. One person in one of the vehicles died. Both parties claimed that the other side was the aggressor. In this instance it probably makes a lot of sense to at least consider some kind of legal representation. This case could be on the fringe anyway, because the legal justification for the shooting (from either vehicle) was a whole lot weaker than the justification the homeowner above had when he shot armed home invaders in his house in the middle of the night.
What I'm driving at here is that having a lawyer on retainer is great if it's something that's in your budget, and something you feel like you need. But, if that's not the case (and it's not the case for most of us), then I would probably determine whether or not I was calling a lawyer based on the circumstances I knew about the shooting I was involved with. If you're in such a shooting, and the police bring you in for an interview under Miranda, then it's not a bad idea to say "I'd like to find a lawyer to represent me before I answer any questions about this incident."
Even with all of this said, providing the responding officer with some sort of justification for your actions can also mean the difference between being arrested at the scene or just being interviewed later as part of the investigation. If you say absolutely nothing (as many in these forums will advocate), then why would any reasonable officer believe that you were a victim who defended yourself as opposed to an antagonist who murdered someone? Again, how much detail you go into without legal representation may need to be a judgment call on your part, but saying something like: "this person pulled a gun on me and demanded my wallet, and I shot him because he was going to kill me" at least gets the responding officers thinking about the fact that you had some reason for shooting the person you just shot.