For many people the legal consequences of their behaviors and actions when dealing with a violent situation are the most important consideration(s). It is understandable that having worked all your life to achieve a certain level of success there will be a natural fear that if you behave and act in a certain way when assaulted you could stand to lose all you’ve achieved – either by being prosecuted for excessive force, or by being sued by your aggressor for personal injury etc. These thoughts often cause us to back away from violence, when we should pre-emptively act to avoid it, and cause us to hesitate from acting “violently” and “aggressively” when in reality these are the only solutions available to us.
Many people look to the Police & Law Enforcement Officers for advice on how to deal with violence and aggression i.e. how to operate within the law (the better person to ask would actually be an attorney who knows how to present the actions and behaviors of the individual, within the framework of the legal process). Unfortunately LEO’s – Law Enforcement Officers – have a skewed perspective on dealing with violence as they have a different end-game, objective when confronting violence i.e. they have to apprehend the person behaving aggressively, and they have a support network behind them e.g. weapons and other officers – all things that are necessary to accomplish their goals and the tasks that have been assigned to them. This is very different to the situation(s) that civilians find themselves in. When a civilian is being threatened, they are not wearing a badge or uniform and cannot call on anyone else to help them – usually they don’t have a weapon either.
When you are confronted by a violent individual who clearly means you harm, you will rarely know the extent of the damage and injury they want to cause you (and they may not know this either). Also in the course of the conflict this can shift; an aggressor initiating a fight, will believe they have the capability to finish it quickly, and with little or no harm to themselves. However if in the course of the fight they begin to question their ability to do so (because you are fighting back, defending yourself and causing them pain) they will have to increase their level of violence to accomplish it. This causes a gradual raising on the ante which is why it’s a much better strategy to meet violence with “extreme” violence, as this allows you to end the conflict quickly and decisively. The longer a fight goes on the more desperate an aggressor will get and the more likely they are to resort to extreme measures.
Unfortunately we often don’t consider “extreme” violence or we question its use because the “rules” of society suggests that it has no place as a civilized response to any form of aggression – as “nice” people we want to do just enough to deal with our attacker in order to defend ourselves. The real issue though is that the aggressor has already thrown out the rules of society, and is not behaving in a civilized fashion. They are not simply looking to defend themselves but to attack another person. Although it may be noble to claim the moral high ground, your aggressor has no respect for this, and you must instead claim the moral authority to act and to do what is necessary to deal with the situation – which is to meet it with extreme violence and assume the role of attacker within it.
There may well be legalconsequences to your actions, but these should not be considered within the conflict/fight - this is the time to do what is necessary - and this is where having a pre-conflict method and strategy that an attorney can frame within a legal contextis imperative. If your method, involves avoidance, de-escalation and other preventative measures that can be referred back to in court, then your actions can be legally justified much more easily. You don't need a working knowlege of the legal system to work effectively in real-life situations, just a system that tries to avoid and prevent violence from occurring.