Riley Bowman: And welcome to the Concealed Carry
Riley Bowman: Podcast, part of the ConcealedCarry.com network, brought to you by HK.
Riley Bowman: Today is Friday, April 10th, 2026, as of the recording of this episode.
Riley Bowman: I am your host, Riley Bowman, and I'm joined today by this gentleman right here to my right.
Jacob Paulsen: Co-host, Jacob Paulson.
Riley Bowman: That dude. Yeah. That guy. Hey, by the way, folks, those of you joining us live,
Riley Bowman: I appreciate you being here with us because today, and those of you who are
Riley Bowman: not joining live, you'll probably recall this, but today,
Riley Bowman: the Artemis II mission, the Orion capsule,
Riley Bowman: lands in the ocean in like, I don't know, know an hour or two so that's kind of cool.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah that sounds cool jake
Riley Bowman: Is like i had no idea.
Jacob Paulsen: Didn't know didn't care i'm just being transparent here i can only have bandwidth
Jacob Paulsen: for limited things and that we we sent some people up to replicate what was
Jacob Paulsen: done 50 years ago i just did it's not capturing my imagination i'm sorry i
Riley Bowman: Well i mean i i think it's interesting i think it's of note I think it's a bit
Riley Bowman: of interesting good news of sorts.
Riley Bowman: I mean, some people could debate how beneficial or whatever it is.
Riley Bowman: But I think it's good news in a day when there's a lot of not so good news. So I think it's cool.
Jacob Paulsen: It's good that these gentlemen are still alive. Yeah. It's good.
Jacob Paulsen: I think I'd rather actually see my tax dollars spent on colonizing the moon
Jacob Paulsen: than most other things my tax dollars are spent on. So there's that.
Riley Bowman: Yeah so sorry sorry.
Jacob Paulsen: For any negativity that was not my
Riley Bowman: Intent no i mean it's just like whatever i i think it's cool so hey we sent
Riley Bowman: dudes and one dudette around the uh the moon uh for the first time like you said you know what.
Jacob Paulsen: When nasa starts buying ksg holsters and barrel blocks i'll care a lot
Riley Bowman: Well we might need to make something to fit a space blaster.
Jacob Paulsen: There's no Space Blasters yet, right?
Riley Bowman: We don't know that for sure.
Jacob Paulsen: Jeez. How do you dry fire a Space Blaster?
Riley Bowman: There's a dry fire mode. Just switch, man. Just like, you know.
Riley Bowman: Anyway. Okay. Well, anyway, thanks for being with us because I know probably
Riley Bowman: a number of people might be distracted by other, you know, video feeds and TV
Riley Bowman: episodes or whatever going on that's covering that. So thanks for being with us.
Riley Bowman: Today, we're getting into Stand Your Ground.
Riley Bowman: Several, several, several hundred episodes ago.
Riley Bowman: One of the earlier episodes we ever did was about this specific topic.
Riley Bowman: It was just called, I think, Stand Your Ground or something to that effect.
Riley Bowman: And we're revisiting that today. Now, we talk about Stand Your Ground issues
Riley Bowman: all the time, you know, in passing, if you will, or as part of an analysis of
Riley Bowman: Justified Save stories, right?
Riley Bowman: Sure, I suppose. Like that comes up regularly on the podcast.
Riley Bowman: And so for three years, I mean, that's kind of our regular opportunity to,
Riley Bowman: hey, you know, in this story out of Kentucky, this gentleman,
Riley Bowman: you know, didn't abide by, you know.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, I mean, it comes up less than other self-defense legal doctrines.
Jacob Paulsen: Sure. In my opinion. Like, despite being kind of one of the more spoken to or
Jacob Paulsen: about, has the most cool, like, sayings and cliche terms, but it's less applicable.
Jacob Paulsen: Generally speaking, than other self-defense.
Riley Bowman: Right, because it doesn't come into play as often as what you might think.
Riley Bowman: But yet, here's the converse of that, kind of sort of an interesting contrast to what you just said,
Riley Bowman: is that one of the most common comments I see on our social media posts about
Riley Bowman: some defensive shooting somewhere or whatever is,
Riley Bowman: Stand your ground!
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, no, it's a misunderstood thing, right? That's why this topic is important,
Jacob Paulsen: even if it's not applied as often as we think.
Jacob Paulsen: Because people don't understand. I think in general, American gun owners and
Jacob Paulsen: concealed carriers don't understand it.
Jacob Paulsen: They misapply it. We've seen some countless number of news stories misuse the
Jacob Paulsen: Stand Your Ground legal doctrine or concept.
Jacob Paulsen: We've seen judges misuse it in trials and then have those decisions be overturned because of it.
Jacob Paulsen: So, yeah, it is definitely a screwed up thing.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: Commonly messed up.
Riley Bowman: Well, that's the point of today's episode is to help our listeners and viewers
Riley Bowman: understand what Stand Your Ground actually is a bit better.
Riley Bowman: So we're taking this opportunity to go back since the original Stand Your Ground
Riley Bowman: episode that we did has fallen off the current podcast feed quite some time ago.
Riley Bowman: We're taking this opportunity to revisit that in depth, talk about what it is,
Riley Bowman: what it means, and give you some also examples of what it is, what it isn't.
Riley Bowman: And when it has worked or when people have abided by the principles of Stand
Riley Bowman: Your Ground versus not and the trouble that can lead to.
Riley Bowman: And there's one particular case that is not that old of a case either that I
Riley Bowman: think is probably worth getting into today.
Riley Bowman: I think it's one of the better examples of this because it was plastered all
Riley Bowman: around social media and the mainstream news cycle about Stand Your Ground,
Riley Bowman: Stand Your Ground, Stand Your Ground.
Riley Bowman: And, well, we'll get into that. So that's going to be your little tease.
Riley Bowman: You got to stick around and see what it is exactly, what story we're going to
Riley Bowman: talk about to cover that.
Riley Bowman: Today's episode, though, is sponsored, brought to you by Guardian Nation.
Riley Bowman: So guardian nation is uh well one of
Riley Bowman: the best communities out there period for like-minded folks such as yourselves
Riley Bowman: that want to know and understand and train and learn about self-defense and
Riley Bowman: shooting and the law and all these kinds of things because well besides of our our annual,
Riley Bowman: guardian conference that we put on in september we also
Riley Bowman: have a lot of video content in the
Riley Bowman: guardian University Library that Guardian
Riley Bowman: Nation members get full and complete access to that this is where you're going
Riley Bowman: to get a lot of that content in addition to the podcast and stuff but like one
Riley Bowman: really great and this is it's the first thing we ever filmed as a video course
Riley Bowman: and it's you know a decade old now at this point.
Riley Bowman: But it's still good content. And I think we do a great job with the attorney,
Riley Bowman: Doug Richards, in there talking about Stand Your Ground.
Riley Bowman: And that is the American Gun Law video course.
Riley Bowman: So that's in the Guardian University Library.
Jacob Paulsen: Yes.
Riley Bowman: So that's one thing that you could go and review if you haven't done that before.
Riley Bowman: Of course, you can buy all of our video courses a la carte. But the best thing
Riley Bowman: is to just join Guardian Nation.
Riley Bowman: So you get full access to all the training content, our live events like Guardian
Riley Bowman: Conference and access to our community of serious, like-minded self-defenders
Riley Bowman: all throughout, you could say the world, but mostly obviously in the U.S.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, yeah. I don't even know if you can join if you're not in the U.S.
Jacob Paulsen: Anyway, it doesn't matter.
Jacob Paulsen: I was just going to add that recently I've added a lot of new videos to the members of the area.
Jacob Paulsen: So if you're listening to this and you are a Guardian issue member,
Jacob Paulsen: you might want to go log in and you click on Guardian University or in the main
Jacob Paulsen: menu, You can just click on, it says like read, watch, listen.
Jacob Paulsen: You can click on watch and then all videos.
Jacob Paulsen: And there's a kind of a carousel there of just member-only videos.
Jacob Paulsen: And that's probably the fastest way to get to that content. But some really,
Jacob Paulsen: you know, 8 to 15-minute length training videos from recent events and conferences from last year.
Jacob Paulsen: And there's one in there I uploaded recently from Daryl Bulkey,
Jacob Paulsen: another one from Brian Eastridge, or excuse me, Wayne Dobbs I'm thinking of
Jacob Paulsen: more recently. There's one from Daryl Bulkey. That's some time ago.
Jacob Paulsen: And then Brian Eastridge this week as well. I'm getting ready to add one from Justin Dial.
Jacob Paulsen: So the point is we're always adding kind of these one-off videos as well,
Jacob Paulsen: above and beyond the full-length video courses.
Riley Bowman: Hey, you know, there's one other thing, too, I think we ought to talk about right now.
Riley Bowman: And I'm going to use this opportunity before we get to our other sponsor message
Riley Bowman: to go into our new segment that has no name.
Riley Bowman: What's that?
Jacob Paulsen: The no name segment.
Riley Bowman: The no name segment now. Yeah. Of, you know, what's new? What's going on?
Riley Bowman: What's the latest from us here at concealedcarry.com?
Riley Bowman: And so let's jump into that real quick. And what it was is I thought it'd be
Riley Bowman: good for us to, since we're talking about Guardian Nation, and you get access
Riley Bowman: to a dashboard with, you know, all these resources available to you,
Riley Bowman: including product discounts from industry partners of ours.
Riley Bowman: And, of course, you know, being able to get to the video content for the entire training library.
Riley Bowman: But, Jacob, we just, I say we, but really you, just did a bunch of work this
Riley Bowman: week to make that member's dashboard a lot better, a lot cleaner, and easier to use.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, and I'm not done. But yeah, when you go to consolecare.com,
Jacob Paulsen: up at the top corner it says user dashboard slash login. You click on that. It logs you in.
Jacob Paulsen: The URL is consolecare.com forward slash my dash account.
Jacob Paulsen: And that dashboard, that first page you see when you land there is way better.
Jacob Paulsen: It's just a massive improvement.
Jacob Paulsen: It's so much easier for you to see at a glance if you have any store credit,
Jacob Paulsen: Guardian Gold, courses that you have in progress that you haven't finished.
Jacob Paulsen: You can see recent orders and their status.
Jacob Paulsen: We've also done a little bit of upgrading to a tool that I don't know if we've
Jacob Paulsen: ever mentioned on this podcast ever, but we've had it since like 2015.
Jacob Paulsen: And that is that on our site, you can track your concealed carry permits and
Jacob Paulsen: their expiration dates.
Jacob Paulsen: I have multiple permits. Most of you listed this probably only have one.
Jacob Paulsen: But on that user dashboard, you can click on my permits, and you can put in
Jacob Paulsen: what's your resident state and the expiration date on your permit.
Jacob Paulsen: And it's not our intent to invade your privacy. This is optional. You don't have to do it.
Jacob Paulsen: But if you do, then you'll receive an e-mail from us at 120 days prior to the
Jacob Paulsen: expiration date and at 60 days prior to that expiration date to just give you
Jacob Paulsen: a reminder to renew your permit.
Jacob Paulsen: And some of you live in states where the government might actually remind you.
Jacob Paulsen: Me and Riley live in a state where you get no reminder at all.
Jacob Paulsen: It's completely on your own and so getting an email from us might be useful
Riley Bowman: Yeah so really cool uh new update to that dashboard yep yeah so and it really
Riley Bowman: that dashboard's improved not just for guardian nation members but you know
Riley Bowman: right everybody has access to that dashboard yeah yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: But we're gonna make some other improvements along those lines here yeah
Riley Bowman: Super cool so that's probably the latest greatest uh news from us here until
Riley Bowman: carry.com uh those that are guardian nation members uh happy to report that
Riley Bowman: your most recent guardian nation box of gear is uh in the process of being boxed
Riley Bowman: up right now as we speak we.
Jacob Paulsen: Have a couple hundred of them i think exactly 200 done today
Riley Bowman: And uh yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: It's it's a whole project but it's
Riley Bowman: Coming yeah so a couple more days and we'll get the rest of those all
Riley Bowman: boxed up and and shipped out to you members so
Riley Bowman: uh be looking for those in your mailboxes right quick
Riley Bowman: very very very soon yep so very excited about that let's get
Riley Bowman: back to sponsor messages so by the way if i didn't mention the link but in case
Riley Bowman: you don't know of course you can always go to concealed carry.com and find this
Riley Bowman: information but you can also go directly to guardian nation.com to learn more
Riley Bowman: about what guardian nation is why you might want to join and also be able to
Riley Bowman: join right there from that page,
Riley Bowman: Our other episode sponsor is CCW Safe. So we're going to be talking about a
Riley Bowman: major legal doctrine today, Stand Your Ground.
Riley Bowman: And, I mean, we're talking about legal things. People get in trouble.
Riley Bowman: And sometimes not necessarily in trouble because they did something wrong.
Riley Bowman: That's the way it goes frequently with self-defense shootings.
Riley Bowman: And I would say particularly those that take place outside of the home,
Riley Bowman: which is really where Stand Your Ground most often gets applied when it does get applied. right.
Jacob Paulsen: It's always the only place it gets
Riley Bowman: Played well yeah I mean yeah I guess there's a case that you could you could make about,
Riley Bowman: inside the home also being, well, when we get into talking about Stand Your
Riley Bowman: Ground, this all makes sense.
Riley Bowman: But anyway, CCW Safe, you're going to want good, solid legal defense coverage.
Riley Bowman: I mean, what are you going to do about all those legal costs?
Riley Bowman: How are you going to hire an attorney?
Riley Bowman: You know, where's that going to come from? I don't know if you got just a reserve
Riley Bowman: cash fund sitting there ready for that kind of thing. I hope you do.
Riley Bowman: But even then, there are some of these cases, including some that we might even
Riley Bowman: talk about today, where you would exhaust, unless you're very,
Riley Bowman: very wealthy, you would exhaust your savings.
Riley Bowman: You would exhaust your investment accounts. You would just blow through money
Riley Bowman: trying to defend yourself.
Riley Bowman: And so that's why you want a good legal team. And I mean a team, not just an attorney.
Riley Bowman: And yes, attorneys put together teams. But really the best thing I think about
Riley Bowman: CCW Safe, Jacob, is that they really, they pride themselves on creating their own legal team.
Riley Bowman: They are really there as a resource to whichever attorney or attorney's office
Riley Bowman: gets hired to take on your case.
Jacob Paulsen: Yes, that's what I'll just say.
Riley Bowman: And they are right there with multiple experts,
Riley Bowman: including people who have been through shootings themselves,
Riley Bowman: People have defended cases directly, including some very high profile ones that
Riley Bowman: are essentially consultants and expert, well,
Riley Bowman: yeah, not witnesses,
Riley Bowman: but what's the term?
Jacob Paulsen: Well, they have two consultants, but they also do have expert witnesses for various topics.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, sure. Expert witnesses. I was just thinking like just experts.
Riley Bowman: I mean, that are able to be a resource to your legal team. So they become a
Riley Bowman: part of that team that's going to work with good defense.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, so they call it the critical response team. Exactly. Yeah,
Jacob Paulsen: on that team, there are former prosecutors, former homicide investigators, detectives. Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: I mean, all types. And it's full court press for them.
Riley Bowman: So it is a huge benefit, I think, of membership is that this team stands behind
Riley Bowman: you when you are a CCWSAFE member. So consider joining today.
Riley Bowman: I hope that this episode today will encourage you to do so if you haven't already.
Riley Bowman: So go to CCWSAFE.com to learn more about their coverage plans.
Riley Bowman: And just a little note that Guardian Nation members get a discount.
Jacob Paulsen: Yes, sir.
Riley Bowman: So that's one of those discounts that we mentioned earlier. Let's jump into
Riley Bowman: it. All right, Jacob, stand your ground.
Riley Bowman: And again, we kind of in the intro talked about how it is, stand your ground
Riley Bowman: becomes, is a legal doctrine that's used far less than people probably expect.
Riley Bowman: It exists. It's an important thing. I think it's good that we have,
Riley Bowman: not every state, by the way, is a stand your ground state.
Riley Bowman: That should be clear. And that's something we can, we could start,
Riley Bowman: you know, here pretty early on in explaining.
Riley Bowman: But it exists, and I think it exists for a good purpose. But it doesn't come
Riley Bowman: into play as often as people think, and there's reasons for that.
Riley Bowman: So where should we start? Defining it?
Riley Bowman: Talking about states that are or are not stand-your-ground states?
Riley Bowman: Or where do you want to go?
Jacob Paulsen: So I think we need to address it or kind of put it in a reference and context,
Jacob Paulsen: and then we can define it.
Jacob Paulsen: But stand-your-ground is a reference to the opposite. it.
Jacob Paulsen: It is the antonym to duty to retreat.
Jacob Paulsen: So I think that's where we have to start is understanding duty to retreat versus stand your ground.
Jacob Paulsen: And these terms have become popularized because this happens to be a self-defense
Jacob Paulsen: requirement, here's the context, that is not universally true across the entire country.
Jacob Paulsen: And so because of that, we've come up with these terms that we use to describe
Jacob Paulsen: states that are or are not this way or that way.
Jacob Paulsen: So I'm going to take it up a level now then I'll come back down.
Jacob Paulsen: In order for you to claim self-defense, it is a method to justify an otherwise illegal act, right?
Jacob Paulsen: So if you use force against somebody, you punch someone, you put them in a chokehold,
Jacob Paulsen: you shoot them, stab them, tie them to a chair.
Jacob Paulsen: Like if you use some sort of use of force against another human,
Jacob Paulsen: that's a criminal act. Like we don't like that, we decided in our society.
Jacob Paulsen: But there are some circumstances that we deem to be exceptions where it's justified.
Jacob Paulsen: It's a justified use of force, which is how many statutes in a lot of states
Jacob Paulsen: label this, a justified force.
Jacob Paulsen: So one of those exceptions, one of the situations where we deem use of force
Jacob Paulsen: against another person to be justified is self-defense.
Jacob Paulsen: Oh, you had to do it to defend yourself or another innocent party.
Jacob Paulsen: But we can't just take you at your word. You can't just say,
Jacob Paulsen: well, it was self-defense. There's got to be some objective criteria we use
Jacob Paulsen: to decide if something was self-defense.
Jacob Paulsen: And so there's these requirements or elements, whatever term you prefer.
Jacob Paulsen: And this particular one, this idea of duty to retreat, is one of those requirements in some states.
Jacob Paulsen: So I think that's the high-level context that allows us to get to it and then
Jacob Paulsen: define it or flush it out.
Riley Bowman: That's good context. So just to kind of recap that there are certain states
Riley Bowman: where before you may use justifiable defense, particularly deadly force,
Riley Bowman: you know, defensive force, you need to meet the standard of retreating.
Jacob Paulsen: Yes.
Riley Bowman: Or at least making the effort to retreat.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. When safely able is the way I like to phrase this. So I would think of
Jacob Paulsen: it this way. Like our self-defense laws in this country are based on English common law.
Riley Bowman: Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: Right? So if you go way.
Riley Bowman: We're talking about stuff that goes way back to like Magna Carta.
Jacob Paulsen: Think like castles and moats and stuff, right?
Jacob Paulsen: Yep. So I think the origin, like if you really went back and looked at English
Jacob Paulsen: common law, the origin of this idea was, hey, you should, you know,
Jacob Paulsen: before we start to think it's justified to use force against people,
Jacob Paulsen: you should just run away.
Jacob Paulsen: And only when you hit the wall, the outer wall, When you can't get away because
Jacob Paulsen: you're up against the wall of the castle kind of thing, of the whatever thing
Jacob Paulsen: it's called, the block, the veil, the thing,
Jacob Paulsen: then you – now you can use force. And so that's the origin.
Jacob Paulsen: That's the real classic way of thinking of it.
Jacob Paulsen: Now, bring it down here a little bit more central to us, and you've got to think,
Jacob Paulsen: okay, so the concept here as a doctrine is that you should not be using force
Jacob Paulsen: against somebody if you could just safely retreat.
Jacob Paulsen: If you have the means and the ability to just retreat from the threat safely,
Jacob Paulsen: then you shouldn't be using force to defend yourself. You should just be leaving.
Jacob Paulsen: Now, there's some nuance there because –
Jacob Paulsen: I'm careful about some of the ways I've tried to word these things.
Jacob Paulsen: So I like to say retreat when safely able so I don't have to put myself in jeopardy
Jacob Paulsen: in order to retreat from the threat, right?
Jacob Paulsen: I also think it's important to note that you don't have to abandon other innocent people,
Riley Bowman: Right?
Jacob Paulsen: So it's not like, oh, I got my elderly parents here or my children here,
Jacob Paulsen: and I can safely retreat because I'm capable of running fast enough,
Jacob Paulsen: but they can't, so I just have to leave them at the mercy of the attacker.
Jacob Paulsen: That's not a thing either. The doctrine of duty to retreat or stand your ground,
Jacob Paulsen: whichever side of this we're looking at,
Jacob Paulsen: is this idea that if me and the other innocent parties collectively can safely
Jacob Paulsen: retreat from the attacker, then that's the course of action that is warranted.
Jacob Paulsen: That we only have a right to use force in our defense if we're unable to safely
Jacob Paulsen: retreat as a group, as innocent parties.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. And you could see this be applied.
Riley Bowman: Like there's some nuance to how it may be written in laws in various states
Riley Bowman: to where it could be applied at sort of different levels of,
Riley Bowman: not detail or aggressiveness, but just sort of like,
Riley Bowman: how much effort do you need to go through to retreat and to avoid the use of
Riley Bowman: force before you're able to do so?
Jacob Paulsen: Well, it's the nature of our legal system is that we have objective criteria
Jacob Paulsen: that is determined subjectively.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: Right? So we have humans who decide whether or not you know, you could have run away.
Jacob Paulsen: We have humans who decide whether or not that alternative exit that you didn't
Jacob Paulsen: take was really put yourself in more jeopardy or not.
Jacob Paulsen: This is the nature of our legal system, that a judge and or a jury has to make
Jacob Paulsen: a subjective decision based on an objective definition.
Riley Bowman: And I think that over time, what you've seen is that people,
Riley Bowman: and I'm just speaking pretty broadly and generally here,
Riley Bowman: have, I think this is a very reasonable take that people kind of as they reasoned
Riley Bowman: about these sorts of things kind of start, you know, thinking like,
Riley Bowman: well, hey, if I'm lawfully and legally able to be present in a certain place
Riley Bowman: at a certain time, I'm just minding my own business.
Riley Bowman: I am not a party to anything in particular. I'm not an aggressor.
Riley Bowman: I'm not trying to instigate anything.
Riley Bowman: I'm just me doing my thing completely legally, like any other lawful citizen
Riley Bowman: would be doing in this place at this given time.
Riley Bowman: That it's sort of like, well, that seems kind of unreasonable that someone that
Riley Bowman: fits that context should have to do anything if they're presented with a threat.
Riley Bowman: And so you've seen this kind of pushback over the last couple hundred years,
Riley Bowman: at least of the history of our country, kind of suggesting, well,
Riley Bowman: hold on here. And so actually...
Riley Bowman: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in a Supreme Court opinion, wrote something to
Riley Bowman: the effect of that a person is not obliged to retreat if they are without fault
Riley Bowman: in a particular situation.
Riley Bowman: And so that's where you start to see some of this a little bit more codified,
Riley Bowman: if you will, in the law or at least in rulings and in cases that at least the
Riley Bowman: Supreme Court has been involved in.
Riley Bowman: And then now, you know, in the last hundred years, particularly in the last
Riley Bowman: probably 50, 60, 70 years, you start to see states get on board with this idea of,
Riley Bowman: okay, we think it's unfair and unreasonable that a lawful person should have
Riley Bowman: to retreat before defending themselves.
Riley Bowman: And I think there's some good reasons for that. Let me present,
Riley Bowman: you know, probably the most popular thought I think on this would be that,
Riley Bowman: well, hey, and I would put this in the, you know, to kind of draw some comparison
Riley Bowman: here that the last few years we, in country, in our country goes through cycles like this.
Riley Bowman: But we've seen in the last couple of years as law enforcement had,
Riley Bowman: there's been, you know, some high profile incidents involving cops where,
Riley Bowman: you know, shootings have happened, whatever.
Riley Bowman: And um you know just as
Riley Bowman: one very popular example i mean like the uh
Riley Bowman: uh uh brown what was his first
Riley Bowman: name um out of like i think it was st louis or kansas yeah i'm sorry anyway
Riley Bowman: um yeah brown right um you know very it was a very very very heated cop shooting
Riley Bowman: involving uh anyway just having a moment, a moment, a senior moment here.
Riley Bowman: I'm going to claim that I'm not a senior yet, but, you know,
Riley Bowman: I'm getting closer all the time, but anyway, so, you know, you have cops that
Riley Bowman: were the, the, the popular Michael Brown, Michael Brown. Thank you.
Riley Bowman: That's funny because I was,
Riley Bowman: uh radio show host named michael brown i'm like that's not right is it no it is that's yeah and.
Jacob Paulsen: If you said if you'd said ferguson missouri i think i might have caught on
Riley Bowman: Faster ferguson's like a suburb of st louis yeah yeah yeah
Riley Bowman: that's why i was like anyway st louis anyway we both struggled yeah
Riley Bowman: michael brown right okay so i'm just using as one very
Riley Bowman: very popular example where an office you know that officer
Riley Bowman: used uh the force that he did and that caught
Riley Bowman: a lot of heat a lot of attention and start seeing public opinion
Riley Bowman: sway and then you see more and more you know uh whether it's actual statutes
Riley Bowman: that are passed by states or just police departments in general start changing
Riley Bowman: policy and basically start kind of handcuffing in a way officers ability to respond to threat.
Riley Bowman: You start seeing like just last week, Jacob, I've seen a couple of officer involved
Riley Bowman: shooting body cam footages where I'm like, why is that officer showing so much
Riley Bowman: restraint? I mean, I'll give you one example.
Riley Bowman: Man's very, very clearly got a knife.
Riley Bowman: He's advancing on a fellow officer. And this cop that we're,
Riley Bowman: you know, from his viewpoint that we're watching, I mean, he's not the immediate,
Riley Bowman: like, a target of this threat.
Riley Bowman: But he's got a very good vantage point. He's got his gun out. He's aimed.
Riley Bowman: And that guy starts advancing on this other officer.
Riley Bowman: And, I mean, there's just an immense amount of restraint.
Riley Bowman: That and I understand like we have the ability as
Riley Bowman: humans frankly to just be like you know what what I feel okay with in this moment
Riley Bowman: is I don't want to have to take this man's life I would really like to resolve
Riley Bowman: this without the use of deadly force I'm gonna do everything I can to avoid
Riley Bowman: that and I understand that and that's kind of what we're talking about here
Riley Bowman: with duty retreat is like trying to avoid conflict.
Riley Bowman: But you see things kind of sway politically and even legally to where it becomes,
Riley Bowman: for various reasons, because other officers have been prosecuted for bad shoots,
Riley Bowman: and now you see cops start to be a lot more hesitant to use deadly force.
Riley Bowman: Now, I know I just went down this rabbit hole, but I'm trying to make this comparison, if you will,
Riley Bowman: to when you have a duty to retreat in place for citizens,
Riley Bowman: you're giving them this additional requirement to an already complicated and
Riley Bowman: complex situation in many cases where it's like, you know,
Riley Bowman: does somebody then hesitate to act that could be harmful to them?
Riley Bowman: Because they're like, oh, crap, I got to retreat. I got to retreat.
Riley Bowman: And so what do you think about that?
Jacob Paulsen: I think that a lot of the court cases and laws we've seen, and we're going to
Jacob Paulsen: get into that a little bit more specifically, I think that a lot of them are
Jacob Paulsen: designed to reduce the fallacy of arbitrary subjective opinions.
Jacob Paulsen: And we were talking about that a second ago when I said, you're talking about
Jacob Paulsen: a judge or a jury or before that, a cop, a prosecutor, right?
Jacob Paulsen: Them on their own deciding whether or not you did or didn't have a safe means
Jacob Paulsen: of retreat or was or wasn't prudent to do so.
Jacob Paulsen: And I think that, yeah, at some point someone's like, wait a minute, like why?
Jacob Paulsen: This is crazy. Yeah. Right? Like why?
Jacob Paulsen: I mean, let's accept. I will accept for me personally on face value that it
Jacob Paulsen: is good tactics to retreat when safely able with all the other innocent parties.
Jacob Paulsen: Like I'm all for that as a best practice.
Jacob Paulsen: But I absolutely don't want to have the legal requirement to do it because I
Jacob Paulsen: want to be able to exercise my own judgment and what qualifies as safe retreat.
Jacob Paulsen: You know? And so that's, that's really, I think the, the gist of this,
Jacob Paulsen: I'll, I'll give one other thought here. And that is, um,
Jacob Paulsen: innocent parties starts to get complicated too uh so so you know if there's
Jacob Paulsen: an active shooting in the mall like maybe i can retreat for me but i i don't
Jacob Paulsen: have to you know do i have to abandon all these other innocent people in the
Jacob Paulsen: mall or can i go hunting right so i think that those are other things we have
Jacob Paulsen: to think about right when we talk about
Riley Bowman: Like you make the decision in that kind of situation this is like a mass shooting
Riley Bowman: of some kind to instead of just being focused on even defending yourself you're
Riley Bowman: like there is somebody out there actively killing people and for whatever reason
Riley Bowman: I've made the decision that I'm going to try to put an end to.
Jacob Paulsen: It. I think I should have the right to make that decision.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. And duty to treat would put that into question for sure.
Jacob Paulsen: Potential question. I think potential question. And I think that's the point
Jacob Paulsen: is it's like we can't write laws in a way that remove the potential for ambiguity
Jacob Paulsen: when human opinions are judging
Jacob Paulsen: until the point where we just remove that as a requirement at all.
Jacob Paulsen: And that's what most states have done.
Jacob Paulsen: So if we look at it at a number line, of the 51 states, including DC,
Jacob Paulsen: 39 of them are Stand Your Ground.
Jacob Paulsen: And by Stand Your Ground, I simply mean that there is the absence of a requirement to retreat.
Jacob Paulsen: So we have 39 states that said no duty retreat, and we tend to use the term
Jacob Paulsen: Stand Your Ground to refer to that.
Jacob Paulsen: And then we have the other, whatever it would be, 12 states that say,
Jacob Paulsen: no, you do have a duty retreat some of the time.
Jacob Paulsen: And we'll get into more specificity on that, certainly.
Jacob Paulsen: But that's kind of the split here. And I think it's worth understanding a little
Jacob Paulsen: bit what that can look like because of those 39 states...
Jacob Paulsen: You know, we should clarify, this would be a good time for me to add a disclaimer.
Jacob Paulsen: We should add at the beginning, which is in case you didn't know,
Jacob Paulsen: Riley and I are not attorneys.
Jacob Paulsen: Have you been to law school?
Riley Bowman: Nope.
Jacob Paulsen: No, me neither.
Riley Bowman: I mean, just, you know, the law school of YouTube. That's right.
Jacob Paulsen: So, so I, we should have said this at the beginning, but you know,
Jacob Paulsen: I think that we're relatively well studied people, but we're not just should
Jacob Paulsen: clarify, this is not legal advice and all that kind of stuff.
Riley Bowman: Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: And you should go, you know, research your own state.
Riley Bowman: We have our standard disclaimer still at the end of every episode that says something like that.
Jacob Paulsen: If you don't listen to the end, then here's that disclaimer now.
Riley Bowman: Just know that this is something that, I mean, we live in this space.
Riley Bowman: This is something that we are interested in, that we've studied for a long time
Riley Bowman: because we're talking about concealed carry issues.
Jacob Paulsen: I definitely did not always understand this well. So I'm sympathetic to people who do not.
Jacob Paulsen: Okay, so back to what I was going to say. So I think there are 39 states that
Jacob Paulsen: stand to ground states or states that do not have a duty to retreat,
Jacob Paulsen: however you want to refer to that. But there's different versions of that.
Jacob Paulsen: So you have some states that have, that they've passed a statute that says,
Jacob Paulsen: hey, you do not have to retreat, even if you safely could kind of thing.
Jacob Paulsen: That's not far from the wording of some of these. You have other states where
Jacob Paulsen: there's, we call them standard ground states, but there's no statute.
Jacob Paulsen: What you have is a court decision.
Jacob Paulsen: So maybe the state Supreme Court or an appellate court or somebody,
Jacob Paulsen: there was a specific case and they ruled on that case and said,
Jacob Paulsen: hey, no, even though this person could have retreated, that's just not necessary.
Jacob Paulsen: That's not required. So it's not a statutory, you know, stand your ground kind of law.
Jacob Paulsen: It's just a court decision that holds as a precedent until such time that somebody,
Jacob Paulsen: you know, a higher court changes the precedent or a statute is written.
Jacob Paulsen: So there's that. And there's a third version. And this is one that we absolutely
Jacob Paulsen: see with plenty of regularity. Those are states that have just nothing.
Jacob Paulsen: There's no law that says you have to retreat, and so therefore you don't have to.
Jacob Paulsen: There's no law that says you don't have to retreat. There's no court case that
Jacob Paulsen: says you didn't have to retreat. It's just the absence of a requirement makes it not exist.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: It's just we're quiet on the subject, therefore it's not a requirement. Right.
Jacob Paulsen: So we could debate over whether there's pros or cons there.
Jacob Paulsen: I would rather be in a state that has a statutory clarity of you do not have to retreat.
Jacob Paulsen: Right. And if I don't have that, then my second choice would be a state that
Jacob Paulsen: we have a court precedent that says there's no requirement to retreat.
Riley Bowman: Where case law essentially establishes that as opposed to a state that says
Riley Bowman: nothing about the matter.
Riley Bowman: Right. Because that could create some ambiguity potentially in a case.
Jacob Paulsen: You might be the one setting the court precedent in your state.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah, no, that's well explained. And I appreciate you explaining
Riley Bowman: kind of those different categories of states that have those kind of different
Riley Bowman: nuanced levels of this, if you will.
Riley Bowman: Now, if I've got my information correct here, states that do have a duty to
Riley Bowman: retreat include Connecticut.
Jacob Paulsen: Hold on. Let me let me I'm going to reconcile your list with my list.
Jacob Paulsen: Yep. Yep. All right. Go ahead.
Riley Bowman: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts.
Riley Bowman: Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island.
Jacob Paulsen: So
Jacob Paulsen: I think that's true. One that's a little bit, it's actually the most confusing one is Virginia.
Jacob Paulsen: So we have to go read Virginia's statute because Virginia basically says you
Jacob Paulsen: have no duty to retreat unless you made a contribution to the affray.
Jacob Paulsen: That's their language, contribution to the affray. So
Jacob Paulsen: So assuming you're truly an innocent party, you didn't contribute to the environment,
Jacob Paulsen: then yes, I would say you're a standard.
Jacob Paulsen: But we could make the argument that Virginia is a duty to retreat state if you
Jacob Paulsen: contributed to the fray in some way. Now you need to retreat.
Jacob Paulsen: You basically need to remove yourself and end that particular confrontation.
Riley Bowman: Right, right. So that's that piece where – and this is also pretty much the
Riley Bowman: case in even stand-your-ground states where – Potentially.
Riley Bowman: If you're the initial aggressor, for instance, if you essentially started the
Riley Bowman: fight or the altercation or whatever, that you may be forfeiting your stand-your-ground
Riley Bowman: privileges, if you will.
Jacob Paulsen: I wouldn't word it that way because you're suggesting one has something to do
Jacob Paulsen: with the other. I'd say you're more forfeiting your self-defense privileges
Jacob Paulsen: than your stand-your-ground privileges.
Jacob Paulsen: So it's its own independent, unique requirement for self-defense is how I think of it.
Jacob Paulsen: But Virginia doesn't say initial aggressor in this particular law we're talking about.
Riley Bowman: You contributed to the affray.
Jacob Paulsen: Contribution to the affray is different than initial aggressor.
Riley Bowman: Sure. Well, that's a, okay, so this is actually the first I'm hearing that specific Virginia example.
Jacob Paulsen: I know these things only because I typed them in. You can find all this on our
Jacob Paulsen: website under concealedcarry.com forward slash laws.
Riley Bowman: Laws, yeah. Yeah, concealedcarry.com forward slash laws. You can see,
Riley Bowman: you can look up any number of things about stand your ground, castle doctrine.
Jacob Paulsen: Oh, vehicle possession, hotel possession, campus carry.
Riley Bowman: Declare.
Jacob Paulsen: Duty to notify law enforcement.
Riley Bowman: Duty to notify law enforcement.
Jacob Paulsen: Permit training requirements, all sorts of things.
Riley Bowman: If you want to know all those different little things, which actually you should know.
Riley Bowman: You should know them, especially for your own state. and you should know them
Riley Bowman: for states that you visit or spend time in because really you got to abide by
Riley Bowman: the laws of the states that you find yourself in.
Riley Bowman: And so that's a, besides our app, the Concealed Carry Gun Tools app that has
Riley Bowman: a lot of great information.
Jacob Paulsen: Including this one we're talking about. Yeah.
Riley Bowman: But also right there on concealedcarry.com forward slash laws. You can access all of the,
Riley Bowman: so much information about this. So anyway, um, right.
Riley Bowman: So back to, uh, duty to retreat or stand your ground.
Riley Bowman: So the, you know, stand your ground as a, as a legal doctrine,
Riley Bowman: especially where it exists as a statute is specifically stripping away.
Riley Bowman: It's, it's the antithesis. It's the opposite. It's the complete polar,
Riley Bowman: you know, opposite of duty to retreat.
Riley Bowman: Correct. So just understand that's what it is.
Jacob Paulsen: The law is one or the other. Like you are either a duty to retreat state or
Jacob Paulsen: a stand your ground state. Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: If you're a duty to retreat state, that's by statute or by law.
Jacob Paulsen: We've said you got to run away.
Jacob Paulsen: There's some nuance to that we'll come back to. And if you're a stand your ground
Jacob Paulsen: state, then we're saying you don't got to run away either by statute,
Jacob Paulsen: by court precedent, or just by the absence of a duty to retreat.
Riley Bowman: So where do people get it wrong? Like, cause again, so often like people sort
Riley Bowman: of like hang their, their, their hats on the stand your ground,
Riley Bowman: like, ah, stand your ground.
Riley Bowman: You know, it's thrown out there as this common, I mean, we, we see it not just
Riley Bowman: in our social media comments on our posts, but we see a news media frequently,
Riley Bowman: frequently, uh, use it incorrectly.
Riley Bowman: We even see law enforcement, uh, you know, sheriffs and police chiefs all the
Riley Bowman: time, you You know, like, well, this is a stand your ground case when it is clearly not.
Jacob Paulsen: I think before we answer that, and that's going to be like probably the most
Jacob Paulsen: valuable part of this episode, but we do have to clarify castle doctrine.
Riley Bowman: Okay. Okay. Yeah, fair enough.
Jacob Paulsen: So this is part of the definition of understanding, like the broad understanding
Jacob Paulsen: of stand your ground. Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: So castle doctrine is another, you know, good gold cliche term we throw around a lot.
Jacob Paulsen: In fact, speaking of it getting overused, this is another one of those that
Jacob Paulsen: people are like, you just insert here if something to do with house is involved.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: But Castle Doctrine is basically the absence of a duty to retreat inside your
Jacob Paulsen: home or habitation or dwelling or however any given state might define that,
Jacob Paulsen: which definition could go so far as to include your vehicle. So –
Jacob Paulsen: A castle doctrine-type law is unnecessary in a stand-your-ground state.
Jacob Paulsen: You and I are in a stand-your-ground state. Here in Colorado,
Jacob Paulsen: this is a stand-your-ground state.
Jacob Paulsen: And so we don't need a castle doctrine law because we already don't have a duty to retreat.
Jacob Paulsen: So it would be superfluous to pass some castle doctrine-like statute in a state
Jacob Paulsen: that already has a stand-your-ground law or policy or whatever you want to call it.
Jacob Paulsen: So we have to isolate this down to the 12 jurisdictions, the 12 states, right?
Jacob Paulsen: Not the 39 that are standard ground states, but the other 12,
Jacob Paulsen: including DC. DC is not one of the 12, but DC making us 51, not 50.
Jacob Paulsen: The other 12 states that are duty to treat states, those are states where a
Jacob Paulsen: castle doctrine law would be relevant or applicable or helpful.
Jacob Paulsen: Because if you're in a state that does have duty to treat, one of the ones that
Jacob Paulsen: rightly read, now having a castle doctrine means, okay, in this state,
Jacob Paulsen: you do have a duty to have to retreat, if safely able, with the other innocent parties.
Jacob Paulsen: But if you're in your home, you don't have to retreat.
Jacob Paulsen: So outside the home you do, inside the home you don't. And that's what castle
Jacob Paulsen: doctrine does, is it removes the otherwise existing duty to retreat when you're
Jacob Paulsen: inside your dwelling or habitation or whatever term that particular law might use.
Jacob Paulsen: So we have only 12 states where we care whether or not they have a castle doctrine.
Jacob Paulsen: And as it were, all 12 do.
Jacob Paulsen: So putting it differently.
Riley Bowman: Isn't it that virtually every state has so-called, quote-unquote,
Riley Bowman: castle doctrine to some degree?
Jacob Paulsen: I mean, in Colorado, we don't. We don't have a law that says you don't have to retreat in your home.
Riley Bowman: Well, it doesn't say anything about that. But what I mean is effectively,
Riley Bowman: like virtually every state, I mean, is there any one state that requires you to retreat?
Jacob Paulsen: That would be the best way to summarize this.
Riley Bowman: There you go. Yes.
Jacob Paulsen: So no. The answer is no. Nowhere in this country do you have a duty to retreat
Jacob Paulsen: inside your home dwelling habitation.
Jacob Paulsen: It just doesn't exist. In 39 states, it doesn't exist because you have no such
Jacob Paulsen: duty to retreat anywhere.
Jacob Paulsen: Right. So the home is just part of anywhere, so it doesn't matter.
Jacob Paulsen: And then in the other 12 states where you do have a duty to retreat,
Jacob Paulsen: we remove or eliminate that duty when in the home with the castle doctrine type law.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, that's what I was getting at. Yeah. And that's important to,
Riley Bowman: I think, call out. But now here's the thing, and this is where I'm going to start.
Riley Bowman: And I appreciate you making sure we define castle doctrine as part of this discussion
Riley Bowman: because really these are two doctrines that both deal with duty to retreat.
Riley Bowman: And you just clarified it very well in that in all the states that effectively
Riley Bowman: have Stand Your Ground, they also have Castle Doctrine.
Riley Bowman: But in states that do not have Stand Your Ground...
Riley Bowman: They may have a castle doctrine statute. No, you said that backwards.
Riley Bowman: Hold on, I said it backwards. You did. You did.
Jacob Paulsen: So in states that have a duty to retreat, all of them also have a castle doctrine.
Riley Bowman: And castle doctrines will remove the duty to retreat when in your dwelling or
Riley Bowman: home or whatever. Habitation.
Jacob Paulsen: Those tend to be the three words we see, dwelling, habitation, and home.
Jacob Paulsen: But with me, a little bit, and there's some nuance there because those 12 states,
Jacob Paulsen: the way they write the castle doctrine, It would get really important if you
Jacob Paulsen: lived in one of those states because whether or not curtilage matters,
Jacob Paulsen: whether or not some extension part of your property or yard matters,
Jacob Paulsen: whether or not your vehicle is an extension of the home in that particular context.
Jacob Paulsen: I really actually hate the phrase extension of your home. But in that particular
Jacob Paulsen: context, some states would extend the castle doctrine privileges into your vehicle.
Jacob Paulsen: Those would be nuanced things that you would want to know if you lived in one of those 12 states.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, yeah, okay. Okay. Very good clarification. So now kind of transitioning
Riley Bowman: back to that question that I was asking a moment ago is where do people get it wrong?
Riley Bowman: Because what we see so frequently is that, and I'm going to say this about both
Riley Bowman: castle doctrine and stand your ground, is that they get used as catch-all phrases
Riley Bowman: to just sort of mean self-defense.
Riley Bowman: And it's sort of like, I can do whatever I want. Yes. You know? Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: No, you're dead on. That's exactly what happens.
Riley Bowman: It's a license to, you know.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, because if we're talking about, when you say how do people get Stand Your
Jacob Paulsen: Ground wrong, there's really two ways to take the question.
Jacob Paulsen: Again, this is Amelia Bedelia Jacob over here.
Jacob Paulsen: I would love, actually, comments from people. Do you have any idea who Amelia
Jacob Paulsen: Bedelia is? Is that a reference that is completely lost?
Riley Bowman: I'm sure it's lost on many today.
Jacob Paulsen: My kids would be like, Amelia, what? So I'm a very literal person.
Jacob Paulsen: So just to be clear, when you say, how do people get Stand Your Ground wrong?
Jacob Paulsen: You could be asking two questions.
Jacob Paulsen: One would be sort of like, how do gun owners get in trouble because they fail
Jacob Paulsen: to abide by that? By stand your ground regulate, or in this case,
Jacob Paulsen: really duty to retreat requirements.
Jacob Paulsen: But the other way to look at this, like, how does the public at large just misuse
Jacob Paulsen: the term stand your ground? I think that's where you're going.
Riley Bowman: Well, and the reason I'm going there is because that's where the getting it
Riley Bowman: wrong in the act part, you know, on the action side of the equation starts is
Riley Bowman: just a complete misunderstanding of what any of that means.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, 100%. So I think that's where we start is talking about like when people
Riley Bowman: throw out these terms, stand your ground, you know, castle doctrine, make my day.
Riley Bowman: Like, again, they're kind of
Riley Bowman: using it in this very broad sort of like this license to dole out justice.
Jacob Paulsen: Well, Florida screwed this up, in my opinion.
Riley Bowman: And they were one of the early states that enshrined this in statute. Yes. And that, yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: And when they did it, they screwed it up for the rest of us.
Jacob Paulsen: Because what happened is at the time, Florida passed two self-defense related laws.
Jacob Paulsen: And one of them is the stand your ground provision that says you don't have a duty to retreat.
Jacob Paulsen: But the other law that was passed at the same time is a self-defense immunity law.
Jacob Paulsen: That law basically says that before you go to court to hear charges against
Jacob Paulsen: you, you can appear before a judge with no jury present.
Jacob Paulsen: And in a hearing with the judge, the judge can hear the evidence presented by
Jacob Paulsen: the prosecutor and by the defendant.
Jacob Paulsen: And if the judge determines that this is clearly self-defense,
Jacob Paulsen: then the judge can basically declare you immune from prosecution and civil liability.
Jacob Paulsen: So it's sort of a way for a judge to kind of preempt it, nip it in the butt
Jacob Paulsen: in advance and be like, we're not going to deal with all the drama of a trial.
Jacob Paulsen: In fact, we're not going to let people even sue this guy because this is clearly self-defense.
Jacob Paulsen: And this self-defense immunity concept statute was passed at the same time as
Jacob Paulsen: the Stand Your Ground provision in Florida.
Jacob Paulsen: They were passed together in a single session.
Riley Bowman: As a package. As a package, yes.
Jacob Paulsen: Thank you. Well said. That's the word I was looking for. And so what happened
Jacob Paulsen: at the time is the media reported on this package of law as a stand your ground provision.
Jacob Paulsen: Like, oh, stand your ground, like Florida's passed stand your ground.
Jacob Paulsen: It means that you can't be tried. You can't be sued for self-defense.
Jacob Paulsen: And so the association, the incorrect association of the phrase stand your ground,
Jacob Paulsen: I think, got screwed up first and foremost because of Florida.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. There's another kind of aspect to this as well, I think,
Riley Bowman: Jacob, that has sort of morphed the doctrine of stand your ground into this broader,
Riley Bowman: you know, it's sort of like people think that stand your ground means or gave
Riley Bowman: the law passed that created stand your ground,
Riley Bowman: created the ability to use a gun in self-defense outside the home.
Riley Bowman: Sure. And why I think this gets kind of roped up in that a little bit is historically,
Riley Bowman: when we look at kind of the timing of everything, is when Stand Your Ground
Riley Bowman: became the law in Florida.
Riley Bowman: And then in some other select states, it was also during kind of this huge surge
Riley Bowman: in states adopting concealed carry laws as well and issuing permits.
Riley Bowman: And so now you start to see, because before that, it was far less common that
Riley Bowman: you had people carrying guns outside of the home and using them in self-defense
Riley Bowman: outside of the home, right?
Riley Bowman: And so I think in a lot of people's minds, historically, they sort of like,
Riley Bowman: stand your ground. I remember that was a big thing.
Riley Bowman: And around that same time, people actually carrying guns on their person outside
Riley Bowman: the home for personal defense also is becoming a thing.
Riley Bowman: And so sort of like lump that all together, that stand your ground means my
Riley Bowman: right and privilege to use a gun and defend myself outside the home.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, I think you're not wrong. In fact, I'm going to do an experiment right
Jacob Paulsen: now. I'm going to open chat GPT on my phone.
Riley Bowman: All right.
Jacob Paulsen: And I'm going to type, did stand your ground law play a part of
Jacob Paulsen: In the George Zimmerman, because this is a Florida case, the George Zimmerman incident.
Jacob Paulsen: Now, the correct answer to this, I'm not looking at the answer,
Jacob Paulsen: I have my phone turned upside down, but the correct answer to this is no.
Riley Bowman: No.
Jacob Paulsen: It didn't. Like when someone is straddling you on the ground and beating your
Jacob Paulsen: head into the concrete, whether or not you have a duty to retreat is irrelevant.
Jacob Paulsen: Right. Because they're on you.
Riley Bowman: Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: Holding you against the ground, right? So it is absolutely, unquestionably not relevant.
Riley Bowman: Forces already, like, very serious force is already being used on you at that
Riley Bowman: point as well. So, yeah, yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: Okay, here's Chad GPT's response.
Riley Bowman: All right, let's hear it.
Jacob Paulsen: Yes, Florida Stand Your Ground law did play a role in the legal process surrounding
Jacob Paulsen: the Georgia Zimmerman shooting at Trayvon Martin, but not in the way most people assume.
Jacob Paulsen: Okay, go on. It says, what Stand Your Ground actually does? Florida's Stand
Jacob Paulsen: Your Ground law removes the duty to retreat before using deadly force.
Jacob Paulsen: Good job, Chet. Yeah. Not bad.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: And then it says, if you're in a place you have a legal right to be and you
Jacob Paulsen: reasonably believe deadly force is necessary to prevent death or great bodily
Jacob Paulsen: harm. That's true. That's basically what the Florida statute says. Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: It also provides a pretrial immunity hearing option, meaning a defendant can
Jacob Paulsen: try to avoid trial entirely. It does not. That's a different statute.
Jacob Paulsen: So that's not quite accurate. Did Zimmerman use Stand Your Ground as a defense?
Jacob Paulsen: No at trial, he did not rely on stand your ground. He did not request a stand
Jacob Paulsen: your ground immunity hearing.
Jacob Paulsen: His legal team instead argued traditional self-defense.
Jacob Paulsen: So I'd say AI did okay on this. I was actually hoping it would fail bigger than
Jacob Paulsen: that. So that I could make fun of it some more.
Riley Bowman: If I was rating it out of five, I'd get four out of five or 4.5 out of five.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, not bad. The jury instructions did include no duty to retreat language.
Jacob Paulsen: Okay. The jurors were told Zimmerman did not have to retreat.
Riley Bowman: Chad's answering it from this perspective. It played a role in that it didn't.
Jacob Paulsen: Play a role.
Riley Bowman: It had to come up.
Jacob Paulsen: Well, I thought I was setting up AI for failure, and I was going to make fun of it completely.
Jacob Paulsen: And it actually did a pretty good job. So props to whoever programmed Chad on that one.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, no.
Jacob Paulsen: But yeah, we see it screw up all the time. Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, I know we have some examples, some specific incidents that it should or didn't come up in.
Riley Bowman: So the big takeaway from this, and this is kind of where I was going with this
Riley Bowman: last little discussion, is that stand your ground is not the law that gives
Riley Bowman: you the right to self-defense. No.
Riley Bowman: That always existed. It already existed.
Riley Bowman: Okay? you may not have had depending on your state the ability to carry a gun
Riley Bowman: on your person especially concealed up to a certain point you know two three
Riley Bowman: whatever decades ago but you always had the right to,
Riley Bowman: use self defense right it still had to be reasonable proportional you couldn't
Riley Bowman: be the initial aggressor you still had to meet all these other legal you know,
Riley Bowman: principles and requirements.
Riley Bowman: Okay. All that always and already did exist.
Riley Bowman: Stand Your Ground just came out to clarify and put a provision in statute that says,
Riley Bowman: hey, in some instances or in some cases or in some locations or some states,
Riley Bowman: there was this duty to retreat piece that was like one of those legal requirements. That's gone.
Riley Bowman: That's it. It didn't change anything else about self-defense.
Jacob Paulsen: Nope.
Riley Bowman: And that's what I think is really key for people to understand so that they
Riley Bowman: know, hey, when we talk about Stand Your Ground, what we are actually talking
Riley Bowman: about, when we talk about it, and when intelligent people talk about it,
Riley Bowman: we are talking simply about the removal of duty to retreat.
Riley Bowman: When you hear it used in the media and by your local sheriff that's doing a
Riley Bowman: press conference that I'm sorry, sheriffs, I mean, not all of them are disclueless,
Riley Bowman: but there I've seen some press conferences that I'm just like,
Riley Bowman: oh my goodness, they don't understand what the actual law means.
Jacob Paulsen: They have no idea what they're saying.
Riley Bowman: So anyway, that's what we mean when we talk about stand your ground.
Jacob Paulsen: No duty to retreat. In fact, I often think of castle doctrine.
Jacob Paulsen: It's just partial stand your ground.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. But that's, you know.
Jacob Paulsen: It's just like limited to stand your ground. It's limited. It's just limited
Jacob Paulsen: to your Yeah, that's a good
Riley Bowman: Way of defining that as well. So I think at this point, I think we've defined
Riley Bowman: it pretty well. We've talked about the context.
Riley Bowman: I think it's good to probably talk about some specific examples.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, okay. How about Draca?
Riley Bowman: Yeah, that's one I was referencing towards the beginning of the episode.
Riley Bowman: Hey, stick around because you're going to hear us talk about this.
Riley Bowman: I mean, this was a huge case.
Riley Bowman: It got a lot of media attention. We've talked about it before on the podcast.
Riley Bowman: It's been a while. This has been a couple of years ago.
Riley Bowman: But uh the the michael draka case out of florida which.
Jacob Paulsen: Ironically is a case that had nothing to do with stand your ground
Riley Bowman: And that's why this is a great example because because people kept saying stand
Riley Bowman: your ground stand your ground like that's all i heard in the media for like months oh.
Jacob Paulsen: The prosecutor refused to prosecute stating they couldn't because it was a stand your
Riley Bowman: Ground yeah this is an example of a prosecutor didn't understand yeah so stand your ground meant so.
Jacob Paulsen: Let's talk about what happened in this incident this is one that's come up on
Jacob Paulsen: our podcast several times. It's one that we often use as kind of an example in some of these things.
Jacob Paulsen: And in this particular incident is a really good example of the legal doctrine
Jacob Paulsen: of imminence, but it's also an example of the public or, and not just the public,
Jacob Paulsen: the people who matter, misunderstandings to end your ground.
Jacob Paulsen: So we got some people who have gone to the gas station, and they've parked in
Jacob Paulsen: the handicapped parking spot.
Riley Bowman: Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: But presumably they're not handicapped. They have no placard to indicate as
Jacob Paulsen: much. They're not, you know, et cetera.
Jacob Paulsen: And Michael Draca, the handicapped parking police guy, in his own mind.
Riley Bowman: Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: He goes to the gas station, and he sees this car sitting in the handicapped
Jacob Paulsen: spot, and the passenger seat is occupied by a female adult
Jacob Paulsen: and he decides that he needs to
Jacob Paulsen: do his thing and yell at this person for occupying this handicapped spot.
Riley Bowman: How dare you park there?
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. Which, by the way, that's a dick move. Stop parking in handicapped spots
Jacob Paulsen: if you're not handicapped.
Jacob Paulsen: That's not okay. Drake is not wrong. Don't do that crap.
Riley Bowman: People understand that intent that he had as far as like,
Riley Bowman: you know he he witnessed an injustice and by
Riley Bowman: the way there was a history of this in fact it came
Riley Bowman: up in in trial uh that more than once
Riley Bowman: i think there were at least two other times before this
Riley Bowman: fateful day that he had accosted somebody at that same gas station uh about
Riley Bowman: the same issue now he also i think had uh some limited mobility or some kind
Riley Bowman: of minor handicap issue I don't know if he himself had a handicapped placard or anything.
Riley Bowman: I just know that he had, what I recall is there was some limited mobility on his part.
Riley Bowman: And I think that he just took this issue very personally that that's a handicapped spot.
Riley Bowman: If you are not, if you don't have that placard, that license plate,
Riley Bowman: whatever, you do not park there.
Riley Bowman: And this was a justice that he decided he needed to take action on.
Jacob Paulsen: That's right. So he's yelling at the female adult occupant when said female
Jacob Paulsen: adult occupant of the car's boyfriend, male driver of the car,
Jacob Paulsen: comes out of the gas station.
Jacob Paulsen: And decides he doesn't like that that old dude over there is yelling at his girl.
Riley Bowman: Yep. Nobody would, right?
Jacob Paulsen: Right. No, that's not cool. So he basically body checks him.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: And this is all on camera. So we have, I mean, there's no audio.
Jacob Paulsen: So I don't know who's saying what. Yeah, it's an
Riley Bowman: Exterior camera on the convenience store. Right.
Jacob Paulsen: But he body checks. He comes out the door. He sees Draco doing his thing.
Jacob Paulsen: And he runs over and it's like, pop. I really just, he body checks him.
Jacob Paulsen: And drake goes like right to the ground didn't see it coming complete ambush
Jacob Paulsen: got him by surprise yeah drake's
Riley Bowman: Attention is still on the girlfriend he's kind of turned like this and uh and
Riley Bowman: it's his name is marquise uh marquise mclochten is the is the victim in this
Riley Bowman: case yeah he comes out and kind of from drake's left bam hits him so yeah he
Riley Bowman: goes right down body checks him good yep.
Jacob Paulsen: So drake is on the ground now yeah and in
Jacob Paulsen: pretty short order while his presumed
Jacob Paulsen: attacker is kind of standing and staring at him like do
Jacob Paulsen: you want to get up for some more draca draws his gun yeah while he's still on
Jacob Paulsen: the ground his back is on the ground his butt cheeks are touching the asphalt
Jacob Paulsen: and he draws his gun it points it uh what'd you guys say what'd you say the
Jacob Paulsen: guy's name was marquise marquise and so So Marquise decides that body checking
Jacob Paulsen: people is all fine and good,
Jacob Paulsen: but getting shots, not something he has any interest in.
Riley Bowman: Right.
Jacob Paulsen: So he kind of puts his hands up in the good old surrender move and starts to step backward.
Riley Bowman: Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: And makes it a deliberate intent to disengage.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: And as he's in the act of this disengagement, hands up, stepping back,
Jacob Paulsen: Draco decides, now, bang.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Riley Bowman: Well, frankly, I think that he had made the decision to pull the trigger at
Riley Bowman: the moment he started drawing the gun.
Jacob Paulsen: But he hesitated. I mean, there's clear hesitation. Like the gun is out and
Jacob Paulsen: presented to target, and the amount of time elapses before he presses the trigger.
Riley Bowman: I don't know if that's decisional time or.
Jacob Paulsen: If that's… Just how long it takes him to press the trigger.
Riley Bowman: How long? Yeah. I mean, come on. You've worked with me on the range.
Jacob Paulsen: It could be unclear from the camera angle. but to me it looks like hesitation
Jacob Paulsen: and if I was on the jury I would have said that looks like he hesitated
Jacob Paulsen: but certainly the trigger is not pressed until such time that the man has his
Jacob Paulsen: hands up in a surrender position and is retreating yeah
Riley Bowman: He takes one or two steps to the rear it's not like a ton of.
Jacob Paulsen: But it
Riley Bowman: Is apparent he's no longer over top of Draca he's no longer he is not pursuing
Riley Bowman: anything he's doing this,
Riley Bowman: and so So, yeah, so this is, I think, one of the most famous cases that illustrates
Riley Bowman: this, and it illustrates it incorrectly because Stand Your Ground wasn't even...
Jacob Paulsen: Has nothing to do with this.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, has nothing to do with this case, but that's why we're using it as an
Riley Bowman: example. One, because, you know, so many people were like, well,
Riley Bowman: it's a Stand Your Ground matter, you know, so we're not going to pursue charges.
Riley Bowman: Draco probably was himself thinking, yeah, Stand Your Ground,
Riley Bowman: you know, like, I was within my rights, you know, kind of thing.
Riley Bowman: But that wasn't the case at all.
Jacob Paulsen: No he's still in prison oh
Riley Bowman: Yeah sentenced to at.
Jacob Paulsen: Least 20 years he could be out on early parole or something but he was sentenced
Jacob Paulsen: to 20 years that was less than 20 years ago
Jacob Paulsen: Uh, so now let's talk about why stand your ground has nothing to do with this.
Riley Bowman: Yep. So when you're, before we do, sorry, one, one, one other thing here I think
Riley Bowman: is, is relevant to point out is that there was, I would say very clearly another
Riley Bowman: crime that was committed in this story, in this situation.
Riley Bowman: And that was the initial contact by Marquise against Draca.
Jacob Paulsen: Oh, sure. Right.
Riley Bowman: Because what we have is just a, a verbal altercation is taking place.
Riley Bowman: And I know that, you know, like, Hey man, that's my girl.
Riley Bowman: Like I'm going to stand up with my girl, you know? So Marquise does what he thinks is right.
Riley Bowman: But in so doing, he's actually the one that sort of draws first blood, so to speak.
Jacob Paulsen: He's arguably the initial aggressor, even though he didn't start the verbal argument.
Riley Bowman: And that's where this is an interesting case because it's like,
Riley Bowman: you know, so if we were to go back in time, if we were to kind of step back
Riley Bowman: frame by frame, and we're at that moment where Drake is on the ground.
Riley Bowman: He's just been body checked, pushed, whatever, to the ground.
Riley Bowman: And he draws his gun. And it starts coming out of the holster.
Riley Bowman: Maybe it's even pointed at Marquise.
Riley Bowman: Marquise is like, whoa, whoa, whoa. If we were to stop that right then,
Riley Bowman: at that moment, and Marquise goes his way, Draco picks himself up and goes his
Riley Bowman: own way, I mean, would have anything come of this?
Jacob Paulsen: No, no big deal. I mean, is it possible that Marquise could have been charged with an assault?
Riley Bowman: That's possible.
Jacob Paulsen: It's possible.
Riley Bowman: Could he have also tried to get Draco charged because he pulled out a gun?
Jacob Paulsen: Sure, aggravated assault.
Riley Bowman: It could have gone to something like that, but the point is that's a whole different
Riley Bowman: thing, a whole other ball of wax, so to speak.
Riley Bowman: But basically, nothing would have come of this unlike what actually ended up happening.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, 20 years in prison.
Riley Bowman: So anyway.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, and again, the real legal doctrine that gets him in trouble in the end
Jacob Paulsen: is imminence. Did he have an imminent threat?
Jacob Paulsen: Was in the moment he decided to act, did he have an active imminent happening
Jacob Paulsen: now or about to happen threat?
Jacob Paulsen: Or was that confrontation ending and de-escalating as the threat was removing
Jacob Paulsen: himself? And that's what got him in trouble.
Riley Bowman: I think even proportionality could probably come into the conversation as well.
Jacob Paulsen: Debatable. You mentioned he has some limited mobility. He's on the ground,
Jacob Paulsen: a young male standing over him. We could get into that debate.
Riley Bowman: But what's clear is that Marquise is not armed.
Riley Bowman: Yes, he may have pushed him down, but he's not armed, and he backs away.
Riley Bowman: Right? And so now why is this not a stand-your-ground case?
Jacob Paulsen: So that's the important thing. It's not a stand-your-ground case because,
Jacob Paulsen: one, nothing hinged on whether or not he had a duty to retreat.
Jacob Paulsen: And if he had had the duty, let's pick up this case and let's move it to Delaware
Jacob Paulsen: where such a duty exists.
Jacob Paulsen: Then we have to ask, but was he safely able to retreat or not?
Jacob Paulsen: And if you were on the ground, on your back, on the asphalt,
Jacob Paulsen: and your attacker is standing over you, younger, tougher, you know,
Jacob Paulsen: whatever, standing over you, do you have a safe means of retreat?
Jacob Paulsen: And I think the answer is probably no, you don't.
Jacob Paulsen: So that's the first reason why Stand Your Ground doesn't come into it is because
Jacob Paulsen: even if this was in a duty-to-retreat state where you had to retreat,
Jacob Paulsen: where you have no stand-your-ground at all, it still wouldn't matter because
Jacob Paulsen: you can't retreat. You can't retreat from that.
Jacob Paulsen: When you're on your back on the asphalt and you have limited mobility issues,
Jacob Paulsen: probably getting up from that position is challenging already and someone is
Jacob Paulsen: standing over you like, get up, I dare you.
Jacob Paulsen: You don't have a safe means of retreat.
Riley Bowman: Yep. Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: So that's why it's not a stand-your-ground case.
Riley Bowman: So in other words, duty to retreat or not is just not relevant.
Jacob Paulsen: It doesn't apply.
Riley Bowman: Yep. Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: In a place where there's a duty to retreat, you only have that duty to retreat
Jacob Paulsen: when you're safely able to do so.
Jacob Paulsen: Yep. And so it's a hinged requirement.
Riley Bowman: There you go. So, and again, this is another example where I don't know the mind of Michael Draca.
Riley Bowman: I don't know exactly what he was thinking. I don't know what he was thinking in the moment.
Riley Bowman: I do know that, well, what I
Riley Bowman: think, what I think is that he thought he was justified doing what he did.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. And I think that he had a misunderstanding of what was reasonable,
Riley Bowman: what was imminent, what was proportional in that situation.
Jacob Paulsen: Yes.
Riley Bowman: And whether he thought it was a stand your ground or not, I don't know.
Riley Bowman: But what I perceive from people that love to throw that out as a defense,
Riley Bowman: stand your ground, is that they would very likely make a similar decision and it would be wrong.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah and we and we do see situations where this this comes into play and it
Jacob Paulsen: gets people in trouble you know an interesting one and it's on our little list
Jacob Paulsen: of potential ones discussed here is is written house written house is maybe
Jacob Paulsen: uh one of the more relevant potential stand your ground ones uh that we could i think
Riley Bowman: It's the most clear uh you know from the examples we have in our little list
Riley Bowman: here i think it's the most clear stand your ground.
Jacob Paulsen: Example yeah uh
Riley Bowman: Because it is one where you know it what there was a possibility of retreat
Riley Bowman: in fact he tried to retreat.
Jacob Paulsen: He was constantly trying to retry trying
Riley Bowman: To get away from the whole the.
Jacob Paulsen: Whole engagement is a duty is a an attempt to retreat yeah
Riley Bowman: Even though there was not a requirement to do.
Jacob Paulsen: So right this in Wisconsin where there's no duty to retreat.
Jacob Paulsen: It's a stand your ground state.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. I know where it gets tricky in some people's minds is,
Riley Bowman: well, he showed up at this.
Jacob Paulsen: He chose to be there.
Riley Bowman: He showed up there. He brought a gun with him. Okay. And I know that like that
Riley Bowman: doesn't necessarily look good.
Riley Bowman: But there was, and this is what was interesting. I paid pretty close attention
Riley Bowman: to the Rittenhouse case.
Riley Bowman: And I remember I was driving back from somewhere on a trip.
Riley Bowman: And I just remember I had several hours of just driving and I had the live feed
Riley Bowman: of like the final day of that trial, closing arguments, all that going on.
Riley Bowman: And, you know, I mean, what it came down to is that there wasn't anything that
Riley Bowman: Kyle actually did that was illegal.
Jacob Paulsen: Right. Right. He might have made some bad decisions.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. That's up for debate. Like teach, teach, teach, teach opinion.
Riley Bowman: I would, I don't know for sure. I haven't talked to him personally,
Riley Bowman: but I mean, if it were me and I went through the heck that he did after the
Riley Bowman: fact, I'd be like, yeah, I kind of wish I didn't go there.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. I have, I have talked to him personally, uh, face to face.
Riley Bowman: Oh yeah, that's right. That's right.
Jacob Paulsen: And I, I don't want to misquote the guy cause he didn't say this,
Jacob Paulsen: but my sense is, um, he doesn't think he did anything wrong or anything foolish or bad. Okay.
Jacob Paulsen: But again, he didn't say that to me. That was just the sense I got from the conversation we had.
Riley Bowman: And that's okay, too.
Jacob Paulsen: Teach their own. I'm not trying to judge.
Riley Bowman: He went there doing what I think he felt was the right thing,
Riley Bowman: trying to provide protection to this community. That's right.
Riley Bowman: And that's okay. But I just, you know, I feel like if it were me,
Riley Bowman: I'd be like, man, that was,
Riley Bowman: I'm not so sure that was worth it or not, you know, Because that's a lot of
Riley Bowman: pain and trouble and expense and life-altering change.
Riley Bowman: I'd much rather not be famous for what he's famous for.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, I think a reasonable person would probably like to rewind that call.
Riley Bowman: You pretty much can't live a normal life having the name Kyle Rittenhouse, right?
Riley Bowman: But anyway, so I do think it is a good example of Stand Your Ground in that he was there lawfully.
Riley Bowman: He was allowed to be there just like any of the other people were allowed to be there.
Riley Bowman: He was carrying a gun actually lawfully under the statutes of Wisconsin.
Riley Bowman: And when it came down to it, he was attacked. He was hit. by a skateboard.
Riley Bowman: Which constitutes a weapon. He was attacked multiple times with multiple individuals
Riley Bowman: and he used force in self-defense.
Jacob Paulsen: Yes, and I think what makes it such a good example is because it may be,
Jacob Paulsen: it's not exactly a good example where a duty to retreat impacted a case because
Jacob Paulsen: it took place in a non-state.
Jacob Paulsen: I'm saying it's an example of how it's potentially applicable because this is
Jacob Paulsen: a situation where he constantly was trying to disengage and get away.
Jacob Paulsen: And often his attempt to do so was thwarted and challenged, and that's what
Jacob Paulsen: led to some of his problems.
Jacob Paulsen: But once the fight began, his seemingly sole objective was to disengage and escape.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: Up to the point of walking up to the cops and trying to surrender himself.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: So that is why, had this taken place in a duty to retreat state,
Jacob Paulsen: not a stand your ground state, he would have been a prime example of somebody
Jacob Paulsen: who followed the letter of the law in that respect.
Jacob Paulsen: As it were, it was probably just good tactics. But it would have been like following
Jacob Paulsen: the requirement of duty to retreat had it taken place in a state where it was required.
Riley Bowman: And that's something I think is noteworthy to this discussion as we get close
Riley Bowman: to wrapping this up is that when we're talking about stand your ground,
Riley Bowman: there's the legal side of this as far as retreat or not, right?
Riley Bowman: Whether you're obligated to or not and there
Riley Bowman: is the uh the tactical decision making side of this yes of whether or not the
Riley Bowman: law says i must retreat or whether the law says there is no obligation to do
Riley Bowman: so is it the right thing to try to do um and those are two different things what the law.
Riley Bowman: You know, either permits us to do or obligates us to do.
Riley Bowman: And what we, whether it's on a more moral basis, personally speaking,
Riley Bowman: or tactical, like that's, those are completely different decision-making paths, potentially.
Riley Bowman: They can be one and the same. I mean, they, and they can end up in the same
Riley Bowman: place too, as far as we decide to try to retreat or not or whatever,
Riley Bowman: but that's, those are two different decision-making trees is what I want to point out to this.
Riley Bowman: And what I would say is that even if not obligated to retreat,
Riley Bowman: and this is why I think we're bringing up the Rittenhouse case,
Riley Bowman: just so this is clear, is that it is still in, I would say in almost all cases,
Riley Bowman: unless you're just putting yourself at greater jeopardy, it is almost always
Riley Bowman: wiser, smarter, more tactically sound for you to try to retreat.
Jacob Paulsen: If safely able.
Riley Bowman: Exactly. And so, because I mean, that is a win in my book if like if we don't
Riley Bowman: have to get involved in a self-defense shooting at all that's a win,
Riley Bowman: The upside of that is way better than, you know, the opposite end of ending
Riley Bowman: up and spending any amount of time in jail, being a part of an investigation,
Riley Bowman: having to go through a trial, having your entire life just completely transformed
Riley Bowman: in many ways, not probably ideal.
Riley Bowman: I mean, like if your name, if your last name is Rittenhouse,
Riley Bowman: there's a high probability there are just certain jobs you will not be able
Riley Bowman: to get because those people just won't like you.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah.
Riley Bowman: Right?
Jacob Paulsen: So anyway. Yeah. Well, there's one more case on our list that I think is worth quickly mentioning.
Jacob Paulsen: And it's one we actually mentioned two weeks ago when we did our legislative
Jacob Paulsen: updates from Akron, Ohio.
Jacob Paulsen: I think it's also a really interesting tactics and legal one.
Jacob Paulsen: Ohio is actually a standard ground state and it's the most recent standard ground
Jacob Paulsen: state relatively maybe in the last 5-6 years, thank you so 5 years ago
Jacob Paulsen: Ohio passed a statute to statutorily become a standard ground state to remove
Jacob Paulsen: the duty of retreat but what happens is in Akron,
Jacob Paulsen: Ohio this is the DoorDash driver and his girl who are out cruising around doing
Jacob Paulsen: deliveries, in my own personal words eating bag fries
Jacob Paulsen: and they date night is door dash you get paid while having a date night
Jacob Paulsen: so they're out doing their thing and they're being tailgated by a 17 year old
Jacob Paulsen: driver with his 15 year old brother in tow and they decide that they'll want
Jacob Paulsen: to pull over and let these guys pass but instead of passing per se
Jacob Paulsen: they kind of the 15 year old opens fire on the door dash driver's girl and he
Jacob Paulsen: returns fire And then as soon as they disengage and the attackers drive off,
Jacob Paulsen: he and his girl drive off also and head to a gas station, Circle K,
Jacob Paulsen: if I recall correctly, and they call the cops.
Jacob Paulsen: In the moment they're taking fire, they determine they cannot safely retreat, right?
Jacob Paulsen: Getting in the car and driving at this point, like, they're stationary.
Jacob Paulsen: They're not moving. They're parked. I mean, I don't know if the car's in park,
Jacob Paulsen: but they're stationary on the side of the road, and they're taking fire.
Jacob Paulsen: So in this moment, they have to say, hey, like, could we retreat from this?
Jacob Paulsen: The answer is no, not fast enough.
Riley Bowman: Right.
Jacob Paulsen: Right? So returning fire is the thing that you do that's the most efficient way to stop the threat.
Jacob Paulsen: And as soon as the threat ceases, like, we're not getting shot at anymore.
Jacob Paulsen: Oh, it looks like they drove off.
Jacob Paulsen: Cool. Now we remove ourselves. Now we retreat. Now we get to safety. And so I think this is.
Riley Bowman: And they called it in and reported. Yeah. You know what happened.
Jacob Paulsen: This is a fantastic example of good tactics.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: That would also meet the criteria of a duty to retreat law should you be in
Jacob Paulsen: a state where it's necessary.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. Yeah. No, I like that one as well. And as you mentioned,
Riley Bowman: that's just our most recent Justified Saves episode. We covered that very story.
Riley Bowman: There's one more thing I wanted to share story-wise, Jacob, and the reason why
Riley Bowman: is because the defendant and now convict of this particular case tried to claim
Riley Bowman: stand-your-ground immunity, if you will.
Riley Bowman: This is the Ralph Yarl case. This is a 16-year-old Ralph Yarl.
Riley Bowman: This happened in Kansas City, Missouri area.
Riley Bowman: He was trying to go and, I think, pick up his siblings from somebody from a home.
Riley Bowman: So you know mom was probably like hey go get your
Riley Bowman: go get your brothers or whatever right so ralph goes to what he thinks is the
Riley Bowman: home it turns out he's mistaken but he just has the wrong house wrong address
Riley Bowman: yeah you know hey hey it's that one down there with the red door okay you know
Riley Bowman: like so he shows up the wrong door he rings the doorbell and 84 year old andrew lester,
Riley Bowman: With virtually no, like, by all accounts, there's, like, no warning given.
Riley Bowman: There's no, there's not really anything that happens other than Andrew Lester
Riley Bowman: just starts blasting through the door. I'm being attacked. Yeah.
Riley Bowman: And he strikes Ralph a couple times in the head and in the arm.
Riley Bowman: Fortunately, this 16-year-old boy survives this whole thing.
Riley Bowman: But what was interesting about
Riley Bowman: this is that Lester tried to invoke Missouri's Stand Your Ground law.
Riley Bowman: But, which is interesting because, number one, this took place at a dwelling.
Riley Bowman: And two, like, I mean, he's in his home. He's behind a door. Like, it's secured.
Riley Bowman: Like, anyway, he tries to stand your ground as a defense.
Jacob Paulsen: The attorney tries to make this defense.
Riley Bowman: And it's clear, like, that is not the case. It has nothing to do with this.
Riley Bowman: It has nothing to do with this situation.
Riley Bowman: And, frankly, everything about it is not reasonable because,
Riley Bowman: I mean, like, what is reasonable?
Riley Bowman: About your doorbell ringing and you're like, and maybe you look through your
Riley Bowman: peephole or you're looking at your camera or whatever.
Riley Bowman: And you're like, I don't know this young kid. He looks like a threat.
Riley Bowman: Bang, bang, bang, bang. You know, there's nothing reasonable at all about this whole situation.
Riley Bowman: Um, and I'm just, I just wanted to make sure we use this as an example to show
Riley Bowman: like people have a completely miss the complete wrong misunderstanding of what
Riley Bowman: standard ground is and try to use it as this catch-all defense for any time
Riley Bowman: they draw and fire shots,
Riley Bowman: including in situations where they are just completely not justified at all.
Jacob Paulsen: I guess the way I perceive this is self-defense has requirements,
Jacob Paulsen: and people think that a stand-your-ground law removes all the requirements,
Jacob Paulsen: and you can just defend yourself anytime, time,
Jacob Paulsen: anywhere, in any reason.
Jacob Paulsen: And that's what they think stand your ground is. And it's not like self-defense
Jacob Paulsen: has requirements and stand your ground removes one of them.
Riley Bowman: Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: But you still got other requirements.
Riley Bowman: Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: So that's, that's all it does. And it's not a blanket, um, you know,
Jacob Paulsen: just permission to defend yourself in any circumstance, which you think it's a good idea.
Riley Bowman: Yep. Exactly.
Riley Bowman: And if I could offer one more thing as kind of closing words to this,
Riley Bowman: be mindful of what you say online and publicly about these kinds of things.
Riley Bowman: Because all those sorts of things, your entire social media history can be subpoenaed
Riley Bowman: and released to prosecutors and to the courts as evidence.
Riley Bowman: Uh one thing that prosecutors try to
Riley Bowman: do is use that as uh you
Riley Bowman: know basically to show how you have a history and a pattern
Riley Bowman: of saying certain things acting certain ways thinking certain things that do
Riley Bowman: not make your case look good not at all uh and of course i mean this we just
Riley Bowman: talked about how you need to make reasonable good prudent wise sane moral decisions
Riley Bowman: that hopefully keep you out of this in the first place,
Riley Bowman: but also just be mindful of what you say publicly and online,
Riley Bowman: because all of that can be admissible into the court of law.
Riley Bowman: And, you know, if you're one of those out there, I mean, we're doing this whole
Riley Bowman: episode so that hopefully we catch some of you out there that are online being
Riley Bowman: all like, stand your ground.
Riley Bowman: And hopefully you start thinking twice about what it actually means.
Riley Bowman: And now you're a little bit better informed.
Riley Bowman: We just gave you all these examples and the logic and the reason and the history
Riley Bowman: and what the laws actually say what stand your ground actually is and i hope
Riley Bowman: that you'll think twice before you say anything that you'll later regret online in.
Jacob Paulsen: The last 28 days we've had 95 000 comments on facebook posts on the conciliacurray.com
Jacob Paulsen: facebook page i just pulled it up to check 95 000 last 28 days that's
Riley Bowman: A lot of comments.
Jacob Paulsen: Our poor social media guy. There's no way he's reading them all. No.
Jacob Paulsen: How would you? Anyway, I bet you half of them would look damning in court.
Riley Bowman: Yes.
Jacob Paulsen: So including outright threats against the governor of Virginia.
Jacob Paulsen: Crazy stuff. I just do not understand what people are thinking.
Jacob Paulsen: We don't get subpoenaed, by the way.
Jacob Paulsen: If you say something dumb on our – they subpoena Facebook.
Riley Bowman: They just send it to Facebook.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, Meta is the one that gets subpoenaed and just turns it over.
Jacob Paulsen: So I don't know how many times comments on our posts have been subpoenaed in the trial.
Jacob Paulsen: Probably dozens of times. We don't even know about it. How would we know?
Jacob Paulsen: Meta's the one getting subpoenaed.
Jacob Paulsen: What are these idiots thinking?
Jacob Paulsen: Most of the time it's that they're outright, like their thinking is immoral.
Jacob Paulsen: But sometimes their thinking is just misinformed.
Jacob Paulsen: You're just wrong. That's not actually true. And either could get you in trouble
Jacob Paulsen: in court. Yeah. So be careful.
Riley Bowman: There you go. Words of wisdom for sure. Thank you for being with us for another
Riley Bowman: episode of the Concealed Carry Podcast.
Riley Bowman: Today's episode was sponsored by Guardian Nation, which you can learn more about
Riley Bowman: at guardiannation.com.
Riley Bowman: We hope you'll join us there, be part of the tribe,
Riley Bowman: the family, the nation, and also CCWsafe, ccwsafe.com
Riley Bowman: for the best legal team in the business out there that will help keep you on
Riley Bowman: the straight and narrow path to navigate these tricky waters if you do ever
Riley Bowman: find yourself in some kind of self-defense situation and the legal aftermath that follows.
Riley Bowman: Just make sure you have that membership and that number. I mean,
Riley Bowman: it's a number you can call 24-7, and we've seen it go into action even.
Riley Bowman: We've been at the dinner table with some of that critical response team when
Riley Bowman: they suddenly all got messages, hey, we got an incident, and they're all like,
Riley Bowman: okay, all right, we'll keep monitoring that.
Jacob Paulsen: It's like Jason Bourne style. It's like prep for transport.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, exactly. And that's happened where they get a message and it basically
Riley Bowman: is like, okay, it's go time.
Jacob Paulsen: We might have to leave.
Riley Bowman: We're going to Springfield, Illinois, whatever.
Riley Bowman: I'm just picking a place, random place, because we have a member there that needs us right now.
Riley Bowman: That's the kind of team you have backing you up if you're a member of ccw safe
Riley Bowman: well thanks for uh everybody everything guys uh like share subscribe the podcast
Riley Bowman: if you would please we appreciate it uh hope to to reach more people because
Riley Bowman: they need to hear about the things we were just talking about here today jacob that's.
Jacob Paulsen: It remember to train right train often and train safe
Riley Bowman: So you can fight hard fight fast and fight true take care,
Riley Bowman: A reminder that laws vary from place to place, and we encourage listeners to
Riley Bowman: seek local legal advice to understand applicable laws.
Riley Bowman: Concealed Carry, Inc., its brands and properties, and the Concealed Carry podcast
Riley Bowman: is not a legal service, nor are we attorneys at law.
Riley Bowman: We make our best-fade effort to share Concealed Carry-related insights and information
Riley Bowman: about firearm-related incidents and the laws pertaining, based on our own understanding and experience.
Riley Bowman: But things can be different where you live, or laws may have changed by the
Riley Bowman: time you listen to this. We cannot be held liable for your actions based on
Riley Bowman: the information shared in this podcast.
Riley Bowman: Please exercise care with all things pertaining to firearm use,
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Riley Bowman: More information about safety can be found at concealedcarry.com forward slash safety. Thank you.