The Pro Ears Tac Gold ear muffs – probably the ultimate best hearing protectors money can buy

It should go without saying that you nearly always should use hearing protection whenever you are shooting, because the shooting sounds are sufficiently loud as to otherwise damage your hearing permanently.  The only exception to this would be to once or twice experience what it sounds like to shoot your defensive weapons with no hearing protection, because that is probably what you’ll experience in real life, and you don’t want the sudden extra loudness of a real life shooting unsettle you.

Of course, in a real life defensive shooting, your adrenalin levels will be so high that you’ll have a very distorted hearing experience anyway, but nonetheless, we suggest you have some experience of hearing shooting without hearing protection – both at a moderate distance from yourself so you know what shots sound like in real life (very different to in the movies where the sounds have been artificially enriched and enhanced to sound ‘better’, ‘bigger’, and more ‘powerful’) and when shooting yourself.

We don’t know of any ranges, anywhere, that do not insist on all people present wearing hearing protection.

There are two main types of hearing protection – ear plug type and ear muff type.  Both types can offer similar degrees of hearing protection.

Ear Plug Style Hearing Protection

Ear plugs are small, light, and convenient, and also don’t get in the way if you are shooting a rifle or shotgun.  But many people don’t like the sensation of stuffing things in their ears, and such people prefer ear muffs rather than ear plugs.

Ear plugs can be as simple as two little pieces of high density foam in a cylinder shape.  You roll each piece between your fingers to get it to compress, then stick it in your ear.  After a minute or two the foam expands back to tightly fit in your ear canal, creating a potentially very effective sound block.

Other ear plugs are more ergonomically designed and are more like hearing aids.

A pair of ear plugs are sometimes joined by a cord between them, so they can hang loosely around your neck when you are not using them.

Ear plugs range in price from as low as a dime a pair for two sticks of single use/throwaway foam, up to $50 or more for a pair that you would reuse many times, and even more if they have electronics inside them to control what sounds pass through and which sounds don’t.

Ear Muff Style Hearing Protection

Ear muffs are bigger, bulkier, heavier, and usually more expensive than ear plugs.  Larger sized ones can also be a problem when shooting rifles or shotguns, interfering with your ability to line up your head, shoulder, and rifle/shotgun correctly.

But for people who don’t like sticking things in their ears, they are the only obvious alternative.  And if you’re not planning on doing much rifle/shotgun shooting, there’s not a lot of downside to choosing them.

Passive or Electronic

In addition to the two styles of hearing protection, there are also two different types of hearing protection.

The least expensive and simplest types are standard ‘passive’ devices that simply block/reduce all the sounds that would otherwise reach your ear (although note that it is common for any sort of hearing protection to offer differing levels of noise blocking at different frequencies).

With these types of noise blockers, quiet sounds become too quiet to hear, normal sounds become quiet, and loud/very loud sounds also get reduced in volume down to more acceptable levels.

The other type of hearing protection uses electronic noise control devices.  Think of them as a regular pair of (eg) ear muffs, that now have a microphone on the outside of each ear cup, and a clever amplifier inside, connecting them to a tiny speaker in each cup.  The clever amplifier will amplify very quiet, quiet, and normal sounds, so as to make them about the same sound as you would be hearing if you didn’t have the ear muffs on at all, but when the amplifier detects a loud or very loud sound, it instantly and briefly switches off, so that sound doesn’t pass through at all and the full passive blocking ability of the ear muff then protects you.

This means you can hear your instructor, your friends, and other people around you reasonably normally, but when the shooting starts, those loud noises are automatically filtered out and reduced in volume.

Most of these units have volume controls on them, with the result that it can sometimes be possible to not just hear quiet sounds at the same volume as if you didn’t have ear muffs on at all, but in some cases, you can even hear the quieter sounds magnified and louder than without hearing protection on at all.

Most of the units are stereophonic – ie, each ear cup has its own independent microphone, amplifier and speaker.  This gives you a sense of directionality in your hearing, but the directionality, which working reasonably well in a left/right sense, does not seem to work so well in a front/back sense.  There are complicated reasons why this is so, and rather than explain them, we suggest you simply accept that the headphones will give you good side to side spatial location of sound, but not good front/back location.  This is not a problem on a range, but if you’re

Clearly, these are much more useful and beneficial than hearing protectors that simply reduce all sounds across the board, whether they are originally loud or soft, and whether you want them blocked or not.  It could even be said they are safer, and some training schools are now insisting that all their students use electronic hearing protectors.

On the other hand, they are also very much more expensive than passive hearing protectors (good ones will cost over $100, compared to $25 – $40 for good passive hearing protectors) so not everyone will choose to make such an investment.  If you can afford/justify this type of cost, you should.

Sound Blocking Rating

Any type of hearing protection has a rating in dB that describes how much sound they block.  Unfortunately, there are several different types of rating, and the rating only applies to sounds at certain frequencies, not to sounds at all frequencies, so the rating numbers are more of a guide than an actual exact consistent type of measurement.

There is a standard rating formula defined by the EPA – the ‘Noise Reduction Rating’.  This dB measurement usually understates the potential noise reduction, because it builds in an allowance for incorrect usage on the part of the user.

There are also European measurements – APV (assumed protection value) and SNR (Single number rating).  The APV is one standard deviation lower than the mean attenuation at any given frequency, so it too is a bit of a worst case number.  The SNR is a bit like the NRR, although not calculated exactly the same way.

This all gets very confusing very quickly (and if you’re not confused yet, there are lots of other acronyms to consider such as SPL, A and C weighting factors, and so on.

So, to make it simple, it is safe to say that always, the larger the number, the better if measured on the same scale, but you need to be aware that if you are comparing two makes and models of hearing protection with different measuring scales, there might be effectively the same amount of hearing protection even if one has a rating one or two dB greater than the other.

You should insist on any type of hearing protection being rated at least 20 dB and ideally the very best hearing protection goes over 30 dB.

We have seen ear plugs ranging from as little as 18 dB to as much as 32 dB in noise reduction, and ear muffs ranging up as far as 33 dB.  Probably with a bit of research you can find even ‘better’ sound blocking devices, or alternatively, if you are noise averse, there’s another very easy strategy.

Double Plugging

Some people simply want to give themselves the best noise protection possible.  Other people plain find it uncomfortable to be surrounded by the sounds of gunfire, even with moderate levels of hearing protection.

And some people find they are flinching when they are pulling the trigger, anticipating the loud explosion that will immediately follow.

In any of these cases, or just simply ‘because you want to’, it might make sense to consider what is sometimes termed ‘double plugging’.  This is simply the situation where you have both ear plugs and ear muffs simultaneously.  Doing so can make a huge reduction in noise levels, way below any degree of loudness that would encourage flinching or discomfort.

The only downside to double plugging is that unless they are both electronic type hearing protectors that filter out loud noises while still passing through quieter ones, you’ll be so insulated from the sounds around you that you’ll find it very difficult to hear other people or range instructors and range safety officers.  This can be both inconvenient and also potentially dangerous, and at the very least, it means you’ll probably be taking on and off your ear muff layer on a regular basis – again, an inconvenience.

We often recommend that first time shooters should experience their first few rounds of shooting while double plugged, so as to have the most mild and positive introductory experience possible.  Once you’ve built up some confidence, then you can ‘progress’ to a single layer of hearing protection.

Indoor Ranges are Noisier than Outdoor Ranges

Indoor ranges are generally much noisier than outdoor ranges.  This is because they are enclosed spaces, trapping the sound and directing it back to you, rather than the open outdoors where most of the sound can travel away from you and not be reflected back.  This effect is aggravated further because they usually have hard surfaces that reflect rather than absorb the sound, whereas outdoors, any surfaces tend to be soft and diffuse or absorb the sound rather than send it back to you.

So good hearing protection is even more important on an indoor range than an outdoor range.  You’ll want to choose hearing protection with higher noise blocking ratings for an indoor range to get the same effect as you would with less efficient noise blocking outdoors.

Carefully Choose Your Neighbors on the Range

Here’s a handy tip.  When you’re visiting a range, sometimes you’ll be assigned a lane number by the range staff, and sometimes you can pick and choose any empty lane.

In either case, try to avoid being next to a shooter with a high-powered gun, so as to avoid the unpleasant side effects of his muzzle blast and shooting sounds.  If the range staff assign you a lane, ask for a lane next to a low/medium powered shooter if possible, and/or for a lane at one end or the other, so you only have fellow shooters on one side rather than on both sides.

If you’re free to choose a lane yourself, look for someone who doesn’t have an obviously large-caliber gun.  Also look for shooters with guns that have longer barrels – typically there is less muzzle blast and sound from longer barreled guns than from shorter barreled ones.

Oh – what goes around, comes around.  If you have a hand cannon yourself, you should be considerate and go next to an apparently experienced shooter with a full caliber pistol, rather than next to a mother and daughter struggling to come to terms with a .22 LR target pistol!

Resources

Ear Plugs

Hearos Ear Plugs – A reasonably priced and very effective ear plug product

Etymotic ER20 Etyplug Ear Plugs – Expensive ear plugs and they stick out a bit, and they provide insufficient noise blocking by themselves, but if you can fit them inside ear muffs, they would be well suited for ‘double plugging’ because they evenly attenuate noise across the entire spectrum.  They come in both large and standard sizes.

Peltor 97079 Combat Arms Earplugs –  These too would work well for double-plugging because they have a non-electronic type of selective sound blocking.  Probably a better choice than the Etymotic earplugs.

Ear Muffs

Peltor 97010 Ultimate-10 Hearing Protector – With an excellent  30 dB NRR, and a price of about $20, these are excellent performers at a great price, albeit with passive only sound blocking.

Howard Leight R-01526 Impact Sport Electronic Earmuff –  A good midrange set of electronic ear muffs

Peltor MT15H7F SV Tactical Pro Hearing Protector – An excellent set of electronic ear muffs

Pro Ears Pro Mag Gold Electronic Hearing Protection & Amplification Ear Muffs – Truly the ‘gold standard’ – the ultimate in hearing protection, albeit at a very high price.  Note they include an ‘on light’ which makes them dangerous if you are sneaking around your house in the dark trying to avoid an intruder.  Highly recommended.

Practice on a traditional range is good and helpful, but fails to fully prepare you for the probable reality of a subsequent encounter

So you own a handgun, and have it in a typical ‘by the bedside’ sort of location, reasonably available for defensive purposes in extreme situations.

Let’s also say that you went along to a half day introductory type class at a local gun range that gave you a quick introduction to weapons safety, some principles of marksmanship, and an understanding of how your pistol operates and what to do if it malfunctions, along with a quick discussion on your legal rights and obligations associated with the use of deadly force.

Is that enough?  Are there other skills you need to develop, too?  Do you ever need any sort of refresher course?

Well, these are good questions (of course!), and you could write medium-sized books to answer them reasonably completely.  Today, we’re simply going to write a single short article.

The shortest answer is that your first pistol course is not nearly enough, there are many other skills you need to develop (all of which takes a lot more than a single four-hour course), and you need to regularly refresh your training to keep your skills at a reasonable level.

What Skills Should You Train to Develop

Here’s an interesting article that refers to recommended levels of training for police officers, in particular (the emphasis is ours) :

… He also outlined court decisions alleging municipal liability for training for lethal and nonlethal force.

Williamson said the DNR range basically allows for officers to stand still and fire at paper targets.  In the report, Marshall and Williamson said courts have held that officers must be trained in shooting under stress, decision-making, attitude, knowledge, skill, shoot/don’t shoot scenarios, moving targets, firing while in motion, low-light or adverse light shooting, and firing shotguns.  He said officers also need to be training in night shooting, use of tasers and in self-defense.

He called that “the environment in which they work.”

“We need to have scenarios in which we not only teach them when to shoot, but when not to shoot,”  Williamson said. …

Marshall said the cost of bullets for training might seem high, but it does not compare to the liability from a shooting lawsuit.

Williamson said the International Association of Chiefs of Police calls for firearms training three times a year.

Okay, so you’re not a police officer, and you’re not anticipating needing to use your gun on a regular basis.  But perhaps that is all the more reason to train at least as often as they do, because, unlike a policeman, your gun skills aren’t a central part of your consciousness, all day of every day you’re at work.

Let’s think about the circumstances in which you are most likely to need to use your gun for self-defense.  First, it is most likely going to be at night.  Second, it will probably not be at a time and situation of your choosing – it will be in a developing situation which you did not plan for and may not be controlling.  Third, there is likely to be more than one bad guy you will need to defend yourself against.

If you carry a concealed handgun with you for defense outside the home, there are going to be even more challenges and variables, making the experience you encounter even more different to standing in a lane at a range and leisurely firing at static targets.

Now, some of the training this article refers to – in particular, shoot/don’t shoot scenarios, stress, movement and night/low light conditions – are hard to duplicate on a regular static range.  But that is not to say that regular static range training isn’t valuable, and time pressures can help add to the stresses on you there.

Any and all competence is better than none, and the better you are at the basics such as you’d learn on a static ‘square’ range, the less challenging the extra stuff overlaid on top of it becomes.

So all range training is good, and anything you can do to add time pressures and other stress to your basic range training is a plus.

But your training should not only be limited to range work.  You also need to be able to instinctively recognize and respond to the main types of semi-auto pistol malfunction, so if your gun develops a problem, you can quickly resolve the problem and get back in the fight.

You also need to understand the color code of mental awareness, how to anticipate problems and solve them before they escalate to the level of needing lethal force, and having plans in place to quite literally ‘run away’ from problems and threats if at all possible.  If you are only risking the loss of your property, rather than the safety of loved ones or yourself, it is much better to be a live (and prudent!) ‘coward’ than it is to be a dead (or imprisoned!) ‘hero’.

How Much Initial Training is Needed

Of course you know that if you are shown a somewhat complicated multiple step procedure once, you will probably not be able to perfectly duplicate it the first time you try it.

That is only to be expected.  You’ll need to practice and get the skills needed to become quick and competent at any process.

Shooting skills require an additional level of training beyond that normally required for most tasks.  This is because when you find yourself in what is truly the ultimately most stressful of all situations, your brain changes mode from normal reasoning mode to a more instinctive mode.  You need to cement the skills and actions needed in weapons handling into the ‘muscle memory’ part of your brain so that in a high stress environment, you can go through the routines instinctively.

To fix these skills at this type of level, you need somewhere between many hundreds and many thousands of repetitions.  Which leads to the next point…

How Often to Train – And an Easy Training Solution

Next, how often should you train?  The more the merrier; it is impossible to ‘over-train’ when seeking to develop and maintain skill at arms, just the same as it is impossible to over-train if you are a professional athlete or musician.  There is no magic level of training, below which you’ll be the looser in any confrontation, and above which you’re guaranteed to be the winner.  More skill improves the odds in your favor, but random chance and unexpected occurrences can and do lead to unexpected outcomes – sometimes better than you hope, and sometimes worse than you hope, no matter how trained you are.

Ideally, you’d spend time at the range every month. maybe shooting off a box of rounds per visit.  More realistically, you should try to go at least twice a year.  Maybe add it to the list of things you do each time daylight saving changes, or perhaps make it something you do close to your birthday and some other anniversary date more or less six months removed from your birthday.

Now for the easy training solution.  Dry firing at home.  Attend a training course that teaches you how to train at home using dry firing techniques, and which also stresses the essential (and not always obvious) safety precautions you must take to ensure there is no possibility of your dry fire accidentally extending to live fire.

You’ll learn how dry firing can help you become a better shooter than live firing, and the convenience of being able to practice at home will make it much easier for you to include regular dry fire practice sessions.

Dry firing at home will also allow you to practice ‘real’ scenarios in your own home – the environment in which you’re most likely to encounter a deadly threat, and to introduce low light, stress, movement, and any/every other factor you might wish.

Summary

Few of us train sufficiently to ensure we can perform adequately in a ‘nightmare’ worst-case self-defense situation, and much traditional type training is inadequate to prepare us for what might occur in a lethal confrontation with an attacker.

Realistically, few of us are motivated enough to invest the time (and money) needed to build and maintain a full set of skills at a high level of competency.

Training therefore necessarily embodies compromises, and we each have to decide where the point is that we’re happiest compromising on.  As professional trainers, we of course urge you to train as much as possible, as realists, we urge you to be wise in your choices for what/how you train.

At home dry-firing practice is an invaluable supplement to traditional live fire training exercises.  And ‘thought’ exercises on what you’d do in various scenarios are also essential, as is a constant level of awareness and alertness, such that hopefully you can resolve situations before they become impossible to solve short of employing deadly force.

Impressive shooting with a stock standard CZ75

In stores, less often at ranges (but never in training classes), we regularly encounter a type of gun owner/buyer who is seeking a magical gun that will instantly transform him from an ordinary person into a gold medal world-class shooter.

He is looking for the gun that will do this, rather than seeking the training to do it himself.

We sometimes encounter gun owners who have progressed one step beyond the first type of gun owner.  After having spent possibly tens of thousands of dollars on buying a huge assortment of different guns, they have slowly come to realize that there is no such thing as a magic gun.  But – oooops.  Instead they now hope there may be an accessory which, if added to a gun, will transform it into the magical gun that shoots straight, every time, all by itself.

They are still looking for some external factor that will instantly transform them into the deadliest of marksmen.

And then we also find people agonizing over bullet choices.  ‘Which is better’, they will ask, ‘The Brand X or the Brand Y bullets?’  These people are seeking the ‘single shot stop’ capable bullets.  They want a bullet that is guaranteed to stop an assailant in his tracks, no matter what the circumstance, or where the shot hits the bad guy.

These types of people are not necessarily ignorant.  Indeed, some of them have read more gun magazines and articles than we have, and know more about the ballistics of different bullets, and the features/capabilities of different guns than we would ever wish to know.

But even the most expert of these people are sadly deluded and mistaken.  They are aided and abetted in their delusion by overly hyped magazine articles – how many times have you seen articles referring to ‘the new super gun’ or ‘the new super bullet’?  How many times have you read ‘reviews’ (they are termed reviews but they are more like recycled press releases than hard-hitting down to earth realistic reviews) that talk about how amazingly good a gun is, or how helpful and transformational an accessory is, or how accurate and deadly a particular cartridge may be?

Now for sure we’d all love to have a gun that is guaranteed to shoot straight, no matter who the shooter may be.  And even if we accept that such guns don’t exist, we’re keen to get a gun that will help us to shoot as well as we can.  The same with accessories.  There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as we understand the relative contributions to shooting well that come from the gun and from the person shooting it.

In reality, neither the fanciest of trigger jobs nor the ultimate in sights will guarantee our shots for us.  They might help us improve our scoring, but they’ll only help, they won’t and can’t do it all for us.

And the bullets we put in our gun?  Particularly if we’re talking pistol calibers, all cartridge variations are inadequate and insufficient to guarantee instant one shot stops.  Does it really matter if a hollow point bullet opens up or not?  The difference in wound cavity between a half-inch and a one inch wound cavity isn’t something that guarantees you a one stop shot when you’re firing into a target’s center of mass that measures maybe 150 square inches in size, of which only a very few square inches comprise ‘hot zones’ where a hit will give you a guaranteed one shot stop.  Does it matter if your bullet’s velocity is 900 fps or 1100 fps?  And so on.

The Most Important Part of Shooting Well

Here’s the key issue – the most important part of the overall gun/accessory/bullet combination is the person doing the shooting.  Before you start spending a huge amount of money on some super-shooting gun and exotic accessories and bullets, you first need to spend some time, effort, energy and money on yourself.

A skilled shooter will always get better results, even when shooting with a bad gun, than will an unskilled shooter with state-of-the-art ultimate equipment.  That is the most important ingredient towards ensuring your success in any encounter you end up finding yourself in.  Your own skill, not your gun’s magical powers.

Lessons From the Real World

Look at the gun a policeman or soldier carries.  Something like half the police forces in the US use Glocks – typically in 9mm or .40 caliber, and typically full size or mid size pistols.  They have no accessories or custom gunsmithing done to their service weapons – they shoot them as they come, pretty much straight from the box.  All other police departments also use standard pistols such as you can buy in your local gun store, too.

US soldiers for the longest time happily carried the M1911A1 semi-auto pistol, these days they usually carry the M9 (in other words, a Beretta 92FS).  Both are standard pistols that you can buy from any gun shop, too.

Police departments tend to issue some type of hollow point ammunition, which admittedly is ‘better’ than standard ball ammo, whereas due to military treaties, the armed forces tend to use less effective ball ammo.

So neither the police nor military use any type of tricked out super-weapons, and neither do they use any sort of unusual ammunition.  But they do spend lots of time and money on training their people in the use of their standard weapons.

Let’s look a bit further, at military sniper units.  Since 1966, the legendary US Marine Corps snipers – perhaps the deadliest of snipers in the world – have used a close to standard regular Remington 700 bolt-action rifle.  Hardly a high-tech exotic piece of equipment at all.

Three Real World Truths

For the person seeking the perfect gun :  In truth, even the worst pistol offers better performance/accuracy that most shooters are capable of.  There’s no need to get a better gun until you’re a good enough a shooter to be able to benefit from its slightly better performance than the gun you already have.

For the person seeking the ideal accessory :  Every accessory you add to your gun also adds to its complexity, and increases the chance of, in an extreme situation, something failing.  Additionally, all those fancy accessories make you look like a ‘gun nut’ and increase your vulnerability to civil and/or criminal prosecutions if you end up needing to use your gun.  A stock standard gun, unaltered, and with ordinary fixed iron sights is all you need for most situations.

For the person seeking the best bullet :  Two rounds of ordinary simple generic ball ammunition, accurately placed on target, will always have more effect on an attacker than one (or two or even three) rounds of super ammo, but poorly placed on target (maybe even missing altogether) and not striking vital organs.  Learn where to place your shots, rather than hope your ammunition will compensate for inaccurate shooting, because it won’t.

The Best Way to Shoot Well

By all means get a good gun, and by all means choose good reliable ammunition to go with it.  Maybe even consider adding an accessory or two. There’s no purpose to handicapping yourself any which way.  This article is not intended to discourage you from getting the finest gun(s), accessories and ammo you can afford.

But, once you’ve got a reasonably decent gun and some ammo to go with it, your mission is only beginning.  You now must switch your focus from your tools to your training.

There is no way of avoiding the need to train.  Sure, there are better/smarter ways to train, and there are inferior/harder ways to train, but in some form or another, you need to train, train, train.  Shooting accurately, particularly in a high stress situation, is not an instinctive skill.  It is something you need to train repeatedly at.

It is also a perishable skill.  It isn’t like riding a bike.  It is something that your skill erodes at if you don’t continue to train.  Once you’ve developed your proficiency, you don’t need to train as often or as much, but you do need to train steadily to build up a base of skills.

So – if you really want magical powers, you’ll need to devote yourself to sufficient and appropriate training.  This may indeed give you close to what seem like magical powers, such as no equipment will ever provide.

Beware of both civil and criminal liability after using deadly force in self-defense

One of the issues we must consider when choosing whether or not it is necessary and appropriate to use deadly force is the possibility not just of a criminal charge being filed against us, but also the possibility of a civil suit being brought by the person we shot (or their estate if we ended up killing them).

Both issues have plenty of downside associated with them.

Criminal Liability

An unlawful killing charge could see us spending years or even decades in prison.

On the other hand, generally a prosecutor has to persuade a jury beyond a reasonable shade of a doubt that the killing was unlawful, and depending on the social and moral values in your part of the country, that may prove to be a tough hurdle for the prosecution to surmount.  If the situation is unclear or ambiguous to start with, it is even possible that the prosecutor may decide not to waste time and money and resource on a case that he might end up losing rather than winning, especially in more socially conservative areas that take a harsher view of crime and have less appreciation of ‘criminals’ rights’.

Here in Washington state’s King County, it seems the county prosecutor’s office has a good reputation for not unfairly bringing prosecutions in cases of prima facie justifiable self-defense shootings, but that’s no promise that your situation, whatever it is and wherever you are, will also be greeted with fair understanding.

Civil Liability

Things are very different with civil suits.  In a civil suit, the requirement for the other side to prove their case to a 99% or greater certainty (in a criminal prosecution) shifts down to a 51% probability as part of a civil suit.  The good news is that if you lose a civil suit, you’re not risking incarceration.  Instead, you’ll ‘only’ be facing a monetary award of damages.

This lower standard of proof is magnified by different considerations that a jury must ponder.  In a criminal trial, the jury is basically being asked the question ‘Is what the defendant did so bad that he should go to prison for a dozen years?’ and if the jury reasonably feels that you acted perhaps not 100% perfectly, but not maliciously and certainly not in a way that makes you deserving of a lengthy period of imprisonment, they’ll probably give you some benefit of the doubt.

But that same fair-mindedness which might help you in a criminal trial may harm you in a civil trial.  Now the question before the jury is one of either ‘Okay, so the plaintiff (the guy you shot) shouldn’t have done what he did, but is it fair that he now be doomed to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, and who will pay his ongoing medical costs of care?’, or possibly ‘Is it fair that the dead assailant’s family should now suffer a life of poverty and sadness and misfortune, while the defendant (ie you) gets off scott free with no cost nor consequence?’.

Can you see how a kindhearted well-meaning jury might decide to ‘compromise’ on these sorts of questions and end up agreeing that you should bear some sort of responsibility for the magnified misfortune that is a consequence of you shooting and injuring or killing an assailant?  Especially when the other side only needs to prove their case to a 51% degree of probability rather than a 99% probability as in a criminal case?

That’s not your only worry.  There’s more to a civil suit than just the 51% burden of proof and monetary award.  Two other issues apply as well.  The first is that whereas – hopefully – a criminal prosecutor will make a reasonably fair and even-handed decision about whether to bring a prosecution or not, in a civil case, you have a (possibly even understandably) vengeful process motivating the other side – indeed, it is a terrible combination of seeking vengeance and greed – hoping to get a big cash payoff.

Which brings us to the second point.  This greed factor applies not only to the person you shot and/or his estate.  It may also apply to their attorney, who will probably have agreed to take the case on the basis of getting a share of the ‘winnings’ if their side triumphs.  So whereas you can justifiably hope for a fair decision to prosecute or not by the county prosecutor, you’re less likely to have such a fair-minded decision on the part of a civil suit and the people bringing it.

The Cost of Defending a Case

Let’s talk for a minute at what it might cost to defend yourself in either a criminal or civil action.  The short answer is that it will cost you almost certainly a six figure sum.  You’ll be paying some hundreds of dollars an hour for your attorney’s time, plus you’ll be paying thousands of dollars more for various expert witnesses, some of whom will research issues and hopefully uncover weaknesses in the other side’s case, and others who will testify on your behalf about the appropriateness of your actions.

You might also feel the need to bring in jury consultants to help your attorney’s decide how best to present your case in a manner that will be best understood and best accepted by the jury.

It is very easy for a case to consume 100 or 200 hours of an attorney’s time prior to going to trial, and then a three or four day trial will be another 30 – 40 hours.  Say 250 hours in total of attorney’s time, and when you add on other costs for expert witnesses, jury consultants, and who knows what else; you’ve ended up spending $100,000 very quickly.

Furthermore, there’s a very good chance (or should we say, a very bad chance) that your homeowner’s policy will not cover your costs.  Many insurance companies take the view that they will defend you against accidents and even against your negligence, but they will not join your defense as a result of a deliberate but wrong action you took of your own volition.

So even if your homeowner’s policy might protect you, your friends, and even uninvited assailants against accidental harm while on your property, it probably won’t protect them or you against ‘intentional harm’ you inflict upon them – even if such intentional harm is shown to be lawful and essential.

There’s a good side and bad side to this lack of insurance protection.  The bad side is that you could be bankrupted by the costs of defending yourself, whether you win or lose the case.

The good side is that the lack of insurance cover is something that attorneys know.  So if you don’t have a substantial net worth (which will be one of the first things the attorney will research), an attorney will be less likely to launch a civil suit against you, because if you don’t have enough money to pay for both your attorney’s costs and then more for an award of damages, the opposing attorney understands that even if he ‘wins’ a big settlement, if you’ve no money to pay it, he’ll end up with no cash and no compensation.

Conclusion

Using deadly force is absolutely the ultimate ‘last resort’ that you should only ever consider if you truly have exhausted every other possible way of resolving the problem confronting you, and if you absolutely are in grave fear of your life or that of your loved ones.

Even if your state has ‘stand your ground’ and ‘castle’ laws that give you some immunity from criminal prosecution, you must anticipate a possible additional consequence of a civil action for damages against you, where the more ‘black and white’ criminal liability issues transform into ugly amorphous greys, and where you might find, to your great cost, that an action which was deemed acceptable in terms of not incurring criminal liability might be deemed unacceptable by the different standards of civil liability.

Lastly, the thing that has caused more civil suits to succeed than anything else?  The inappropriate statements of the person who defended themselves.  Here’s a classic case in point – read both this article and the one preceding it.  The people in this case were outstandingly fortunate to avoid criminal prosecution, but by virtue of their own words, both before and after the shooting, they were understandably found guilty in a civil case.