American self-defense law is generally quite sensible, and in fact coheres remarkably well with Catholic teaching on self-defense. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, wrote:
Wherefore if a man, in self-defense, uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repel force with moderation his defense will be lawful, because according to the jurists, ‘it is lawful to repel force by force, provided one does not exceed the limits of a blameless defense.’ (Summa Theologiae, II-II, 64, 7)
In other words, you can use force to protect yourself, if you really have to, and only to the extent that you really have to. St. Thomas, not known as a self-defense expert, doesn’t go into further detail about how to really apply his notion of ‘necessary violence.’ The Catechism, quoting from this same passage by St. Thomas, also says:
The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. “The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not.” Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow… (par 2263-64)
But these principles must be applied to real world situations in a fine-grained way. Thankfully, as I just suggested, American law does a pretty fine job of that.
It’s especially important that we have good self-defense law here in the United States, since a lot of people carry concealed handguns. Last year’s Bruen decision—irrespective of New York’s scofflaw response—removed the last barriers to “shall issue” permitting, and Florida’s concealed carry law is set to change on July 1st, making it the 26th state to allow permitless carry. More than 30 years into the concealed carry revolution, we can see that “the streets will run with blood” objection to widespread legal carriage of handguns are simply false.
And, yet, gun rights enthusiasts like myself can’t ignore that easy access to guns can lead to negative outcomes.
Claude Werner identifies three failures that get gun owners into trouble: they don’t understand the situation, they have inadequate skills, and they don’t know the rules. State-mandated concealed carry training classes might, to some limited extent, help students avoid these failures. But many states have minimal training requirements, again, more than half of the states have no mandated training, because they have no permitting process whatever.
Since a responsible gun owner will want to avoid negative outcomes, it will be obvious that he needs to educate himself on the law. Massad Ayoob’s Deadly Force is an outstanding way for him to start to do so. Ayoob makes no attempt to connect his thought to that of St. Thomas Aquinas or other great thinkers from the past—he is focused solely on the current realities of the American criminal justice system. But since, as noted, American self-defense law coheres well with Catholic teaching, this is actually a fine book to read as a primer on use of lethal force by Christians.
The first thing to take into account is that the righteous defender must “maintain the mantle of innocence.” If you provoke a fight—if you’re the instigator, or if we’re dealing with an instance of mutual combat, such as a bar fight between two guys who won’t get out of each other’s way—then you are not innocent and your use of force is not necessary. If you started the fight, then even if everything else you do falls within the law, you could still be found guilty of manslaughter.
The focus in this review is deadly force. You will not be justified in using deadly force unless you are fending off deadly force from an attacker. But deadly force might not mean what you think it means. As Ayoob puts it, “Lethal force (or deadly force; the terms are interchangeable) is that degree of force that a reasonable and prudent person would consider capable of causing death or great bodily harm.” To my knowledge, there is no clear and universally applicable definition of great bodily harm, but if you reasonably believe that the imminent attack is likely to lead to rape or crippling injury, it surely meets the standard.
How do you know an attack is imminent? The “AOJ Triad” is the heart of Ayoob’s answer to this question. This triad applies to your attacker. It comprises Ability, Opportunity, and Jeopardy. So if the attacker has the Ability to cause your death (or great bodily harm), the Opportunity to do so, and appears to be putting you in Jeopardy of putting that ability and opportunity to use, then you are probably legally justified in using deadly force in defense of yourself.
Ability “means your assailant possesses the power to kill or to inflict crippling injury.” An opponent armed with a gun or a knife fits the bill. So does someone who is obviously aiming his car at you as you walk down the sidewalk, someone armed with a bludgeon, or someone straddling you and pounding your head into the pavement. In general, if a healthy middle-aged man is punched by a healthy middle-aged man, the victim would not be justified in using deadly force. But a frail, elderly person attacked by a healthy middle-aged man is in a different situation entirely, and deadly force may possibly be justified. Generally speaking, women would receive considerably more leeway on this matter than men.
Opportunity “means that the opponent can carry out that ability in the immediate here and now.” Silly example (not Ayoob’s): a person who you know cannot swim, and who you know to be armed with a knife stands across a raging river from you, uttering terrifying threats against you. This situation meets the Ability condition (and, as we’ll see in a moment, also meets the Jeopardy condition), but clearly does not meet the Opportunity condition. If you shoot him across that river, you have committed a grave crime (and a grave sin). Now, if he had a gun, that would alter the scene entirely, for the missile weapon could cross the river for him. The details of what would constitute Opportunity vary greatly depending on circumstances.
The last condition is Jeopardy, which “comes into play when your assailant utters words or performs actions that a reasonable and prudent person would construe as demonstrating an intent to kill or cripple.” This might involve verbal cues as in the above example, but it could also include nonverbal signs—someone apparently reaching for a gun on his waistband, for example, in the midst of an escalating altercation, is “saying” that he means to use it.
You will need to read Ayoob’s more detailed version if you hope to understand these matters well; his analyses of these conditions are detailed and clear. He has been teaching this material for decades, and knows how to make his point. He also has a wealth of examples to illustrate the ideas. In fact, there are studies of some famous shootings, which are helpful in giving life to the abstract notions. Ayoob writes at length about the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, for example, in an analysis of the trial where Zimmerman was (quite properly) found not guilty of a crime. This discussion is useful both because it brings to light a good many facts that were suppressed in many media accounts, and because of the way in which Ayoob shows how AOJ applied in Zimmerman’s case. There is also a detailed study of a shooting involving Larry Hickey (actually written by guest author Gila Hayes), and briefer discussions of the more recent Rittenhouse and Arbery shootings. These discussions are well-informed, careful, and enlightening.
There is a solid chapter on “Stand Your Ground” laws and Castle Doctrine, as well as discussions of selecting an attorney, selecting gear for concealed carry, dealing with mob violence, and dealing with the psychological aftermath of a shooting (provided by guest author Anthony Semone). Last, there’s an important chapter on myths about armed defense. Unfortunately, if you hang around gun shops or online gun discussion fora, you are likely to hear some really bad ideas from “experienced” gun owners. Some of these ideas should be rejected by Catholics without any additional prompting from Ayoob: the “make sure your opponent is dead” myth (in other words, make sure if you shoot someone that you finish the job). This myth shouldn’t draw decent people in. But other myths are less obviously pernicious: for example, you might be led to think that it’s a good idea in some cases to fire warning shots. Ayoob explains in detail why this is—almost—always an extremely bad idea.
This book is excellent, and if you have guns in your house, you should have studied this book carefully, more than once. Even if you have taken a relatively solid concealed carry training class that went over the legalities of self-defense, you will benefit tremendously from seeing the material again, in detail. The reality is that a solid concealed carry class is likely to, at best, offer watered down versions of Ayoob’s material.
Two additional, final thoughts here. First, as good as Ayoob’s material is, some of it is too compressed. His discussions of reasonability and innocence are quite quick. For this reason, I would urge the gun owner to supplement Deadly Force with Andrew Branca’s The Law of Self-Defense. Branca breaks self-defense law down into five elements, and covers them well. The elements are Reasonability, Innocence, Imminence, Proportionality, and Avoidance. Due to Stand Your Ground laws, Avoidance is increasingly left out of self-defense laws, as Branca explains. I find Branca’s approach useful, and his book covers issues like the defense of others, defense of property (don’t do it) and how to think about the legal system. If you want to avoid negative outcomes based on not understanding the law—and you do—then you should be intimately familiar with these two books.
Second, if you already have a copy of the first edition of Deadly Force, I do not see an urgent need for you to buy the second edition. It’s true that the new version is nearly 100 pages longer, and the additions are useful. (They include, for example, the material on mob violence and attorney selection.) But the real core of Ayoob’s contribution in this book is found in the largely unaltered material about AOJ, self-defense myths, SYG, and so on.
I don’t agree with everything Ayoob writes. For example, I’m at least a little less keen on Stand Your Ground laws than he is. But this is a fine work that I can strongly recommend.
Deadly Force: Understanding Your Right to Self-Defense, 2nd edition
By Massad Ayoob
Gun Digest Media, 2022
Paperback, 416 pages
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