I am putting together a digital training notebook on the advice of Marty Hayes at the Firearms Academy and Armed Citizen Legal Defense Network. I’ve had paper records scattered around for years. It is the 21st sentry, time to go digital. I’m using Evernote because I already use it for everything.
Why am I making a Training Notebook? And why should you? I have two great reasons for putting it all together. The first, it gives me a chance to review it all. I need to review all this stuff, at this point I can’t even remember all the classes I’ve taken. It’s nice to be able to look through things from time to time and to search them digitally.
The second reason is to help against prosecution and liability after you have to defend yourself. The standard is suppose to be what you knew at the time of the incident and what an average person would do with that knowledge. If you have a training log you can prove you knew you where in danger because of your training.
For example, I took a class a couple years ago that talked about an unusual method of robbery in Florida. In a crowded area, during the day, the male robber would find another male that was bigger then him (a problem for me since I’m 6’1”) and start running into the victim while yelling, “Stop pushing me!” The victim would be confused and try reasoning with the robber. When the robber was sure everyone was looking, he would yell, “don’t hit me!” and then punch the victim repeatedly until he fell down. Once the victim was on the ground the robber would fall on them and start telling that the victim let him go. The robber would steal his wallet and run off. When the police arrived there would be a bunch of people telling them that the victim was the attacker. The robber would get away and the police couldn’t do anything.
Now that I know that, there are two ways I would handle that. As soon as the robber bumped into me once and he started yelling, I would start yelling for help and asking people to call police. If the robber didn’t stop, I’d attack him first. If I had to defend myself in court do to a stupid prosecutor or later a civil case, I can enter the information into the record that I knew the person was going to attack and rob me. I tried to stop it without violence, but the robber persisted.
In self defense there are two different parts, the actual attack, and then the legal system after. You need to learn how to deal with both.
Stay Safe,
Ben