Look how well this works.
It looks like they are about to try again. They even had a brief talk about how to yank open that second door when she opens the inner door.
Don’t open the door. There are no exigent circumstances, they can’t legally enter your home without a warrant. Tell them through the doorbell cam to fuck off and come back with a warrant.
Honestly, there is a certain point when you are willing to find out if the local police have level IV plates.
First, a bit of background:
Police have two ways they can talk to someone in the public: consensual or seizure. A police consensual encounter is a voluntary, non-detention interaction where an officer approaches a person to ask questions or for identification. The person is free to leave, refuse to answer questions, or decline requests at any time- to include refusal to provide ID. It does not involve commands, force, or blocked movement.
A seizure is where a person isn’t free to leave. Police can use force to keep you there, they can search you, demand your ID. Noncompliance with this is considered obstruction or resisting and is illegal. The person being questioned still has the ability to refuse to answer questions, or refuse to answer them without a lawyer present. This is why asking police if you are free to leave is so important. This tells you if you are in a consensual encounter or have been seized.
If the police want to talk to you, they can ask or they can seize. In order to seize, they have to have probable cause that you are or have committed a crime, or they have to have a warrant. If you are in your home, a warrant is generally required, if they don’t have exigent circumstances. Those include the belief you are destroying evidence (e.g., flushing drugs down the toilet), or there is something going on that is an emergency (say you are murdering someone in the home). Police cannot make a warrantless, non-consensual seizure inside someone’s home just because they have probable cause. They generally need an arrest warrant (unless exigent circumstances apply). This is important.
Two years ago, three men were involved in a fight in a bar in Saint Cloud, Florida. One of the men was reportedly armed with a handgun and had left the scene. The other two individuals who were in the fight contacted police: one of them refused to give a statement, and the other (visibly intoxicated) man did give a written statement claiming the third man displayed a handgun. Both of the men who spoke to the police at the bar were rather vague on details about the fight or what started it.
The next step you would expect an investigator to do would be to, well…investigate. You would think that the cops would contact the man, ask him to come in and answer a few questions, or perhaps even send a cop or two over there to ask. After all, he isn’t under arrest, they don’t have a warrant, and the contact at this point is consensual. Or supposed to be.
The cops immediately assembled a tactical team and had a meeting where they discussed the methods and tactics they would use to take him into custody. They surrounded the house by posting two cops at the rear of the home to prevent his escape, the cops out front had a K9, bullet shields, and NFA long guns with suppressors. They called him on the phone and asked him to step outside to answer some questions.
What happened next was captured on body camera video, you can see the video below. They held him at gunpoint and ordered him to the ground. Even though his hands were raised, they kicked him to the ground, used the K9 to bite him because he wasn’t going down fast enough, and used quite a bit of force for a consensual encounter.
Any reasonable person would agree that they are not free to leave at this point. This is a seizure. They avoided the requirement for a warrant by luring him outside using a friendly tone and a request to just “Answer a couple of questions.” Since police tricked him to come outside specifically to avoid the warrant requirement, courts tend to scrutinize that. This trick is called constructive entry. This was never intended to be a consensual encounter, as evidenced by their own meeting and plans to take him into custody.
There was no reason to rush over there and arrest him. The incident was over, and there was plenty of time to secure a warrant. There were no exigent circumstances, and therefore no exception to the requirement to get a warrant. This doesn’t look like a casual “knock-and-talk” but more like a planned arrest operation without a warrant, which courts scrutinize closely. Payton v. New York ruled that police cannot do indirectly what they’re forbidden to do directly—i.e., they can’t avoid the warrant requirement by tricking or forcing someone out of their home.
In my mind, there is little doubt that this man’s constitutional rights were violated, both in the arrest without warrant, and in the manner the arrest was carried out. There was no reason to use force on a man who had come out voluntarily and was offering no resistance. Not one of those cops mentioned “hey, maybe there is a better, more constitutional way to do this.” This, in my opinion, destroys the “few bad apples” trope.
To make it even worse, it turned out that this man was the victim and the two intoxicated men had attacked him. The prosecutor in the case dismissed all charges, saying that the case was “unsuitable for prosecution.” He has since filed a lawsuit against the city and its police department for violating his civil rights. The cops will almost certainly hide behind qualified immunity claims.
There is a lesson to be learned here.
I’ve said this before- don’t talk to the police. Ever. There is no such thing as a friendly chat with cop. I will refer you to an old post of mine on the subject that contains a video titled “Don’t talk to the police.” Don’t talk to the cops, no matter what. They aren’t your friends. They aren’t there to help you. They are there to make a case to arrest someone, and they will get the arrest that requires them to do the least amount of work they can. At best, they are there to find reasons to take you to jail, at worst they are there to use their cool toys on you- whether that be a machine gun, a K9, or just a good old fashioned beating.
Most cops are pussies and cowards. We see that time and again- they will use overwhelming force on those who pose no threat, even going so far as to toss grenades into a baby crib, but will cower outside with their machine guns and body armor while children are being killed by an armed murderer.
A cop calls you on the phone and wants you to come out and answer questions, ask them if they have a warrant. If the answer is no, you tell them you don’t want to answer any questions or speak with them until you have an attorney. Offer to come down to the station with your attorney to answer questions, and tell them your attorney will schedule the meeting. Whatever you do, don’t open the door. You have a doorbell camera for a reason.
Open that door, and this just might happen to you. Ever since my incident in Orange County, Florida in 2001 where a Deputy Sergeant threatened to kill me when I presented him with my concealed weapons permit during a traffic stop, I don’t inform cops of shit.
The cops may not have enough to arrest someone, but you talking will give them what they need. If they DO have enough to arrest you, there is nothing you can say that will talk them out of it. Refuse to talk to them, don’t open the door, and go about the rest of your life.
We carry a pistol just in case we find ourselves in a gun fight. If we know we will be in a gunfight, the best option is to not be there. Failing that, we should bring the most gun we can, along with a lot of friends who also bring the most gun they can. Still, that’s inconvenient to do 24/7. My friends and I can’t live our lives as if we were a Marine platoon about to be ambushed.
So we carry a pistol. Most people spend a lot of time trying to find the one perfect carry pistol.
Experienced shooters eventually realize something different:
There is no perfect gun—only the best gun for today’s constraints.
What I’ve built is a four-tier carry system that scales with clothing, concealment, and performance needs. It’s not just practical—it’s exactly how I maximize capability without sacrificing consistency.
This is the “always gun.” It has some advantages:
Extremely light (~18 oz loaded)
Minimal grip height → very low printing
Works in gym shorts, light clothing, or no-belt situations. I can drop it in my shorts pocket as I head out the door, and now I am armed for a quick run to the store. In Florida’s heat and humidity, this is far more important than you realize. It’s rounded profile hides well in pockets, it’s highly reliable regardless of grip or draw angle.
The disadvantages are low capacity, and they are nearly impossible to reload. This revolver doesn’t deal with speed strips or speedloaders very well, so this pistol is 5 shots and done. Not only that, but with this extremely short barrel, high pressure loads aren’t possible, meaning the bullets are just not great performers.
This relegates the J frame to a niche role: The gun you carry when carrying anything else is difficult or unlikely. The reality is this is not my most capable gun, but it’s the one that ensures I’m never unarmed, not even for a quick run to the store. It’s my “get off of me” gun that I will push into an attacker’s midsection and pull the trigger 5 quick times, an “oh shit” gun.
This is where you step into a true fighting handgun while staying highly concealable. The advantages here are the Shield has a thin, flat profile, which makes for excellent IWB concealment. The ten round magazine capacity is double that of the 642. The 9mm has better terminal performance than the J frame, the reloads are faster and more easily accomplished, the handgun is more controllable than a snub revolver, and the XS DXT sights on mine are exponentially better than the sights on that pocket pistol.
I carry my 9mm with 124gr +P gold dots. That bullet is a proven performer, and in the +P loading, it is a superior performer. I will admit that I own compact automatic pistols in 9mm, .40S&W, .45ACP, .357Sig, and .380ACP. Bullet design has come a long way, and in a sub-4 inch barrel and limited magazine size, 9mm is equal in performance to any of the others.
That places this pistol in the role of best balance of concealability and capability when I can wear a belt and holster. Still, it’s the pistol I carry least often, as it is only marginally more concealable than my tier 3 gun:
The most useful carry gun I have. It’s an optimized defensive system. The advantages here over the stock shield plus are faster follow-up shots and target reacquisition due to the compensated porting and the microdot sight. A thirteen round magazine gives me enough firepower to face multiple attackers without reloading. This is, in my opinion, the best EDC pistol that I own. It’s my primary carry gun when concealment allows slightly more size and weight.
Some time has passed since I bought this pistol in 2021. I bought it with the intention of volunteering for the Guardian program that turned out to be a farce. The only thing that was wrong with it is the Crimson Trace microdot failed and I replaced it with a Holosun about two years ago.
I carry this one when clothing allows full concealment (jackets, winter wear) and want full power available. That doesn’t happen often here in Florida. Maybe 30 or 40 days out of the year. This is not about convenience, it’s about maximum capability when concealment constraints disappear. Loaded with full power Underwood 180 grain XTP, which gives me 1300 fps and 676 foot pounds. This is great for delivering a lot of energy into a target wearing heavy clothes or behind a barrier like a car door. The only real disadvantage here is the size of the handgun and the risk of overpenetration. When I can carry a large boat anchor of a handgun, this is my go-to.
What makes this system effective isn’t just the guns—it’s the decision-making framework behind it. I’m doing something most people don’t: Adapting my carry gun to the environment instead of forcing one gun into every situation.
When concealment is hardest → I still carry (642)
When possible → I upgrade capability (Shield)
When conditions allow → I maximize performance (PC Shield / 10mm)
Are any of my readers doing anything like this? Let me know in the comments.
Today, I came across a 2023 incident in San Bernardino involving a shootout between a deputy and a criminal. The action begins at the 10:00 mark.
The lesson here is stay in the fight, even after being wounded.
I just added a new instruction manual to the training page. It’s a set of instructions for building a wood gasifier. This allows you to convert wood chips into fuel for internal combustion engines using common hardware parts. It looked interesting. If you haven’t already, check out the page, it’s full of interesting manuals, all in pdf form for you to download.
Three masked men are trying to enter your home. They announce through your Ring Doorbell that they are going to enter your home and kill everyone inside. When you don’t open the front door, they kick in the gate to enter the back yard before slashing your screen to enter your porch and pound on the sliding glass door to your lanai. Watch the video, then ask yourself what you would do in this situation:
In Florida, you can use deadly force in your home if you reasonably believe you or another are facing imminent death or serious bodily harm, or a forcible felony is about to happen, and you are lawfully present in your home. Because the statute provides a presumption of reasonableness when an intruder is unlawfully and forcibly entering your home (or attempting to), the law strongly favors the occupant in that scenario.
So the questions that must be answered are:
I would say that the answers to 1, 2, and 3 are a definite yes. Question 4 and 5 are a no. After all, jiggling the doorhandle isn’t enough to say the threat was imminent. After all, they are being stopped by a locked door, so deadly force likely won’t be viewed as necessary. Right up until they entered the curtilage of your home Let me take a moment to explain:
Curtilage refers to the immediate area surrounding and associated with your home — the space that is considered part of the home for purposes of privacy and legal protection. Florida courts and the U.S. Supreme Court have described it as the area that harbors the “intimate activity associated with the sanctity of a person’s home and the privacies of life.”
That typically includes:
It does not usually include open fields, detached outbuildings far from the house, or unfenced areas that are visible and accessible to the public. Under both Florida criminal law and the Fourth Amendment, curtilage is defined as:
“The area immediately surrounding and associated with the home, which is considered part of the home itself for many legal purposes.”
— Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013); Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170 (1984)
Florida courts have consistently held that curtilage is an extension of the home for purposes of:
Courts look at several factors to decide whether an area is part of the home’s curtilage:
(See: United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294 (1987); State v. Hamilton, 660 So. 2d 1038 (Fla. 1995).)
Under Florida Statute § 776.013(1), the “dwelling” includes the building and its curtilage. Florida courts treat screened porches, lanais, or enclosed patios attached to the home as part of the dwelling. (See State v. Martinez, 700 So. 2d 142 (Fla. 2d DCA 1997)). This means:
This means you can’t shoot someone for trying to open your door, standing on your porch, or walking up the driveway. Postal workers and Amazon delivery drivers are happy about this. However, if they kick in a fence or forcibly enter through a locked portal, such as slashing a screen, they have crossed over into breaking and entering.
At that moment, under § 776.013(2), Florida law presumes you have a reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harm, because:
That presumption legally justifies deadly force, unless one of the exceptions in § 776.013(3) applies (for example, if the intruder is a lawful resident, or if you provoked the incident, etc.).
So back to this situation: I don’t breach my perimeter for idiots. I sit safely inside and call the cops. I would be wearing electronic hearing protection and body armor. I would be armed with a long gun that has lots of ammo. Why? Because we carry a handgun if we think we might be in a gunfight. If we think we WILL be in a gunfight, bring a long gun, and bring friends with long guns. My wife would be safely in the closet, also with hearing protection, body armor, and armed.
Once the critters breach my perimeter to enter my rear yard, then enter my second perimeter to enter my back porch, this threat becomes imminent, making both my fear of harm and my use of deadly force reasonable. In a case like this, there would be at least one dead body and perhaps some blood trails for the police to follow when they eventually arrived ten minutes after I called for them.
Florida appellate courts have repeatedly found deadly force justified when:
In such cases, the courts held that fenced yards, porches, and patios are part of the dwelling — the “castle” — so the presumption of reasonable fear applies.
Then my homeowners’ insurance would have to replace the glass in my back door, and pay to clean the gizzards from by rear porch furniture. I might even sue the estates of the decedents for the damages to include mental anguish, if they had any assets I could take.
It’s a great reason to have a fenced yard and a screened in porch with a locked door, even if the lock is flimsy like the ones found on a screen door.
State v. Martinez, 700 So. 2d 142 (Fla. 2d DCA 1997) Martinez shot an intruder who broke through a screened porch attached to his home late at night. The state argued the porch was not part of the “dwelling,” so deadly force was not justified. The court held that the attached, screened porch was part of the dwelling’s curtilage. The homeowner was protected under the castle doctrine. The court reasoned that a porch “integrated with the home’s living space” and enclosed by screens “serves the same privacy and security functions as the interior.”
State v. Hamilton, 660 So. 2d 1038 (Fla. 1995) A man was shot in a fenced backyard after threatening and attempting to enter the home. The issue was whether the fenced yard counted as the home’s “curtilage.” The Florida Supreme Court held that a fenced backyard was part of the dwelling’s curtilage for self-defense and burglary statutes. The fence “manifested an intent to exclude the public and protect the area as part of the home.”
State v. Giles, 579 So. 2d 792 (Fla. 4th DCA 1991) A homeowner shot a man trying to break into the house after entering the yard aggressively and ignoring commands to leave. The court found that deadly force was justified because the intruder’s actions created a reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harm. The “no duty to retreat” principle applied — the homeowner was lawfully in his dwelling.
Weiand v. State, 732 So. 2d 1044 (Fla. 1999) A woman shot her abusive husband inside their shared home and was prosecuted for murder. The case helped establish Florida’s “no duty to retreat” inside one’s home rule (before Stand Your Ground). The Florida Supreme Court recognized the castle doctrine as firmly established: you are not required to retreat in your home before using deadly force against an aggressor posing imminent danger.
State v. Hill, 95 So. 3d 434 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012) A man shot someone outside his home during a violent confrontation. The court examined whether the shooter could claim immunity under § 776.032 (the Stand Your Ground immunity statute). The court reaffirmed that § 776.012(2) justifies deadly force when a person reasonably believes it’s necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm — even outside the home, if the shooter has a right to be there and is not engaged in a crime.
If the intruder crossed into your yard and made explicit death threats, the standard of “reasonable fear” would almost certainly be satisfied — even if the intruder had not yet crossed the threshold.
When my son was young, he was small for his age. He came home from school one day, upset that while playing soccer, he accidentally kicked the ball through his own team’s goal. Because of this mistake, a 5th-grade kid had physically assaulted him. He told me that this kid had been hitting him and bullying him for the past several weeks, and was telling me that he no longer wanted to go to school. I called the school and was told: “Well, there are a lot of children out there for recess, so many that the teachers can’t watch everyone, all of the time.”
I told my son that the next time someone hit him, he should defend himself. He told me that he didn’t want to get in trouble. I responded by telling him to let me worry about that. I also pointed out to him that he had been playing Pop Warner football, and the kid who had hit him was no bigger than some of the other kids on his team.
A couple of days went by before he again came home from school, this time telling me that the kid had hit him, and he had done what I told him to and beat the snot out of the other kid. My son was upset, because he had a letter telling him that he was to be suspended for fighting.
I called the school and told them that I wanted a meeting immediately. I got one for the next day.
At this meeting, the answer that I got was that they had a “zero tolerance” policy for fighting, and the result of this was all kids who fight receive 3 days of out of school suspension. I pointed out that I had come to them just the previous week and was told they couldn’t watch everyone, so why now?
“Well, we saw the fight.” I told them that they have a legal duty to keep my child safe, and when they fail in that duty, even after being told that my child was being physically attacked, they were failing in that duty. To compound this by suspending my child when he defends himself from a physical attack is the height of irresponsible behavior.
I also told them, should this discipline stand, I would be back to the school the following day with an attorney, and we would see where that would take us. I had every intention of doing so- it wasn’t an idle threat.
The suspension was lifted, and the kid never touched my son again. The best part was that my son learned a couple of important lessons that day on how not to be pushed around by others.
You can’t let bullies, in this case a child and a lazy set of school staff, run roughshod over you. You exhaust your options for a peaceful solution, but once that has been seen to its completion, you have to go on to the next step. Unless you fight back, bullying behavior will always continue. The corollary to that was eloquently stated by Mike Tyson: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
That’s the lesson for today. I’m sure each of you understands where that line of thought leads.
Those of us who carry guns are often told that we don’t need guns to protect ourselves, we just need to remember that the robbers are just people trying to feed their families. If we just give them what they want, we will be fine. This assumes that robbery is merely a business transaction, and depends upon a criminal threatening violence being a moral and upstanding citizen.
What if he isn’t? What if that criminal is just someone who sees other people as mere objects who are simply standing in the way of their happiness and success? Killing you is no more problematic to such a person than stepping on a bug. That’s how things like this happen- a man in Miami is robbed, and hands over the goods. They kill him anyway.
The last two posts are why:
Last night, we went shopping and then to a swanky restaurant in an artsy district of a nearby town. I had a filet, my wife had garlic mussels. I was dressed in khaki slacks and a loose fitting Guayabera shirt. It hid my 9mm Shield Plus with microdot sight and my can of pepper spray very well. That gives me a less lethal option for boorish behavior, and also gives me 14 rounds of “I am not going to die unless you come with me.”
I’m not willing to bet my life, or the life of my spouse, on a criminal’s sense of good will and conscience.
One opinion that I have had since I was in high school is this:
I don’t care what martial art you study, what color belt you have, or how skilled you are, physical defense has limits. A 6 year old with a black belt in karate can’t beat up a full grown adult. A 100 pound woman isn’t going to beat up a 250 pound man, unless that man is in poor physical condition.
That opinion wasn’t a popular one, but it’s true. Skill can only do so much, but at the end of the day, physical strength, stamina, and size are just as important. Let me show you:
That doesn’t mean that skill is to be ignored. It means that what skills you do have should be viewed through a realistic lens. A 100 pound woman still is far outclassed in strength. That 100 pound woman believing that taking some krav maga classes is going to enable her to take on and disarm a full sized man is going to give her the overconfidence to go places and get into situations that she is not equipped to handle.
She let her classes where she practices set moves against compliant adversaries give her the false confidence that she can take on grown men armed with weapons and prevail, when in reality, she can’t even take on a man when given a distinct advantage, and in this case, the man was holding back and trying not to hurt her.
The same is true of people who carry guns. Many people only carry in “bad neighborhoods” and allow that firearm to pull them into places where they wouldn’t go if they weren’t armed.
Have a realistic idea of what training and weapons do for you, what your capabilities are, and know how and where you should be. One thing that I have learned by taking BJJ is that I have flexibility as my advantage, but I don’t have the stamina and cardio of a 23 year old any longer. In many cases, a 22 year old will be stronger and will be in condition to outlast me in a protracted fight. In any hand to hand, I must endeavor to win the fight early, because I will lose a protracted battle.
Be realistic in your own assessment of your abilities.