The Cumulative Effects of Equipment

Posted by Mostly Genius – September 30, 2009

From the recent discussion about hand loading carry ammo, there is something that I think is being missed: equipment choices are cumulative in the minds of the jury.

Lets take an extreme hypothetical situation:
1. Subject exits his car and proceeds to cross the parking lot to enter a grocery store.
2. Subject is attacked by a known, violent, felon in a manner that clearly poses a lethal threat.
3. Subject responds appropriately with deadly force, shooting the attacker with his licensed, concealed, handgun (this is clearly a “good shoot”, with lots of witnesses.)
4. Police respond and investigate.

So taken at face value this is triumph for law abiding citizens, concealed carry, and the 2nd amendment. Now let me start adding a bunch of strange equipment and behavior to our hero:
- His (primary) handgun is Desert Eagle .50AE with a laser and a flashlight.
- He has 5 magazines for his primary handgun.
- All of his ammunition is hand loaded and he made his own jacketed bullets to some exotic specification.
- He is carrying secondary and tertiary handguns, with reloads for each of them.
- He is carrying 4 folding knives (of legal length in the jurisdiction), of a type originally designed for sentry removal and issued to the navy SEAL teams.
- He is wearing hard body with rifle plates and a ballistic helmet.
- “Born to Kill” and “I am justice” are written on his helmet.

Admittedly, this is hyperbolically weird, but all of this gear is legal (at least for the sake of this argument.) In the eyes of the extremely paranoid he is “well prepared” to buy a pack of hot dogs at the grocery store, but a lot of people would say he is “looking for trouble.” Some of the people in the “too much gear for a shopping trip” camp are very likely to be the witnesses, responding officers, prosecutor, the jury, the media, and the general population.

  • Nice article, thanks for the information.
  • Jeff
    MG, you raise a good point. It also reminded me of your post regarding redundancy versus capability.

    The problem is where on the slippery slope does one stop?
    I must admit, I am guilty of carrying two knives most of the time when not at work. Even with a pocket clip and a quick opening Axis lock, my benchmade folder is still primarily carried to be my pocket knife, and I carry a Ka-Bar TDI in a horizontal sheath under my shirt at 11 o'clock for a quick deploying defense knife.

    For every day carry, I don't carry a BUG, or even reloads, but would do so if the situation called for it, e.g, in a post-Katrina environment I would likely have a BUG, reloads and a perhaps a long gun handy, or if I had the type of job that took me to the bad side of town I'd probably carry an extra mag.

    So, for me, it comes down to trying to match equipment to the situation. War zones call for a full load out, my relatively comfortable middle-class existence generally does not.

    Jeff
  • The problem is where on the slippery slope does one stop?


    And that is the crux of the issue. We have to ask ourselves if our equipment helps or hurts us. The equipment changes as the situation changes, so we predict what sorts of threats we are going to optimize for and make do with what we have the rest of the time.
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