That’s the title of a new book by an old friend of mine, a retired Federal law enforcement agent who has also served his country in the military.  He writes under the pseudonym of Dan Bernoulli. More than once, he has had to kill bad guys. His own experiences and what he’s learned from other Good Guys who’ve had to kill Bad Guys prompted him to write “Reasonable, Justified & Necessary: Exploring the professional, physical and psychological complexities of deadly force.” His position is that training academies don’t do enough to teach the physical skills necessary for the fight itself, nor nearly enough to prepare them psychologically for mortal combat and ending another man’s life if they are forced to do so in righteous cause. He writes, “…cultural-cognitive factors, which are always more difficult to measure in any meaningful way, are completely un-avoidable when it comes to the teaching of police recruits (or anyone for that matter) to kill another person. Despite this difficulty, to argue that these factors do not have an impact is folly.”

He is aware of the elements of so-called “post-shooting trauma,” and analyzes them. He writes, “I had some disturbing dreams that interrupted my sleep almost nightly. Although I did not wake screaming or thrashing, I would often start awake with elevated breathing and some confusion as to where I was. It would then often take several hours for me to fall back to sleep afterward. These dreams have tapered off with time and are now only occasional visitors, though they remain rather vivid when they happen.”

The author is aware of how men like him are judged: in criminal courts, civil courts, and the courts of public opinion.  He observes, “If the way we train law enforcement professionals on this subject is to be improved, those improvements will have to be based on solid scholarship. Yet that scholarship needs to be accessible to both law enforcement professionals and non-law enforcement police administrators, politicians, judges, and citizens. These are the people who, like it or not, are vital stakeholders in deadly force training.”

“Reasonable, Justified & Necessary” is important reading for anyone who keeps or carries a gun for defense of self and other innocent parties, and would qualify as “must read” for those whose professions take them into harm’s way while armed. It is currently available on Amazon, Kindle only at this time, and a second edition is in the works.

21 COMMENTS

  1. This should be a must read for anybody that intends to venture into Law Enforcement. I have seen more than my share of new Officers that were ill equipped to handle the effects of lethal threat encounters. This should be front and center of academy training as well as annual refresher training for all LEO’s.
    Civilians too would highly benefit from this type of training.
    Thanks for sharing this recommendation Mas.

  2. Looks like a terrific read; however, I wish this wasn’t an eBook.

    I abhor reading “books” on a device. I’ll stick to Mas’ books and others.

    • especialy those devices controlled by the Zon. They have a nasty habit of poofing a “book” you’ve bought and paid for when they deem it no longer “appropriate’ to be out there. If it were availble as an eBook (PDF) that changes, as the file resides on MY computer, can be baced up elsewhere, and there is no ccess to it from outside.

      I’ll wait till some folks murder some trees and spread dark ink on the pages made with them. Infinitely portable, accessible anywhere any time, easy to sequester for seciurity (remember the “firemen” in Farenheit 451?)

      • Tionico, If you buy a kindle book , you can use a free program called calibre to convert it to pdf format. Do a search for the instructions.

  5. This is a very important subject for Americans. Most of us only know about killing other humans from the news, TV, movies, YouTube and history books. Killing is not a part of the average American’s life, (except for hunters) and that is a very good thing!

    I imagine killing someone I know to be evil would be gratifying. Many of the best movies stir up righteous anger. But, criminal attacks happen so fast, the victims probably don’t know who they are fighting with. When you are fighting for your life, I’m sure there is no time to think about whether or not your attacker deserves to die.

    To me, WWI was especially horrible, because in my eyes, none of those soldiers was evil enough to deserve death. There were no Nazis in WWI. The belligerent nations’ governments forced young men to go to the trenches, and kill their fellow Europeans. If there was no war, the soldiers would be neighbors, and maybe play against each other in soccer (futball) matches. Imagine if, instead of obeying Kaiser Wilhelm, the young German men had practiced civil disobedience, and not gone off to kill Frenchmen. I’m sure Kaiser Willy would execute some draft dodgers, then it would have been nice if he was assassinated, and his government overthrown. Remember Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu in Romania in 1989?

    In my dreams, I wish our government would invite wannabe mass shooters into prisons, so they could shoot criminals, instead of shooting school students and mall shoppers.

    This book reminds me of “On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society” by Dave Grossman.

    • When you are fighting for your life, I’m sure there is no time to think about whether or not your attacker deserves to die.

      in such a situation it it is truly unprovoked and otherwise unjustified (the attack on yourself) then the very fact of the attack justifies the killing.
      In the old law in the bible, it says “if man and his family are asleep in their beds, and a stranger breaks in during the night, he “may strike him that he die” and there shall be no blood guilt upon him. The very fact of the invasion of one’s home justifies lethal force even to death. If the guy didn’t knock and holler, he’s up to no good and deserves whatever comes his way.

    • “There were no Nazis in WWI.”

      There weren’t a lot of hard corps “Nazis” in WWII.
      My father was stationed in Germany in 1955-58. He told us (I was nine or so) that we would meet men who had been in the Wehrmacht, and we would treat them with respect. Most of them had fought for their country, just as Dad fought for ours. Now the war was over, and the time for healing was at hand.
      I noticed they treated him with the same respect.
      After WWI the Allies punished the Axis countries, and that led to WWII.

      It’s relevant here. The Armed Attorneys have a YouTube video of the top five reasons their self-defense clients end up in court. Being attacked by a criminal isn’t one of them.

      NOTE: True criminals do exist, and the information in Mas’s recommended book is necessary.

  6. Here’s the problem.

    Most people think that everyone is educated, civilized, mannered and under control. Some more than others, but everyone acts like a reasonable, middle class person.

    Disagreements are fought with biting wit, social media postings, verbal interactions, and bluffing. If things really get out of hand, the judicial system takes over, and disagreements are dealt with under formal rules laid out by the courts.

    The problem is that there is a subset of our civilization that does NOT behave like this, and unless you work in certain professions that move in this world, or live there yourself, you have no idea that it even exists. That means that the average person judges any interaction with this world based on standards that seem reasonable in their world, but are insanely irrational in this other world.

    Further, people making these sorts of judgements have no idea that they are clueless about how this world works, and have little interest in fixing this ignorance. It’s only when they accidentally cross paths with someone or some place that sits in this world, that they might get a clue that they might be ignorant.

    It’s why during the earlier days when few people carried guns, the main possessors of LTCs were physicians, psychiatrists, lawyers, social workers, and parole staffers who regularly saw the werewolves who roamed in the shadows, and realized how dangerous they really were.

    • Despite knowing that werewolves exist, I have no personal experience with them. I live in an upper middle class town where there is little crime, and what does happen, rarely reaches the general public. I attended a snotty, liberal arts college, where everyone was seriously bright, ambitious, and properly raised. I work, socialize, and shop around these sorts of people. I rarely cross paths with anyone who isn’t like me.

      This makes it very easy to get complacent, and to write off stories that Mas talks about as rare events, or something that will never happen in my town. It almost seems like what happened to the Hawke-Petits, or Andrew Patti and his son, are something that only happens in a Hollywood screenplay. It’s takes constant effort to be vigilant, when I’ve never seen the werewolf for myself.

      • Dear Friend Christine, just remember that if the goblins know that you are armed and capable, they are least likely to cause you any harm in the moment, even if they are walking nightmares. I have had the misfortune of knowing several killers, and I draw extreme comfort at having often been well armed and sufficiently aware of ways to advertise, that although I am fundamentally sociable, that I could put enough hurt on them instantly to make them very sorry if need be. All predatory criminals are by nature mentally unhealthy in their general outlook, another way of saying that they are all insane to some degree. No reason obtains to cut them any slack, or worry that they may formerly have been treated unfairly one way or another. You have protective “radar,” and if you pay attention to it, you will head trouble off appropriately “at the pass,” hopefully with some kind of assistance, Remember Little Red Riding Hood? There was just something a little off about Grandma? Did not the story have a happy ending?

    • Christine,

      Right you are. Also, America is a truly wonderful place to be a criminal. This is even more true today, as we see that shoplifting is legal in some cities.

      I would bet that life is better in the worst American prison than it is for the average North Korean. Of course, North Korea is one big prison.

  7. Well, the American Left has just found the secret to addressing so-called “Gun Violence”. All we have to do is implement their climate change policies! Yes Sir! The “Green New Deal” is the answer. We can save the planet and end “Gun Violence” at a single stroke! See this news report:

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/new-study-finds-tragic-factor-contributing-to-thousands-of-gun-deaths-nationwide/ar-AA17WWbZ?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=f3c9e98e1d6740b8a8fb74f5f605180d&ei=9

    As you can see, “Gun Violence” correlates nicely with higher temperatures! As further proof, I can point out that there were no (zero) gun deaths during the last Ice Age. I am surprised that the author did not bring up this telling point in the above article. 🙂

    Can you believe this claim? Yet, I am sure that some of the “low information” true-believers on the Left are just eating it up. Why else put out such a stupid piece of propaganda?

    • Connecting gun violence to global warming is Reasoning Fallacy Example #1 in the Elementary Logic curriculum.

    • TN_MAN,

      That whacky article could only be believed by brainwashed public school students. So, we see what the Left did. They dumbed down as many Americans as possible, so they can write lies to further brainwash the dummies. Maybe I should hope that public school students won’t even learn to read, but then the Left would get rappers and Kardashians to simply tell lies to the new Democrats.

      I think we are at the point where the Democrats will never be out of power again. They have created their supporters, who mindlessly vote for them. The Democrats are brilliant, evil and victorious. Our cities are the way they are because city voters voted, over and over, for politicians who implemented those policies, over and over. They got what they voted for.

  9. Sounds like it’s time to buckle up & realize that the police aren’t coming to save you & may not even stop by till tomorrow to check out the aftermath. Even if you haven’t ever noticed them there are plenty of people out there that don’t care about your feelings, your education, your friends or your life. To them, you are just a resource to harvest & they will sleep like a baby at night after doing it. The only time they stop is when they are locked up or are killed. You had better be prepared to deal with them as it don’t look like things are getting any better with de-fund the police idiots and Soros DAs running the show in many cities. You had better not worry about their rotten childhood, their race or their motivation when you are in the bucket & fighting for your life. Enjoy

    • Mark,

      I wonder if I will live long enough (I am 59) to see the day when, America is such a bad place, no one wants to immigrate here.

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