Should You Give Medical Attention to a Bad Guy

Should you give medical attention to a bad guy after you are forced to defend yourself?

If you have to defend yourself should you give medical aid to the person that just tried to hurt you?

No. Is the simple easy answer and should be the end of it. There are only two reasons this may not be true, and I would argue that it should still be the rule: 1) If you are legally obligated by law to help people under any circumstances, or 2) the person you had to defend yourself against is someone you care deeply about and you really don’t want them to die.

Barring, or even in the two exceptions above, there are three things to consider when helping someone that just tried to hurt you (and this all goes double if you had to use deadly force):

1. The Tactical Situation; will this act put you further in danger?
2. Morally; is it the right thing to do?
3. Legally; will this make your actions more or less defendable in court?

The Tactical Situation

If someone tries to hurt you and then you put them down on the ground so hard that the preditor now needs medical attention, that person just became that much more dangerous. That person is now a wounded animal and you never know what that wounded animal would do.

If I was losing a self-defense situation and was on the ground and had the other person coming up to me, I would assume that person is there to finish me off while I’m down. It would never cross my mind that the person was there to give me medical attention.

Remember most dirtbags (people that commit crimes for a living) are very familiar with criminal violence. In the criminal culture, you don’t give help, pity, or empathy to a person outside your circle. There is no way the person you just had to use force against is going to think you are there to help them.

That person may give up and you might be able to help them, or they may fight back with everything they have trying to take you with them. I would. Wouldn’t you?

Morality

On the surface, it may seem that the morally right thing to do is help someone. Under normal circumstances it is. You should help people that you can, need, and want your help.

A self-defense situation where someone just tried to hurt or kill you is not a normal circumstance. It’s not something you do all the time, it’s not something you probably have ever experienced before. After being in 11 gunfights in Iraq I can tell you after everyone I was overly excited and not thinking as well as I should have after the adrenaline dump. And the more gunfights I got in, the angrier I got that someone was trying to take my life.

It’s hard to help someone when you are angrier at this one person than you have ever been in your life. When you are seeing red, you don’t always do things the way they should be done. I would be afraid to make a mistake and do more harm than good.

I can get that person and anyone else that needs help faster and better by calling for help.

Legally

If you have the knowledge to help someone that is hurt very badly, do you have the knowledge to make it worse? Of course, you do. You have been told how things can go wrong if you put the tourniquet on wrong, or could pull a wound open more to make it bleed faster. If you have more advanced life savings training, you know a lot more things that could go wrong with someone you are working on.

If that person dies or has a major problem after the incident, every lawyer that person has will say you did it. And they will come after you. What might have been a cut and dry self-defense case now looks like a lawsuit and maybe a criminal prosecution if the prosecutor thinks they can win a case against you… especially if they are anti-self-defense.

There isn’t really any way helping that person will help you legally. Even if you go to trial and have most of the jury believe you were just trying to help the person, there will be a few (and it only takes one) that will doubt your intentions because they don’t think they could have helped someone after that person had tried to hurt them or their family.

Conclusion

Don’t do it. Call 911. Get lots of people there to make the scene safe for you and the other innocent people around. Get the professional medics there as soon as possible to give that person the best medical attention they can.

Stay Safe,

Ben

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