A video surfaced recently that showed a man being killed by a licensed firearm holder after he allegedly pulled a knife during a conflict in Kingston, Jamaica. One life was lost and the licensed firearm holder has been charged. Two lives destroyed.

I am going to analyse that video with an intention to determine two things. First, and most important, I want to highlight the level of risk to the licensed firearm holder once the knife was introduced, and demonstrate how that risk alters as the video progresses. This is totally an exercise for an expert in self-defence and is not an intention to assess the legality of the action taken by the licensed firearm holder.

The case is before the court and they will get an opportunity to determine liability, criminal or otherwise, with the time allocation that is reasonable to assess the entire incident.

I would, secondly, like to examine the expectation of the Firearm Licensing Authority (FLA) when they issue you a licence to carry a firearm, and how they expect you to conduct yourself in relation to the use and care of the weapon.

So let us begin as I remove my criminologist hat and put on my self-defence expert’s cap. I’m not an expert because I am a serving member of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF). You do have experts in the JCF, but not everybody who serves the JCF is an expert. In fact, the vast majority of the police force are not really trained to a significant degree in combat of this type.

To train as a self-defence expert you need to hold a black belt at an elevated degree in a recognised martial art. You then need to focus your martial art training on combat. Some do, most do not. Some become expert teachers of the art. Some become sports fighters. Some focus on patterns or katas. I chose to study combat. So, although I participated in sport fighting, both as a participant and as a coach, my primary area of focus is combat.

So back to the video. The firearm holder was in danger once the man pulled the knife. It doesn’t matter that he did not advance. They were arm’s length apart and therefore the ‘knife man’ can stab the armed man in under one third of a second, which is the time required to react to any stimulus whatsoever.

So the armed man stepped back upon the presentation of the knife. This made the striking range further, but still under the required time of one third of a second to respond to an attack.

When he pulled the gun, had he pointed the said gun he would still not be able to respond, because before he can pull that trigger he will be stabbed because of the one-third-of-a-second lag between detecting the threat of movement and responding to said threat.

So let’s imagine he had stepped back four full steps during the period under attack and the knife man had not pursued? Well, once the knife man has the ability to close the distance then momentum and bullet behaviour have to be considered.

If he shoots him after the knife man starts the surge in his direction he likely won’t bring him down, unless his bullet strikes the head or spine before he is stabbed.

The type of gun used in this video, which I believe fires a 9mm calibre bullet, is also a significant consideration. The bullet travels so fast that the victim will likely not feel it immediately and it exits the body, unless it’s fired from a considerable distance. The stopping power is minimal.

Now, a lot of what I am making reference to didn’t happen. The knife man didn’t advance and he appeared to have been hit in the head. However, that doesn’t mean that he couldn’t advance, and once you are in close proximity you are in danger once that knife is in hand.

Twenty-one feet is the rule of thumb that you are in danger of a knife attack if your gun is in your waist. This is because, on average, to close that ground in 1.5 seconds and to draw a gun takes that amount of time. So, drawing a knife on someone has to be a decision that is taken carefully. There are mountains of studies that can justify shooting someone once a knife is introduced.

Now, there is an expectation from Jamaica’s FLA pertaining to how you will conduct yourself when you are issued a firearm, because you have the ability to kill and the legal authority to carry a weapon capable of killing. It does not mean that you are to look for opportunities to do so. So yes, it is for the protection of life and property, not to go and pick a fight.

This video did not reflect the expectation of the FLA. If property was stolen and you went to retrieve it, then that would be understandable. This came across as someone trying to punish another for trespassing after the person had come off the other person’s land.

Carrying a firearm in Jamaica is a privilege, not a right. Only 25,000 of us out of a possible two million adults are given this privilege. It can be taken at any time. In fact, in the 1970s it was arbitrarily taken, and the issuance of new permits stopped in totality. Weapon seizure was common. We take this era for granted because many don’t remember what we went through before.

We criticise this authority but we choose to forget the years of being ignored after we applied, when it was handled by the armed forces. Now that doesn’t make the FLA perfect, but it does make it the most efficient government entity in the country and the most advanced licensed firearm monitoring system in the world.

This video is very disturbing. Since the birth of social media we are seeing videos that reflect abject violence and random brutality that was previously the bedfellow of invading military. We realise now how violent our fellow civilians have become.

The violence displayed in this video is disturbing. The ignorance of the knife man was quite saddening. I don’t think he realised how dangerous a situation he was putting himself in by opening that door. If there can be one positive take away, let it be that other people will learn and not make that mistake again, because it is too common for people to draw knives on each other in Jamaica. It is also too common that people are wounded or killed by knives in our country.

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