The 5 W's of Personal Defense - Introduction

For a number of years around the country William Aprill's been presenting some really important information on the nature of violent criminal actors to attendees interested in personal defense, and armed professionals, who want to learn more about the types of people in situations that they may have to deal with, and how that informs the decisions they're going to make, I think is an incredibly important part of preparation for personal defense. William, I really appreciate you being here today. Not at all, Rob, glad to be here. Your work. How do you come to know the mind of the violent criminal actor?

And then talk to people a little bit about where the the information we're going to talk about comes from. I think that's really important understand. Well, I originally intended to have a career in law enforcement. And, oh about halfway through my college career, started working for the local Sheriff's office, and then for the US Marshal service in the Eastern district of Louisiana. Went back to school, after a while, once I had figured out that wasn't where I wanted to go as a career.

And on to study psychology and then graduate school, and post-graduate studies. But having had a background in law enforcement, I was always drawn to the places where mental health and the courts overlap, which is frequent and becoming more and more frequent as we go. And often called upon to assess criminal offenders. Sometimes in death penalty mitigation cases, or even as part of a defense strategy. So, mental health component of the judicial system is getting larger and larger all the time.

And that's just sort of a niche I found myself in. And-and the idea of bringing this information out, the way you've created your presentations, And I've seen a couple of them, an-and the-they're incredibly informative and very efficient and concise. What, how'd you get started doing that? It was, I started out as a student of traditional martial arts and eventually moved into firearms training, and was exposed to Massad Ayoob early on. And he, he remarks something as an aside.

He said "the best way to know something is to teach it." And so I started seeking instructor ratings and things and I got called upon to provide a little team teaching for one of Massad Ayoobs' courses on the mental health aspects of shooting after shooting trauma or post shooting trauma. And it just started there. That sort of set off a little bug in me and then, and started there. And when you, you go about presenting the information on violent criminal actors, where, where specifically do you find the best source of information? In your current work or...?

Criminal, from criminals. I'm always drawn toward a research basis that involves criminals themselves. And some correctional agencies are doing it. You know, one of the seminal books that I hope we'll be talking about earlier is research by a sociologist named Lonnie Athens. Interviews of prisoners are, to me, the richest, because you can compare that to theory.

I mean, theory is fine, but it's gotta be rooted in a in I think the violent criminal actors understanding. So the perspective of the criminal actually informs what you're sharing with the people interested in defending themselves from criminals. Critical. Because the inability to assume the perspective of the violent criminal actor is, in my mind, one of the top limitations of the, you know the lawful defender. And actually I think that-that hits on one of the key points that I've noticed in your presentations.

And some of the things that I think are so important to understanding when you sort of give yourself that green light to defend yourself. You, you can't assume that that person has the same value scale, or is making the same decisions and same judgment processes as you do, because you're not the violent criminal. No, certainly not. And I, I talk a little bit about what I call the traditional responses: Avoidance deterrence de-escalation, and my emphasis has been a lot on de-selection. Well, avoidance, deterrence, de-escalation and de-selection are wonderful, but they, they appeal to the rational operator, meaning one that shares my rational framework for the world.

And what we have to recognize is that there's a parallel completely separate moral universe in play. And we don't share much of it with the violent criminal actor. Well, that completely separate but parallel moral universe is what we're going to be talking about on this DVD, and learning more about the violent criminal actor.