The Best 1911 vs. Glock Video Ever


















































“I have a love interest in every one of my films – a gun.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger
“I have a very strict gun control policy: if there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it.”
– Clint Eastwood
“The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose.”
– James Earl Jones
“There are hundreds of millions of gun owners in this country, and not one of them will have an accident today. The only misuse of guns comes in environments where there are drugs, alcohol, bad parents, and undisciplined children. Period.”
– Ted Nugent
“To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic.”
– Ted Nugent
“A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.”
– Sigmund Freud
“An armed society is a polite society.”
– Robert Heinlein
“There are no dangerous weapons. There are only dangerous men.”
– Robert A. Heinlein
“Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.”
– Charlton Heston
“We would just go out and line up a bunch of cans and shoot with rifles, handguns and at times, submachine guns… When I was a kid it was a controlled atmosphere, we weren’t shooting at humans… we were shooting at cans and bottles mostly. I will most certainly take my kids out for target practice.”
– Johnny Depp
“But if someone has a gun and is trying to kill you … it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.”
– Dalai Lama
“A woman who demands further gun control legislation is like a chicken who roots for Colonel Sanders.”
– Larry Elder
“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
– G. K. Chesterton
” … the right to defend one’s home and one’s person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.”
– Martin Luther King
“That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”
– George Orwell
“In England, if you commit a crime, the police don’t have a gun and you don’t have a gun. If you commit a crime, the police will say ‘Stop, or I’ll say stop again.’”
– Robin Williams
“It’s better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it.”
– Christian Slater
“A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand.”
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“I will teach my children weapons and warfare, so they might teach their children science and law, so they might teach their children art and literature.”
– Unknown Greek
“Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.”
– Pericles
“The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.”
– Thucydides
“Though defensive violence will always be ‘a sad necessity’ in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men.”
– St. Augustine
“A free people ought to be armed.”
– George Washington
“Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples’ liberty’s teeth.”
– George Washington
“A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.”
– George Washington
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
– Thomas Jefferson (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria)
“A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.” – Thomas Jefferson
“The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“On every occasion [of Constitutional interpretation] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying [to force] what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, [instead let us] conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self defense.”
– John Adams:
“To disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them.”
– George Mason
“I ask sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few politicians.”
– George Mason (father of the Bill of Rights and The Virginia Declaration of Rights)
“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe.”
– Noah Webster
“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority … the Constitution was made to guard against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”
– Noah Webster
“The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops.”
– Noah Webster
“A government resting on the minority is an aristocracy, not a Republic, and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force against it, without a standing army, an enslaved press and a disarmed populace.”
– James Madison
“Americans have the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the people of other countries, whose leaders are afraid to trust them with arms.”
– James Madison
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country.”
– James Madison
“The ultimate authority resides in the people alone.”
– James Madison
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
– William Pitt
“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.”
– Richard Henry Lee
“A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves … and include all men capable of bearing arms.”
– Richard Henry Lee
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined…. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.”
– Patrick Henry
“This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty…. The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”
– St. George Tucker
“… arms … discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property…. Horrid mischief would ensue were (the law-abiding) deprived the use of them.”
– Thomas Paine
“The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”
– Samual Adams
“The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”
– Joseph Story
“What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty …. Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.”
– Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts
” … for it is a truth, which the experience of all ages has attested, that the people are commonly most in danger when the means of insuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.”
– Alexander Hamilton
“When a strong man, fully armed, guards his house, his possessions are safe.”
– Luke 11:21
“Jesus said, ‘But now whoever has a purse or a bag, must take it and whoever does not have a sword must sell his cloak and buy one.’”
– Luke 22:36
“If a thief is caught breaking in and is struck so he dies, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed.”
– Exodus 22:2
“A patriot without religion in my estimation is as great a paradox as an honest Man without the fear of God. Is it possible that he whom no moral obligations bind, can have any real Good Will towards Men? Can he be a patriot who, by an openly vicious conduct, is undermining the very bonds of Society? … The Scriptures tell us “righteousness exalteth a Nation.”
– Abigail Adams
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
– John Adams
“The thing that separates the American Christian from every other person on earth is the fact that he would rather die on his feet, than live on his knees!”
– George Washington
“God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.”
– Daniel Webster
“Though defensive violence will always be ‘a sad necessity’ in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men.”
– St. Augustine
“Without doubt one is allowed to resist against the unjust aggressor to one’s life, one’s goods or one’s physical integrity; sometimes, even ’til the aggressor’s death…. In fact, this act is aimed at preserving one’s life or one’s goods and to make the aggressor powerless. Thus, it is a good act, which is the right of the victim.”
– Thomas Aquinas
“When the law disallows both the means and moral authority to defend one’s self and property, crime and violence fill the void between common sense and the hoped for utopia.”
– JD Filkins
“Keeping and bearing arms is not only a fundamental right; it is a fundamental duty upon which all liberty and sovereignty is based.”
– Donald L. Cline
“A shoot-out is better than a massacre!”
– David M. Bennett
“It is a lesson of history that it is ethically, morally, and philosophically impossible to have too many personal weapons, whether they be edged, impact or projectile.”
– David W. Loeffler
“Nothing puts the dignity in personal dignity (or the freedom in personal freedom) like the self in self-rule.”
– John Longenecker
“No law ever prevented a crime.”
– Anonymous
“Those gun control activists advocating exchanging a liberty for safety should recall that the safest place on earth is solitary confinement at Leavenworth.”
– Rand T. Lennox
“The gun control extremist has at least two things in common with the Islamic extremist. He has a willingness to die for his fundamental beliefs. And he has the sanctimony to demand that others go with him.”
– Dr. Mike Adams
“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”
– Daniel Webster
“You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.”
– Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
“The philosophy of gun control: Teenagers are roaring through town at 90MPH, where the speed limit is 25. Your solution is to lower the speed limit to 20.”
– Sam Cohen (inventor of the neutron bomb)
“The tragic history of civilian disarmament cries a warning against any systematic attempts to render innocent citizens ill-equipped to defend themselves from tyrant terrorists, despots or oppressive majorities,”
– Daniel Schmutter
“If the constitutional right to keep and bear arms is to mean anything, it must, as a general matter, permit a person to possess, carry and sometimes conceal arms to maintain the security of his private residence or privately operated business.”
– David Prosser (Wisconsin Supreme Court justice)
“As a card-carrying member of the liberal media, producing this piece was an eye opening experience. I have to admit that I saw guns as inherently evil, violence begets violence, and so on. I have learned, however, that in trained hands, just the presence of a gun can be a real “man stopper.” I am sorry that women have had to resort to this, but wishing it wasn’t so won’t make it any safer out there.”
– Jill Fieldstein (CBS producer, Street Stories: Women and Guns)
“If you’ve got to resist, you’re chances of being hurt are less the more lethal your weapon. If that were my wife, would I want her to have a .38 Special in her hand? Yeah.”
– Dr. Arthur Kellerman (famous gun grabber)
“If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of crime rates reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying — that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 — establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime.”
– Senator Orrin Hatch
“Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. … the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”
– Sen. Hubert Humphrey
“Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.”
– John F. Kennedy
“By calling attention to ‘a well regulated militia,’ ‘the security of the nation,’ and the right of each citizen ‘to keep and bear arms,’ our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy… The Second Amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason I believe the Second Amendment will always be important.”
– John F. Kennedy
“Just as the First and Fourth Amendment secure individual rights of speech and security respectively, the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. This view of the text comports with the all but unanimous understanding of the Founding Fathers.”
– Attorney General John Ashcroft
“There’s no question that weapons in the hands of the public have prevented acts of terror or stopped them.”
– Israeli Police Inspector General Shlomo Aharonisky
“The great body of our citizens shoot less as times goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace in the world… The first step – in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come – is to teach men to shoot!”
– President Theodore Roosevelt
“The ruling class doesn’t care about public safety. Having made it very difficult for States and localities to police themselves, having left ordinary citizens with no choice but to protect themselves as best they can, they now try to take our guns away. In fact they blame us and our guns for crime. This is so wrong that it cannot be an honest mistake.”
– Sen. Malcolm Wallop
“One of the arguments that had been made against gun control was that an armed citizenry was the final bulwark against tyranny. My response had been that untrained, lightly-armed non-soldiers couldn’t prevail against a modern army. I had concluded that the qualitative difference in firepower was such that all of the previous rules of guerilla war no longer applied. Both Vietnam and Afghanistan demonstrated that wasn’t true. Repelling an armed invasion is not something that American citizens are likely to face, but the possibility of a despotic government coming to power is not wholly unthinkable. One of the sequelae of Vietnam was the rise of the Khmer Rouge and slaughter of perhaps a million Cambodian citizens. Those citizens, like the Jews in Germany or the Armenians in Turkey, were unarmed and thus utterly and completely defenseless against police and paramilitary. An armed minority was able to kill and terrorize unarmed victims with total impunity.”
– Paul Hagar
“Make good scouts of yourselves, become good rifle shots so that if it becomes necessary that you defend your families and your country that you can do it.”
– Lord Baden-Powell, Scouting For Boys
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and passed on … or we will spend our sunset years telling our children’s children what it was like in the United States when men were free.”
– Ronald Reagan
“I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.”
– General Douglas MacArthur
“A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.”
– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
“Gun control is like trying to reduce drunk driving by making it tougher for sober people to own cars.”
– Unknown
Lesson: It’s hard to have to kill. It’s harder when the bad guy is someone you know … and when your defense of family and self is called murder.
October 9, 2018. Seth Casteel and his wife, Jessica, and their six kids receive a visit from an old friend from their high school days. Rocky Russell has brought his girlfriend and her progeny. The kids spend time together as the adults, all in their 30s, catch up at a pleasant gathering around an outdoor fire, with the children toasting S’Mores.
The Casteels are delighted to see their old friend after so many years. They don’t know Rocky’s military career in Afghanistan has affected him profoundly, seeing him institutionalized for 18 days at one point to treat his PTSD. They won’t know until later, when it’s too late, he has gotten into drugs recently and beaten the hell out of his girlfriend. Seth is limiting himself to no more than one beer per hour, but Rocky is pounding down the booze, and it’s starting to show.
These old friends speak of old times. Seth mentions to Rocky that he’s the kind of guy Seth would want to take care of his wife and kids if something happened to him. Rocky becomes morose and answers he is a bad person who has done bad things. Seth tells him to STFU, he knows Rocky is a good man. Rocky starts muttering over and over, “Shut the f___ up.”
Rocky is 6’1″ and weighs 215 muscular pounds; Seth is 5’5″ tall and weighs 135. Suddenly, Rocky is standing, looming over Seth from a foot away and looking over Seth’s head with a thousand-yard stare.
And now, without warning, Rocky smashes his left fist into Seth’s face.
Under Assault
The brutal blow is delivered full power, with Rocky’s entire body weight behind it. The punch rocks Seth backward, and to keep from falling, he grabs Rocky’s shirt. The two of them fall together, with Seth under the larger man. Seth’s tongue can feel his two front teeth bent backward horizontally over his tongue by the punch. They roll on the ground together.
They separate for a moment. Rocky grabs Seth, swings him around and throws him. Seth is too stunned to remember it later, but one witness claims to see Seth thrown bodily through the air. Rocky tackles him full power, and they’re on the ground again, Seth is on the bottom once more. The larger man punches the smaller one, again and again.
As suddenly as he has begun the assault, Rocky breaks it off. He stands and walks away from Seth for a moment, picking up chairs and throwing them. Rocky blurts, “It’s him or me!”
Seth’s wife goes to him, puts an arm around him, and helps him toward the house. Seth’s mind is racing. Rocky seems to have gone crazy. What if he attacks Mrs. Casteel? Or one of the children?
Everyone, including Rocky’s own girlfriend, tells him to leave. He stubbornly refuses. Seth leans against a wall to catch his breath and gather his thoughts. He decides that a gun might be a deterrent. He goes into the house and heads for the bedroom.
A part-time gunsmith, Seth owns about 70 firearms, mainly rifles and shotguns. He has only two handguns, a Makarov and a Para Ordnance GI Expert 1911 .45, and keeps the latter loaded and cocked and locked in a Serpa holster. Seth, a southpaw, retrieves the pistol and puts it in his left side pants pocket and then heads outside.
His kids stare in horror at Seth’s bloody, broken face. He assures them he is okay and tells them to go inside for safety. Seth is outside now, by the grill in the carport and not far from the door.
Seth sees Rocky behind the wheel of his car, arguing with his girlfriend, who is begging him not to drive drunk. Their argument becomes loud. Rocky gets out of the car and approaches Seth. Seth and the girlfriend are both telling Rocky urgently he has to leave.
Instead, Rocky goes straight to Seth and delivers a brutal punch to the jaw.
Knockout Blow
It’s a knockout. Whether it was the fist to the jaw that did it or Seth’s head hitting the concrete, he has lost consciousness.
Seth awakens down on the concrete in time to see Rocky throw Jessica against the wall. Seth’s worst fears are confirmed: His wife is now under attack. As he rolls to the side to push himself up, Seth’s right hand falls on the 1911 and he realizes it must have slipped from his pocket when he was knocked out. He picks it up in his non-dominant right hand as he struggles up to a standing position.
Final Moment
Having seen Rocky throw Jessica against the wall, Seth is no sooner standing than Rocky turns toward him, clenches his fists, and starts coming forward. Seth knows he can’t let him get hold of the gun.
He raises his right hand, thumbs down the safety, and fires a single shot.
Rocky collapses instantly to the concrete floor of the carport.
And now, Seth finds himself on his knees next to Rocky’s motionless body. He on-safes the .45, sets it down, and bursts into uncontrollable sobbing as he blurts over and over again, “My God! My God!”
That’s how the first responding law enforcement officer finds him. Seth Casteel is arrested and ultimately charged with murder.
Preparing The Defense
The authorities apparently couldn’t see past “unarmed man shot.” Seth and Jess hired John Colley of Columbia, Tenn. as a defense attorney. It was a wise choice. I had done a manslaughter case a decade before with John, which concluded with a complete acquittal by the jury in record time. Colley approached this case with the same strategy he had used with that one: dismantle the State’s case meticulously piece by piece, and, just as precisely, build Seth Casteel’s case for lawful self-defense. There were many issues to deal with, some more subtle than others.
Issues And Answers
Most of the following comes verbatim from my pre-trial report in this case. It is offered here to encapsulate the issues.
Size and weight disparity greatly favored the deceased, Mr. Russell, over the defendant, Mr. Casteel. According to the arrest report, at the ime, Mr. Casteel stood 5’5″ tall and weighed 135 lbs. At autopsy, Mr. Russell was found to be 73″ tall (6’1″) and to weigh 215 lbs.
In use of force training, the prevalent size and weight chart used to determine disparity of force was created by Juste David Myers for his book Close Quarter Combat and was popularized in John Peters’ police training textbook Defensive Tactics With Flashlights. That chart (was) appended to this report.
By this standard, Casteel would be listed as a size “Small,” and Russell would be categorized as a size “Large.” According to the Myers chart, a person Casteel’s size would have only a 30% chance of surviving a homicidal bare-handed assault by a committed aggressor.
Disparity in ability to fight and cause physical harm also favored Russell over Casteel. Mr. Casteel told me he does not recall having any training in hand-to-hand combat or physical restraint of violent people. Mr. Russell was a trained soldier who had done tours overseas in a combat zone. He had experienced things sufficiently dire to have left him with what his significant other perceived as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder requiring treatment. Even had they been equal in physical size and strength, one would expect a trained combatant and veteran of war zones to have significantly greater fighting abilities than a man with zero experience in such matters.
Moreover, the escalating violence in the minutes prior to the shooting had clearly demonstrated Mr. Russell’s dramatically greater fighting skill compared to Mr. Casteel’s. In their first encounter, Russell had caused Casteel to be seen “flying through the air,” according to eyewitness testimony. In the third and penultimate physical conflict, the one directly prior to the shooting, Russell had knocked Casteel unconscious with a single, powerful punch to the left side of the face, which left him prostrate on the concrete floor of the carport where the shooting took place soon thereafter.
It is my considered opinion this would leave any rational person in Casteel’s situation with the conclusion he would not be able to use his bare hands to stop Russell from killing or gravely injuring him and possibly others.
Having been decisively overpowered in the first two of the four encounters in this chain of events would support Casteel’s conclusion he needed to arm himself to deter Mr. Russell from further escalating physical violence. He had reportedly armed himself between the second encounter and the third, in which he was knocked unconscious, and the pistol he had just retrieved fell from his pocket to the floor of the carport.
Reenactment
On June 22, 2021, while visiting the shooting scene and doing a “walk-through” re-enactment of the shooting, I performed a demonstrative evidence video to illustrate that point. At the actual shooting scene, Mr. Casteel stood where he recalled standing when he fired the shot in question, and he placed me where he recalled Mr. Russell standing at the moment the shot was fired. We measured that distance, which turned out to be some 103″, torso to torso.
I had Mr. Casteel hold a dummy gun exactly replicating the size and shape of the weapon in evidence, a Para Ordnance 1911 .45 caliber pistol, extended at arm’s length in his right hand as he recalled holding the weapon. From the position he recalled Russell being in, I then lunged forward to disarm him. We subsequently overlaid an app called “Coach’s Eye” to break down the movements to 1/100th of one second. That video was titled Ayoob Demo, Tennessee v. Casteel. The breakdown is as follows.
As best I can determine by eye, my movement forward toward Mr. Casteel begins at 12.69 seconds on the video counter.
By 13.86 seconds, from Mr. Russell’s position, I have closed the gap between us, used my left hand to deflect Casteel’s gun away from me and to grasp his wrist, and have pivoted my torso away from the gun muzzle. At this point, shooting me is no longer his option — 1.17 seconds have elapsed since I began the forward movement.
At 14.60 seconds, I have stripped the pistol from Mr. Casteel’s hand, as evidenced by my right elbow now pulling back away from him, the gun in my hand. What had been his gun hand is now trapped against my chest. An additional 0.74 seconds have elapsed.
At 15.50 seconds, 0.90 seconds later, I have turned the gun in my hand into firing position; have put his gun hand in a wristlock to keep him from grabbing the gun back, and my finger is pulling the trigger of the dummy gun. The gun muzzle is oriented to the center of his head for what would be a presumably fatal gunshot wound to the brain.
The total elapsed time from beginning to move forward to “shooting” Mr. Casteel through the brain with his own gun has been 2.81 seconds.
Therefore, I believe I can testify to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that if Mr. Casteel had not fired when he did, he could have been disarmed and shot to death with his own gun in three seconds or less.
Escalating Violence
The escalating violence of Mr. Russell toward Mr. Casteel showed no signs of diminishing. Russell’s assaultive behavior had escalated from manhandling Casteel to rendering him unconscious with no sign of remorse. At the time the single, fatal shot was fired, Russell was approaching Casteel in a manner that could only reasonably be construed as an intent to disarm and cause further harm. In the final moments before Casteel fired, there is nothing in the discovery materials that indicates to me anything other than escalating, potentially homicidal violence in Russell’s behavior.
The autopsy conducted by Dr. Tashjian, the forensic pathologist, states, “Direction of projectile — anterior to posterior, superior to inferior, and right to left.” The bullet traveling front to back, downward, and from the right side of the body toward the left side can be oriented to the gun and the person holding it. It is consistent with a man moving forward with his head and torso aggressively forward. This, in turn, is consistent with an attack posture in relation to the person holding the gun and also consistent with the defendant’s account of Mr. Russell moving aggressively toward him when the defendant fired.
As to Casteel having been drinking beer before the shooting: Only the jury can determine the reasonableness of Casteel’s actions with an understanding of the dynamics of violent encounters. The doctrine of competing harms, aka doctrine of necessity and doctrine of two evils, forgives one for breaking laws or rules in the rare circumstance where following those laws or rules would cause more human injury to the innocent than breaking them. The actions, not the alcohol, determine. “Alcohol on board” does not automatically indicate bad judgment. If the jury concurs with the defense that Casteel’s actions were those any reasonable, prudent person might have taken under the circumstances, his blood alcohol content becomes irrelevant.
Resolution
The Commonwealth Attorney’s office apparently became increasingly aware of how flawed their Murder case against Seth Casteel actually was. In January of 2022, Seth accepted a plea of guilty to reckless homicide with a sentence of probation. This charge generally carries a two- to four-year prison sentence in Tennessee; Seth got zero time served, an almost incredibly good plea bargain for the defendant. While I was confident we were going to win at trial, I can understand why he made that decision. A conviction would have taken him away from his wife and children for many, many years. I firmly believe even the most “ironclad” case has a 10% disaster factor: a rogue juror blind to the facts, a surprise witness who lies but is believed, etc. Here, there were other factors. One was “sympathetic victim.” Rocky was, after all, a heroic veteran who’d fought for his country. While Seth’s alcohol consumption was low that night, there is always the chance of a juror who is the kind of teetotaler who thinks anyone who drinks more than he does is an out-of-control alcoholic. Seth’s collapse next to the body and his anguished cries of “My God!” could be misconstrued as an admission of wrongdoing, as a similar action was apparently construed in the case during the same timeframe of Minnesota police officer Kim Potter, who mistook her GLOCK for her TASER.
Seth’s family needed him at home, not in prison. As ace trainer John Hearne famously says, “It’s not about the odds, it’s about the stakes.” We need to remember what lawyers know: Acceptance of a plea bargain is not necessarily an admission of guilt.
The Werewolf Parallel
Let’s explore that “sympathetic victim” element. I’ve come to think of it as The Werewolf Parallel. The werewolf mythos in horror movies goes back to the 1931 film The Wolf Man. It stars Lon Chaney, Jr. as kindly Lawrence Talbot, who risks his life to save someone from a wolf; he kills it, but it bites him, and from then on, the full moon turns him into a tragic monster who can’t stop himself from killing the innocent. In the end, the werewolf is attacking a woman who is rescued by Talbot’s father, played by Claude Rains, who beats the creature to death with a silver-headed cane.
As the werewolf dies, it turns back into kindly Larry Talbot, and the movie closes with the horrified face of the father, who realizes he has just had to kill his own son.
In cases like this one, something similar happens. Rocky Russell was the good American, fighting for his country when he was “bitten” by the PTSD that changed him. Alcohol became the full moon that triggered Rocky’s transformation. Seth didn’t know about this until he and then his wife were attacked by the changed Rocky, whom he had to shoot as a last resort.
And after he fell dead, Rocky was seen to turn back into the hometown hero again. Moreover, the man he forced to kill him was overcome with grief at having had to perform that act.
In such incidents, there are no winners. All you can do is limit the degree of loss.
No lawsuit has been filed in the matter as of this writing. Seth and Jess are rebuilding their lives. The incident was a tragedy all around. The actions of Rocky Russell made his fatal shooting a last resort. If disparity of force and the deadly danger of being disarmed by a berserk assailant had been better understood within the prevailing system, I suspect Seth Casteel would probably never have been criminally charged at all. Noted Attorney Colley, “Tennessee has a very strong Victim’s Rights law.”
The Rhodesia Mamba
The Rhodesia Mamba: Big Hype and a Big Flop
The Mamba was originally conceived in a 1970s Salisbury, Rhodesia barroom bull session about the best elements of semiauto pistols. The project would wind up being pushed by an American expat named Joe Hale, and production of parts was contracted out to a South African engineering firm.
The Mamba was hugely hyped at the time as being the best service handgun ever developed. It was an SA/DA system based on the Smith & Wesson Model 59, with ambidextrous safety, all stainless steel construction, and nary a single stamped part. Probably less than 100 were ever made (definitely not more than 200), as a result of massive technical problems. Many of these were ultimately because of an improper heat treating regimen insisted upon by Hale, but poor quality control in the manufacturing process didn’t help anything. When the South African manufacturer bailed on the gun (having gotten a lucrative armored car contract from the South African government instead), the parts and IP were purchased by Navy Arms of the US. A small number of guns were assembled in New Jersey from South African parts, but there the project died.
Today, the Mamba is a vary scarce pistol, for all the obvious reasons. Many thanks to the South African collection who provided this one for filming!