Question 076: Faked demo

I watched the video clip Blotched Self-Defense Is Worse Than None At All and could not help but come to the conclusion that it is probably fake. Pause it at 48 Seconds, the point where the shot JUST goes off. Notice that the shooters arm is entirely free. The gun, as well, is free and no attempt is being made to grab the shooting arm or the wrist or even his hand or gun. With 3 people on him, each one of them (I would think) would have tried to grab the gun arm and stabilize it while pinning the man down. This video seems fake. I guess the men could just have been really stupid. Even the part where one guy had the shooter by the hair. Why didn't he just pull the guy’s head to the ground and hold him down with his friend? I have seen a lot of videos on cop shows like this one that are obviously faked. There’s no law saying they can't be faked.

It is good to be skeptical; skeptics are seldom fooled. However, sometimes the skepticism leads to vindication of the item in question instead of conviction. When analyzing this video, you should:

Consider the source. This appears to be a clip from a news service. Although there are exceptions, most reporters verify their information.
Consider any motivation for faking it. For it to be a fake, someone would have had to go to a lot of trouble for only a few seconds of video.
Consider what an ordinary person might do under the same circumstances. In court, a jury is not supposed to consider what they might do, or what an expert might do under the same circumstance; they are to consider what an ordinary person might do under the same circumstance.
Consider that he clip is shown in slow motion. The entire confrontation actually only took a few seconds and the aiming and firing of the weapon only took a split second. Although the law says that a spit second of aiming and firing is all the thought that is required for premeditated murder, it is not enough time for a victim to react, even if he is martial art master. Think about your last sparring match. After the match, you probably thought, “Why did I do that? I should have reacted to that attack differently.” Think about a clash during a match; how much thinking did you do during the clash? You probably did not consciously think during that couple of seconds, and you are a trained fighter who knew what he was getting into and was prepared for it. What can you expect an untrained fighter to do when suddenly thrown into a life or death struggle?

It is difficult enough for one person to do the right thing, now try to get four people to do the right thing at the right time. Even if you know what to do, such as grabbing an arm, one of the other people may pull the person away before you can grab it. When fatally shot it in head, you do not grab your head or stagger backward, you just collapse to the floor—you are dead—there is no muscular tension in the body so it limply collapses, just as in the video.

Have you even been near a revolver when it is fired? Smoke and unburned gunpowder blast out the muzzle in a large cone shape that spreads to the sides, and they blast out the side of the weapon between the front of the cylinder and the back of the barrel. This blast can burn and temporarily or permanently blind as person close to the weapon as it fires. The sound a gunshot is deafening, especially in an enclosed space and near your ears. This is not the sound of a blank fired in television show or a movie with the sound reproduction limitations of the medium, it is the sharp, tremendously loud sound of a large amount of gunpowder exploding. The sound will cause your ears to shut down and your brain to freeze for a split second; then your ears will ring for hours. It is difficult to think in this type of situation.

Consider the how the information is being presented. To be able to record 24 a day and be able to save the recordings economically, surveillance cameras have low resolution and record at a slow frames-per-second, therefore, their images are poor, and there are gaps in the action. Contrary to what you see on CSI type television shows, you cannot magnify a low-resolution image to see more details. For example, try to magnify a cell phone camera image as you would an image from a digital camera. The slow frames-per-second recoding rate means the video is jumpy and sometimes omits critical actions.
Search for collaborative information. In this case, check out Malcolm Pearsall’s conviction at: http://www.mtpleasantdc.org/forum/download.php?id=89&sid=d7b4dd5125693daf7b3e7ac9c0ed9f41

If you slow motion or freeze a video of a sparring match, you will see a kick headed toward the opponent’s head and wonder why the opponent did not block the kick. In real time, things do not happen in slow motion. If you could stop time, everyone could make the right decision.
As trained fighters, we know that, in this situation, one person should have grabbed and controlled the gun by grabbing the cylinder and hammer and twisting it, while the others beat the crap out of the attacker, bashing his head into the floor, jabbing fingers into his eyes, ripping his ears off, and bashing his face with elbow strikes. The gun can kill, but not without the trigger being pulled. If the attacker is unconscious or dead, he will not be pulling any trigger.

If the robber wanted to kill, he would have shot everyone at the beginning and took their money, not just threatened them. It was the reactions of the men that got them killed. If they had just given the robber their money, they would all be alive. If you are going to resist, you had better know what you are doing; unless you know the attacker intends to kill you, which means you need to do any and everything you can to resist.

After scrutinizing this video, it appears to be legitimate. It shows how your life may end, or be forever altered, by a decision that has to be made in a split-second under extraordinary