Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
In a wild new breakdown, Colion Noir dives into a confrontation outside a Columbia business plaza that escalated from shouting to pepper spray to a single gunshot in seconds.
The viral video, captured by WACH Fox, shows a protest, a fistfight, and a rapid chain of bad decisions that ended with one man shot and another detained. Noir cuts through the noise the way he always does: sharp, direct, and laser-focused on the realities of self-defense.
The scene starts with tension already simmering. A regular pro-life protester stands in his usual spot: filming, preaching, doing what he does every day. Whether anyone likes what he’s doing or not, he’s legally allowed to be there.
Then the man in the black T-shirt storms straight toward him, hands buried in his pockets, crowding his space. Noir instantly flags the danger: hands in pockets can mean concealed intent, concealed weapon, or concealed aggression. It’s a universal red flag.
The protester backs up. Clear body language that he doesn’t want it to get physical. But the black-shirted man keeps pressing, closing distance, escalating. Noir’s angle is clear: self-defense isn’t about waiting to get hit, it’s about recognizing aggression before violence starts.
So when the protester deploys pepper spray, Noir calls it what it is: a reasonable, non-lethal response to someone aggressively moving in.
But instead of backing off, the man charges. He chases the protester, tackles him, and forces a full-on ground fight. A bystander tries to peel him away. A woman with a gun tries to stop the attack. Everyone intervening is trying to restrain him. That alone tells you who the aggressor is.
The attacker rises, resets, and charges again. That’s when the gunshot rings out.
Noir then breaks down the legal side, focusing on South Carolina law. You have no duty to retreat in a place you’re legally allowed to be. And in this case, the protester did retreat anyway.
The state’s presumption of reasonable fear doesn’t apply here because it wasn’t a home, vehicle, or business. But more importantly, the presumption also doesn’t apply to the aggressor. And based on the video, every step of escalation comes from the man in the black shirt.
Finally, Noir ends with a hard truth for gun owners: even if you’re justified, you can still be cuffed, questioned, charged, or dragged through court. Real-world self-defense is messy before, during, and long after the moment itself.
As Noir puts it: stay safe, stay trained, stay free.
Self-defense doesn’t end when the threat goes down. That’s when the real battle begins. Lawyers. Prosecutors. Headlines. USCCA Members never fight that battle alone. Find out how.
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is a seasoned outdoorsman, lifelong hunter, and the kind of guy who’d rather track whitetails than scroll social media. As an editor for GunsAmerica, he’s got a sharp eye for spotting both solid gear and bad gun laws. Whether he’s deep in the woods or deep in editorial deadlines, Larry brings a no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is approach to firearms, hunting, and the great American tradition of self-reliance. If there’s a hot debate on gun rights or the latest in hunting tech, you can bet Larry’s got an opinion—and it’s probably backed up with both facts and field experience.
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That dude is going to jail. His use of pepper spray precipitated the assault.
“Precipitated the assault”. You just identified the aggressor, but thanks for playing.
Posted by Dacian: “Although the attacker was clearly in the wrong the protesting fanatical Right Wing Religious Fanatic went looking to provoke a fight and found one. It mirrored the infamous punk kid Kyle Rittenhouse that brought an illegal AR15 rifle into a protest situation and ended up killing two people and seriously wounding a 3rd. He bated them pure and simple and found the fight he went looking for. If it had not been for a fanatical Right Wing Judge he probably would have been sent to prison for years and should have been sent there.
The Right Wing Fanatic at the Clinic clearly knew you change things by changing the law not by provoking people into violence.”
my response: Dacian, you need to check into your heart about what you posted. 1) He was NOT there to incite violence. He was using his full legal rights to film. You do support the 1st Amendment, right? You do support the right to protest, right? 2) He was chased down by the assailant, showing that he was intent on doing harm to to the photographer. 3) The assailant tackled and started beating up the photographer, TWICE. You do support the right to defend yourself against someone trying to do bodily harm to you, right? 4) Seems the assailant didn’t respond to others to stop the assault, carrying the assault onto someone’s private property, showing intent to further cause harm to the photographer. 5) I think at that point, if it was you in that situation you would be screaming for help and wishing you had a firearm.
You need to stop your anti-Christian rants.
Also, for your information, since it seems you didn’t get the memo, Rittenhouse was found not guilty. Know why? Because actual video was presented in the trial rather than the doctored video the “news” organizations used. Rittenhouse was attacked by several people and he defended himself. Those that attacked him should know that people carrying rifles tend to fight back.
And I might add the punk Rittenhouse was illegally trespassing on private property when he deliberately instigated the confrontation he came looking for.
As far as your religious rant, you have no right to force your fanatical religious beliefs on other people who want you to keep your nose out of their private lives. I do not see the Religious Fanatics adopting all these unwanted children yet they scream from the rooftops about paying even a small amount of taxes to help needy people, none of which would be spent if women had the right to get an abortion for an unwanted pregnancy and a pregnancy is not a human being until it is gestated past the at least the 1st trimester according to many former laws that were rescinded by a corrupt fanatical Supreme Court who has become a rubber stamp for the present administration’s crazed agenda. Retribution is coming in the mid-terms and it will be heavy.
And by the way if you want to preach religion do it in the privacy of your own time or church not on the internet because there are those of us who do not participate in prayer, ritual, incantations or dance naked by the light of the moon.
what a shame he survived!
Wonder if you’d be saying that if you pulled the trigger….. you are such a dumbass.
…..”man thats gonna leave a mark” and “bet thats gonna hurt in the morning” and “bye-bye you are the biggest loser” the latter will also apply to you buzz!
Although the attacker was clearly in the wrong the protesting fanatical Right Wing Religious Fanatic went looking to provoke a fight and found one. It mirrored the infamous punk kid Kyle Rittenhouse that brought an illegal AR15 rifle into a protest situation and ended up killing two people and seriously wounding a 3rd. He bated them pure and simple and found the fight he went looking for. If it had not been for a fanatical Right Wing Judge he probably would have been sent to prison for years and should have been sent there.
The Right Wing Fanatic at the Clinic clearly knew you change things by changing the law not by provoking people into violence.
Cool. So by your logic anybody who irritates someone by protesting can reasonably expect to be attacked…that’s a new take on political discourse.
GOD gave us the “right to life”. No one else should be able to take that away (other than a capital offense). We (some/many) have NOT been savages for a long time. Let’s not go back there… OK?