Ever had a gun pulled on you

[Tom Servo]

Twice with guns, once with a knife.

The first time, the idiot discharged the gun into his own calf while drawing. I think I've told that one around here.

The second was a guy who walked into the business I worked with the intention of intimidating someone named "Vic." Problem was, he had the wrong place, the wrong Vic. All I knew was that a guy in gangbanger clothes walked in, yelled, "where the fiddlysticks is that bad man Terry [paraprhasing]?" While doing this, he reached into his pants and started pulling out a snubbie. I have never come that close to killing another human being.

Practice pays, trust me. This was a crowded place in the middle of the afternoon. If I'd drawn and fired for COM (he was facing sideways from me) there likely would have been collateral damage. Fortunately, I was only about five feet away and was able to move to an angle where his head was the target (that guy had a big fat head), and the wall was the backstop.

Fortunately he relented. According to bystanders, I was quite calm and intimidating. I'm just happy I didn't a) take that last pound of slack out of the trigger or b) wet my pants.

The knife guy was an idiot, and at the sight of the gun, he took off like he had some pressing business elsewhere.

Still, in the second two instances, had I not been armed, there would have been bloodshed which was averted by the presence of the gun in civilian hands. In both cases, it was at least 10 minutes before law enforcement was able to respond.

 

[nelson133]

Twice, once when I was 15 and running with a very bad crowd, today we would call it a gang. He got to enjoying his position of authority too much and got distracted by the sound of his own voice and I took it away from him.
The second time I was working for a company that picked up canceled checks from banks and hauled them to the Federal Reserve in Detroit. This one particular bank had a lock box with one door on the outside of the bank and one on the inside. The girls would put the checks just inside the door of their side and you had to crawl 1/2 way into the thing to reach the checks and sign the paperwork. While doing this, I heard some cars driving up and stopping but I didn't think anything of it. When I emerged, there were a number of stste and local police with guns drawn looking at me. A very nervous time was had by all. Since at the time i wore no uniform, had a beard and long hair and was wearing a denim jacket with a death's head patch, they weren't terribly interested in my explanations. It turned out that the girls had been horsing around and one of them had bumped into something that set off the alarm. I didn't find this out from the cops, but later from one of the girls that worked there. They finally let me go, but I was twitchy for a while after.

 

[MyRoad]

You know, I actually forgot about this until reading this thread. It happened about a dozen years ago. As I recall, the LEO's had their guns drawn, but pointing down, not at us, so I'm not sure that counts. We weren't much of a threat, our hands were pretty full with the giant TV we were carrying...

It was one of those really odd situations... My girlfriend was sort of "evicted", and asked if I could get someone to help me move her big old TV from her old apartment to her new one. Her old apartment was on Greenwich Ave. in Greenwich, CT. First floor was high-end retail, second floor law offices, third floor apartments. It was about 9pm, someone was working late in the law office and heard people upstairs, and knew no one was supposed to be there, since everyone on the third floor had recently been asked to vacate immediately with no notice -- an inspector determined that the fire escapes were not up to code. Apparently another one of the uninhabited apartments had be recently robbed, and they thought we were the robbers coming back for more stuff.

Greenwich CT has a LOT of money and very little crime, so the so Police force is big and they don't have much to do... and we were about two blocks from the police station. By the time we got to street level with the TV, there were five police cars parked at the curb with their lights blazing, including the K9 unit. That was the first and only time I've been in the back seat of a police car. Not much room back there. When they called my girlfriend to verify my story she thought it was a joke, and almost denied knowing me. We got a good laugh out of it when the dust settled.

As far as my reaction went at the time, it was pretty much "move slowly, maintain eye contact, and do exactly what they say".

 

[Dorryn]

Ony if you live in New Yorkistan or the PRK

NY is like Florida compared to Illinois. NY gets a bad rap, but compared to some crazy states, we've got it pretty good!

Ive never had a gun pointed at me. However, almost all of my friends in Buffalo have been robbed at knife and gunpoint, tied up, etc. One of my friends was on the front page of the Buffalo News when they did a special on robberies, because he has been robbed so many times in the last three years that the cops wanted to know why his name kept turning up. Most of my friends live in cheaper, college areas close to "bad" areas. I pay a little extra, live alone, and live frugally in a nicer, more populated area.

People say, your things arent worth your life. But I dont want some scumbag touching anything not his. I think I might have a hard time complying, even if someone got the jump on me and disarmed me of my CCW.

 

[cookekdjr]

Had a some carjackers reaching for their guns when I pulled mine first. They decided they'd rather walk.

 

[BobMcG]

Never a gun drawn on me but of all things a hatchet, and I was unarmed at the time. I managed to break my hand in my defense but I also broke his (attacker's) head so it wasn't a total loss. He dropped like a ton of bricks, down for the count. Not a pleasant ordeal and wouldn't want to repeat it.

 

[foghornl]

Several times...but this one is sort of entertaining....

Had pulled up to a 4-way stop interestion. Guy walks up, says "Gimme a ride"
Me: "Nobody but me & family ride in this car." (He also smelled like his body-n-clothes hadn't seen running water in several weeks)
Guy: "Oh yeah? What I got in my pocket says you'll gimme a ride." and he starts fumbling around his jacket pocket.

I said nothing else, but laid the .357 Blackhawk on the window ledge

Guy: "Hey, you wouldn't shoot me, woodja?"

Me: Says nothing, thumbs back hammer on Blackhawk. Guy disappeared in less than 2 seconds.

Another time, had stopped at a traffic light. Guy yanks door open, jumps in and says "Drive, mo-fo", while pointing a very small revolver at me (a .32 Clerke). I drive, and see Police Station a couple of blocks ahead. Speed up to 50, slam on brakes (pre-ABS cars) and yank wheel hard left....passenger side of seat folds forward (2-door car) and I lean into that, while waling on said miscreant with my "The Club". At screeching sounds, several cops pour out of station. Seems the bad guy had just robbed the liquor store, but his getway driver took off without him when a cop car went by.

 

[scurtis_34471]

I had a cop pull a gun on me once, which was no fun. Long story short, I was sitting in a park with some friends when a cop car drove up. One cop got out, pulled his gun and started calling us faggots and making other crude remarks before accusing us of being druggies. This went on for about ten minutes and then we were told to disburse and they left.

I don't know if it still does, but Manchester, NH had a pretty bad police force when I was growing up. If you were young or had no money, it was pretty much open season for abuse.

 

[MD_Willington]

Yes

High school in CANADA... some punk pulled a single action colt on me, I guess he failed to realize the front of the cylinder is open and I could see it was not loaded...

lets just say he had a better understanding of why it's not nice to pull guns on people afterwards...

 

[davek]

I've got an old couple that lives across the street in their mid 70's. The old man can't hear for nothing, and is a little eccentric..but nice as anybody you'll meet. He's a retired city cop and worked in Memphis back in the bad old days of the 60's...and by "bad" I mean all the violence surrounding the Civil Rights movement. At any rate, my wife and I like to check in on them from time to time to see how they're doing. Every time you ring their doorbell when it's dark outside, you will be greeted with a loaded .357 pointed right between the eyes. It of course spooked me the first couple times he did it, but over the years, I've actually gotten used to it. I just ring the doorbell, step back, and hold my hands out to my sides until he recognizes me.

Another time, way back in '88, I spent a month in Egypt for a summer quarter class I was taking in college. One of the things each of us had to do was become an "expert" on one room in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. I got a room dedicated to Akhenaten, who was really an interesting character, but that's for another thread...

So there I was explaining all this stuff to my classmates and professor..and was even doing so well as to attract a crowd of tourists, when this group of guards come running up all pointing their old Swiss made submachine guns at my face ordering me to stop.

Seems it's terribly...terribly illegal to give tours in the Egyptian Museum without a license. My prof got everybody to calm down and explained the situation, and they were cool with it.

 

[pro2am]

I was robbed at gunpoint in the wee hours of the morning while working the counter at a convenience store. I was 18 at the time. The guy was never caught. That was over 20 years ago and I still remember some things about it like it was yesterday.

 

[Caimlas]

Only situation I've had was what I can assume to be a 'mock drive by shooting' by a couple frat boys about two years ago in (IIRC) June. I was out walking downtown, a couple blocks from my house, enjoying the weather; it was about 9pm and still bright out.

I was walking back and there was a small grey-blue 4-door (Nissan? Honda? Ford? Something like that) stopped at the stop sign, but it was more than just a "stop", and more like they were hesitating. I noticed the guys on the passenger side were looking at me, and I stopped walking for a second because their behavior was suspicious. They then accelerated quickly, coming around the corner of the intersection towards me, and the guy in the front passenger seat pulled out what looked to me to be a GLOCK and pointed it at me. He didn't shoot, but by the time he had withdrawn his hand and the gun back into the car, I'd already hunkered down behind a brick sidewalk potter and drawn my CCW pistol. I could have shot at the car, and I was ready to, but obviously I thought better of it, for quite obvious reasons.

It was a weekday, and the downtown had shut down for the evening, so there really weren't too many people around at the time; it was at an intersection near a parking garage and a small restraunt seating area/park, right next to a residential area (1 blcok away), so it wasn't too high traffic to begin with.

It wasn't until a couple seconds later (which seemed like an hour) that the adrenaline kicked in that I noticed - after I'd walked across the street. I guess I was slightly shell-shocked. I then called 911 to report the incident. Everything turned out OK, in the end, but it was heavy on my mind for quite a wihle, and I am to this day much more cautious around vehicles with passengers, even out here in SD. In general, you could say I'm in condition orange now all the time, whereas I used to be in condition yellow only most of the time. It doesn't make for going out in public/crowds a terribly enjoyable experience for me (never has been, to be honest), but it's liveable and preferable to the alternative.

 

[Caimlas]

Stood there like a lump thinking; "Is that a gun? Hey, thats a gun! Am I about to be robbed? Wow, I'm actualy getting robbed! No, I can't be getting robbed, that makes no sense! Nope, he just demanded money, I guess I'm getting robbed. This sucks!"

Hey, that's exactly like what my inner dialog went like. "Hey, do they intend harm? Oh, what's that in his hand? It couldn't be a gun. But he's pointing it like a gun, and it kinda has the shape and color of a gun. Yeah, that looks like a gun. Maybe it's an Airsoft? But I don't see an orange cone on the muzzle. But I should probably treat it like a gun, huh?"

It's amazing how much can go through your head in such a short period of time. (I'll be damned if I didn't almost enjoy it.) To this day, I don't know for certain whether or not it was a gun. But it sure did scare me just the same.

 

[Catsailor]

Once while hunting. I was 14 and was bird hunting with a friend, no luck on that day. We were going to load up on the ATV's and head home but couldn't resist the flock of nearly 100 Canadian geese in a farmers field. My friend took up a position where we expected them to fly over if spooked then I took off on the ATV to get them moving. BAD MOVE!!! The birds were barly airborn when I saw a 4X pickup closing on me fast. I quickly made for a exit from the area but caught a round of salt rock for my efforts. (Long shot for salt rock as I was wearing heavy winter clothing I barly noticed) Friend got his goose and we never invaded that farmers field again.

 

[GRB]

Ony if you live in New Yorkistan or the PRK

I live in New York and practice like this routinely. Are you saying that my practicing such, or my choice to live in NY, make me an idiot? It sure seems as if this is what you mean. If so, please take your insults elsewhere and stick to the question the poster asked in a respectable manner.Thank you.

Glenn B

 

[msimonds]

My Squad Member

In 1991:

While playing the "hurry up & wait game" in the Army during Desert Storm, I was a squad leader. Every night I had to put the members of my squad on guard duty ( I had 4 squad members ). Now being a sergeant in some of the other NCO's heads thought that made them exempt from pulling guard with their soldiers, I was not one

One of my squad members was ex-air force, having problems at home and just was not all there. Well I gave him the 12 - 2 shift and I had the 2-4 shift. I figured he did not like that. I had given these orders to my squad at around 10:30 in the morning. Around 2:30 PM that day, I was playing spades with some other NCO's on some MRE boxes, under a camo net.

I was not wearing my helmet and all of a sudden I felt a barrel on the left side of my head. It was this squad member holding his .45 Colt 1911 to my head, stating that I was being unfair about the guard duty and that he "ain't" pulling his shift. Everyone froze! My platoon sergeant was there (E-7) and two section leaders (E-6). Staying calm, my platoon sergeant talked to this soldier and after about 5 minutes was able to get him to drop his weapon.

Once the weapon was clear, we made it CLEAR (beat the crap out of him) to him that what he did was wrong.

He was court-martialed and received a dishonorable discharge. I never saw him again after that day

 

[BlackManWithAGun]

…the only time it wasn’t expected was at a range in Maryland. One of the worse ranges for cleanliness and safety is right outside of Washington, DC. I was providing instruction and was standing behind a student and was the unfortunate recipient of having a muzzle cover me one too many times by a young man without a clue, full of testosterone, false bravado and too much ammo. He was waving his pistol around in and out of the booth, shooting like a madman and talking “smack” to his buddies. I asked him to please keep the muzzle pointed downrange and away from me when he gave me the indication that I offended him. I saw it in his eyes. I slowing pushed my student into the booth out of danger and changed my stance after he moved like he was about to draw down on me. By the time he said, “what if I don’t”. I responded, “then you better be very, very fast”. It kinda killed the festive mood everyone in the range had after this exchange and the place cleared out. I made sure we were the last to leave.

I am so, so glad nothing happened. It sounds macho but was scared later. This would have happened on my time and not the governments (where I am usually covered) so I couldn’t afford the attorney, the loss of work and media attention I would need or get.