Okay.
We have discussed that question many times.
Usually, the discussion gets into whether or not the defender may be able to shoot first.
But of course that is only the first question, and the answer to the second is "probably not".
It's Testy Out There
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We have discussed that question many times.
Usually, the discussion gets into whether or not the defender may be able to shoot first.
But of course that is only the first question, and the answer to the second is "probably not".
Terry Vincent
Member
You may want to talk with Lance Thomas regarding your thoughts on this matter.
My late father was a bus driver for Bi State Development Agency who have operated the buses in the St Louis Metro area since about 1962. Back in the days when people still used cash money for things like bus fares, the drivers made change. They even had a fair box that would make change. Towards the late 1960s there was a spate of armed robberies of the drivers. Many of the drivers took to carrying guns. A friend of my dad's was killed by an armed robber when he tried to draw on the robber. He died for maybe $80 in change. I still remember going to the funeral home with my mom and dad.
Let's look at the dynamics of the situation as described in the OP:
This is a pretty vague description. We don't know anything more then a customer pointed a gun at someone wearing a mask. We don't know if any words were exchanged, we don't know the distance involved, we just know that there was a gun pointed.
We do know that drawing on a drawn gun is a last ditch defense that fails more then it succeeds. It's quite possible that it may be the only way to survive, but it's much more likely that de-escalating the situation or fleeing is the best option. Lets look at another similar situation. You are in a convenience store standing at the counter and an armed robber comes in, pushes you to one side and covers you and the clerk. Do you draw then or do you wait and see what transpires? If you draw then there is a good chance an armed robbery is going to turn into a double homicide with you as one of the victims. It's a hard call to make. Personally, I would wait and only draw if the armed robber decided to move me and the clerk into the cooler or took some other action that made me believe that starting a gunfight was the only chance of coming out of the situation unharmed. There is no right or wrong answer, it's going to depend on what you perceive the threat is when you are confronted with it.
As a rule of thumb though, it's always best to avoid the fight if possible.
I would never draw conclusions from a tiny data sample.
herrwalther
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I have seen too many instances of stabbings, assaults, or shootings over wearing or not wearing a mask. Wear one or don't depending on what your locality and conscious dictate. Above all, avoid confrontation. Sometimes an apology and moving out of someone's way is all that is needed to avoid escalating a fight. If a fight finds you, respond with appropriate force.
Terry Vincent
Member
Lance’s discussion has considerable relevancy and greatly contributes to this topic. Moderator White is on point when he presented the conclusion there is no correct answer due to the totality of circumstances because it would vary from scenario to scenario. Forecasting a situation and drawing a conclusion becomes impossible as demonstrated in Moderator White’s presentation of his father’s friend’s death. Limited facts to make a conclusion on the outcome and other alternatives that may or may not have been realized is fruitless.
A bad guy points a gun at you, and is too far away for you to grab the weapon, but way to close for him to miss is a testy scenario. You, and you alone, will make your decision(s) that will guide your response to the threat. I would not be inclined to tell anyone how to react when they find themself injected into such a deadly situation. However, I am confident I know what my response would be.
Trunk Monkey
member
Based on your scenario you're not shooting someone over a face mask dispute. You're shooting them because they drew on you.
Yes indeed.
If I thought hat I could shoot him first and that that would most probably prevent him from shooting me, that is likely what I would do.
ButI have seen to many videos of attackers continuing after absorbing five or six shots or more to have much confidence in the latter.
Terry Vincent
Member
Depends on what caliber and points of impact employed and the attacker’s determination (which we won’t know until the rounds go down range).
I don’t know how many fire fights you experienced, but I do know my empiricism to not be unusual for my profession. Multiple hits in rapid succession to the plural cavity with service caliber weapons are reliable endings to the conflict.
azrocks
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Don't be there. Don't let it get to that point. Don't escalate. De-escalate. Walk away. Say I'm sorry. Beg forgiveness. Whatever it takes to avoid unnecessary confrontation with people allowing their emotions to override their frontal cortex.
But once you've done all that and you're still getting drawn on, if you're not taking immediate action, you've failed in preparedness / training IMO.
Not saying that action necessarily has to be drawing yourself, but it sure as heck isn't standing there stunned hoping the nut in front of you isn't crazy enough to pull the trigger. He's already proven he's got a screw loose by drawing in the first place. I wouldn't bet my life hoping he's only half-way crazy.
But once you've done all that and you're still getting drawn on, if you're not taking immediate action, you've failed in preparedness / training IMO.
Not saying that action necessarily has to be drawing yourself, but it sure as heck isn't standing there stunned hoping the nut in front of you isn't crazy enough to pull the trigger. He's already proven he's got a screw loose by drawing in the first place. I wouldn't bet my life hoping he's only half-way crazy.
Trunk Monkey
member
I realize I'm reading into this because we don't have a lot of information on The Mask Avenger but there are WORLDS of difference between a violent criminal offender who commits armed robberies for a living and who has probably been in an armed conflict or two before he ran into you and a fat Rambo wannabe who probably has no training beyond BRM and a Hunter's Safety Course which was all he needed to get a CHP and who is probably carrying a Taurus in a SERPA.
The problem is we don't have enough information to draw any real conclusion. I'm fairly certain Fat Rambo didn't just randomly throw down on the first person he saw with a mask. SOMETHING led up to this and I'm certain there were opportunities to disengage and deescalate. We just don't know what they might have been.
Lotta truth to that.
AlexanderA
Member
Maybe you have to try to divine the motives of the person who's drawing a gun on you. (Yes, I know, we are not all trained psychologists.) If he's trying to rob you of money, maybe it's best just to give it to him to avoid getting killed. On the other hand, if he's acting out of personal animus (wants you dead) or, worse, acting out of ideological animus (hates everything you stand for politically), the time has come to shoot, because you won't get a second chance.
That said, there's a lot we can do ahead of time to avoid finding ourselves in the latter two situations. Basically, don't make either personal or political enemies.
That said, there's a lot we can do ahead of time to avoid finding ourselves in the latter two situations. Basically, don't make either personal or political enemies.
I'm not sure about caliber, but the number of hits and the points and angles of impact will indeed be known later.
Well. yeah, but the important question is is one of timeliness--of whether your hits will prevent him from shooting you.
Hangingrock
Member
One may place their selves in jeopardy by simply being in the in the wrong place at the wrong time. Practicing the life style of avoidance, of stupid people, places and things helps to diminish the chance occurrence of violent confrontations. With that said, there is always the what ifs. When the sun goes down and the moon comes up I'm at home.
Terry Vincent
Member
Well. yeah, but if I don’t shoot I give him all the opportunity for an unfettered assault. He who hesitates is lost, as the saying goes. I would not recommend standing in the kill zone like a deer in the headlights hoping the truck stopped. Nor would I recommend believing persuasive dialogue would be useful when confronted with great bodily injury or death.
Please submit the list of videos you have viewed depicting suspects shot multiple times and still continue their aggressive behavior as noted in your post #33.
Good Ol' Boy
Member
Avoiding confrontation seems to be the subject at hand.
I dont wear a mask anywhere. Most places I choose to go dont care. If I were to be confronted by a "Karen" then I would just extricate myself from the situation.
If a SD scenario was forced on me before I could leave than I would act accordingly.
Seems quite ridiculous that such situations might occur over such frivolous things but such are the times we live in.
I dont wear a mask anywhere. Most places I choose to go dont care. If I were to be confronted by a "Karen" then I would just extricate myself from the situation.
If a SD scenario was forced on me before I could leave than I would act accordingly.
Seems quite ridiculous that such situations might occur over such frivolous things but such are the times we live in.
There is plenty of documentation of people absorbing multiple hits and continuing to act. All you really have to do is read MOH and Silver Star citations from just about any conflict. If you want to look towards criminal actors as being more representative of what the armed citizen might face, you can start with the infamous 1986 FBI Miami shootout. Matix received his fatal wound early in the right and remained functional long enough to kill 3 FBI agents. There is the shootout in the Chicago Federal Courthouse from the same era where a federal prisoner disarmed a Deputy US Marshal in a elevator and took something like 14 9mm hits before a court security officer finally put him down in the driveway. There are many more examples out there.
People argue online about the best caliber and round for a reason. That reason is that handguns are not reliable fight stoppers. You just can’t count on putting your assailant down with anything less then a central nervous system hit. And the designers of the human body decided to protect the central nervous system pretty well. Barring a good hit to the central nervous system you are relying on exsanguination to stop your assailant. During the FBI Miami shootout a Winchester Silvertip from SA Jerry Dove’s 9mm auto hit Matix in the aorta. You would think that would be the perfect shot, but Matix remained on his feet and in the fight long enough to kill 3 agents after Dove shot him.
No one knows why some people can take multiple lethal hits from weapons of large enough caliber to use for self defense and other people drop dead right there when hit by a .25 auto.
There are no magic bullets and the fight isn’t over until it’s over.
Terry Vincent
Member
if you lack confidence in your weaponry and/or your skills, why do you go armed? Are the videos you reference the norm, or those isolated, small samples mentioned in your post about Lance Thomas? Moderator White came up with two, how about some more?
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azrocks
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It's just life & death, right? I just lost my father to Coronavirus. Fell, broke his hip, and ended up in the hospital. He spent a month in the medical system between different facilities, but thanks to the disease I couldn't visit him once. Somewhere along the line he contracted COVID. When I finally did get to see him it was at a COVID-positive hospice facility. By that time, he was unable to talk. For 7 days he lingered on drowning in his own fluids before passing away before my eyes. Then I get to come home and go into quarantine myself, isolated from what family remains.
I'm not a Karen. Karen hasn't realized that no matter how loud you scream, you can't fix stupid, selfish, or immoral.
Terry Vincent
Member
Avoidance is not the issue. The original question was how long to wait when an aggressive, hostile adversary is pointing a gun at you, threatening to kill you. The OP wanted input regarding how to evaluate the scenario and what action to implement to reach a desirable conclusion.
NedNederlander
Member
I don't want to derail the topic but... There's no standard time frame definition that I know of as to what constitutes continued aggressive behavior after being shot 5-6x, but I would think a reasonable expectation would be that the threat is over immediately (falling to the ground with no further movement), and any further actions (even if for just a few more seconds) means you've still got work to do to end the threat. Seconds count in a life or death situation and it ain't over till it's over. There are a plethora of videos showing just about anything and everything about how these situations can play out. Here's a good example I think should answer your question
entropy
Member
Talk in an attempt to deescalate, create distance towards cover, (the cover you bookmarked in your mind, right?) if they follow with gun still drawn, get behind cover, draw, and make ready. Hope I never have to do it. If close and they are still closing, get inside them, control their weapon. Again, not easy, but you may not be given a choice. Another one I'd rather not be tested on.
AlexanderA
Member
I keep telling myself that I have enough situational awareness to identify a threat before it becomes a threat, and to get the hell out of there. But the older I get, the more lapses I seem to have. We cannot be 100% on alert constantly, regardless of age.
That's the old story of the "Appointment in Samarra."
If I had to take a wild guess I'd say it's quite likely that the dude did not point his gun at the mask wearer because he/she was wearing a mask but probably because the mask wearer confronted the non mask wearer about the lack of a mask. I know this isn't about masks, but I say this to emphasize that one important way to avoid confrontation is to mind your own business.
I would not assume that, but I would also not automatically go to guns. Many (I would venture to say most) handgun carriers don't think about the fact that if they get in a shooting, they'll be in a fight. That doesn't mean that a gun is the best solution in every case.
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