Bigger Hammer,
If you are saying he is shooting at me from 40 yards, and there is no way to escape, then yes I would shoot back. But he since he has a rifle and I have a pistol, he is more likely to win.
And yet Mr. Dicken prevailed when his opponent had a rifle and he had a pistol.
If you are saying he is at 40 yards, and shooting at or distracted by other targets, and I am just one person in a crowd of potential targets, and there is a way to escape, I would probably just try to escape.
It's obvious that we have a different ethos. I'm aware of all of the situations that Styx mentioned in his last post, just above yours. Self‒defense situations are rare in the first place. Layoff shooters are even more rare. Had the defenders in most of those situations been a little more situationally aware they might have noticed the other shooters. Don't get me wrong. These people are my heroes. They went up against evil in the protection of others. I'd like to think that I'd have seen the layoff crooks and either taken action on them, or held off on showing my hand until both shooters were in my sights. If they were just taking money from the cash registers in those robbery situations (not the active shooter situation) I probablyu would not have taken action. It's just money. AND it's not even MY money! But if they started acting violently, fear of their presence wouldn't stop me from acting, it would just change how I acted.
An active shooter is going to keep on killing until he runs out of ammunition, he's stopped by the police, or someone in the crowd stops him. If I have the opportunity to do so, I will. I know that it's possible that I'll miss a shot, so I train hard to minimize that possibility. The saying, "You miss 100% of the shots that you don't take" comes to mind. Yet, I could live with myself if I hit a bystander in that situation. I'd be trading that person's life for many others. I've seen crime scenes with multiple bodies. They left an impression.
I think the odds of a guy with a pistol versus a guy with a rifle in a gun fight favor the guy with the rifle.
In most situations, this is probably right. But if that's the situation you find yourself in, as did Mr. Dicken, you just deal with it or you die.
Sticking to the facts of the Indiana mall shooting, The shooter is busy shooting others, and you're 40 yds away. Chances are he doesn’t even know that you are there. That changes the odds significantly.
Perhaps if you had a RDS and had trained with it, you'd have the confidence that you could make a 40 yd shot even under the stress of such a situation. I'd not hesitate to do so. But even when my eyes were good, I'd hesitate to take that shot with irons. I've seen that "picture" at many matches. I know my skill level there. It ain't pretty. At one time I trained A LOT at extended distances, but I was never any good. But with the RDS and a barricade type support or from a rest, it's all but a sure thing.
I gave my brother a gun for his birthday last week. I encouraged him to get a RDS and he did. He called me last night to thank me for the gift. He'd mounted the RDS and was doing some dry firing, using the info that I'd given him on the phone and the links to the videos I've mentioned. His comment about the RDS? "This is like cheating." He was surprised that the government hadn't tried to regulate them out of the public's hands.
Of course, he's dying to get to the range. He said that in dry fire the dot seems to "magically appear" every time, on every draw. His eyes are failing too, and he was having trouble using iron sights.
