I may have over-reacted...

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SuperNaut

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So I'm walking from work out to my car @ 6:00PM. On a Friday our parking lot is a ghost town by 4:00PM. Anyway, I always park my car at the far end of the lot in an attempt to get a little exercise. So I'm about 25 feet away when a truck comes hauling ass down the the main road (I mean really hauling ass, probably double the posted 35 m.p.h. limit). As the truck passes a guy leans out and yells something. I keep walking to my truck and as I'm opening the door the guy in the truck slams on his brakes and flips a U and heads back.

Something ain't right.

I have my PX4 in a holster under the driver seat so I pull it out and stand behind the driver-side door. The guy comes burning down the street and stops in the middle of his lane. Normally this street is quite busy, but again because it is Friday, it is a ghost town. He stopped at kind of an angle to me and a strip of curb and lawn separates us. I can now see that there are two guys in the truck. I'm thinking "cripes, if they both get out I'm in real trouble."

I step one step back away from the door so that they can see that I have my PX4 at low ready. And I get a reaction I really didn't expect; they both just sit and stare at me. Now I'm thinking "If they come out, I'll have to drop the passenger-side guy first." As I'm thinking this I'm looking right into the eyes of the driver. Then the driver slowly, very slowly, drives past and on down the street. I watch to make sure that he isn't going to pull into the parking lot and I get in my truck and I drive a very different way home.

I may have over-reacted, but the whole situation was too weird. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure they weren't going to ask for directions.

scenario.png
 
Sounds scary. I would have had my firarms ready also. I would have been shaking with fear. But that is just me. That was not normal behavior???? Who knows what they were doing or going to do?
 
Sounds to me like you went from level yellow to orange to red in the perfectly proper order. Alert-specific threat-ready. One of those incidents where a handgun prevented a crime without being fired.
 
+10 You made it home.
+10 No one got hurt.


-1 You didn't call the police.

Somewhere, some officer might be taking a report right now, about some crazy man, obviously dangerous, who pulled a gun on two guys who got lost, and stared down the driver. All they wanted, were directions. Slowly, the two innocent men drove away slowly, as to not provoke the man.




Its all about who calls first...


Edited to add : I just read that you were in a company lot. Depending on company procedure, that might not be a good call to make.
 
Personally, I have no problem with what you did.

Now brandishing a weapon is illegal in many places in certain situations, but I don't think you were brandishing...you didn't pull your gun out and point it at them, you just showed them not to screw with you.

Sounds to me like they were up to no good.
 
Holy cow! :what::what::what: You did well, but yes, yoiu should have called the police. That is incredibly weird behavior; it deserved a call at least to CYA.

Springmom
 
Well exposing your gun to them is the only thing I would question. But I dont get excited about much ever. So I read your post a bit diffrent than it hapened probably. what is important here is you are safe no shots fired and every one got to go home. I would take a mental note of the guys and their truck and remember them for a while.


But all in all I have dont the same in the past once where I was aproached and a guy stuck his hand in his pocket and grabed sat something. I drew down on him and he ran off. Could of been a pack of smokes for all I know.

-1 You didn't call the police.
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I have seen this work as much against some as it has for others. I would have skipped out on calling police myself.
 
I didn't call the cops because I was really second guessing my reaction. I kept thinking "was what just happened what I think happened?"

I still kind of am...
 
Mistake

Your "overreaction" was drawing your weapon unprovoked. Perhaps they were miscreants with bad intentions. But perhaps they were also just lost or looking for an address. They technically could have called in a complaint and the police would haven been out there after you, not them.

I would reserve actually drawing a weapon until someone approaches or makes a real threat. Those kind of encounters as you had can be disconcerting. But showing the weapon does tthree things:

Let's your adversary know you are armed. You lose your tactical advantage of surprise and shock.

Possibly provokes them to action, or to report you as threatening them

Puts you in an unnatural position that you have a weapon drawn but do not know quite what to do with it.

I hope that encounter was a unique one for you:) Good Luck!
 
Your "overreaction" was drawing your weapon unprovoked.
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Well maybe not so much that never a crime in having something in hand so to speak but revealing it there is the thing.

I say take this experience and learn well from it. If I can ask the OP what have you learned?
 
lets face it folks, they weren't going to ask for directions. Really, most people who are lost go under the speed limit, not above it. Also, they don't yell at you, flip a bitch, and come back and stop right next to you.

Sometimes you have to pick up on the minor details. Thats what SuperNaut did, and he reacted appropriately.

Aggression can be detected from 99% non-verbal communication.
 
Mistake Your "overreaction" was drawing your weapon unprovoked.
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I disagree, he was provoked by the suspicious activity of the vehicle. They were driving aggressively and screamed at him. Drawing the weapon when they first went by would have been precipitous. When they slammed on brakes performed an aggressive u-turn and then stopped next to him in the middle of the lane, his actions appear very waranted. Remember, aggressive behavior is one of the precursors to violent action. Sounds to me like these guys were looking for a fight and he convinced them he wasn't an easy target. Don't know that I'd have shown them the weapon though. Be ready yes, show your hand prematurely and you loose suprise.
 
good you have learned somthing use this for the next time if an incident should ever hapen again

lets face it folks, they weren't going to ask for directions. Really
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totally agree
 
I might have waited a little longer before showing the gun depending upon what was said after they stopped. Perhaps besides getting your gun, you could also have started your vehicle. Many time flight is the smarter choice than fight. If one or both started to exit their truck, you could have yelled, "What do you what with me?" with a tone of authority, but not hostility. If you don't like the answer, or if they don't answer at all, then it's time to bug out. You certainly could have driven back to your work place. Very unlikely they would have followed you to an occupied area if their intentions were hostile. It just wouldn't be worth the risk for them.

K
 
Teuthis, hauling donkey in a deserted area is hardly 'looking for an address', and their behaviour towards the Supernaut was hardly innocuous.
Something ain't right.
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Bingo!! One has to go with one's gut, and my gut would have been bright orange.

I'm with Springmom, the only thing Supernaut maybe did 'wrong', was not calling the cops, because he did, indeed maybe brandish, had the wierdos call him in, it could have been a problem. And I would have gotten outa there ASAP.
 
for him to have stopped at an angle and not in the direction of traffic flow would have been plenty for me to assume that he was hostile and i would have taken very similar actions... perhaps keeping my gun out of sight until i was very sure... but i wasnt there....

from your diagram, you had few easy escape routes and they had an easy entry point to come after you in their vehicle if you had decided to flee on foot or by getting in your car... its possible they could have entered the lot and blocked you in before you could have moved... of course you could have then gone over the curb, but thats not ideal either...

you did fine, and probably handled it much better than most would
 
SuperNaut - Whatever anyone says, whether or not you were actually right or wrong, doesn't matter. What matters is that if nothing else you learn from this, and try to discern what you should do differently next time (if there is one).

That being said, if I had been in your situation, things would have gone like this:

After the dude in the car yells at me, and starts to bust a U, I get to my vehicle and lock the door. If they want to approach me, they're welcome to, but they'll have to talk to me through a partially-closed window. That way, not only do I have access to my firearm, I have the benefit of a nice solid steel car door in between them and me in case their idea included a knife or other contact weapon.

If they do want to talk (need directions, whatever) like I said, they're welcome to. But the doors would be locked and the window cracked enough to converse through, and that's it.

If things go sideways, I drive the hell off. Period. Escape the situation, and as soon as possible call the cops. Outside of your car you are vulnerable. Inside, you have many, many more options.

As far as showing them the pistol - it wouldn't have been my first choice, especially if they were still in the truck and not acting obviously aggressive towards me (my standards are possibly different than others in that regard, but whatever) because by doing so, I feel that *I* would have been the one escalating the encounter, at that point. I am of the school of thought that a ccw firearm is a last ditch, rather than a "check out what I have, you better back off" type of tool. Once again, some may disagree, but whatever.

Overall, you did what you thought was right *at the time*, and that's nothing to be ashamed of. Many people wouldn't have had the presence of mind to even get that far, ya know?

Don't beat yourself up about it - what's done is done. Live, learn, and all that stuff. :D
 
If the hair on your neck is going up, there's usually a good reason for it.

I would have done what you did, and I do not think you over-reacted. Like a couple of folks have mentioned, I might have waited for a more overt display of aggressive behavior on their part before I displayed my weapon, but I damn sure would have had it ready, displayed or not.

I say all this having had the luxury of several minutes to mull it over without any heightened stress levels. You did not have that luxury.
 
It doesn't sound like you did anything wrong at all. I do not agree with the position that you should have "held off." There was absolutely nothing that indicated that they had any peaceful intentions, and you were under no obligation to wait until they spun their car at you or got out to beat you. You prudently and successfully defused what could have been a very ugly situation, before it had the chance to become any uglier. You drew at the critical moment: when they were sizing you up and making their final calculations of what they were going to do. Your timely display of the weapon caused them to have some extra data to take into account: that you were armed and not an easy target.

-Sans Authoritas
 
I was almost thinking the reason they left so slowly was that maybe one guy was memorizing your plates but I'm thinking not because of the time of day you last posted.
 
I really don’t see much wrong with what you did. Fact is, you were the one in the hot seat. I think the best way to constructively critique the situation is to ask yourself the “what ifs”.

If you were to call the PD and report, would you have gotten in trouble for brandishing? If the answer is no, then you did fine on that score.

Could you have safely and successfully extricated yourself from the situation without brandishing the firearm, and does local/state law demand that you do so? If the answer to the first part is “Yes”, then it probably would have been the best option. Remember, Harold Fisch had no witnesses to back up his story, even though the investigating officers ruled it SD. It’s always best to avoid if possible, but don’t do so at the unnecessary risk of safety. Also, if you can’t avoid, hope you have plenty of independent witnesses to back up your story.

As for “Showing your gun too soon resulting in the loss of tactical surprise”, well… people can second-guess it all day long but, It Worked. Nuf said.

It’s easy for you and everyone else to nitpick any mistakes you may have made, but the bottom line is that, “you made it home safely, and without legal complication”. Life isn’t perfect, and to expect you to perform in a textbook manner when you’re startled, alerted, afraid, under an “adrenalin rush”, etc… just isn’t being realistic unless you train for it daily. Besides, even those who train don’t really know how they’ll react until they’ve been tested.
 
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