Masad Ayoob advocates shouting: DON’T. TOUCH. THAT. WEAPON. (Even if they don’t have a weapon as they will assume that you assume they do have a weapon.)
Enunciate every word and full stop between words to ensure they are articulated well.
I’ve been close to being involved in two vehicle accidents recently. My wife was in shock that I never honked my horn. I never thought to do it.
I surmise from this that I am unlikely to give verbal commands in a deadly threat encounter. Yelling at people is rarely my go to. Thank you @WellBonded and @Shamrock for mentioning this. Good flag for me.
[quote=“Les23, post:27, topic:103775”]The catch… you don’t know which of the 5 civilians is the attacker.
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Then how would you defend yourself, even if you shot the correct person shooting the others will send you to prison for a long maybe life or maybe the needle.
To me that seems like a bad choice.
And as for shock and awe, on the street is not the same as on the battlefield and the rules are totally different.
On the battlefield most everyone is armed on the street very few people are armed and deliberately shooting unarmed people will land you in prison and with the loss of wages and the fact that you will be considered unemployable there goes everything you worked for, many times including your family.
In my opinion shoot all of them and let G*d sort it out is a foolish choice.
Plus how do you think it would out if one of the dirtbags you shot was a undercover LEO?
Bottom line is you walked away from this encounter unscathed physically and legally. Well done. You won. Thank you for sharing your encounter to help the rest of us learn.
If I knew he was following me and if I knew I didn’t have time to get in my car and close the door, I hope I would not have stopped at my car. Stopping allows him time to catch up to me. if I am with my family, running away seems like a less likely option. It would seem that continuing to move would be a good option. Move to a place with lots of light (if dark) and lots of people. Where possible, put objects between him and you like other vehicles, etc. If at night, use of a tactical light will let him know you are aware of is presence even if not shined directly on him. Sweeping the area he is in might make sense and let him know you know he’s there. It should also indicate that you have some gear with you and finding an easier target might be a better choice of the victim selection process. Of course, that might also escalate depending on how it’s done and his personality/intent.
The Florida Legislature passed and the Governor signed into a new one that clearly states if you are in your car and become surrounded or you life is threatened you can drive over the trouble makers.
The law was enacted to try and prevent law abiding who might not even be armed t use their vehicle as a weapon.
I have had several instructors give different recommendations but it is hard to argue with Masad Ayoob!
I would prefer to use something along the lines of “back off” or” that’s close enough” for someone approaching that I am not certain is a clear threat. All of the trainer recommendations I have gotten agree not to use the word gun or knife because with the adrenaline rush you may default to one of those when they have the other or none at all. So I like the “don’t touch that weapon” recommendation for a threat that is clearly making an aggressive move.
I also tend to not beep at or verbally confront people. I am trying to ad the verbal command to my draw training to make it an automatic response. Makes having a generic, multi scenario appropriate, single response important.
I was longer than second it took him a few seconds to realize where my hand was and a little more to compute what that meant, however he was on my weak side in what little time it would have taken to attack me he would have ended up shot, even if I was injured.
In the end by giving him some time and the option of running I didn’t have to take a life something I never want to do.
Yea I would win legally but I would loose real badl mentally, taking a life seems easy on a keyboard and some of the answers posted here reflect that, but I never want to do it and will do everything I can to avoid killing someone.
However in Florida we as law abiding citizens do have a law that protects us quite a bit, if a life is taken or a person is just wounded that person or the persons family cannot Crump up and sue the shooter for anything if the shooting is justified, not for injuries, inability to work or even a wrongful death claim, the shooter is protected.
Mas’s reasoning (and he had several commands he taught us for different scenarios) also included hard consonants that were easily understood. The letter “D” in “don’t” is a hard consonant unlike other letters that get mushed together.
He also advocates for things like “call the police” after a shooting because 911 isn’t the right number in some countries and “police” is a similar word in other foreign languages so if a non-native English speaker is around, you are more likely to be understood.
If possible, I would escape to avoid conflict every time! Not only would that show that you tried to avoid confrontation if the perp were yo follow you and you ultimately had to defend yourself. Regardless of stand-your-ground laws, that shows well in court. More importantly, I would try to avoid conflict at all cost because I would NEVER want to deal with the aftermath of shooting and possibly killing someone, regardless of how justified I may be.
That’s on him not the members of the forum, if he wants to walk into a semi-private club sit down and interject himself without getting a feel how the conversion is going he’s probably going to get pushed back a perch.
It is not on the members to change their ways to match his, he needs to change his ways to fit in.
And unlike on TV bad people may not being a threat when shot only 2 times, a person needs to be trained to continue shooting until the threat is no longer a threat.
Typical training is to engage a series of threatening targets and get a good score on each with 2shots at a time, history is replete with reports of people doing as they where trained who fired 2 shots and see what happens only to discover things are getting worse
That doesn’t cut it nor does trying a head shot which is too dangerous for innocents down range, under stress it is too tough to get a good head shot and a miss and hit can equate to along time in prison for the shooter.
The same applies to “shoot him in the groin or the legs”.
The legs like the head is too easy to miss and in most case’s there is not enough mass in the groin to stop a bullet, both of those may cause a undesired downrange hit and a wold of bad things for the shooter.
most that have been in combat know how fast things happen, and that killing will change you, that said at 3 feet get cover if knife is out draw aim hope he runs but if not fire till the threat is not a threat anymore.
Living in a state where crime is still relatively rare (so far) I try to observe what’s going on around me, particularly when going from point A to my vehicle or other destination and “wargaming” possible scenarios. But I will acknowledge that I can’t anticipate every possible situation. That being said, I recognize the fact that, as a 72 YO male that cannot run and missing half a lung to cancer, there are 3 possible reactions to a threat. Those 3 being 1) Fight, 2) Flight or 3) Freeze. Depending on the situation, my first thought would probably go to Fight since if I chose Flight, I would probably be good for about 20’ before it devolved into Fight anyway when they caught up with me so I might as well get it over with while I still have breath to resist. I’m working on suppressing “Freeze” as an option…
this cannot be said enough.
