Shots Fired / Bar Security v Enraged patron / Coweta County Georgia 21 August

I found this article about an event which occurred 19 August here in Georgia.

The unique thing about this news piece is the station integrated the Bars’ security video with the Reporter’s descriptive of events. I’ll mention here, at the point fire breaks out, the video stops.

Also, while a good guy with a gun stopped what could have become a mass shooting, He didn’t come out on the good end of the confrontation. My understanding is he does survive but is in critical care at a nearby trauma center recovering from many gunshot wounds. The article reports the assailant has been aprehended.

Deputies credit armed employee with stopping potential mass shooting at bar

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Hope the good guy recovers fully. He’s the hero!

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Something everyone that carries should keep in mind. Once you decide to act as the sheepdog during a shooting event, this becomes MUCH more likely.

Avoid
Escape
Defend, either by choice or necessity.

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If we take the video of the interaction as a training opportunity, the good guy appears to make a couple of mistakes from which we can learn. 1) It seems he verbally challenged the adversary before he established a position with cover and ability to produce an effective range of fire.

Earlier he realized the situation with the assailant could go sideways and withdrew his rifle from it’s secured location in the trunk of his car, moving it to the backseat. Later when others had returned into the Bar and before the assailant has returned with his weapon, Our hero is effectively performing over-watch but is unarmed. It is then reported in the narration the assailant has gone to arm himself and apparently discharges a firearm as he is coming back through the parking lot toward the back entrance.

It is at this time the good guy reaches into his back seat and arms himself. The opponent, not recognizing there is someone sitting in a car as he passes, is holding his weapon and has already demonstrated earlier in the evening that he is highly agitated, readily looking for a confrontation and appears to have adrenaline pumping throughout his body as demonstrated by his literal springing jumps, rapidly repeated and as high as a foot into air while verbally engaging (shouting at?) the identified security team in front of him.

2- Instead of shouting out and verbally challenging the foe from where he’d been sitting, our good guy could have slipped out of his vehicle and found a location where he could present arms, perhaps moving to the side and back of the vehicle where there is some cover beside the rear wheel. IF he felt he had time and opportunity moving around the drivers’ door he could have assumed effective cover beside the engine / front wheel with an excellent field of aim at the opponent. However, this could have been more difficult , possibly causing him to be exposed before he was ready.

The point I’m making is our friend needed to be already positioned as best he could to cover the assailant before notifying him he was being challenged. The assailant, upon hearing someone shout at him, was already supercharged with anger, adrenaline and likely at least alcohol, immediately discharges his gun multiple times, instinctively firing upon the line of “sight” his hearing tells him his threat is coming from. He also, be it knowledge or dumb luck does not consider the vehicles windshield and bodywork any kind of impediment to his fire at our hero. It is entirely possible one or more of these initial rounds finds their target and wounds the good guy.

All the while our good guy is only now attempting to exit the vehicle. His weapon is useless as he is not pointing at the opponent and he can’t bring his weapon to bear until he completes his exit. This is the precious time he does not have. The assailant walks toward his opponent at this point, while our good guy is moving toward the back of his vehicle on the drivers’ side. It is unknown if the good guy got any rounds on target at this point. It is a certainty the bad guy could have, easily. Especially if our good guy was previously wounded, didn’t expect the immediate viciousness of the encounter, and is only now trying to figure out how to win a fight for his life.

3 - While our good guy is in every consideration a “hero” for the unknowing people he is saving inside the bar because he has turned the anger, ire, and frustration of the assailant upon himself, he has in nearly every way failed the goals he should have had from the beginning:

  • How do I make sure to make it home tonight?
  • How do I control the encounter so I can neutralize the threat as quickly as possible with a strong consideration for my safety?

Here are some thoughts - Before anything gets started but I’m expecting something to go sideways, what is my tactical situation? Where is the trouble going to come from? Where am I? And what can I do to get to cover quickly if things go bad? Where else can I find cover if the foe comes from somewhere else? What can I do with my own firearm to be ready to deploy it quickly, knowing what my lines of fire can be from here and where can I NOT fire toward should a fight break out? Where is my PHONE; and why haven’t I already called 911? (I mean seriously if I’ve got my gun next to me and it’s a long gun - something is seriously pearshaped and I need HELP - NOW!

  • Understand, someone who is so hopped up and begging someone/anyone for a fight that such a person, armed with a firearm, is literally on a hair-trigger and will most likely shoot first and think about what’s going to happen tomorrow… maybe never. (This is assuming the bad guy is a ‘normal’ under the influence encounter. It does not speak at all toward how a sociopath would approach such an instance of combat.)

Anyone else see something I haven’t noted yet? Come on and toss it out. This guy gave us a real-life training opportunity and we owe it to him to learn from what he did: right and wrong. If we don’t learn from an example of selfless heroism so freely offered, we are literally prone to go through such a situation reliving the mistakes he has already offered to teach us from.

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Nice analysis and I absolutely agree we owe the hero a debt of learning from him.

Thoughts:

  • that guy is seriously jacked up… why weren’t the police already called? You throw the guy out several times, hes making threats and trying to fight his way back in? Somebody dial 911 already.
  • the hero doesn’t stage his firearm where he can use it. It’s in the back seat, he gets in the front and has to reach over for it.
  • the hero waits too long to arm himself.
  • the hero puts himself in a position (inside a car) where he can’t maneuver his long gun to get it pointed in the threat direction.
  • the hero may have done the right, and brave, thing to save others by calling out (to) the bad guy and distracting him from where he was headed. But his rifle was pointed 180 away from the threat and he had no room to maneuver.
  • I suspect the hero was hedging between looking like a potential aggressor by having his rifle fully ready and visible, and trying to prepare… trying to not look like the problem. The move from back of vehicle to back seat to front seat looks like tamped down escalating alarm to me.
  • a long gun is the wrong firearm for the cramped quarters… if he didn’t have a hand gun, he should have avoided space too close to move in.
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