Jon Wayne Taylor and I were discussing the recent shooting at a Denver Walmart. When psycho killer Scott Ostrem opened fire, several armed innocents drew their gun. According to TTAG’s resident war hero, wrong answer . . .
JWT reckons that armed innocents should not remove their gun from their holster until they’re going to use it to shoot the bad guy or guys. Not warn or threaten them with deadly force, as in “Stop! Drop your weapon!” or “Don’t make me kill you!” Not to be ready to shoot should the situation degrade. Shoot.
“People are stupid in combat,” JWT told me. “The idea that you can move, acquire a target, assess or reassess a threat and communicate effectively all at the same time is dangerously naive . . . I’ll wait ’til the last possible second to draw my gun. But once I do, I’m shooting.”
Jon points out that giving the bad guy a chance to see your weapon is counterproductive. It’s more likely to enrage them, triggering deadly aggression. What’s more, a drawn gun creates the possibility that other armed innocents or responding police may mistake you for the bad guy. Not that that happened in Colorado, but it could.
I’m not so sure. While I understand the tactical advantages of drawandshoot, thousands of defensive gun uses end without a shot fired by the good guy (such as the Colorado crime). If I was facing an imminent, credible threat of grievous bodily harm or death, I’d rather not shoot anyone. What’s your plan?
Draw and shoot. As JWT admonishes, if you draw your weapon, the time has gone beyond assessing and talking and is time to shoot. Not to mention ‘brandishing’ and ‘threatening’ laws because you are most likely not a LEO of any color.
Besides, if talk would stop an attack, it probably wasn’t much of an attack, which you’d have noticed in the initial assessment.
How about find good cover or know where the exits are?.wherever my wife and I go,we know the exits.
Assess the situation,get out of the store,get safe and let LEO take care of it.unless you are fired upon by the BG.if you have to,shoot until the threat is ended.GTFO of the place.especially if you have your precious ones with you.
I was taught to act until the threat was no longer a threat. This means in part not unloading the entire magazine while the bad guy lies motionless on the floor, or is running away. Reassessing the situation constantly is part of that philosophy.
Move, shout, draw, ask “Is it still a threat?”, shoot if yes then ask again. I even practice putting my conceal carry back in the holster without firing a shot sometimes. Woe to the man who auto shoots, he is the man who will kill his kid when they try to sneak in late at night.
The thought that other good guys will see your gun and try to kill you is something the antis made up to justify restricting our rights. It is easily disproven by the literal millions of DGUs every year that don’t involve firing a shot.
Three people killed, my prayers go out to their families. It could have been a lot worse tho
Them damned orange plastic sights are a joke and the non fluted( cost savings) and vent rib makes them plumb fucking ugly. The pistols cool, but 9 mm.
We were taught in Oregon concealed carry classes that if you shoot without a warning odds are you’re going to jail. I suspect the same is likely true in many other states. In one class we even practiced keeping finger off trigger until we had yelled “Armed citizen! Stop!”
I suspect in the scenarios we’re discussing, that is BS. If the guy is actively shooting random people, he cannot hear a warning. After you’ve shot him enough times that he has ceased firing, *then* would be the time to issue the warning, because under the adrenalin of the moment you probably won’t remember exactly when you did it, but you are sure you did. And less of a joke, while you are calling out “Halt. I am armed. Drop your weapon or I shall fire!”, he has killed several more people.
“We were taught in Oregon concealed carry classes that if you shoot without a warning odds are you’re going to jail. I suspect the same is likely true in many other states. In one class we even practiced keeping finger off trigger until we had yelled “Armed citizen! Stop!”
ROFLMFAO…Keep yelling, it’ll get you killed one day…
“…We were taught in Oregon concealed carry classes that if you shoot without a warning odds are you’re going to jail…”
If you shoot with a warning you’re going to jail. You are responsible for every round you fire ad where it goes– either a target, a backstop, or an unarmed individual hiding where your bullet can find them. If you shoot, you will go to jail until the entire mess can be sorted out.
So you give a warning and have told the perp you are unwilling to shoot them, while they obviously have no such qualms about shooting you.
If you have to give a warning, give it as you pull the trigger.
Require a verbal warning before shooting? That is absurd. I’m going to look up the Oregon self-defense law tomorrow. I can’t imagine how that would be worded in the statute.
So we have government employee’s “Monday Morning Quarterbacking” the actions of citizens who took responsible actions to defend themselves and other innocents. Until these cops walk a mile in the shoes of a citizen they need to keep their opinions to themselves.
Forget them all, just send me one..Love the New Smith & Wesson..I have enough Ammo 😊
It seems like some carriers were seeking the threat.
My thought would be draw (if it sounded very close) while seeking cover or set cover then draw (if it sounded further away). Even further away? Get the hell out.
RF: nice “Magnificent Seven” screen capture! Great movie. I prefer it to the original.
I have a Virginia CCW permit but just moved to Ohio with new drivers license. So is my permit legal in a Ohio now.
If some dies during the commision of a felony it murder. There were several felonies committed in this circomstance!
When only the State has firearms, the People are completely at the State’s whim and mercy (also that of criminals and terrorists). We have already stupidly allowed the State(s) to infringe our right to keep and bear Arms and rendered ourselves vulnerable to advancing tyranny. The State is not our friend or protector at the local, State or Federal level. We, the People, are our own best first responders and immediate defenders. Anyone who says differently is not our friend, either, but an ally of the tyrants who shackle and deny our Liberty. Until and unless we refuse to tolerate these political tyrants and their sycophants any longer, the American Experiment in human freedom is doomed to ultimate failure.
If someone dies during the commision of a felony it is murder. There were several felonies committed in this circumstance! Not sure about multiple illegal entries is a felony, but possesion of stolen goods is, as well as possesion of a stolen firearm, and I’m sure there could be several more charges brought against someone in these circumstances.
If someone is shooting and they come by you, but your weapon is not already in your hand, ready to go, you will lose. Action beats reaction. He will have already put 2-3 rounds towards you before you can even level your weapon for the shot.
As for the police issue, proper training by both the CC’r and the police will keep both reasonably safe. Don’t point your weapon at the police, don’t point it at anything you’re not ready to destroy, and when the police tell you to put it down, do what they say.
Robert,
Be careful when asking military veterans to assess and analyze strictly civilian situations. What was common ROE in Afghanistan may get you 5 to 10 (and an empty bank account) in America. Further, what is de rigueur for an agent of the state may be harshly assessed by a DA when performed by a citizen. I am not saying that I agree with this stuff, merely making observations.
Here is a simple example. Things get bad enough for you to determine that you have to shoot. AS you are drawing, the bad guy turns and now his back is presented to you. Shoot anyway??? Not unless you can afford a dream team of lawyers. Or know the DA quite well. Or have a last name that rhymes with Clinton.
Geesh, that’s a scenario Id hate to be in. What would I do? Crawl around until I could get a clean shot probably, I just couldn’t let some nut kill people.
Nice knife! Very elegant.
Like most liberal cesspools, they want laws that make sure that all potential crime victims are at an equal disadvantage to an attacker in order to reduce their individual risk.
A beautiful American young lady is dead! The man that killed her was a criminal, in America illegally, and has been deported several times, was in a California City that decided that they were going to give refuge to illegals in spite of the law, that makes them, criminals! You see, when you deal with Californians you deal with idiots who are defiant and in this case, negligent, the young ladies father should take that city for all he can possibly get! Had they done their job correctly, the young lady would still be alive!
I think I understand JWT’s position, and I think I agree with him for the most part.
If I have to pull my gun, the time for talking is over and the time for shooting has arrived. Pulling a gun on someone without the intention of firing right now is a fool’s errand. Between drawing and shooting, the BG will have a split second to cease and desist or get dropped.
I hope the BG chooses wisely, but it’s his choice to make, just as the choice to pose a deadly threat to me was his choice. But he won’t get a warning.
I agree with your “agree but actually disagree” position. You posit that you will still be observing and evaluating after you draw. You just limit the expected interval to a few milliseconds. That seems entirely sensible. But, you knew that already. Laugh.
Stop complaining about the locks, it just makes you seem childish. It took me five minutes to remove the locks on my revolvers, there are videos on line that show how to do it, and removing the lock does not leave a hole in the frame.
It never ceases to amaze me that people who build their own ARs and load their own ammo nevertheless complain about a lock when it takes less time to remove the lock than it takes to clean the gun.
If you can take your gun down for cleaning, you can remove the lock. Easily.
I agree with you, I have a 629 and I love it. But how does removing the lock not leave a hole in the frame?
“It took Thornton Police five hours to identify the killer”
The Pulse Nightclub cops could have used that as an excuse. It took them three hours to breach.
If cops wait long enough, it’s easy to identify the BG, because everyone else is dead.
You could be more right than you know. If you wait for everybody to bleed out, well, the dead are cheaper than the injured.
It seems to me that Bloomie, DeBobo, Proconsul Cuomo-the-Yonger, and their ilk are concerned about guns because they think everybody will bullet-hose at random.
It isn’t “the people” or “the police” who should or shouldn’t be armed, but the boneheads in uniform or not shouldn’t be armed (or, really, permitted out in polite company), while the rest of us are a net gain to the world, the more capable the better for everyone else.
I suspect these overlordlings’ odd ideas about other people come from the company they keep. Too bad they weren’t at that Wally-world the other day … like they’d be caught dead (alive, actually) among the proles
Until we start putting politicians, and defiant judges in prison, this sort of horror is going to continue! Do you know when California politicians get tough on criminals? It’s when a self-described, movie-star, is affected, or a politicians child is murdered! The United States of America has been burdened by that insane asylum they call a state, for way, too long! When you have mayors, judges, and politicians, with brains destroyed by LSD, and twisted ideologies, you build a tall, concrete wall around them, and put armed guards atop that wall, and you cut off communication to that place! Our Country is full of treasonous, cock-suckers, who have discovered that money is all that matters in DC. It is so bad that the lunatics are in control of the asylum! A one-term, (absentee) senator from Kenya, by way of Indonesia, landed in Chicago, who had an anarchist mother with jungle fever, applied for, and was awarded Federal, foreign-student, grants to go to college in America! Later in his life a 1960’s domestic-terrorist, with a rich father who kept his son from prison by paying the right people, invited the half-black, dope smoking Kenyan to his home for cocaine, and cocktails. It was at that little gathering of like minded trash, that they plotted his run for President. Sounds bizarre I know, but this is America! So this Ayers fellow, a smart-ass, punk with family wealth, and an education, plotted the largest, fraud ever perpetrated against the American People! It truly was an anarchists dream team, literally! At some point this Kenyans mommie, had made acquaintances with Ayers, at some Chicago hood-rat, communist workshop. Barrack Hussein Obama, named after his Kenyan father, his mother was a white-trash, American, ho with jungle fever! So they took this skinny necked, Mule-eared, lad and made plans to take over America! They were dynamic, reaching hearts and tiny minds! It really was something brilliantly criminal to watch! He became POTUS, brought with him an administration of who’s who, in the anarchists Rolodex! I mean, they had members of the Weather-Underground, the Black-Panther-Party, The Symbionese Liberation Army, whom in the early 1970’s kidnapped Patty Hearst, (allegedly) and the old guards of the DNC, would say, and or do anything to be in power, so they fraudulently jumped on the Obama-Train! Never in the history of America, has there been such a criminal-organization! Obama didn’t know how to run a cool aid stand, but he was elected not once, but twice! He spent more taxpayer money than all former Presidents combined! He brought in the most educated lawyers, the best economists, he turned America into a cess-pool of atheists, baby murderers, child molesters, gay, lesbanic, and transgendered, freaks that would make Barnham, and Bailey, blush! This back-ally-homo, bath-house-Barry, destroyed America, we have been printing counterfeit money, 24/7/365 since he got inaugurated! They were rolling, they made Al Capone look like Mr. Rogers! They made America the most racially, divided, country on the planet! They used the Adolph Hitler playbook, to the tee! They wanted to stay for a third-term, but couldn’t swing that one, so they plotted, and plotted, then came up with a plan, they were going to have Hillary Clinton elected President as a store front, and give Obama his third term! Hillary went on her world wide shopping spree, while enjoying that, she lied to every country she touched down in! She had everyone from Vladimir Putin, to the King of Egypt salivating, she lied, and they wrote checks! She even sold Russia 30% of our uranium! She and Obama were selling weapons to ISSIS in Benghazi 🇱🇾 and told the radical Islamic jihadist not to leave any witnesses, so she had them kill (D) Chris Stevens, the US. Ambassador to Libya, and three other men there to protect the embassy! So Hillary wasn’t even concerned about campaigning she was certain to be elected, until President Elect Donald Trump blew her fraudulent ship out of the water! So every NWO, salivating terrorist country on earth got a royal screwing! Their plans to take over the world came to a halt! Now the American Citizens won’t have their guns taken away, so we can’t go forward with our plans! Can you imagine the hate they have for Obama, and Hillary? Those two can’t even stand up straight for fear of a sniper from a tree top! The point of this rather vague summary is to hopefully, remind people who love this Great Country, to get behind President Trump, 100% he needs all the help we can give him, because every Hollywood imbecile, every rock & roll geriatric, and every left-wing radical professor, wants his head, because the self-described global elitists are the ones who own every celebrity in America, and they want to own the world! Hillary and obama made promises that they didn’t keep!
Copy and pasted from my post on –Colorado Walmart’s Armed Innocents Hampered Police. Or Not.—
Personally I don’t care what the police say, or anyone else for that matter.
If I hear gunshots in a store my weapon is coming out, and me and family are quickly finding a safe exit. Very quickly and low seeking cover along the way.
If wacko shooter happens to be in my way, bad for him/her.
Otherwise we are out of there.
5 cameras lol ? The average Wal Mart has closer to 200 .
Hellfire Gen 2. The end.
This law will be thrown out at first challenge.
It is in direct violation of Amendment 8, Bill of Rights, US Constitution:
Excessive Bail, Fines, and Punishments Forbidden;
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Unless they’re paying owners a fair price to turn them in, also violates the 5th Amendment.
“And you know this because? You are clairvoyant and can guarantee this outcome?”
“What the current drug dealers, etc. do in a free market, free society is certainly not clear, and it is nobody’s business but theirs what they do anyway. Or anyone else. And the black market in drugs is only one of the problems in America today, so repealing that one thing is not going to be enough. But you might be very surprised anyway.”
You might want to quit the crack your obviously smoking you old bat!
As a former ASM for walmart and APM for Sam’s club I can tell you that, even with the low end cameras, it shouldn’t have taken that long unless the police had no idea what time the shooting occured, did not bother talking to witnesses and were drunk/stoned/concussed.
The stores I worked in had the worst cameras in the market, and I’ve helped local LEOs make arrest on organized retail crime rings so I have some experience with the equipment.
Massholes.
None of them are real.
However all of them look real enough if pointed at you by a thug.
#1 is real. I had one of those in .88 magnum.
Early reports — which are never accurate — says at least 15 shot, two or more dead plus the murderer.
One of those new M&P M2.0 compacts a couple of weeks ago. Slightly heavier than my G19 but I shoot it a bit better. Carrying it now in place of the Glock in a DeSantis IWB holster, now that cooler weather is here.