http://youtu.be/pTF0HneXa2w

I don’t know the backstory to this one. The aggressor has a South African accent and claims the security guard pepper sprayed his kid. Other than that I got nothing. Save this: the security guard did the right thing by using the van as a blocking device. I used this same technique to avoid getting hit by an RPG once. (Brian! Give me back my damn keyboard!) This is a particularly useful technique when  . . .

you’re in a parking lot, about to get into your car and a bad guy is approaching. You don’t have enough time to enter the car, lock the doors, start up the vehicle and get away. You don’t have enough time to get to your concealed firearm. Use the car (or cars) as blocking device until you can draw your weapon or head for the hills – if possible.

When it comes to facing a lethal threat, distance is your friend. Distance + intervening solid object is even better. Cars and trees are ideal. But anything that keeps a bad guy or guys from being able to make physical contact is a very good thing indeed.

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25 COMMENTS

  2. That guy was an idiot…right or wrong he wouldn’t be doing his pepper-sprayed daughter any good if he were shot dead. Aggressively walking towards someone who has drawed down down you isn’t a very smart move.

  3. I’m sure the ~cop~ security professional feared for his life and was completely jusified in spraying the 2-year-old. She probably had a long criminal history. Thugs usually do. Good shoot.

  4. RF –

    I know a South African of Dutch decent, and he sounds nothing like that guy.

    Was that guy South African of British decent?

  5. Based on his over-the-top and not very logical response in the face of a drawn weapon you have to ask yourself exactly what happened that the security guy thought it necessary to pepper-spray him in the first place?

  7. The guy who got sprayed clearly does not know how the game is played. You wait many months or even a year to get even , then the guy will never connect the dots.

    Then you do so late night or very early morning, one thing I love about deer season I’m up hours before anyone else is out and about.

  8. South Africa is going to have a lot more of these videos and much worse coming out. Right now the 10% of the population that is Dutch/English is under sustained attack. They are leaving as we speak. The highest rate of those killed as a percentage are white farmers, until that is the government conveniently stopped keeping records of crime based on race. The Boers can be tough if they put their minds to it. We shall see.

    • I’m not surprised. White Africans are in the same situation as European Jews: perpetual outsiders.

  9. In the movie version, or the one we often see on youtube, the uniformed guy with the gun assumes the stance, gun leveled at the aggressor, shouts at him to comply (get on the ground, hands up, etc., etc.) and then an invisible line gets crossed and the aggressor gets shot. The whole encounter with an angry , loud, perhaps threatening citizen, is to go into you-are-about-to-get-shot-dead-mode with all to predictable results. Except in this case, Mr. uniform chose not to do that. Instead, he kept moving around the van, keeping his distance, remain vigilant, and all the while allowing Mr. out-of-control to wear himself—and not get himself killed. Mr. uniform handily defused a bad situation which, with many people (not just cops) might have gone very wrong. After all was said and done both parties could just walk away. I call that an A+ save.

    • Well said–and you even used the right word (“defused” instead of the ever-popular and wrongly-applied “diffused”). Bravo!

  10. :I used this same technique to avoid getting hit by an RPG once . . . while I was rescuing a puppy.”

    How could you forget the puppy?

  11. I’m less interested in the self defense topic of blocking and more interested in the details and backstory of this video.

  12. Trying to gain distance-good. Turning your back on the guy approaching-bad. Why did he turn his back on the guy?

  14. Using physical barriers to create some standoff distance sounds good to me. In this case, whatever the backstory, it really does sound as though the father is just outraged and wants an explanation and an apology. That is, he sounds like one of us would were we in a similar situation.

    Dealing with an actual human predator, though, making that transition from in the open to behind some cover could be tricky. These encounters don’t always unfold like some kind of sporting event where it’s known right from the start what everyone’s intentions are. In real life, that guy approaching you asking “Gotta light?” could want to rob and/or kill you. Or he might be in need of a light.

    If he’s a real predator, you’d probably want to manage that transition expeditiously to achieve the desired effect, but also cautiously so as not to trigger that chase/attack instinct in the predator.

  15. Or… don’t spray babies in the face with pepper spray and you won’t need a vehicle for blocking.

  16. If the security guy still had the pepper spray…why didn’t he just keep on using it instead of playing “London Bridge is Falling Down” around his car with some pissed off dude running after him?

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