http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3MZHi4YSPA

When this unnamed security guard signed on to surf the graveyard shift at a 24-hour Internet cafe, he probably had no idea he was signing up for an unfriendly, unannounced and very high-stakes Tactical Pistol Challenge Match. With 3:1 odds against him. As the video shows, he was up to the challenge . . .

Imagine yourself, right now, sitting exactly as you are and wearing your carry gun. How quickly could you Observe, Orient, Decide and Act to defend yourself if three armed attackers burst into your room? How accurately could you deliver fire? And how well would you use movement, concealment and (eventually, in the guard’s case) cover?

If you’re as fast and as accurate as this guy, you’re pretty damned cool under pressure. He looks like he could quit his day (actually, night) job and make his living in action pistol competition.

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66 COMMENTS

  1. How “Fast & Accurate” was he ?

    The bad guys left because he started shooting. They didn’t drop because of his hits.

    How many rounds Fired?

    How many High Center Chest Hits?

    No doubt, fast and decisive action won the day and he is to be commended for those things. But, we need to look for the lessons learned.

    I would suggest that Shifting during presentation and then planting and shooting would yield better results. If the Psychological Effect of simply resisting their assault didn’t work, we might be saying something else.

    As hard as it is emotionally, we need to intellectually critique these videos so that we can learn from them and plan for our own best responses.

    -RJP

    • The guard would be much harder for the criminals to hit because he was moving and appeared to be adjusting his position to get a clear line of fire.

      • An 80 year old woman with a cap gun would have had the same effect on the thugz. Nice job and all that, but please. These clowns are nothing but chicken-sheet cowards, not big-time and highly trained evil operators.

    • One of the baddies dropped “less than a block away” outside. And he stopped the threat. There wasnt any audio so I couldnt really tell how many shots he fired, but at least one BG down, the others running away. Damn fine job IMO.

      Also, what the heck is up with Internet cafes being knocked over lately? Seem to be dangerous places…

      • Internet cafes are prime targets. They are de facto gambling parlors. And, that means CASH is present in abundance. When Willie Sutton was asked, “Why do you rob banks,” he replied, “That’s where the money is.”

      • Also, what the heck is up with Internet cafes being knocked over lately? Seem to be dangerous places…
        Yeah, I thought the same thing!!! Why rob it, or have armed gaurd???

        Shop selling coffee, maybe some bagels, with free WIFI. Maybe a few machines that you can use to access the Web per hour.

        Nope Internet cafes mean gambling joint in today’s world.
        Learn something everyday.

        Guy22

    • The purpose of armed self-defense is to deter, deny, or disrupt as well as defeat an attacker in armed combat. Almost all civilian DGUs do not involve firing the weapon. We generally only hear about DGUs when a gun is fired because they are newsworthy.

      My biggest gripe about self-defense training is that it focuses almost exclusively on shooting the gun and not on avoidance training. Learning police or combat shooting tactics is fun but not very useful to the armed citizen. Self-defense involves fending off your attacker and not engaging him. Making him run away should be the goal of every defensive scenario. You only shoot as a last resort against persistent attackers and unless you are gangbanger or other felon persistent attacks are a rare occurrence. You train for the most likely threat and learn to improvise, adapt and overcome the outliers.

    • Actually, the first in the line did drop because of hits. The others turned and ran. Actually, all three did. Should he have shot them in the back? Given his performance, I think it’s safe to assume that if they’d have kept on coming, he’d have kept on shooting.

    • The security guard discharged his duty by protecting the cafe, AND he emerged unscathed. Sure it would have been a nice bonus if he’s dropped all the bad guys, but it would not have been worth the price of him taking a hit, especially since it does not look like he has kevlar on.

      His almost constant movement probably made his shots less accurate, but it may have also have saved him from death or grievous harm. A fair trade, given that dropping the bad guys was not his mission – protecting the cage was.

      Something for all of us to think about – how much accuracy are you willing to sacrifice for increased safety?

      • Pincus has that “I know everything, your an idiot attitude “. He would criticize Jefferson on penmanship for the Declaration of Independence. I ignore him.

  4. I believe reaction time depends as much on context as mindset. Apparently the context of the assault in the video made it obvious that the men who rushed in were violent criminals … and the security guard reacted quickly.

    I believe events in different contexts would be much more difficult to process and hence slow reaction time considerably. Imagine two or three people that have relaxed body language and demeanor as they casually stroll into a store — looking like they own the place. They smile as they pass some people and nod to others. And from a distance you see a cashier handing something to one of them. Who would give it a second thought? Finally, after they are half way to the door, the cashier stammers about a robbery. Of course the two or three people are still casual and friendly as they continue to stroll right out the door. I guarantee that would confuse a lot of people and reaction time would be on the order of half a minute or more. In that situation an alert defensive mindset would not speed things along.

    Of course people still need the right mindset. When a criminal is obviously aggressive and attacking, people need the mindset to respond immediately without any hesitation. Kudos to the security guard.

  5. To answer the question: “I seriously doubt it”.
    That guy is a pro! Smooth, movement, stance, position.
    Wow. Just wow.

  6. Excellent! But not ideal.

    I reckon he should have moved for “proper” cover/concealment (behind the wall to his left) and stayed behind it.

    Engaging in a gun fight in the middle of a room (he moves left then back into the center) is a sucker’s bet. Which he won. And good for him, too!

    • No matter how text-book perfect the man’s response was, no matter how effective the results, no matter what, people will still carp and complain that the man wasn’t more perfect.

      There’s no pleasing some people.

      You complain that he didn’t take more advantage of cover. But the problem with cover is that it limits your field of view and what you can do. The man clearly was a lap ahead in the OODA loop and was taking violent, decisive action (which you always seem to laud). He kept moving and kept them reacting to his violence. If he had sought more effective cover he might have allowed them to respond and counterattack. Note that he did find cover in a recess but moved back out to continue the attack and press home his advantage.

      I can’t find one thing to fault with his actions and I’m appalled that anyone here has the nerve to be critical of his brilliant mastery of the situation.

      There are always trades to be made in attack and defense in a reaction. The man on the scene could see his enemy and how they were acting and he was in the best position to judge whether he should attack or seek more of a defensive posture. The results speak loudly. The peanut gallery should take a hike.

    • Plus, how much “cover” is a steel stud and a sheet of drywall making up the “wall” that you speak of?

        • Wouldn’t the perps have seen him duck behind the wall? Not only does it conceal him from them, it conceals them from him. They know where he is, they could just pepper the wall with bullets.

      • It looks like that by the time the guard is up and has his pistol drawn, the first bad guy is standing in the gap between the desk and the wall area. Moving towards the wall would be moving towards that attacker and without cover. The guard pivoted around the desk to keep as much of it between them and him, which seems reasonable to me.

        • @Jason

          “They know where he is, they could just pepper the wall with bullets.”

          In such a situation, you don’t waste ammunition on where someone could be. They likely do not have extra mags with them, so spray and pray is a bad idea. In a gunfight, I would think you would conserve ammo for the “sure” shots. Suppressive fire isn’t ideal when you are limited to 10-19 rounds.

          These guys were obviously amateurs, possibly first timers. The first sign of retailiation sent them packing.

  7. Excellent shooting!

    Mental preparation is one of the keys to a fast response, and this shooter also drew from an exposed holster, which is faster than a CCW draw. I’m not sure what firearm he was using, but I was very impressed with his movement and use of cover. The lack of innocent bystanders in the immediate area also helped his fast response. The bad guys clearly did not expect armed resistance.

    As an LEO, drawing from an exposed holster, I would be proud to do this well. I’ll add it to my list of SHTF scenarios.

    The other take home lesson is that the 2A is a clear winner here. If this guard waited for a police response, he would have been a victim or a corpse. Access to a firearm, by a lawful citizen with training, made this incident have a positive outcome.

    • Roger the open-carry observation.

      I wonder if the guard is a retired or off-duty cop? Some of those police academys turn out well-trained officers. He’s obviously took his job seriously enough to learn it well in any case.

  9. A lot of you guys are advocating for a textbook response to textbook capable bad guys. Fortunately, thugz like these have no clue what they are doing and any sort of resistance is more than sufficient to send their cowardly asses high-tailing right back out the front door.

    • i think a lot of people prep for “hollywood” capable bad guys. large teams of well trained and equiped villians which just happens so rarely in the real world as to be a non starter.

  11. Nothing like a few CC’s of adrenaline to wake you up.

    This guy either is a competetive pistol shooter, or is ex-mil/leo. Someone trained him to shoot and move somewhere along the line, that much is obvious.

    • There are numerous schools all around the country that provide this kind of training without any prerequisites of mil/leo/competition. Not saying you’re wrong, just pointing out that even “civilians” can get training if they want it.

      • I’m about the last person in the world who’d use the term ‘civilian’ with a straight face coming from a LEO point of view.

        Just saying the guy clearly has training, and odds favor it came from the aforenamed sources.

  12. To be honest I think his reaction was fantastic and, without a much better understanding of the layout of the room than I can readily observe from the video, I would not offer any critique.

    Being able to say “I shot a bad guy out of his shoes.” Priceless!

  13. It’s hard to tell but you can see shells eject from the gun and to my view it looked like three shots were fired and although the first shot could have dropped the BG, he didn’t seem to fall to the ground until the second shot.

  15. i’d like to know more about this guys background and age. i’m betting x military or leo and middle aged, i did see what looked like a bald spot on his dome.

    training is good. experience is priceless. the way this guy reacted and moved tells me that it wasn’t his first shitstorm.

    hats off to the lone ranger.

  16. 1. Incredible response.
    2. Law enforcement or combat experience can work for you. This was an obviously older man, probably with that stuff long behind him.
    3. He came out of that chair and responded instantaneously and correctly.
    4. Very, very unusual. Possibly one person in one thousand is capable of responding like that.
    5. Attribute that more to an exceptional individual than to training or experience.
    6. Remember -this guy had NO time to think.

  18. The guard did very well; as to the question if other people could do as well in a similar situation is answered on this site and others like keep and bear arms all the time; I’ve read a number of times of multiple attacker scenarios where the citizen successfully defended themselves without getting shot and without shooting innocent by standers.
    What I find interesting is how some people will say if a citizen does well in a shooting scenario that they must be an off duty cop or military; I’ve found that when I’ve shot with the regular police or military, that they are mostly average to mediocre in skill level.
    It would be an interesting study to see the average skill level the police and military and then compare the averqge skill level of gun owners who regularly carry a weapon and compare the two groups.

    • skill level with the gun is not what i mean when i say x military or leo. you can be an excellent shot on the range and in training, and by all means get some training, but that means little until you’ve been in a real world shitstorm. and the chances of being in that shitstorm increase greatly if you’re military or leo.

      age also figures into it. by the time you’ve reached middle age you’ve probably had enough personal shitstorms in your life that it’s easier for you to deal with bad monents with a clear mind.

      i’m not an expert on anything, these are just my observations. ymmv.

      • I understand what you’re saying, but I would have to disagree about that; statistically, most police and military members can go thier whole careers without firing a weapon in anger, so whether it’s police, military or citizen, a shooting situation is usually thier first time and training is what makes the difference.
        So far, from what we see reported on these types of sites, citizens with no prior police or military back ground have done very well.

  19. Fellas, you’re missing the bigger question…What’s with all these bad guys running right out of their shoes? Didn’t the same thing happen in the other cyber-cafe DGU a few months ago?

  23. I don’t shoot competitively so I will defer comments to those of you who do, realizing that you are using the benefits of 20/20 hindsight. However, in a real life situation it is pass/fail. He passed and the bad guys failed. Way to go, Dude!

  24. Wow it was a thing of beauty if there could be such a thing.
    He immediately moved right. As Robert mentioned, Left might have gotten him in that doorway, but he would have to move right in front of their entry point and direction of travel to do it, so the fact he moved latterly is good. He kept moving.
    His draw was calm, and deliberate, no chance of an AD with that.
    He sited his target(s)
    He kept moving. Sure standing still makes you more accurate, but then again not getting shot is kind of high on ones list too.

    I look at it this way. We can certainly look and criticize, but to be honest he did everything right. Bad guys gone, and he doesn’t have a scratch on him. That is like that old pilots saying, a good landing is any that you can walk away from!

    • I find that standing still does increase accuracy! not only for you but the fella’ shooting at you too. keep moving. As for taking concealment behind the wall on the left, the baddies would most likely pepper the wall until they got a “click” or two. They were street hoods with a very low chance of having any kind of firearm discipline. you would of then had a shot up wall with a most likely injured or dead guard behind it. He owned that situation by pressing the offense and adding the variable of movement..In which only he knew which way he was going to move throwing the baddies off even more.

      If one has the opportunity to train in the open then nothing beats numbered staggered targets and firing on the move while a friend calls out the “threat” number to engage except a shoothouse.

      He totally had control of that situation, good for him!

  26. It looked like the jig was up upon brandishment. After the first shot, he really could have stopped popping caps. Not that I really care though, as I hate creeps.

  27. That security guard has received some sort of professional training and has serious gun handling experience. He was disciplined; and I do not believe that he fired more than 3 or 4 times.

    Yes, he moved too much; and that is a mistake. Every time you move your feet while firing you’re asking to slip and fall. I like the fact that he chose to, ‘hide behind his front sight’ when there really was no other place to go.

    I was going to fault him for not swapping out his magazine during the lull in the fighting; but, after I (more or less) counted his shots I realized that he had plenty of ammunition left in his modern semi-auto magazine. I believe he put two rounds into the first guy; and I’m certain that, at least, one of those shots was a central torso hit. (The target was really close; he just got outdrawn by someone who was in C-1 and perfectly willing to shoot him!)

    The only thing I didn’t like about this guard’s combat behavior is the delay he showed in moving to BOTH better cover, AND a better vantage point from which to surveil the assault area. Still, not too shabby; not too shabby at all! (He definitely does NOT work a day job as an NYPD police officer.) 😉

    I’d really like to know the specifics on this one: What handgun, what caliber, how many shots were fired and by which party, as well as where the target was hit? I, also, think that IF the target had been well-armed AND determined to succeed, then this gun battle would have been a really bloody affair – Probably with injuries on both sides.

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