Thread: How would you react if...

So your a gun enthusiast and you consider yourself a real pistolero. You go to the range often and consider your self a real dead-eye. You also have considered what you would do if someone broke into your house and that you would not hesitate to defend your family and your property.

So you go to the range today and you have a pistol and you buy your two boxes of ammo and go inside and crank out the target to 15 yards and as you finish firing the 6th round all of a sudden from out of nowhere, from inside the range to the side some dude pops out with a gun in hand and starts firing at you.

So what are you going to do? He's already started firing at you so if he's a decent shot you've already been hit. How many seconds will you hesitate before firing? How many more rounds will you take? Will you have the presence of mind to immediately seek cover or just stand there? Will you just panic and do nothing or fire wildly and miss totally? What if you have a 6 shot revolver? Think you can unload and reload under that pressure?

You see you were part of an experiment.They weren't real bullets.

So now transpose that to an incident where your at home one dark winter night and your on your computer and you hear breaking glass and you just happen to have a gun in a locked box in that room. You hear footsteps, its dark in the hall. How long is it going to take you to retrieve the weapon under pressure? have you practiced doing that? You enter the hallway and you see a dark figure and can see he's holding something but you can't tell what it is but you think its a gun. How long will it take you to decide what to do. He's in the dark and is moving you came out out of a lit room and are framed by the light and stand out like a target at a shooting range. Your also standing still in total panic. He sees you and your gun and starts firing. Now its real bullets whizzing by. So how would you react and how long would it take you to react? Think you'd be a dead-eye now?

Just food for thought.

With the exception of the last paragraph I've been through training like that just that we used rubber bullets in a .357 propelled by the primer alone. If your hit within 10 yards or so it hurts like hell.

After some responses I'll tell you what highly trained Federal Agents did.

No one can answer this question with any certainty unless they have been under fire before.

I am curious Sir. Is this thread intended to illuminate our possible problem areas in home defense so that we may endeavor to improve or is it intended to suggest that home protection is best left to the experts so why even bother trying to protect your family and yourself under such possible situations?

both scenes are a tough call...but on the first one, if i get a chance to see someone pointing a gun at me and firing and i am able he/she is going to get it right back, if i am able to fire and have not been injured. if the person was not shooting live rounds, then to bad. do not play games with people with weapons in their hands.
the second one where someone has broken into my house is different as i will
hopefully fire on them first and i intend to take them out, not just injure. i keep a 44 magnum short barrel by my beside. i also have other weapons throughout the house.
but i can bet others will have different views on this subject. but after having one house broken into and have been fired upon, i do not take it lightly.
also i would like to praise anyone willing to put on a police uniform and wear that weapon and badge and be a target for all the crazies out there. my hats off to you and your brothers and sisters doing a great job out there..

I am at work now with a 357 mag on my person. At the computer at home the same gun is within reach. By my lazy boy chair is a 40 Sig and by my bedside a 10mm glock. Woe to the miscreant who trespasses in my space.

How did they do the first experiment? I can't see them giving the person being tested live rounds.

Originally Posted by Pete_S

How did they do the first experiment? I can't see them giving the person being tested live rounds.

If they did they only did it the one time.

The idea of the thread is to do two things; 1-think about tactics if you have to use a weapon and 2-make you think about your ability to function under extreme stress in a life or death situation.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

The idea of the thread is to do two things; 1-think about tactics if you have to use a weapon and 2-make you think about your ability to function under extreme stress in a life or death situation.

In that case I like it!

I said after some posts I would tell you how trained people responded. By the way the example of the shooting range wasn't a true event. I made that up just to get your reaction to it.

So here is the scenario. I'm at this weapons school given by a Federal Agency and the exercise puts two people in a car and they have to pull over another vehicle and perform a felony traffic stop and apprehend the two bad guys inside. The first to have to do it was a very experienced individual who is also a range officer. In the car with him is a supervisor also with alot of experience who happens to be a female. Everyone is armed with a .357 revolver with rubber bullets powered by the primer only. So they pull the car over and order the two individuals out of the vehicle after having them show their hands and get out and begin backing up towards the good guys. All of a sudden the two bad guys pull out their weapons and start firing at the good guys. The range officer drops to his knees and gets over by his open car door and returns fire. The supervisor dives for the floorboard and starts screaming.

In the second scenario our range officer and I decided to try the same as the original range scenario I started off with. This was an outdoor range at our office during our regular qualification. Now the people knew something was up because we gave them the ammo which we never do and they were told they would experience a traning scenario. So we put them at the 25 yard line with a baracade to provide cover. I was off to the side and as they were shooting at the target I started shooting at them. I had already hit all 4 of them at least twice before they even realized what was happening and then some hit the dirt and started returning fire from a prone position, some started firing just standing there and some used the baracade for cover and some just stood there in the open.

With each group of people the result was pretty much the same.

So what is the moral of the story if you are in an actual situation?

1-the more you train the better you will react. If you rely on common sense and reaction you will fail. In a panic situation you react plain and simple . If you have trained the more you have trained the more you will fall back to your training reaction automatically because your brain shuts down in such situation. There have been incidents where police have been killed in shootouts and they have found spent casings in the officers hands. Why? Because when they trained they didn't want to pick up brass so the put them in their hands and pockets and in a crisis they reverted to their training good or bad without thinking.

2-Always be aware of your surroundings and keep the total picture. In panic situations you develop tunnel vision and only see the single threat in front of you. If there is another bad guy you will never see him coming.

3-If you are ever in such situation always look for cover no matter what it is even if its in your home.