surreptitious57 wrote:Seth wrote:
Like I said there are alternatives but if the invaders had actually had a gun and been willing to use it she would be dead
now whereas if she had a handgun one two or all three of the thugs would likely be dead which is the perfect outcome
Three young armed men against one old armed woman :
Yup, a deadly situation no matter how you cut it.
The odds would not be in her favour in that scenario
The odds are rarely in the victim's favor in a sudden-attack crime. That's why one needs an edge like a handgun, so one can retake the edge.
If they knew she did not have a weapon then the probability of her living is greater than if they knew she did
have one : Then again they would probably not have considered burgling her if they knew in advance she was
armed : Apparently many burglers prefer to avoid confrontation since it is time consuming and unpredictable
They just want to go in and get what they want and leave so having to engage someone is not on the agenda
Precisely correct. In this situation the intruders had most likely cased the joint and knew who she was and that she likely was NOT armed. They were quite surprised when she resisted them because they were operating on the assumption that their mere invasion would instill enough fear to quell resistance, and that's usually a correct assumption because at least half of the population overall is unarmed. It's geographically disparate however, as rural people own guns at a much higher rate than do city-dwellers, mostly due to laws prohibiting urban dwellers from owning firearms and idiots who think the police will keep them safe.
But this presumption on the part of criminals is becoming much less rational as more and more people are buying and carrying guns, both in the home and in public. The result is that they become much more careful, being quite naturally and correctly afraid that they will get suddenly dead rather than get the TV they are after.
This again is where the armed citizen has the advantage over the criminal. I've said before that I can out-draw and shoot a crook who has his gun pointed at me. This is true, whether you believe it or not, and the reason is because of the mindset of the crook versus the mindset of me, or some other armed citizen.
As we see from this example, the crooks used terror tactics to try to overcome any resistance by threatening to shoot the victim. But they were not convincing and didn't actually have (or produce) a handgun, so she decided to call their bluff. And when she did, they ran like rabbits. The reason they ran is because they had their thoughts fixated on STEALING STUFF, not on murder, and when their plan went awry and all of a sudden they had to either retreat or attack, they became confused and reverted to their "training," which is to flee a confrontation you're not prepared for. It's a perfectly natural response. The number of criminals who are trained to fight when they encounter significant resistance is actually quite small. In real life, the bank robbers in Los Angeles who shot it out with police demonstrate a resolve to fight rather than flee. In the movies, the best, most accurate representation of that mindset is "Heat" with Robert DeNiro and Val Kilmer. The shootout scene at the bank is highly realistic and is probably the model upon which the LA robbers built their plan. But that's extremely unusual in street crime.
Which is why we have more than 2 million violent crimes committed every year, but only some 8000 homicides. Most street crimes and burglaries don't end in a killing, even when the robber is armed. For one thing, they are usually pretty lousy shots and they only hit their targets some 15% of the time, and of those hits, less than 15% are fatal. The odds of not being killed by a street thug with a gun are actually pretty fair just because they are lousy shots.
More importantly is the mindset at the moment the fatal confrontation takes place. The thug is there to get something; your wallet and watch, your TV, your car. Their focus and intent is on using a weapon, or the threat of a weapon only to facilitate their getting what they want. They are not generally in a "murder mindset." If you watch surveillance tapes of robberies where shots are fired, the majority of the time the crook shoots wildly without looking as he runs away, if he shoots at all.
This psychological factor is extremely important in training for self-defense. The maxim of crisis situations is that in a crisis, you will revert to your training. If you have no training, in a crisis you will do nothing and your "flight or fight" instincts will take over...at some point.
So, we have a thug who wants my wallet so he can buy meth. He's waving a gun around threatening to shoot me while looking around to see if there's anyone else around, and he's entirely focused on getting my wallet. I tell him I'll cooperate to further confuse him, and then I reach for my wallet, which is what he is expecting. What I come up with instead, faster than he can possibly perceive and react to it, is my pistol, with which I shoot him dead in 0.76 seconds, while moving sideways out of his line of fire and, if possible, blocking his gun with my left hand so that even if he does jerk the trigger, I won't be hit. Aside from physically and biologically not having time to perceive the threat and react to it, he's confused because he is expecting me to reach back and get my wallet, not produce a pistol and shoot him, so added to the raw perception/reaction minimum time of most humans, which is 1.5 seconds is a hesitation while he tries to process the fact that he's no longer the aggressor but is instead about to be dead. This can add a substantial delay to any response he might make, particularly if he has not trained himself what to do if a victim pulls on him. This gives me the advantage in the situation, and I'm going to use it effectively to put two in his chest and one in his head in 0.76 seconds
because that is what I've trained myself to do in that situation for decades. I don't have any confusion or hesitation about my role or plan. Once I know I'm being robbed my decisions are all but automatic because I practice, practice, practice like crazy to draw and fire three rounds with extreme accuracy at up to 7 yards
from the instant I initiate the action.
The important difference here is that unlike the crook, who has to perceive that I'm drawing a weapon and not my wallet, then decide what to do about it, be delayed by confusion and surprise, which makes his reaction time much slower than what it takes me to draw and fire, I KNOW what I'm going to do, and I've decided to do it already, "long" before I initiate the draw. I've analyzed the threat, hopefully far in advance so I can actually draw my weapon before the thug gets close enough to rob me, but at least a second or two before I choose to initiate the draw. That being the case, I'm not "outdrawing" the crook based on MY OWN perception/reaction time (which is also quite short compared to most people, again because I train) because I've already perceived the threat and know what I'm going to do. Having made the decision to shoot, it's all muscle memory from there, and I shoot before the crook even knows what happened.
The same principle applies in a longer time frame with, by way of example, these three stooges who invaded the lady's home. They are intent on getting stuff, and all she had to do was delay long enough to analyze the threat, which she did, and then obtain a weapon, in this case a toy guitar, and proceed to whup their asses. Now, if she'd had a handgun, even in the bedroom nightstand, she can take advantage of their uncertainty by screaming like she's terrified and running to the bedroom. Chances are the thugs will not pursue her, they will go for the swag because that's what they are there for and see her running away as capitulation based on fear and will therefore not be thinking of her as a threat, so when she returns from the bedroom with a pistol or shotgun and opens fire without saying a word, they are most likely going to die or run, either of which is an acceptable ending.
This happens all the time, which you would know if you took some time to peruse the NRA's "Armed Citzen" online site, which aggregates news reports from across the nation of incidents where citizens used their firearms to defend themselves on a daily basis.
So, unlike what the tactically ignorant like BG claim, I've studied the criminal mind and operating procedures for decades and trained very hard and very carefully to hone my response to a deadly situation which gives me a substantial and important edge over criminals.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth
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