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I noticed one of those guys with a squee-gee and a bottle of glass cleaning fluid at a local intersection this past weekend. Hadn't seen that in years. In any event it brought back fond memories of how to handle that when they approach.
Roll down the window, lean out and yell, "Don't touch my car with that"! Smile, and move on.

shootthesheet wrote:The last thing I want to do is be forced to shoot someone. I don't want the problems involved in doing so. I will if I have to but it will not be over something as small as property and especially not over a cart of food. You should have been more aware of your surrounding so he didn't get that close. That is something you will learn with time. You should never escalate a bad situation by threatening to shoot someone in the face. You lost your cool and didn't mean it but if the guy calls and tells a LEO then you may get slammed. What if he pulled a gun because of your threat? That is my point in all this. I am not flaming you and really am on your side in this. I just don't want you to go around thinking you are justified in threatening to shoot someone over nothing. He was old and I assume you could beat him to death without much effort. You have a gun and a better reaction time than he has. Self-control is a major part of CHL and that is what I am concerned about. You do as you see fit but please consider what I posted.

I don't see it that way at all.

If you are moving/loading/unloading groceries you can be as "aware" of your surroundings as possible and still be pretty much subject to incidents like this happening. What do you do? Yell at him from 10 cars away to stay away? Turn around and head back to the store because you saw him in the parking lot? There is no way to anticipate if the guy was headed your way in the first place, and if you could, it was because he was close to you and obviously headed your way.

Any preemptive action that you could have taken could have been seen as overreacting to a threat that may have never happened. If you don't like what you see, turn around and wait or tell security. But if you are in the middle of unloading groceries and kids into your vehicle, that gives plenty of time and opportunity for a guy to show up univited at your carside. How do you and your "situational awareness" handle that? You stop what you are doing and address it.

I think the OP handled it well and should not be denigrated for failure to be "aware".

In addition, there is an assumption that you should be able to handle the guy physically. What leads one to believe that the OP is in a position to do that? You might also take into account that beating up an old-guy sure does not look good to a bystander. Get him out of there with the least fuss and emotion seems the best way to me. No bystander saw a gun, no bystander saw fists flying. All they apparently would have noticed was a guy having sharp-words and the "bum" letting go of someone else's cart and moving away.