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Excaliber wrote:

Purplehood wrote:I do challenge them (and have). I am playing the devils advocate here.

I'm not sure that is helpful to furthering the discussion and may well be confusing to some of our newer members.

Excaliber wrote:

RoyGBiv wrote:

Excaliber wrote:

RoyGBiv wrote:In early July I was in Winston Salem, NC. Long story short, I was downtown, on Saturday evening (before sunset) and was nearly out of gas. Below "E" on the rental car. No excuse. I should have known better.

I pull into a gas station right near my highway entrance and start pumping gas. It's a typical inner city area. 4 other cars in the station, 2 at pumps and 2 at the convenience store. I'm busy watching around the station, my back is to the car. After about a half tank I spot two guys to my left, across the street, looking at me and taking to each other. Maybe 50 yards away.

The two guys start walking towards me. I stopped pumping gas, hung up the hose and closed my gas cap. Relaxed attitude, but not wasting time, less than 10 seconds. The two guys split up. One walked over behind the pump I was using and the other was headed straight for me. I turned my strong side to the car. The guy walks between me and the pump (Imagine yourself standing at the gas pump. How much room is there between you, your car and the pump? Would you ever think about waking between someone else's car and the pump? ) stops just past me and just looks at me. I stared back and could feel my heart pumping. The guy says "Hey Man"... I said "How's it goin'?" He took maybe a 1 second pause and as he walked on I got in my car and drove away.

I guess they were just trying to have some fun with me.
Thankfully, NC and TX are reciprocal states.

Lesson 1: Never drive with less than a 1/4 tank of gas.
Lesson 2: Always carry.

Consider lesson 3: Challenge and move if necessary before letting someone get within bad breath range where your options are severely limited if his intentions aren't good.

I've thought about this "lesson 3" a lot since it happened.
A potential aggressor is approaching, but I have no idea how things will unfold.
Am I about to become the target of a robbery or violence?
How do I act to dissuade the potential aggressor without "appearing like I'm looking to escalate" or "giving the aggressor reason to escalate"?

Here's what went through my head at the time....

I'm armed, witnesses around, daylight, in the open.
I can fight, I can run, I can stand my ground and prepare. But, if I begin to take obvious action to avoid some confrontation, the situation is more likely to escalate. If the potential aggressor is just "feeling me out", any obvious avoidance or aggressive action on my part will give him an immediate reason to go to the next step.... Like a child, but more dangerous. My immediate reaction was to button up the gas situation and prepare to leave the area, but, maybe the live gas pump could have been a good weapon if needed? Too much downside there I thought...

If he was intending to just have some fun and "scare the white guy", as I suspect was the case, in hindsight.... Then if I would move away from the car, or put my hands up defensively, or call him out verbally or some combination of available options, his reaction, on his turf, would almost certainly have been to "escalate the fun".... Maybe call his friend over for support.

If he was intending felony, I was ready. 6 protected, weapon ready with strong side away from the aggressor, escape routes available (I would have moved towards the convenience store).....

My gut said be ready but don't act. Turned out ok, but I think about how it could have gone otherwise.

Is taking a more aggressive response to this situation a better deterrent?...... I just didn't think so at the time.
Given the setting, I had a clear feeling that he was feeling me out, but I was ready if I was wrong.
When I looked into his eyes and didn't cower, his fun was over.

I'm certainly open to suggestions.... How else to learn?

Thanks.

During the entire approach phase, BG's are watching you closely to figure out if you'll be a good (compliant) victim or not. They capitalize on the reluctance most folks have to recognizing a threat and taking direct action to close the distance to a point where the victim is in a very poor position to resist.

Most will break off with either direct eye contact combined with a ready posture at distance, or a verbal / hand signal challenge at around 30 feet (e.g., "I don't know you. Stop there and state your business") when eye contact doesn't work. If they don't heed a direct challenge, this gives you good reason to believe that a threat is developing while there is still time to take evasive or defensive action, and it sets the stage in the minds of witnesses for who might be the good guy and the bad guy if things develop further. If the "stop" hand signal gesture is used, it also provides visual evidence that you attempted to avoid a confrontation by preserving distance and the BG persisted in closing with you, giving you good reason to believe he presented a threat. This may well be a point in your favor if direct action needs to be taken. Direct action also isn't the only option. Buttoning up the car and walking into the store may also be a viable option to avoid a direct confrontation, and removes you from the setting a potential attacker saw as favorable to him, but this decision has to be made early enough to make it practical.

Don't feel too safe just because you're armed. If you let him get within arms reach, being armed is not nearly the advantage it is further out. Even an unarmed street thug can attack and kill or disable a person before the defender could draw and fire, and gunfights at bad breath distance often don't have any winners - only degrees of losers.

SQLGeek wrote:

Purplehood wrote:

SQLGeek wrote:

Purplehood wrote:As a result of this particular thread I have taken to carrying my Glock 19 with 14 rounds in it, instead of my XD40 with 8 rounds per mag.

Why are you downloading by two if you don't mind my asking?

Because I change holsters sometimes and only one of them can carry the extra mag on the XD-40. Depends on my attire for the day. With the Glock I know that I have a "Illegal in California" magazine with 14 rounds at ALL times.
With the XD, I may have 8 rds or I may have 16 rds.

I understand. I guess what I'm asking is why not load the G19 to its full 15+1?

SQLGeek wrote:

Purplehood wrote:As a result of this particular thread I have taken to carrying my Glock 19 with 14 rounds in it, instead of my XD40 with 8 rounds per mag.

Why are you downloading by two if you don't mind my asking?

Excaliber wrote:

Purplehood wrote:I noticed at least two posts in this thread that asked why the Police had not responded by the time that the poster had finished pumping their gas.

As a counterpoint to Speedsix's tongue in cheek reply (which did make me chuckle), the short version is that LEO's don't have any exemptions from the laws of space and time.

It takes time for a dispatcher to gather information, it takes time to transmit that information, and it takes time to get from wherever the officer was when he received the call to where he is needed. The incident in the OP's post wasn't a Code 3 (lights and sirens) call, and even running code saves only a fairly small amount of time. This is the real reason behind the saying that when you have only seconds, the police are just minutes away.

If you've ever been late for an appointment and tried to compress the time it takes to get to your destination to fit the time remaining until you're due there, you have some idea of the challenges involved.

Time and space don't compress much, even when we want them to.