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Tactical
Scenario: 08-2004
You
are in your four-door Chevrolet Lumina driving to the downtown area of a small
Mid-Atlantic city on a Sunday morning. It is summertime and about 6:30 in the
morning. The sun is rising to your left.
The car doors are locked and the windows are up.
You have just pulled up to a traffic signal to make a
left-hand turn onto a busy highway.
Your vehicle is pointed in a southerly direction. The traffic signal is
red. From prior experience you know
this is an extremely long wait at this light.
You are the only car stopped at this intersection. The traffic on the road in front of you is
light. Given that it is Sunday morning you are not quite awake and are not
paying very close attention to what is going on.
Suddenly, you notice to your left, a man quickly
approaching your car with a displayed short barreled revolver which looks a lot
like a Smith and Wesson K-frame. At the
time you notice this man, he is about ten feet away from the driver’s side of
the car.
You are legally permitted to carry a concealed weapon in
this jurisdiction. Your strong side holstered Glock 23 has a round in the
chamber with a full 10 round magazine.
A spare, fully loaded magazine and a SureFire 6P flashlight are on your
belt. You have Mace OC spray in your
glove box. Your Nokia cell phone is turned on and lying on the passenger
seat.
Quickly analyze the situation; generate an appropriate
plan then put it into action.
Sunrise
Approach Response
By: Richard
Wright
The
obvious answer is of course, to simply drive off. Driving forward, to the left or right would do just fine. The second best solution would be to simply
back-up. The danger here is to know
what's behind you. Either option is
acceptable.
Drawing
your gun (or better yet, attempting to draw your gun) will probably get you
killed. Let's see, a man is approaching
you with a gun in his hand, and he is 10 feet away. How long before he is at your window? One second? Heck, he
doesn't have to be at the window to shoot you.
You are trapped in the seat by the seat belt. The Tueller Drill (named after Sgt. Dennis Teuller from the Salt
Lake City PD determined that the average adult male can cover 21' in 1 1/2
seconds. At half that distance, even at
a walk, the assailant will be on the driver before the driver can draw his
gun. The driver typically has a seat
belt on, and if the gun is in a strong side holster (right handed person) then
the gun and seat belt are right next to each other, further complicating and
slowing the draw. Now on a good day,
with no covering garment, how many people you know can draw and fire their gun
in 1 second? Not many. A few world class shooters with custom gear
can do it. But even they would be hard
pressed to outdraw a man approaching them with a gun in his hand. And assuming you could do this, can you stop
him before he shoots you?
There
are only 3 outcomes in a gunfight, you lose, you tie, or you win. Winning is the only choice.
In
addition, a car, moving as little as 15 miles-per-hour is almost bullet-proof to
handgun bullets. Even rifle rounds
fired at a moving vehicle seldom penetrate the vehicle. The greater the angle, the less likely the
round will enter the passenger compartment.
An
additional step one could take would be to drop his upper body into the
passenger seat, keeping his head as close to the seatback as possible, and
keeping one eye above the dash, drive away.
You really only need to be in this position 1 1/2 to 2 seconds, then you
can straighten-up.
The
next item on the list would be to call 911.
Call
the guys on duty and allow them to take the guy down. You be a good witness.
Additional
Sunrise Approach Response
By: Anonymous
Since
I don't know who the man is, I think it's best to decamp post-haste. I'd make a quick right turn and put the
heavier glass of the rear windshield between him and the occupants of my
car. Also, the glare of the rising sun
on the rear window, just might spoil his aim.
I'd make a couple of non-signaled lane changes to further confuse the
situation for a would-be attacker.
Once
I was safely out of range, I'd use my cell phone to make a "man with a
gun" call, just in case he has a car and decides to pursue me. I'd be
prepared to make a quick u-turn, just in case he has an accomplice down the
road in the direction I'm going.
Additional
Sunrise Approach Response
By: Glenn E. Meyer, Ph.D.
Given
the situation, I say: Drive. Gun it. The scenario indicates there is little
traffic in front of you and none in back. Movement is best.
I've
been in a similar one, where stopped at an intersection late at night, with
little traffic except one car in front of me, a brawl spilled out of a bar and
on the hood of the car in front of me. I jammed into reverse, zapped back and
went down the street in the other direction.
With
room to move, that comes first. My carry gun comes later.