OldMarksman
Staff
Most self defense confrontations develop extremely quickly. One important thing is to have the proper training; one will almost always default to his or her training when faced with violence.Posted by David13: That thing moved fast and there was no time to plan it out "according to the book".
Such training must necessarily address the skills necessary to react extremely quickly. Such skills include drawing, presenting, and firing a weapon very quickly, from retention position if necessary; retaining one's firearm, should someone try to take it; doing something, if possible, to keep the attacker from drawing and shooting first; moving to the side, putting something between oneself and the attacker, seeking cover or concealment, etc., if possible.
The Marionville incident happened to end with the best possible outcome: no one was hurt. But as Double Naught Spy has pointed out,
The clerk faced a less-than-determined robber and as a result, came out unscathed. So for the situation, he did well, but not because of good tactics. People often win with poor tactics, but often get slaughtered as well. So just because it worked this time does not indicate that this what should be learned by others for the future to try to repeat in similar situations.
To point out the shortcomings of the clerk's actions may seem unnecessarily critical and non productive, but the video does provide us with useful material for contemplation and training. One can either characterize it in terms of a demonstration of what not to do or as a demonstration of what to do better; it doesn't really matter.
One can start with JohnKSa's comments:
For one thing, not many experts would advise holding a gun out one-handed toward an opponent at bad breath distance.
... there's value in understanding what he could have done better. For example, one slight modification to his response would have been to grab and control the shooter's hand with his left hand (as he did) and then draw his gun to a one-handed retention position instead of holding it out to the attacker. It would have controlled the situation effectively while keeping his gun much more secure from the criminal.
Another questionable move was to relinquish control of the attacker's gun hand while it still held the gun. That gun was a deadly threat as long as it remained in the attacker's hand and there's no way he could predict with any level of certainty, that when he released the man's hand that the man would choose to retreat instead of choosing to shoot.
One other thing: we have discussed whether or not the clerk would have been able to shoot quickly enough had the robber "raised his gun." It occurs to me that some people may have in mind the idea that the robber would bring his gun up to eye level, as in gun range shooting. Keep in mind that at the distance involved, all the robber would have had to do is rotate his wrist very slightly and open up from the hip. The clerk was potentially in extreme danger from the moment the robber came in with the gun until the man had left the store. As John has mentioned,
...there's no way he could predict with any level of certainty, that when he released the man's hand that the man would choose to retreat instead of choosing to shoot.
None of us would reasonably have hoped for the robber to be injured, but it is clear that the clerk was uninjured only because of the inaction of the robber. A more prudent defender, having made the decision to resist rather than to comply, most certainly would have fired, unless perchance he had been able to gain control of the robber's firearm, or unless the robber had dropped it very quickly.