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Posted by dayman: He handled it perfectly.
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Are there any professionals or competent trainers who would agree with that assertion? I most seriously doubt it.
Should the clerk conclude that his actions were the correct ones and rely upon the same approach in another encounter, we might well not be saying "good guy won."
More importantly, it is critical that no one else ever follow his example.
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As evidence of that, I present the fact that nobody got robbed, and nobody got killed.
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That is evidence that this time, the robber chose to not shoot.
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Based on how quickly he was able to react and draw, I'm willing to bet that by the time his gun was in the BG's face he could have gotten off a shot faster than the would-be robber could have raised his gun. ... According to the clerk, had the BG tried to raise his gun he could have simply pulled the trigger.
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The clerk would have had to (1) realize that the robber had raised his gun, (2) decided to shoot, and (3) fired his gun. The next very important question is, would the defender's shot have prevented the robber from firing? Not likely.
There are two facets of the issue. The first is what to do if a man points a gun at someone and demands money. We discuss that all the time.
One course of action is to hand over the money, and hope that the robber chooses to not shoot. That often works out. Sometimes it does not. But is the "school solution" in most circumstances.
Another is to assume that the robber will shoot anyway, and to try to use deadly force. The problem is that that strategy may precipitate the robber's use of deadly force, which might not have occurred had the victim not tried to resist. And it may or may not prevent the victim from being harmed.
A variation on the latter is to hand over the money and prepare to shoot while the robber is preoccupied.
In this case, the victim tried none of the above. Faced wit h an armed robber holding a gun in his hand, he reached out at the robber's gun and drew his own, but he did not shoot.
He got away with it--this time.
His stated reasoning was that he did not see the bore of the robber's gun. That is not at all the mark of experience or sound judgment.
That takes to the second facet--that of using a weapon to defend against an armed robber. Drawing on a man with gun in hand is a very high risk gambit indeed. It should be attempted only when it is absolutely necessary, probably in concert with doing something else to distract him; the victim should probably move off line, behind something if possible. And if he has already made the move to escalate the situation by drawing his gun, the victim should open fire immediately.
This dude was just plain lucky.