Will You Be Assaulted/killed in a Street Robbery? Poll

[Guantes]

With recent threads I thought this would be an interesting poll.

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[buckeye .45]

I said significant chance, and that is because robbery is a violent crime (as opposed to burglary), in which items in one's possession are removed through violence or the threat of violence. The threat of violence against another with intent or ability to carry out that threat is assault in a lot of jurisdictions. So assault and robbery really are interlinked IMO (but I'm not a lawyer, this is just stuff I am remembering from learning the law during criminology classes).

But robbers are violent felons with no compunctions about using violence to get what they want. Add in drugs or mental instability, and its a bad combination.

[Stevew]

I went with significant chance, but I think a better question would be "killed or seriously injured".

[Ice Man]

I will not comply and I will not surrender my weapon. If I do either, I give my power away. I will not trust my life to a street thug. After all, street thugs are known as gentile and caring individuals!

Add the aspect of thugs showing off to their fellow pukes, I bet you are lucky if you walk away with your face attached if you comply.

[Bark'n]

I voted significant chance for the exact same reasons as buckeyeLCPL stated!

[msgt/ret]

I too voted significant chance, buckeyeLCPL summed it up perfectly.

[CCWFlaRuger]

admittedly there is a chance, however, I try to avoid situations that will lend to being victimized... I do not carry cash, nor do I visit ATMs, I do not go out to bars, nor do I walk around shady areas at night. All taht being said, there is always a risk... but, isn't that a big part of the reason we are all here>?

[searcher 45]

Voted significant chance, don't plan on being a willing victim.

[Bark'n]

admittedly there is a chance, however, I try to avoid situations that will lend to being victimized... I do not carry cash, nor do I visit ATMs, I do not go out to bars, nor do I walk around shady areas at night. All taht being said, there is always a risk... but, isn't that a big part of the reason we are all here>?

CCWFlaRuger, no doubt you are on the right track to keeping yourself from being a victim or being targeted. You avoid troublesome places and no doubt have a high level of situational awareness.

I find one thing ironic in the advice people always give to not carry any cash around. Yes, I know it is so if you are ever robbed, you won't lose a lot of your money. But, as far as I see it, when a person targets you, he has no way of knowing you aren't carrying any cash. I mean, he certainly doesn't have X-Ray vision to see into your wallet or pocket. The mere fact that he is targeting you for robbery is he expects to get something. Now if you come up empty handed, with no cash or anything of value to offer, it wouldn't be the first time a thug who operates with a double digit IQ doesn't just get angry and kill you just out of plain meanness and frustration.

I always try to have about $40 or $50 cash on me just to give up if I'm in a situation where I end up complying. But know this, complying and giving up the cash is my Mr. Murphy factor "Plan C" choice of action. A majority of my defensive training is for contact distance encounters of most street robbery and assault scenarios. I train for weapon retention, disarming techniques, drawing against the drop, hand to hand techniques, quick draw from concealment and engaging multiple assailants. I also carry two guns and sometimes even a third "mouse gun," so that I go into a situation with about an 80% likelihood that I am going to immediately counter-attack with overwhelming and explosive violence of action. The remaining 20% is to allow me to be flexible, expecting Murphy's Law to play a factor and to be able to respond to the situation as it plays out and retain other options. One of those options is that if I really think I screwed the pooch so much that I have no other choice than to comply, then I at least have something to make it "worth his while" so hopefully I remove the urge to kill me because I didn't have anything to offer.

[Yeti]

I hAve lived in most major cities thru out Europe
Richmond va washington dc and la in the worst of times
been at gun point 3 times in my life
Still typing , comply With a real strong attitude
was never cc but if I were would not of helped at all !

A shotgun in your nose. From a deranged coke addict who's wife just left him
trained or not it will get your diction in action.
And no wing chung will not help , ever

Bow down. Submit ....
Then do as you choose ...

[Thumper]

Maybe you will be killed and maybe you won't but... you had better believe you are going to be killed and act accordingly!

[Treo]

I'm not going to comply anyway, sorry

[Bark'n]

I hAve lived in most major cities thru out Europe
Richmond va washington dc and la in the worst of times
been at gun point 3 times in my life
Still typing , comply With a real strong attitude
was never cc but if I were would not of helped at all !

A shotgun in your nose. From a deranged coke addict who's wife just left him
trained or not it will get your diction in action.
And no wing chung will not help , ever

Bow down. Submit ....
Then do as you choose ...

I'm not saying your wrong... But to say you'd never win such an encounter simply isn't true. As a matter of fact, it just happened 4 days ago during an armed robbery attempt at an ATM in Charlotte, NC. See link below.

Good: Citizen shoots suspect who tries to rob him at gunpoint at an ATM

And then there's Lance Thomas a watchmaker in LA who shot 6 men and killed 5 of them in 4 separate armed robberies. All the robbers had the drop on him, or had their guns in their hands when they entered. You can see the video interview of him on the show Justice Files below. It is a case Mas Ayoob refers to quite often when he speaks of Mindset and Training.

Lance Thomas, Modern Day Gunfighter

There are many, many more cases of armed citizens successfully defending them self with a firearm against armed robbers who had the drop on them, but these two examples... one from 4 days ago, and the Lance Thomas experience should suffice to show that just because someone has the drop on you, it isn't a foregone conclusion that you can't turn the tables on them and survive.

As I stated earlier, I never said I wouldn't comply if I felt that was the only thing to do given how the initial events play out. But here's the deal. I've made the determination beforehand, like Lance, I won't let the bad guy negotiate for my life. If I am killed in the encounter, it's because I screwed up and it was my decision, not his. I'm under no illusions I'm going to survive just because I have trained for it for the last two decades. But when they stick that gun in my face, they aren't expecting a violent counter-attack. What they are expecting is compliance or they would have targeted someone else. And action does beat reaction whether they have a finger on the trigger or not. Some people deep down inside don't have the stomach for, or determination to have a mindset such as that. But I haven't spent the last 30 years just living in or hanging out in bad areas. I have spent the last 30 years dealing with violence for a living and have had shots fired at me in anger. I have accepted certain truths and made certain decisions in advance which goes to how I have developed a survivors mindset and not hollow machismo.

Now there are always gonna be folks on internet forums who will exclaim B.S. That's fine. I've got no control over that, and personally could care less. But there are those who are here genuinely wanting to know what it takes to survive a violent encounter, and it starts with taking a deep long, honest look at yourself and asking if you are capable of being ruthless and without mercy fight for your life? And can you accept the fact that your action may be the action which ends your life. And can you accept the fact that it will come to you when you least expect it. When you desperately don't want it to happen now. You don't wake up in the morning and know that 16 hours from now, you're gonna have a gun shoved in your face while you're walking to your car with your wife after having dinner at that nice restaurant you've planned for the last two weeks.

Carrying a gun with the intent to take a human life, if it comes to that is as serious as serious can be. And the truth of the matter is, a lot of people aren't up to it. Or, really haven't thought things through. And it's not always their fault. If they don't have knowledge of certain critical information, then they simply do not know they are lacking that critical information. Most people have never seen a dead person outside of a relative or friend cleaned up and laid out in the sterile environment of a funeral home. Cleaned up, dressed in their best suit and laid out like they are merely sleeping. Most people have never seen a 70 year old woman in a pool of clotted blood with her panties and clothes ripped off and her head bashed in with a hammer. Or smelled the stench of her lying there for 3 days with the heat at 80 degrees with the flies swarming over her head. Killing someone whether they were a murder victim or an innocent person killing their attacker is an ugly and terrible sight to bear witness to. And bearing witness to a 14 year old girl, nude, battered, beaten and repeated raped by two men with the stench of their sweat and semen and her blood smeared all over her body who 30 minutes before meeting her, she was forced at gunpoint to dig her own grave in a remote location. Where the absolute only reason she was alive was the sheer happenstance that her attackers and would be killers were scared off by the sirens of a fire truck which was responding to a fire call over 1/2 a mile away and fled leaving her there alone. Finally able to run naked to a nearby house begging for help at nearly 1 am. The difference between TV and real life is the sense of smell. It's the smell of such things which makes it real as opposed to what you see on TV. It affects you. It leaves scars.

And many folk have never given it a serious thought simply because they never knew to think about before. In 30 years I've born witness to a lot of horror, just as any police officer or any other public safety professional, and for me... I'm not letting some 22 year old crack head decide whether I live or die in some parking lot outside my hotel when I least expected the moment of truth to come to me. I see my wife suffer in pain daily and can barely walk without a cane because some nut job patient rode her down a flight of stairs like my wife was a friggon toboggan 20 years ago and crippled her for life in a line of duty incident. She'd much rather live pain free and be able to walk than receive some stinking Fire Department pension at a fraction of her earning potential which barely covers the bills.

Rant off... My apologies if I offended anyone here.

[Guantes]

Superbly put.

[Back 40]

Bark'n
Very well said, I couldn't agree more.