One Point Five Seconds

Look left. Look right. Those two actions probably took you about three seconds to accomplish. Now imagine yourself on the wrong end of an attempt at transactional violence, where the bad guy (or girl) is threatening us with violence because we have something they want. It could be our wallet, our phone, our car keys or it could be our body. We need to decide long before we’re in this awful situation if we will respond with lethal force, and if so, when we will make our move. 

Looking around to see if anyone has noticed a crime in progress is a not-uncommon occurrence in a violent encounter, and someone (it was either Rich Grassi or Brian Hill) mentioned that if you can see either of the bad guy’s ears facing you, you have about 1.5 seconds to do something before his reaction goes off. 

Can you draw from a holster and get a shot off at two yards in 1.5 seconds? Can you deploy pepper spray in that amount of time? Should you do either of those if all the bad guy wants is your wallet? 

Those first two questions can be answered with diligent practice, and I don’t have an answer to that last question, that’s up to you and your moral convictions. I do know this: Police archives around the country are filled with reports from murder scenes that started out with a simple armed robbery done on compliant victims, yet still wound up as murders because the bad guy(s) decided that shooting their now-compliant victims was the right thing to do.

They are not like us. Always remember that.