Page 1 of 2

Another "What Would You Do" Question

Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 10:59 am
by thatguyoverthere
Here's a scenario that came up where I did not know what to do. I'd like to get some opinions of what some of you all would have done.

Now, let me say right up front that I did not experience this situation - not exactly. This was something that I actually dreamed last night! :shock: But I think it was something realistic enough that something kind of similar could happen in real life. But you guys tell me.

Here's the layout in this scene: my wife and I and two other couples are standing in a small rectangular shaped room. There is one door to enter/exit the room, located in the corner of the room, near the end of the long-side wall. No other doors or windows. No furniture, nothing else in the room.

My wife and I are standing about the middle of the room, against the wall on the opposite side of the door. The other two couples are standing between us and the door; one couple very near the door, the other couple about half way between us and the door.

The door opens, and in steps a man in his late 30's. The man is about 6 feet tall, very muscular build. He's very neatly dressed and groomed. He's wearing dark pants, dark long-sleeved shirt and a black leather vest (no patches or markings on the vest).

The man in the black vest who just walked into the room immediately attacks the first man standing nearest the door. But the "attack" is kind of strange (it's a dream, remember). The nature of a particular hold that the attacker uses causes the victim to immediately drop to the floor, temporarily paralyzed (sort of like the old Vulcan neck pinch thing from Star Trek), except that the victim is screaming in terrible pain. While the victim is down and paralyzed, the attacker goes through the victim's pocket. The attacker finds nothing in the man's pockets, so lets go of the man, and they both immediately stand up, the victim apparently having no lasting effects from the attack at all. So at this point, I'm not really sure that I saw what I thought I saw.

But now the attacker moves to the man in the second couple and does exactly the same thing. As the attacker is going through the second man's pockets, it finally hits me as they are on the floor: this is a mugging! A plain and simple assault and robbery.

This is all happening very quickly. No one other than the attacker and his victims have moved. But now I have my hand on my (still holstered) handgun.

Now the second victim is back standing again, and again showing no lasting effects of being attacked. Both victims standing as if nothing had happened. The attacker is now standing about 10 feet away from me, looking directly at me. Only now do I see that he is wearing a black OWB kydex retention holster and that holster contains a full size black handgun.

As we're standing there looking at each other, my hand still firmly grasping my gun but still in the holster, he also with a holstered gun, but his hand not on it, my mind is racing while I'm thinking: "Do I draw and shoot now? He hasn't attacked me yet, and his victims seem to have no lasting effects. Would they testify for me, or would they have the I-don't-want-to-get-involved attitude. If I shoot now, will I go to prison for murder? If I give him too much time, what if he draws on me first? I can tell by looking at him that he knows how to handle a gun. What if he moves behind the two couples off to the side of us to use them as human shields, then he draws on me!"

Then my thoughts are shattered as he's looking at me menacingly and he says to me: "What'cha gonna do, Spider Monkey? What'ch gonna do?" (I have no clue where the "Spider Monkey" came from, but hey, it's a dream!).

That's when I wake up from this dream. Breathing pretty heavily, I might add.

Weird situation for real life maybe. But maybe not, also. I think any of us could find ourselves in a situation where we are faced with sudden, unanticipated danger and have to make an immediate life or death decision. It's not something that I continually dwell on, but I do think about it occasionally. I don't know that it would really help in a real life situation by playing these "what-if" games, but I figure it couldn't hurt.

How about you? Wanna play "what if?" What would you do in a situation like that?

Re: Another "What Would You Do" Question

Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 11:44 am
by The Annoyed Man
I am so going to steal "spider monkey". "rlol" "rlol"

The situation is so surreal that it is difficult to answer coherently - except to say that I doubt I would have remained inactive beyond the beginning of the first mugging. I'm not sure what I would have done, but I would have done something, after which I'd either have not witness mugging #2 because I'd already be gone out the door, OR I'd have interfered in mugging #1 putting a stop to it at gunpoint. But those are both very general answers, and it is very difficult to say more than that, it being such a surreal situation.

I've actually seen someone use words before to the effect of "I was about to go spider monkey on his butt" to describe a situation of escalating tension between two opponents. But I've never heard it used as a derogatory name in a similar context.

Re: Another "What Would You Do" Question

Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 11:52 am
by Jusme
I'll give you one thing, you do have interesting dreams. :mrgreen:

In a real life scenario, where I am witnessing, a mugging/assault such as you describe, I would draw my gun, whether or not I could see that the perpetrator was armed. I would make sure that my wife, and any innocents were out of the line of fire, while ordering him to stop his attack. If he stopped, I would continue to hold my gun on him while ordering him to the ground. He may or may not, comply, but I would continue to repeat my orders. I would hope that someone by this time had called 9-1-1. If I then noticed he was armed, I would tell him to keep his hands away from his gun. If he made any moves either towards me, or began to draw his weapon, I would shoot. The attacker, has already demonstrated, his willingness, to harm others, and is obviously able to overpower them, physically, so I would believe that my actions would be justified, as well as having witnesses, who could corroborate my version of events. JMHO

Re: Another "What Would You Do" Question

Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 11:52 am
by bblhd672
You have same strange dreams dude. Did you have pizza for dinner last night? For some reason pizza for dinner makes me have weird dreams. :mrgreen:

Re: Another "What Would You Do" Question

Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 1:38 pm
by RogueUSMC
bblhd672 wrote:You have same strange dreams dude. Did you have pizza for dinner last night? For some reason pizza for dinner makes me have weird dreams. :mrgreen:
Or dinner in any form after 8 o'clock at night...lol

Re: Another "What Would You Do" Question

Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 2:12 pm
by RPBrown
Jusme wrote:I'll give you one thing, you do have interesting dreams. :mrgreen:

In a real life scenario, where I am witnessing, a mugging/assault such as you describe, I would draw my gun, whether or not I could see that the perpetrator was armed. I would make sure that my wife, and any innocents were out of the line of fire, while ordering him to stop his attack. If he stopped, I would continue to hold my gun on him while ordering him to the ground. He may or may not, comply, but I would continue to repeat my orders. I would hope that someone by this time had called 9-1-1. If I then noticed he was armed, I would tell him to keep his hands away from his gun. If he made any moves either towards me, or began to draw his weapon, I would shoot. The attacker, has already demonstrated, his willingness, to harm others, and is obviously able to overpower them, physically, so I would believe that my actions would be justified, as well as having witnesses, who could corroborate my version of events. JMHO
:iagree: with all of this. Also stealing the "Spider Monkey"

When my wife was taking Ambien to help her sleep, she would have dreams like this. Thats why she doesn't take it now.

Re: Another "What Would You Do" Question

Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 10:07 pm
by Bitter Clinger
It's a dream. Go all Bruce Lee on him. Make those kinda weird bird noises, rip off your shirt and show that 6 pack, head feint him, inside crescent kick to the head followed by a reverse spin kick and then a flying scissors take down. Finish him off with a sleeper hold, grab the girl, saunter off into the sunset with the flute melody theme from "Kung Fu" playing in the background.

Re: Another "What Would You Do" Question

Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 10:14 pm
by WTR
Bitter Clinger wrote:It's a dream. Go all Bruce Lee on him. Make those kinda weird bird noises, rip off your shirt and show that 6 pack, head feint him, inside crescent kick to the head followed by a reverse spin kick and then a flying scissors take down. Finish him off with a sleeper hold, grab the girl, saunter off into the sunset with the flute melody theme from "Kung Fu" playing in the background.

Better yet, have the BG trip, fall and break his neck at the get go. Then you can saunter off with the girl without breaking a sweat.

Re: Another "What Would You Do" Question

Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 10:26 pm
by thatguyoverthere
I'm loving it. The replies are getting better all the time!!!

:lol: Yes, I've been blessed (cursed?) with vivid dreams for as long as I can remember. :shock: I won't experience them every night, but usually at least several times a week. I swear if I were a really creative kind of guy, I could have written a number of best selling books from my many story-time dreams! :smilelol5:

As for analyzing my dream-actions, looks like the general consensus here is to have taken definitive self-defense action - draw my weapon and order the attacker to stop as soon as I recognized that an attack was in progress, while simultaneously trying to make sure I'm in the best position to do so.

After being awake now and thinking about it, I agree with those ideas. Seems very logical and pretty straight forward now.

Having had these kinds of dreams so often for so long, one thing that I have realized is that my decision making skills in my dreams are severely limited. I suppose in reality that poor decision making is because so much of the brain is shut down during sleep. But quite often in my dreams, I will make critical decisions that seem perfectly correct and logical in the dream, but then when I wake up and recall the dream and recall the decisions that I made in the dream, I think to myself: "wow, that was a stupid decision to make!" :roll:

So anyway, that's my night's work for last night! Thanks for the replies, guys. It's been fun. Now it's off to bed for another night's high adventures! Hopefully I'll be able to get my dream problems worked out on my own next time! :leaving

Re: Another "What Would You Do" Question

Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 11:05 pm
by WTR
Taking your dream at face value , I would have drawn on the man as he was distracted attacking his first victim. Had he drawn a weapon I would have trouble tapped him without hesitation.

Re: Another "What Would You Do" Question

Posted: Sat Aug 26, 2017 11:06 am
by JustSomeOldGuy
Translating your hypothetical dream situation into a hypothetical real life situation; (with some realistic use of physical force in place of the Vulcan neck pinch) here's a hypothetical answer......

1) never go into/stay in a place you don't know how to get out of (thanks to the character of Sam in 'Ronin' for that one). Actually, I think fire codes preclude 'box canyon' architecture in most public/commercial buildings. I have no issue with someone deciding "not my monkey/not me paying for my lawyer's kid going to college", and slipping out the back at the first sign of trouble. 911 as soon as reasonable.
2) you just witnessed two aggravated assaults, and the perp also has a firearm. potentially deadly force is present, paranoia is justified here.
3) unless the perp is Rob Leatham or Jerry Miculek gone bad, you have maybe a 1/2 second advantage by virtue of hand on your gun vs. his gun hand being at his side. (It would have been better if you went to low ready while the perp's attention was not on you, given the circumstances)
In response to the spider monkey query (represents escalation by the perp) you could go with A) ordering the perp to leave, or B) put that 1/2 second advantage to use.

Re: Another "What Would You Do" Question

Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2017 3:51 pm
by thatguyoverthere
AndyC wrote:
thatguyoverthere wrote:How about you? Wanna play "what if?" What would you do in a situation like that?
Shoot him inna face.
Seems to be the more or less general consensus from everyone (thanks for all the replies). Andy just put it so succinctly! :lol:

Re: Another "What Would You Do" Question

Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2017 4:43 pm
by LDB415
I think the moment it moves to the second person I draw to low ready and prepare to shoot if required.