He was driving through town late in the evening when two cars tried to block him in at an intersection. As the occupants jumped out and headed his way, he strongly suspected that he was about to be the victim of a carjacking. Instead of trying to fight it out with multiple attackers, he quickly devised a plan. Driving over the curb, he quickly drove down the empty sidewalk, got back on the street and left the carjackers behind him.
In another case, a farmer’s wife was fixing breakfast while her husband was down at the barn feeding livestock. While she worked in the kitchen, a strange man burst through the back door without knocking. The woman merely reached over for the stove-top coffee percolator and threw it and its hot contents into his face. He left.
Finally, there was the rancher who had just sold a herd of cattle and was walking from the stockyards over to the hotel. A young man stepped out from behind a stack of hay bales and pointed a 1911 at him. Being unarmed, the rancher stopped and started talking. In short order, he had talked the young man out of robbing him and had bought the .45 from him. Years later, the old rancher still had that .45; he called it his lucky gun.
Criminals have their plan of attack and generally anticipate what their victim will do. They anticipate that their approach will be a surprise, and the victim will be momentarily frozen in place, trying to come to grips with what is happening. By going into immediate action, we mess up that plan of attack, and the criminal becomes the one to be momentarily confused. It gives us the chance to get away from the threat or to deal with it decisively.
In order to do this, we have to stay alert to what is going on around us. And, it helps us to understand how these types of crimes are committed. Coming up with an unexpected response, whether it involves the use of a defensive firearm or not, takes the advantage away from the surprise attack.
Instead of saying, “This won’t ever happen to me”, we accept the fact that no one is immune to being the victim of a criminal attack. We inform ourselves, expect the unexpected, and that helps us overcome our shock and surprise. When we act immediately, especially doing the unexpected, we have a far better chance of ruining the criminal’s day.
