Have you pulled a gun in self defense?

[pioneer]

As a cop, both uniform and detective; pulled pistol too many times to count.
Shot twice, 1 death.

Off duty / retired; once while off duty, no shots fired. 

Most folks involved in a killing don't like to talk about it. 

 

[gunman1911]

As a cop, both uniform and detective; pulled pistol too many times to count.
Shot twice, 1 death.

Off duty / retired; once while off duty, no shots fired. 

Most folks involved in a killing don't like to talk about it. 

 

The last sentance +1

[twyacht]

I don't think the premise of the survey was designed to calibrate Police Officers.  That is a profession that has inherent risk and the potential to become very bad, very quickly.

I certainly wouldn't expect any LEO or military, active or not, to discuss any firearm incident. It's not our business, and doesn't apply to this survey.

I relayed my "shot without firing" vote because it was just that, if I had fired,.. I don't know if I would want to share, probably not.

Lesson from my WWII Veteran Grandfather, he never spoke of the "bad" times in his service to this country. Right up until the end of his life, and I was older, did he share a "few". His eyes, voice, mannerism, all changed right before my eyes, I never saw him like that before and it was chilling to hear him say what he said. 6 weeks later he passed away.

I respect all that have done their duty whether as a Police Officer, Military, OR Civilian defending their life or family.

Stay Safe

Tom W

[unique]

I don't think the premise of the survey was designed to calibrate Police Officers.  That is a profession that has inherent risk and the potential to become very bad, very quickly.

I certainly wouldn't expect any LEO or military, active or not, to discuss any firearm incident. It's not our business, and doesn't apply to this survey.

Tom,
I agree.  But I think it helps us private citizens if we share our stories, including the close calls, because, in my experience, it doesn't happen like we think it will.  I've posted this one before, but I learned so much from it, I'm going to post it again;

Here's my last encounter.
It was over twenty years ago, I was divorced and living in an upstairs apartment in the city.  I shared a common entrance with the young guy downstairs who was, at best, an alcoholic.
Several times he had mentioned to me that someone had been “stealing his stuff”, I didn't think much of it until one night probably around 2:00AM he was pounding on my door saying something about knowing who was stealing his stuff.  I got out of bed, pulled on my jeans, stuck my Colt Officer's model in my back pocket, and went to the door.  I'm left handed and the door open in with the knob on the right, so as I opened the door, my left arm was behind the door.  I opened the door and there he was, with a revolver in his right hand, pointing at the ground.  All I could think of was that he thought I was the one stealing his stuff and he was going to shoot me.  I pulled the Colt, raising it behind the door, and started stepping back to get the gun around the door.  At that point I knew I was going to shoot him.  He started raising the gun, but in an odd way, kind of cross body, pointing to his left, then I saw the saddle ring at the base of the grip, it was a pellet gun.  With my right hand I grabbed the barrel of the gun and took it away from him.  He explained that he wanted me to keep the gun for him so whoever was taking his stuff wouldn't get it.  He never saw my gun, I kept it behind the door, so he never knew how close he came to dying, but I'll never forget it.
My point in all of this?  We all tend to practice for the direct confrontation, the mugger, the car jacker, right and wrong, black and white.  It's been my experience that confrontations are more often gray, and I often read them wrong, but we don't train for that.  We pull over to help someone with a flat tire and he walks to the car with a tire iron in his hand and we're conditioned to think “car jacking”, not that his kid put the wrong tire iron in the car and he's mad as hell and wants to show you what his kid did.

[Teresa Heilevang]

I too realize that these experience's are personal.. but I appreciate all of those who share them because it helps those of us who have not ever had to draw down on someone ..to ..in a round about way.. feel and learn so that when we do have to ..at least we have a little bit of knowledge under our belt.

[Sponsor]

[kmitch200]

3 times pulled, did not have to fire.
In no particular order...

One car driving a little crazy in BFE section of desert at 0dark30. Person hops out and comes running up to my window.
Upon closer inspection it's a very drunk female with empty hands who thought my truck was someone elses.
She never saw the 45. My friend who was with me didn't even register what was going on 'till he heard the safety click off.

Irate customer jerk who didn't like my boss in a previous life. 
Came at said boss with some sticks held together by chain. Kind of a Bruce Lee wannabe.
One look at 357 in hand, with me backing up to gain some distance, and decides that the sticks were better off being in the car. 
The boss was a turd, but nobody was going to bash his head in that day. (6 months later I would have cheered him on)

Told one uninvited guest to leave my house right the f*&% now!  As in IMMEDIATELY.
30-30 Winchester in hand reinforced the feelings I was trying to convey.
He was grumbling something unintelligible as he was backpedaling toward the nearest exit. 

[USSA-1]

Too many times to count.

USSA-1

[tombogan03884]

I don't think the premise of the survey was designed to calibrate Police Officers.  That is a profession that has inherent risk and the potential to become very bad, very quickly.

I certainly wouldn't expect any LEO or military, active or not, to discuss any firearm incident. It's not our business, and doesn't apply to this survey.

I relayed my "shot without firing" vote because it was just that, if I had fired,.. I don't know if I would want to share, probably not.

Lesson from my WWII Veteran Grandfather, he never spoke of the "bad" times in his service to this country. Right up until the end of his life, and I was older, did he share a "few". His eyes, voice, mannerism, all changed right before my eyes, I never saw him like that before and it was chilling to hear him say what he said. 6 weeks later he passed away.

I respect all that have done their duty whether as a Police Officer, Military, OR Civilian defending their life or family.

Stay Safe

Tom W

Reports of other peoples experiences can be a valuable lesson for the rest of us. Just like game tapes for a sports team. That's why Police and Military shooting situations are  documented as carefully  as possible, so others can use them to see what does or does not work, and for those involved to examine what they could/ should have done differently.

[DonWorsham]

The answer is..."not really". The point of my story is "know your target". This happened recently. My wife was out of town. She raises dogs for the show ring. I had just finished bring in the dogs and feeding them. Lights out in the dog house around 7pm. It was dark-ish outside because it was about to rain.

After being in house a couple of minutes the dogs made a great racket. They do that sometimes. Deer come around, cats come around, bunnies come around...and coyotes (so my wife says).

So I think maybe I left a kennel door unlocked and a dog is running aroung the dog house causing havoc. I look through the window of the door first, the lights are off it is dark inside...nothing runing around.

I open the door and step in...to the far right there is a person just beginning to rise up from a kennel with an object in their hand. My hand goes to my revolver and begins to pull it from my pocket holster...when I hear:

"Hello, Mr. Worsham! I was just getting something out of the freezer for dinner".

It was the teenage girl from next door. They have remodeling work going on and the workers needed to turn the electricity on and off sooo, my wife had the neighbor put her frig stuff in the frig we keep in the dog house and didn't mention it to me (not that she needed to).

Know your target.

[unique]

Don, that reminded me of another one.  I was first on call for our companie's alarm system back twenty years ago.  My boss was getting tired of being "fined" for the police responding to false alarms, so I went in alone, searching a five story building by myself.  I was on an upper floor, the only light was by the elevator, and I could see someone poking around an assembly table.  I pulled my gun and was tracking him while he walked towards the light, intending on stopping him there. When he got to the light, I could see it was a cop!  He didn't see me, so I put away my gun and called to him.  He just happened to be passing by, saw a door ajar, and came in to investigate, his story anyway.  I was so shook up I wasn't about to question him.  It's just too easy to misread a situation.