Fight or Flight...

You've all heard this before, it's the adrenaline dump reaction to a stress situation. All of your nerves tingle, your muscles tense, your digestive system shuts down, blood flows to your extremeties, your heart beat and respiration increase, and you are ready to either run for your life or fight for it.

In an encounter a CCW carrier there are steps that we have to go through before making the final decision to draw our weapon.

Legally, in my state, you have the duty to retreat to avoid conflict. Meaning if you are at a gas station and someone approaches you, you have the duty to retreat, if you can, to get out of the situation. You can't just go Billy the Kid on them right there. Its different if you are in your home, but out in the world, you're legally bound to get out of there. And its a good idea!

Here's how I look at it:
Awareness - Know where you are and your surroundings. You don't have to be paranoid, just aware.
Avoidance - You see 3 guys in hoodies at midnight looking in to cars at the gas station, get the heck out of there.
Exit - Run like heck. I mean run, I don't mean brisk walking, I mean RUN like your life depends on it, because it might.
De-escalate - This is more to do with individual encounters when someone is looking to fight but not looking to commit a "crime" per se.

If you are backed in to a corner, if you can't get away, if they aren't going to leave you alone and you fear for your life, then, and ONLY then do you pull your gun.
And that's the last decision you get to make in that fight, believe it or not.

Some people say might makes right, in some cases that's true. When it comes down to a fight like this, that' not exactly the case. Follow me on this one.

If I'm in a fight and I've drawn my weapon I have made the last decision I will make in that encounter. The bad guy (BG) gets to make all the choices from now on and I will react accordingly.

Example: Someone breaks in my home while the wife and pups and I are asleep. I hear it and I head downstairs, weapon drawn and at the ready while the wife calls 911 from the locked bedroom. I encounter the bad guy. There he is, trying to take my laptop or whatever...the sticky part is he has a crow bar in his hand.

Ok, I perceive that he is an imminent threat. In a normal situation, I would have a tough time fending off a guy with 5 pound of steel in his hands when he's swinging it Mark McGuire style. So I go in to target acquisition mode. I draw down on him and command him to "STOP".

Decision 1.
It is fair to say that my intentions are well known to him right now. I have a gun, he's in my house, and he's now in a position to make a choice. He can stop what he's doing, at which point he lives, but goes to jail, and I'll hold him at gun point until the police arrive (information that is relayed to the police by the way via the 911 operator's conversation with my wife). If he relents, gets on his knees, goes to jail. Problem solved, I loose some sleep, no one got hurt, all in all a good night.

Decision 2.
He boogies and I mean he hauls all kinds of ass out of my house, his feet don't make marks in the dew on the yard he's hauling so much boogie. At which point, the police show up, they canvas the area, they may catch him, they may not, but he won't be coming to my house again. I loose some sleep, no one got hurt, all in all a good night.

Decision 3.
He decides to "try me". I know that I have 1.5 seconds for him to cover 21 feet. I'm already on target, I'm ready to do what I have to do. He makes the first furtive movement my way and he gets a severe case of lead poisoning. Maybe he dies, maybe he doesn't, but he's down, period, down. My wife goes out to meet the cops (she's already told the 911 operator that shots have been fired and the intruder has been incapacitated). She tells the police that "My husband's the one in the Spider-Man Garanimals and flip flops with the Glock". They come in, I drop (and I mean literally drop, not set down) my weapon, kneel, cross my legs behind me and put my hands on my head. The cops then have to do their job . They handcuff me (perhaps) for their safety, they get to working on the bad guy to make sure he gets medical treatment and the confiscate my weapon until it is determined wether or not I was justified in my actions. I may even have to go to jail that night, it all depends.
I loose a lot of sleep, I may need therapy, I may have taken a man's life, worst night of my life, period.

So you see... after I drew my gun, I made no more choices. The bad guy did.
And he either made a good choice or a bad choice, but he made a choice, I just reacted accordingly.