Sometimes when I’m out with my family at a restaurant or mall food court or lots of other places, I often wonder what if. What if we were sitting in a fast food restaurant and a lone gunman came in demanding money from the cash registers? What would I do? What would you do? What if there were 3 or more gunman? What are the pro’s and con’s of drawing your firearm in this type of scenario? This article will focus purely on hypothetical situations and is meant to garner thought and discussion around what you would do in a situation.
If you’re like me, you probably treat your concealed carry handgun like a fire extinguisher. You prepare for the worst, hope for the best and pray you never need to use it. But you’ve probably also considered these scenarios much as I have, like a convenience store robbery, a fast food robbery or a mall shooting. Just because you have a firearm, may be proficient enough to use it and are properly trained does not necessarily mean you should draw your firearm.
As I’ve ran through these scenarios multiple times in my head the one thing that sticks out in my mind is that I probably wouldn’t draw unless it became a life or death situation. Our first instinct when carrying may be to intervene but as most experts would suggest, the day you draw your firearm, your life is forever changed. As we’ve seen with some recent shootings in which a legally carried firearm was used in personal defense, the amount of attention some of these situations draws is unwelcomed and life is never the same again. On the flip side of that coin, if you are in a situation that suddenly turns to a life threatening situation, losing your life or your loved ones lives will obviously make a life changing impact as well, so I think it comes down to this; every potential situation where you could draw your firearm can and probably will have an impact on your life, so choose your actions carefully.
I’ve seen a number of What If Scenario videos online in the past and most of them just brought about a discussion. A panel would watch the video and then discuss what they would have done in the situation. Some of the panel members after the video would draw their firearm. Others would not. There were no right or wrong answers immediately following the video, but there were definately questions left unanswered with each scenario.
Let’s take a hypothetical situation and run with it and see where it takes us. Let’s say you’re grabbing lunch in any city and it’s a fast food type setting. Your family, children or friends are sitting with you at table. There are 4 of you and you are sitting with your back to the rear of the restaurant so you can see the entry door, and the cash registers. You see a man enter and perhaps you notice that something doesn’t feel right. He waits in line and when he gets to the counter, he produces a revolver and demands money from the registers. Would you draw your firearm in this situation? Speaking purely in hypothetical terms, I probably would not draw in this situation, but I would put my hand near my firearm, making sure it could be drawn at a moments notice should the situation take a turn for the worse.