Two Gun Range Employees Return Fire After Detaining Two Armed Robbers and Taking Fire From Two More

HOUSTON, TEXAS — Two employees volunteered to stay behind at an indoor gun range after a rash of reported burglaries in the area. Around 12:30 a.m., surveillance cameras picked up two vehicles entering the parking lot. The employees watched as four people got out and attempted to break into one of the employee’s vehicles. That’s when they sprang into action.

According to ABC 13 News, the employees detained two of the robbers but the other two jumped into a car and drove off. During their escape, the two escaped suspects opened fire at the employees. The employees then returned fire with AR-15 rifles.

One of the suspects is believed to be detained after he showed up at a nearby hospital with a gunshot wound. Police investigators are still trying to link up the injury to the reported crime. As for the two that were detained, one of them is a prior convicted felon armed with a gun.

This was sort of an unexpected move. On one hand, it’s Texas. You’re allowed to defend yourself and you don’t have any duty to retreat from a threat. Four guys showed up to continue to harass, steal, and threaten gun range employees and probably customers as well.

At some point, enough is enough.

But that’s some dangerous ground to tread. Walking out onto the street, armed with AR-15s and facing down four potentially armed opponents is not one lick less than I’d expect from Texans but it’s not a road you should feel compelled to go down.

State laws will dictate a lot of nuance with how people are able to defend themselves and their property. Trying this can also get you killed.

That needs to be said.

If you walk out into a known hostile situation, visibly armed, there’s a lot of room for bad things to happen. Even worse, should you survive, the police may not see it your way. This case is still under review. We have yet to receive word whether or not a prosecutor wants to take this case on. Based upon the article, I’m going to guess not — but that’s still a lot more room to mess up one’s life than I’d think would be worth it.

That said, both employees had each other’s backs, managed to emerge from the situation unharmed, and even detained two bad guys and shot a third. These bad guys were a special breed of dumb to continually threaten gun range employees. The unfortunate part about reality is that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put a round on target and I’d personally hate to see a law-abiding gun owner get hurt or killed because he wanted to go toe-to-toe with a numerically superior force under poor conditions.

Carry everyday and be safe. Honestly, if you see something like the aforementioned scenario playing out in front of you, take down some license plate numbers and call the police. If you have video surveillance cameras, get them right on the suspects. Defend yourself if attacked, obviously, but if you can stay out of the action, your chances of not getting shot go up dramatically.