Somebody who has a gun is threatening you...

[Animavore]

Depends where you are.

According to groper and jonno, you're supposed to lay down and die, or get raped, or whatever the criminal pleases.

What would you do, Collector?

Follow the first rule of gun fighting.

Have a gun.

Cute dodge, and pretty much what I expected. How about answering the question?

That is an answer, and a very good one. Having a gun at a gunfight...even a potential one...gives you many options you wouldn't otherwise have.

A dodge on top of a dodge. Great.

Now what would you do if you found yourself without a gun? It's a simple fucking question.

[Clinton Huxley]

Use brains and/or legs to escape.

[klr]

Start speaking to them in French, and don't forget to throw in a few Gallic shrugs.

[Hermit]

Depends where you are.

According to groper and jonno, you're supposed to lay down and die, or get raped, or whatever the criminal pleases.

What would you do, Collector?

Follow the first rule of gun fighting.

Have a gun.

Cute dodge, and pretty much what I expected. How about answering the question?

That is an answer, and a very good one. Having a gun at a gunfight...even a potential one...gives you many options you wouldn't otherwise have.

But the question was: "Somebody who has a gun is threatening you and you don't have a gun. What are you legally allowed to do?" I don't think "Have a gun" is answering the question.

I think what you are legally allowed to do is exactly the same, regardless of whether you had one, or not. The only difference is what you could do.

I've only had a gun pointed at me twice in my life, and my reaction was not even remotely heroic on either occasion.

In the first instance I was about ten years old. One of a couple of boys in their early teens pointed his revolver at me and demanded that I give him my bicycle. I complied. The one wielding the revolver turned to the other and said: "See? It works." and both let me hop on my bike to get back home from where I was. Later on I figured out that the revolver was a replica, and the boys were testing just how convincing that replica was.

For the second instance we wind forward about 30 years. After about three years of sub-contracting, I was wondering what to do with all that money that had accumulated in my savings account. It was certainly enough for a deposit on a house. I lived in the inner-city suburb of Sydney's Glebe at the time, an area which I liked for its bohemian ambience, but unfortunately the properties were out of my price range. So I looked around for something to buy in a less fashionable suburb with a similar atmosphere and bought a tiny terrace house in Newtown which was just as close to the the CBD - and almost as badly infested with heroin addicts and similar low-life.

One advantage of my new abode was that it had dual-street exposure, so parking a 6.5 metre truck was not really a problem. I just had to park it in the back street, which also quite conveniently turned out to be a lot wider than the street passing by my new home's front door. All I had to do is to enter it via the backyard and the bathroom.

One evening I did just that. As I walked in, I heard a lot of shouting, but could not make out what was being shouted. The noise seemed to emanate through the kitchen window. I thought that was most atypical of Craig and his partner, who had been living next door for several years now, quiet as church mice.

With daylight fading, I flicked the kitchen light on. Nothing happened. "Great," I thought. "Now I'll have to get the ladder to change the bulb." Meanwhile the shouting became even louder while the words remained incomprehensible to me. Walking through the lounge room I noticed flickering lights in the corridor. That is when I realised that the noise came from inside my home.

My immediate reaction was to go into denial: "This is my home," I thought. "I live here on my own. Nobody else can be here right now." Fractionally later, I discerned the outline of revolvers - cast by torchlight carried by the bearers - and I finally understood, at least in part, what they were shouting: "Don't move!" "Raise your hands!" Pedantic me immediately thought: "How can I not move if I have to raise my hands?" But raise my hands I did. Not carrying a gun myself, there was no alternative.

All turned out well in the end. What happened was that a few minutes before I returned home, a heroin addict tried to force my front door open after turning off the power supply, smashing a glass panel in the process. The resulting noise alerted the neighbour, who rang the police. The police turned up with two patrol cars shortly after. The burglar heard the sirens and fled. Police entered through the smashed front door just as I let myself in through the back door. Police thought I might be the burglar and bailed me up.

They actually caught him in the back street while he was in the process of trying to hotwire a car, and he finished up with a custodial sentence. One of the officers asked me if any valuables were stolen. I checked around and discovered only that a small amount of pot was missing. "Can I have that back?" I asked "I didn't hear that." he replied.

All in all, I am glad not to have been in possession of a gun on both of the occasions even though I might have stood a good chance of successfully defending myself in court had I killed any one of the persons who had indeed pointed theirs at me.

[Tero]

Kaufman used to do his foreign guy if he was getting in a tough situation on the street. The mugger would say: here is 5 bucks,go get some coffee.

[Seth]

.
I, on the other hand, have trained for many years on exactly what to do when someone points a weapon at me and demands my wallet, and that is to draw and fire two to the chest and one to the head in 0.76 seconds, long before the crook can possibly perceive and react.

In my part of the world, (NZ and Australa) people who make claims like that are called wankers, and are subject to mockery. Certainly they are not taken seriously.

That's because your part of the world is filled with wankers and idiots who know absolutely nothing about armed combat.

[Seth]

Bear in mind if someone put a gun to their own head ,demanded my wallet and said they would kill themselves if I didnt give them any money I almost certainly would give them my wallet. Better a lost wallet than having to watch brain splatter pie on the pavement.

I would hope most decent people would do the same (and call the police later of course)

Er, if he wants to blow his brains out that's fine with me, it just means one less deranged suicidal nutcase I have to worry about going postal and killing OTHER people in order to make a name for himself.

[Seth]

Now what would you do if you found yourself without a gun? It's a simple fucking question.

It depends on quite a number of unknown and unstated factors including location, available cover and concealment, distance from the assailant, physical features of the assailant and half a hundred other things that get assessed in a split second in making a flight or fight decision.

So, the short answer is "either flee or fight, depending on the situation."

[Seth]

All in all, I am glad not to have been in possession of a gun on both of the occasions even though I might have stood a good chance of successfully defending myself in court had I killed any one of the persons who had indeed pointed theirs at me.

Well, carrying a gun does require that one use good tactics, which includes not entering a potential crime scene where there's some sort of conflict in progress.

[Tero]

I've been thinking about this same thing...Seth 2 posts above. I thought some gun toting idiots would kill each other, eventually. But idiots hang out with idiots, not all of whom have guns. Not a big loss to idiotdom, losing a few bystanders. But not fair.

[Audley Strange]

Bear in mind if someone put a gun to their own head ,demanded my wallet and said they would kill themselves if I didnt give them any money I almost certainly would give them my wallet. Better a lost wallet than having to watch brain splatter pie on the pavement.

I would hope most decent people would do the same (and call the police later of course)

Nah. I'd call his bluff and if the person did blow their brains out, they were to fucking stupid too live. They had a gun, they could have tried to mug me.

I have also asked The GLS and she said "fuck him."

[Animavore]

I'd laugh and say,"Do it!" And reach for my phone and start recording and continue with further laughing and then laugh more when his head pops. And then post it on the webz.

[Coito ergo sum]

...and you don't have a gun. What are you legally allowed to do?

If he is pointing it at you, shoot him.

[Coito ergo sum]

Scenarios
1 they are 20 ft away with gun in hand
2 they are 20ft away and make a verbal threat, with gun hidden but hand ready

1. If the threat puts the victim in reasonable fear of his or life or serious bodily injury, then he or she can do whatever it takes to stop the threat.
2. If the gun is hidden, then the victim probably doesn't know it's there. So, a verbal threat probably would not justify killing the guy.

Both of these scenarios depend on the nature of the threat. It's fact-dependent.

[Collector1337]

All in all, I am glad not to have been in possession of a gun on both of the occasions even though I might have stood a good chance of successfully defending myself in court had I killed any one of the persons who had indeed pointed theirs at me.

Well, carrying a gun does require that one use good tactics, which includes not entering a potential crime scene where there's some sort of conflict in progress.

I read his story and found his total lack of situational awareness appalling and just downright stupid.

You hear voices, but think it's coming from next door, and not inside your own house? WTF?

How shitty is your hearing?

If you were paying attention, you wouldn't have had to walk into that at all. You would have heard voices, and before you stepped foot in the room, you could have gone outside and called the cops.

Instead, do to obliviousness and ineptitude, you get held at gun point, which could have easily been avoided.

You're lucky it turned out as well as it did. Some criminals will just kill you when they get scared of getting caught so there's no witnesses.

Nice work making an almost fatal mistake.

And then you ask a cop for your weed back, obviously admitting to weed possession!

Not the sharpest tool in the shed, are you?