“Benavides said the Beefy Crunch burritos had been sold for 99 cents each as a promotion, but the man was apparently angry that the promotion had ended, and the price had gone up to $1.49.” You can guess what happened next, or click here for the details. Suffice it to say, angry non-burrito boy did the Falling Down thing, barely avoiding eating a bunch of lead courtesy the San Antonio police. The closest I’ve ever come to a gunfight didn’t quite go down at SuperStation WTBS. I watched a professional wrestler point a Smith & Wesson Model 60 at the promoter/producer standing not five feet to my left and demand payment . . .
“Go ahead,” the promoter challenged the man mountain, literally pushing his chest against the muzzle. “Pull the trigger. ‘Cause if you don’t I’m going to grab that gun and fucking kill you.”
The wrestler backed down. “I just want my money man.” The promoter pocketed his gun (‘natch). I removed my sweaty hand from my own revolver and resumed breathing. What’s the scariest gun fight you’ve never had?
The scariest? I’d have to say my first divorce.
Called out to a ‘Gunman’ spotted in the married quaters near an installation, Northern Ireland, circa 1988. I was armed with an SLR (FAL) in 7.62mm that was older than me, and had patchy reliability. We spotted the ‘Gunman’ and I gave chase, I ducked between a house and a greenhouse and got the drop on a figure about 200m to my front. He was tall, dressed in camo and was carrying some kind of rifle.
I dropped into a kneeling position, put the front sight between his shoulder blades, snicked off the safety, and took up the first preasure on the trigger. I issued him with a challenge, ‘Army, Halt or I fire’. I would not have repeated that challenge, and because of the reliability issues, I would have killed him if he didn’t do exactly what I said for him to…
As it turned out, I didn’t have to kill him. He stopped and dropped the rifle. Which was good, because he was a 16 year old kid (allbeit a tall one) and he was out shooting with his air rifle. It nearlly cost him his life too. We took him home, and his mum gave him a right seeing to. It took me about an hour to stop shaking.
Rusty
Only time I’ve ever been in a tense situation involving guns pointed at people was when I was 14 and interestingly enough, considering Rusty Ray’s comment, it too was in Northern Ireland. My dad and I were coming up from the south into the north near Enniskillen in the evening on a back road. We came around a blind corner and ran smack dab into British Army patrol on foot. They apparently were taken a wee bit by surprise and were a little suspicious of 2 Americans travelling at high speeds down a backroad on the border in a car that didn’t belong to them. We were stopped at gunpoint and I can still remember what it feels like to stare down the barrel of a L85.
We checked out on were sent on our way safely, but the eyes of the trooper behind the optic on that rifle left no doubt in my mind that he would’ve pulled the trigger if need be.
My brother in law and his wife, though he is a doctor and she a nurse, like to live in some of the seedier areas “for the night life”. My wife (his sister) dragged me and my then 2 year old son down to visit him one fall afternoon, and it was decided that we would all walk to some local restaurant for dinner.
A little background here. Because he likes to live in bad areas, whenever we go to visit him I swap my normal CC gun which has only 7 rounds of small caliber with one backup mag for my Glock 22 in .40S&W with one in the chamber 15 in the mag and at least two backup mags. He lives in a bad area, and it just always made me feel a little better when visiting.
My son was still somewhat new at walking, and he insisted on walking, holding daddy’s hand of course (not my shooting hand, he was trained young heh). My wife and her brother and his wife got impatient and decided to go ahead to start the reservations, I was unhappy about this plan but my protests fell on deaf ears as they rushed down the street and around the corner.
What happened next, I will never forget and neither will the other person involved. A man pulled up about 15ft in front of me in a pickup, got out and grabbed a chainsaw from his truck bed and started it up, he then started walking directly towards my son and I laughing maniacally. I was terrified, but I drew my gun by the time he had closed to 10ft, a distance I knew was already too close but it all happened so fast it was the soonest I could react. I was going through my mental shoot don’t shoot stream and had decided because I had my son and the two of us were not going to be cut up by a chainsaw that the mad man had to go. Fortunately for both of us he also reacted quickly to the sight of the gun and changed his facial expression, put the kill switch on the chainsaw and dropped it, and raised his hands saying “wait, don’t shoot”.
Since the situation changed, but I was still unsure what was going on or if there was someone coming behind me or any of a million other things I kept the gun on him and I remember saying something like “Back away or you will be shot.” I also remember my son was crying as he was terrified as well, but feeling helpless to comfort him because I would definitely have to cede control of the situation in order to do so. He explained he was a city employee tasked with cutting down a small tree (was like 8 feet tall and like 3 inch diameter max) that was behind me. He explained he wanted to have some fun at our expense and give us a bit of a scare. I remember saying something like “Well, that was pretty stupid and almost got you killed”. He agreed, apologized profusely and said he had learned a lesson and would never do anything like it again.
Fortunately, we both walked away alive. I have never pulled my gun before or since, but it is something I will never forget. The thing I remember most is that there must have been tons of adrenalin involved, because I started shaking as soon as I re-holstered the gun. But while it was going on, I didn’t notice any distractions, I was both super aware and almost tunnel vision focused which is an odd mix. I remember my thoughts centered primarily on the safety of my son, and my grip on his little hand never was lost. But other than that my thoughts were devoted entirely to the task at hand, which was deciding if the chainsaw guy lived or died. The one thing I sometimes worry about when reliving the moment is that I was not even going to give the man a warning. Because he was already inside 10 feet by the time the decision to kill him was reached, he was going to die and soon. Had he not also acted fast enough to change his own situation in the short time it took me to reach my decision, he would probably have died that day, and I probably would have entered into a heap of trouble. It was really the fact that his face changed to sheer terror, and he began to lean away from me instead of approaching at a quick pace that made me pause long enough before pulling the trigger to re-evaluate, by the time the re-evaluation was done he had stopped and dropped the chainsaw (and I mean he dropped it), and completely changed to a non lethal threat.
I am ashamed to admit that I made lots of mistakes that day, fortunately none came back to haunt me. The largest mistake I made was not calling the police to give my side of the story, fortunately neither did he or if he did the cops never came. This was a huge mistake I didn’t even think about at the time but would learn later through watching an associate make the same mistake but not get as lucky as I did (he wound up in jail). The other mistake was agreeing to walk through the worst part of a big city with a two year old in the first place. I could have insisted we drive, and should have and taken the two year old with me, even if the rest wanted to walk. Lessons learned.
My wife got more than an earful for leaving us. My son was still upset when we got to the restaurant, and I must have been still shaking, because my wife knew instantly that something serious had gone down in the few minutes we were apart. Honestly though, I don’t know how my wife would have reacted and so in some ways I am glad she was not there.
As to the other guy, I am pretty sure he learned a valuable lesson that day. As I walked away I continued to look back just to be sure the situation wasn’t escalating again. The last thing I saw was the man leaning over his pickup bed with his hands on his face crying.
Long ago I had been out late with friends. We noticed that the liquor stores were about to close and hightailed it to the local store, running full speed around a corner to the front door. I was in the lead and when I opened the door I was looking down the barrel of a hand cannon. I don’t know if it was a .22 or JOE’s S&W 500, but all I remember is the manager looked as terrified as I felt. His only words were “we’re closed”. I somehow managed to back away gracefully, without sh*tting my pants or getting shot. Wouldn’t have mattered if I had a gun or not…
No stories involving guns, but if you do a post on knife fights I might contribute.
Sitting in the left turn lane at a red light, I nearly had my passenger mirror clipped off by some idiot in a ford taurus and he cut me in line to turn left. I honked out of sheer “holy sh*t I’m about to get smashed.” So the dude pulls in front of me and puts it in park. He gets out of the car (in busy rush hour traffic) and starts to walk back to my car yelling “what you want!? You want this!?” I told him all I wanted to do was turn left and told him to get back into his car. He was about 10 feet away from my window before he stopped, flipped me off, and went back to his car.
As I pulled out and did an illegal u-turn to get away from this guy he got out of his car and started to come at me again. By this time I was already on the phone with 911 and had given a description and a plate number. I overheard “possible stolen vehicle” on the radio chatter in the dispatch center.
I never knew what happened to that creep, but usually you don’t want to challenge people to fights in traffic if you’re driving a stolen car. I had my gun on me, and was prepared to defend myself if he tried to pull me out of the car. Luckily I was able to maneuver out of there, and my car has a turbo. I was shaken up for the rest of the day.