What to do if 2 guys, each one a gun, assault you?

Question

This weekend near my area a guy was assaulted by 2 guys with each one a gun in the hand. No one was hurt cuz they were just after the money.

It makes me struggling a little bit. What would you do in a situation when 2 guys attack you? Should I just let them the money and then run away? What if they don't let me run and tell me to sit down, stay on the wall or whatever it takes to control me. Should I still run if they try to control me? Or is this the moment where I would have to defend myself? And how would you defend against 2 people with each a gun? Is this even possible? When is the moment where you should run and when you should strike back?

Answer 1

If they just want your belongings, give it to them, and good, you're done. Your friend is unhurt, so your friend did the right thing. The question people need to focus on is "What will make me safer?" and your friend did the thing that got him out safely.

If they want your life, you're going to have to a) figure that out in time, b) figure out what you're going to do about it. Those two parts make up a lot of what intense self defense training is about and people spend years doing scenarios, drills, watching footage, looking up statistics and trying to best prepare.

In most cases, however, running is probably going to do you better than fighting against a gun. This report puts the average hit percentage for NYPD officers shooting at 15% and you can also see the chart showing people being killed by guns by range dropping off significantly after 10 feet distance.

A lot of it is going to be specifics that you can't answer with a question that broad - maybe you'd be able to run to safety, or at least enough cover to get to safety. Maybe you'd be able to deal with one and use him as a shield from the other until you can get the gun free. It's a million and one specifics that no one can answer for you ahead of time.

Answer 2

While taking on multiple armed opponents is possible, as Bishnu Prasad Shrestha (1, 2) proved, it is a very rare event indeed. Dan Inosanto is famous for a knife vs gun video showing that a knife is better at close range. And finally, we have Mythbusters's Gun vs. Knife Fight. Of course all of that is just one off events. If you want real data the journal of trauma and your local crime statistics are a good places to start. Since OP lives in Switzerland, the Swiss Statistics and Switzerland Crime Stats are very applicable.

In case of a robbery, you might win a fight against armed assiants. However, You will get injured, maybe very seriously and you might die. Is whatever in your wallet worth your life? If so, get it out of your wallet right now!. If gun and knife is so common where you live: move! You cannot get hurt if you are not there.

In case of an assassination attempt, then unless you have bodyguards, luck, and non-professional attackers, you are dead. 'nuff said.

Most, if not all, martial arts will not teach anything that is even remotely useful against guns or knives. There is a lot of non-sense being taught sometimes with good intension, that will do nothing but endanger you. See my answer to a previous knife self defence question for generic advice that apply here as well.

Finally, playing make believe in your head about what you would do in such and such scenario is less than helpful. Dreams and reality tend not to match at all.

Answer 3

NOBODY, can give you the right answer to your questions as there are too many crazy people out there, even if you give them your money they will shoot you. If you run away they will shot you. If you fight back they will shoot you! What to do then?

It depends on the situation and the guy in front of you, also the location where it happens, by that I mean, if you are in a country, where a human live is less worth as that of a cow, you should be thinking twice to fight back. You should also avoid appearing as a potential victim... don´t try to show off with chains, expensive watches or acting as a prototype of a tourist (with camera etc. or in a safari outfit in south Africa - the natives are not running around like that around too right?)

Is the guys in front of you nervous? Anxious in any way, maybe under drugs? There are many situations where people got shoot 'accidentally' because they were scared respectively surprised by the attack of their victim and shot him.

Running away from someone that has a gun? Seriously? Just give them your belongings and obey to what they tell you and don´t make any quick or suspicious moves and the most important - stay calm!! Staying calm (or at least try as hard as you can) enables you to think.

If they are after YOU personally, the chances that you have done something wrong too, are pretty high and then it´s your own fault - live with it, it is the risk if going the wrong path in live. And even then, it depends ... shooting first?

you got my point... ?

Answer 4

The odds of violent resistance against two assailants, with firearms who also have the drop on you, are not good. The best you can do is comply until the situation changes. If they don't kill you right away, you may have an opportunity to resist and/or escape at a later point. If your goal is to survive, then the best skill to have is the ability to 'read' the situation, including the genuine intent of one's assailants.

Answer 5

If you're allowed to conceal and carry, you need to be more sensitive to these threats and see them coming before they happen. Arm yourself with know-how, confidence; know who and what your enemy is, and be ready before any of this dumb stuff ever happens to you.

Worse comes to worst, what? 200 dollars? Is your life worth 200 bucks? More? Less? Give the dumb ass caveman your money, go have a beer and laugh and thank god you're still breathing.

Answer 6

I assume that you are not in that 2 vs 1 situation right now. I'd say you run, as far to safety as reasonable, starting right now. If you have any possessions (or family) you don't want to give up, you better start packing your bags and move out. You say you don't have the money to move, but that can't be right. You must sleep somewhere, you sell it, or if you pay rent, you stop it. Go sleep at friends to save money for a ticket out.

Attackers will be nervous as well, and acting hostile will end badly. Move out. Let's call it "pre-emptive strike weeks in advance".

Answer 7

Bankuei, in his winning answer, is right that this comes down to specifics. If you really think about the situation, the person with the gun has a huge tactical advantage of having a gun, while you do not. In such an asymmetric situation, you're not going to find a general solution that wins. If one existed, guns wouldn't be such a big deal. Instead, you must exploit mistakes the assailants have made. Those are specifics to those two assailants that one particular time.

Teachers can tell you general patterns, such as running at a particular time, but there's no guarantee it will work. There's just an increased likelyhood that you will be able to exploit a mistake at one of those points in time. You wont learn to spot every mistake every gunman will ever make in a short period of time, which is why so many arts elect to not teach gun defense, or teach it late in your training. Overconfidence near a loaded gun is a very easy way to learn just how much blood happens to be pumping around your body.

Since you tagged Krav Maga, my opinion is that arts like Krav Maga that teach gun defenses teach them as a last resort. If you have to use the gun defense they taught you, it means you have already lost, and you are hoping that the other person simply doesn't realize it until its too late. The really good Krav Maga teachers will teach you to carry yourself in a way such that you don't need to use the gun defenses they teach you. In the best case, that means not making decisions that get you held at gun point. In the worst case, that means you're comfortable enough improving to not need to use some canned gun defense plan. Instead, you improvise something which is custom tailored to the exact situation you're in. It might look like a gun defense they taught, or it may not.