After reading your post, I suppose it is not at all counter-intuitive to understand that if you are armed and have quick access to your gun and can take advantage of the perp’s weaknesses, you do have certain advantages in a hold-up situation.
I always enjoy reading your clear explanations of things. You obviously have a well of wide-ranging knowledge upon which to you draw. Bravo.
It begs the experiment.
Oddly enough, the physicist Neils Bohr (1885-1962) was fascinated with Hollywood westerns. He noticed that when there was a gun duel, the good guy always drew *second*, but shot the bad guy who drew first. While he could have written it off as a movie convention, something struck him about it as having a deeper meaning.
So there was one of the most brilliant physicists in the world, with several of his equally brilliant physicist peers, having very carefully analyzed gunfights with cap pistols.
And Bohr established that in many circumstances, the human brain reacts faster than it acts, by a relatively long time in milliseconds. This was not physically proven by neurologists for well over half a century. Ironically, they only did it to prove or disprove Bohr’s theory, yet in doing so opened the door to several other neurological discoveries.
If you haven’t seen it, William Shatner was in a TV drama involving a concealed carrier being mugged by an armed criminal. Ignoring the silliness of the dialogue, look at it tactically, as if it was a serious situation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erqVUhwvybI
Cut through the acting, stuff like Shatner showing his gun before using it, and there are some really good timing points there. The biggest mistake was the violation of “Tuco’s rule”:
“When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.”