So he picks it up and takes a few steps toward me at which point I kindly point out that as I am standing on private property, if he continues to advance I will take it as a physical threat and respond accordingly,
This sounds like TV.
option b: he'll wear the crap home, get his man-card taken in front of his wife and child...
whatever is easier for him (them). i'm very flexable and accomodating..
Now my question is…what would you do if someone was about to get in a fight with you and you were carrying. I have no desire to pull a gun on him over some dog sh** but I am also not going to risk a tackle/knockdown and risk my gun coming loose…any of that bad stuff. What do you do?
Once its going to get physical, do you draw and issue a warning or do you grab hold so you dont lose control of the gun when you get knocked down. I'm starting to realize the merits behind also carrying OC (pepper spray).
I've been in fights and wrestling matches while carrying in a retention holster, and it's not a pleasant experience. You need to constantly protect and maintain control of your firearm even more than you need to win the fistfight, it's totally different than rolling around on the floor of a high school hallway. With your gun in a concealment holster & no weapon retention skills, you're sh*t out of luck.
Just because the situation will go lethal if they get your gun doesn't mean that it's a lethal situation as soon as they square off with you to throw punches. You brought a gun to the fight, you got involved in the fight, and you own everything that results from it in one way or another.
Pulling a gun in a fistfight gets LTC's pulled in MA.
On top of all this, you were at your house...if you drew on Mr. Dogdoo and he wants to settle up later on with 5-6 friends and their guns, he knows where you live.
Something else to consider, most self defense shootings are up close & personal violent encounters. Don't get stuck thinking that a defensive use of a firearm will occur in a vacuum where you have time to create distance, draw and fire without the bad guy(s) laying a finger on you. A gun is a tool for fighting, not a talisman to get you out of a fight. Like an airbag, it'll make a bad situation slightly less worse, but if you draw it will be in a completely fluid set of circumstances, probably after your system gets a nice dump of adrenaline and cortisol to shut down the upper 2/3's of your brain as you
react to a violent attack.
It sounds to me like you got lucky and narrowly avoided getting into a situation that you didn't have the training or knowledge to get yourself out of, where you didn't even know what you could do. Get some training in weapon retention/h2h, practice often, and don't provoke idiots to the point where you wind up killing them in front of their child.
I know this probably sounds harsh, but I'm being much more gentle than the press, the ADA and the judge at the criminal trial you almost got a front row seat in.
Seriously.
You should have pistol whipped his ass, old school style
Henry Hill knew how to do it. Fun factoid; in the movie Goodfellas he used a .38 snub, but in real life he used a .22 semi auto in that incident.
See, this is the problem with being a CIVILIAN! If you were a LEO, the appropriate course of action would be to tase the child, shoot the dog, and kill the couple mouthing off to you. Then you could just say they rang your doorbell and got what they deserved! However, as a non-LEO, you did okay. Not a lot of options.
If you were discussing guns, you'd be the Brady Campaign.
I'd rather look like the biggest pussy alive then look like a really brave dead man over a dog shit incident.
No kidding. Who really cares? The toughest, meanest, scariest men I've ever met have never felt the need to advertise to everyone how tough, mean and scary they are.