Shooting Video: 5 important Street Survival Lessons

Just a few days ago this happened in down town Buenos Aires.

After attempting to rob a man that had just left the bank with a significant amount of cash, two criminals take off in a motorcycle as the man draws a Glock and shoots five or six times, killing an innocent bystander, a locksmith that was just walking by.

• Laws change from one country to another, even from one state to another. Keeping that in mind, it is still safe to say that in most jurisdictions its practically impossible to claim self-defense when shooting someone clearly escaping from you. Again, different laws, but in general you don’t want to shoot a bad guy in the back as he moves away from you.
• Elemental rule of firearms safety: Know your backstop. A gunfight is a very dynamic situation, but still you should maintain a level of self-control and avoid opening fire in areas full of innocent bystanders in the line of fire.
• This incident happened in the financial district of Buenos Aires. Notice how just seconds after dropping practically dead everyone just keeps walking around him as if a dead guy on the sidewalk was the most normal thing in the world. The normalcy bias is a strong psychological safety mechanism.
• Today there are cameras everywhere, even without them shootings leave plenty of evidence around, from ballistics to blood splatter patterns, it is fairly easy to tell who got shot in what circumstance.
• Many of the bystanders attempted to do the right thing in this type of situation: When you hear gunfire, take cover! The two on top drop to one knee or lower their bodies although it would have been much better to go prone, the one on the right attempts to get behind the wall of a building entrance, but fails to do so fully which would have been much better. Oh, and one more thing. It is estimated that half the motorcycles in the down town area with two people are driven by criminals. There’s even been laws proposing to ban more than one person in them in the capital.

FerFAL
Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”.