Hypothetical situation:

A bad guy breaks into your home, you get to your AR/Home defense gun but only after he takes a family member hostage.  Bad guy demands you drop your weapon, what do you do?

Guns are bad. I piss my pants and call 911

only take the shot if you're 100% sure you won't hit your family member....of course if you drop it, your family member is then completely at his mercy....bad situation that i hope i'm never in

One of them deals where you never really know how you will react till it happens.

Very bad deal with no good choices and little chance of happy outcome.

The way I see it is everyone dies if you are disarmed.  I would hate to make this decision, but a decision has to be made and made quickly.

Its a rifle capable of 2 inch groups at 100 yards. Aim at the center of his face. If you cant hit your target at that range with a rifle you shouldnt own a gun.

Drop the gun so he can rape your wife, then kill both of you.

Shoot the hostage. Take them out of play.

Duh, shoot the hostage
ETA: crap

Shoot the family member in the leg and then put him down , or some hollyweird BS like that. Or maybe ill just rack a shotgun and throw a live 110v wire in the puddle of piss on the floor , viola instant homemade taser.

Serously don't know , hope I never find out.

I think, although who really knows, that I would have already taken the shot before his finished his sentence telling me to put the gun down or else........
thats what I want to say, that i would spread his gray matter all over. But obviously, no one knows until they've been there.

I say take the shot.

He would be a difficult moving target though ,
considering the dogs would probably be disembowling
him as he tried to hold a family member hostage.


IMHO ,a faithful dog is the best security system you can own.

They wouldn't hesitate ,even if I do.

Well, if it's my soon-to-be EX-wife, by all means I'm taking the shot. Seriously though, I have enough confidence in my skills to take the shot.

I say you shoot to miss both of them.  I would think that being on the receiving end of muzzle blast would be quite disorienting.  If several close (12") misses caused him to separate from the hostage, then shoot to kill.

I offer this merely as an idea.  I have nothing to back up my contention.

Never, under any circumstances do you put down your weapon in such a situation. Ever.

A person only grabs a hostage out of desperation. The hostage is their last hope. They know this. Without that hostage, they are a dead man. If a person is stranded alone in the desert and they have a full canteen of water, they aren't gonna throw that water away. In 99.9% of the situations, the hostage taker isn't going to kill his victim either. Because to do so gives up his lifeline, his last possible chance to survive. So he may talk big, bad and ugly and make all sorts of threats, but it is highly unlikely he will actually kill the hostage. To do so would be to kill himself.

So the only course of action is to keep your weapon. If you put it down, you are dead and the loved one/friend he has taken hostage will be dead. That is a 100% bad outcome. However, by keeping your weapon, there's a good chance that you live and the hostage lives. And even in the worst case scenarios, some of the good guys are likely to live. So don't put down your weapon! Kill the attacker if the opportunity is available and if you are sure of your gun and your own ability are capable of doing so with minimal danger to the hostage. And if the shot isn't available or if other conditions make it too dangerous to shoot, then use the standoff situation to negotiate with the attacker until he makes a mistake and then nail him. If an opportunity for a shot doesn't become available, then start negotiating a means of escape for the individual in which everyone can walk away, taking into account your own safety and that of the hostage (in other words don't allow him to gain any advantage such as getting to cover while you and the victim are exposed). If the guy grabs a hostage, he is desperate for a means out of the situation. If nothing else is available, chances are he'll be happy to get any deal he can. He will just be worried about surviving the next 5 minutes at that point.

But never, ever put down your gun. It is the worst thing you could ever do and will have the worst outcome of all the possible scenarios.

Quoted: I say take the shot. He would be a difficult moving target though , considering the dogs would probably be disembowling him as he tried to hold a family member hostage. IMHO ,a faithful dog is the best security system you can own. They wouldn't hesitate ,even if I do.

That is exactly the way the scenario would play out in my house.

Quoted: Well, if it's my soon-to-be EX-wife, by all means I'm taking the shot. Seriously though, I have enough confidence in my skills to take the shot.

Dude, theres a huge difference between being confident in your skills knowing you can defend yourself from an attacker, and being confident enough in your skills to know you can eliminate the threat without harming one you love. And in thise case, you could be talking about INCHES of difference. In the heat of the moment, you could miss by feet........

Its one thing to engage a hostile threat who means to do you bodily harm. Its a whole different ballgame when that threat has put one you love between you and them.

Take the shot

Quoted: Never, under any circumstances do you put down your weapon in such a situation. Ever. [snip]

Excellent post!  Pretty much covers it.

I think I'd talk to the guy.  Tell him we all just want to get out of this, and none of us want to get shot, including him.  Then I'd offer him the opportunity to flee without the hostage.  He can take the hostage to the front door, then bolt out of there.  Then I call 911.

If a good shot opportunity happens during any of this, or if I get the feeling he's not going to take the out, then I take him down.

NEVER drop your weapon.

Aim at the forehead, and the shot willhit the perp right in the piehole, hopefullycutting his spinal cord and killing him before he hits the floor.

Ops

I honestly cannot say how I would react. One thing is for sure though, I would be more inclined to take the shot if I had my AR on hand than if I were using my 1911.

Something to keep in mind is that at close range with an AR type, you have to aim a little bit over where you want to hit.. Thats assuming you are zeroed at 25m.

Old Painless did a fairly good job of answering this question for me.  Sight offset at close range.

Aim normal.  Take the shot.

Quoted: Dude, theres a huge difference between being confident in your skills knowing you can defend yourself from an attacker, and being confident enough in your skills to know you can eliminate the threat without harming one you love. And in thise case, you could be talking about INCHES of difference. In the heat of the moment, you could miss by feet........

My wife is only 4'10".  Unless she's taken hostage by Gary Coleman, I should have lots of open target...

"You kill them, I kill you.  Guaranteed."

Then I cycle my action twice and cock the hammer on my Glock to really slam the point home.  

"Bang!"



My GF and I have talked about this very same situation.  She knows to go completely limp, as if she'd passed out.  Even though she only weighs about 115, a perp will have a hard time taking cover behind a limp 115-pound of salty meat.

I'll get my chance for a good shot.

CMOS

Quoted: My wife is only 4'10".  Unless she's taken hostage by Gary Coleman, I should have lots of open target...

Quoted: Quoted: Never, under any circumstances do you put down your weapon in such a situation. Ever. [snip] Excellent post!  Pretty much covers it. I think I'd talk to the guy.  Tell him we all just want to get out of this, and none of us want to get shot, including him.  Then I'd offer him the opportunity to flee without the hostage.  He can take the hostage to the front door, then bolt out of there.  Then I call 911. If a good shot opportunity happens during any of this, or if I get the feeling he's not going to take the out, then I take him down. NEVER drop your weapon.

+1

I have thought about this before and I think I would say something along the lines of "if you harm (insert hostage) then there is nothing stoping me from blowing you away.  Let them go and I will give you the chance to run away."

Quoted: Its a rifle capable of 2 inch groups at 100 yards. Aim at the center of his face. If you cant hit your target at that range with a rifle you shouldnt own a gun.

Actually you would want to aim Just at the tope of the forhead because at short range you AR will shoot low. If you have it sighted correctly that is. So you would aim about 2 inches high of where you actually want to hit. If you shoot him low in the face he is going to retain some motor function and still might be able to pull the trigger before he expires.

I took the shot.

Take the shot. Nothing good can come of dropping your weapon.

take the shot

as soon as you drop the gun, you (and more than likely your famliy member) is dead--he knows you are a threat and when he gets the upper hand, he will neutralize you somehow

  I would tell the guy if you let the hostage go, I will kill you quickly and painlessly, but if you harm the hostage in any way, I will torture your sorry ass a la that movie "Seven" with Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt.  IIRC, a hostage in that movie had his arms, legs, and tongue cut off, and then was strapped to a bed and tortured for a year...

Taking the shot; 1% or greater chance of you and family member surviving

Dropping the gun; 0% chance of surviving (at his mercy)

Funny!  0% said "drop the gun" so far!

My eyes are teh suck.  No way I'm taking the shot except as an absolute last resort.  No way I'm dropping the gun either, though.  I guess that means we stand there with our guns pointed at each other until one of us nods off.

I am confident in my ablilities especially with my AR, so is my wife...take the shot!!