A Reddit user said the one time he had to draw happened several years ago while he was working security at a steel recycling facility around 1 a.m. He admitted right away that he had made the kind of mistake people always say not to make. He had just come back from the bathroom, was walking toward what he described as a prison-style guard shack, had headphones in, and was looking at something on his phone. Then he looked up and found a man standing right in front of him. He described the stranger as about 6-foot-5, built like he had almost no body fat, covered in tattoos across the torso, shirtless, pants hanging low, and with a wild look in his eyes.
He said he immediately yanked his earbuds out, dropped them, and shoved the phone into his pocket. Then he tried to figure out what he was dealing with. He started asking the man basic questions — what he was doing there, how he had gotten in, whether he was alone. At first he got nothing useful back. The stranger just rambled and mumbled. Then at some point the man said something about looking for his shirt. The guard told him he did not have his shirt and that he needed to leave. He asked again how he had gotten in and whether anyone else was with him. That second round of questions seemed to flip some switch, because the man suddenly screamed, “No! GOD IS WITH ME!!!” The guard wrote that this was the point where things went from weird to terrifying.
According to the post, he put his hand on his holster and began slowly backing away while repeating commands for the man to leave the yard immediately. The problem was that the stranger did not react the way a normal person usually would when somebody is backing off and issuing clear commands. He stayed completely unfazed, rambling even faster and even more incoherently. Then he started doing something that made the whole encounter worse. He would turn his body and casually drift off to the side like he was leaving, but he kept his eyes locked on the guard the whole time. After a few steps, he would suddenly square his shoulders back up and start closing distance again.
The guard wrote that this happened over and over. He said he finally drew his firearm and held it on the man, but even with the gun out, the stranger still kept doing the same wander-and-close routine. One second he would turn away like he did not care at all. The next second he would pivot back and come in again. The guard said they repeated that dance three or maybe four times while he kept backpedaling. What made it even worse was the ground he was retreating across. He said the entire yard was full of tripping hazards, and he knew there was a crane and a pile of scrap somewhere close behind him. Every step backward was dangerous. He could not just keep walking forever and hope the man got bored before he ran out of space.
He said the moment that stayed with him most was not some clever line or tough-guy reaction. It was begging. He wrote that at one point he was pleading with the man, saying things like, “Please don’t make me kill you, please don’t die here for nothing.” He said his feet were planted by then, his finger was on the trigger, and he knew he was out of room to retreat safely. The stranger did the fake-walk-off move again, and then this time he finally kept going and slipped back out through the front gate. The guard said the whole encounter started with roughly 50 feet between them and ended with only about 15 feet left. He added that if the man had gotten any closer, he most likely would have fired multiple times.
The story did not end when the stranger left the yard. He said police still took about 45 minutes to arrive, even though the man just sat on the curb roughly 10 feet outside the gate the entire time. The guard said he told the 911 operator plainly, “I have my firearm out, I will shoot him,” and it still took that long for officers to show up. So for nearly an hour after the worst of the encounter had passed, the same unstable stranger was still right there outside the gate, close enough to keep the tension alive.
Afterward, he said he felt like he had run a marathon. He was exhausted, his hand was trembling, and he was angry with himself. He wrote that he believed he had failed to take the job seriously enough that night by walking around distracted in the first place. Looking back, he thought he had probably retreated too far and too long. He knew that if he had tripped, the man would have been on him instantly. He also said that at 6 feet tall and around 230 pounds, he still believed there was a very real chance that if he had gone down, the stranger could have either taken his gun or just smashed his skull in. He ended it by saying no one got shot and no one got hurt, but he knew how close it had come to ending much worse for one or both of them.
What do you think — if you were backing through a scrap yard at 1 a.m. with your gun leveled on a man who kept fake-walking away and then closing in again, would you keep retreating like he did, or hold your ground sooner?
Original Reddit post: Have you ever had to draw your firearm on someone or something?
