A Reddit user said one of the times he had to draw happened when a homeless man came toward him holding a machete. According to his comment in the thread, the man was not in his right mind at all. He described him as “not on planet earth,” which gives a pretty clear picture of how unstable the guy seemed in the moment. This was not a normal confrontation with somebody yelling threats from a distance. The man had a machete and was closing in enough that the commenter said he had to prepare to act.
He wrote that he drew on him right there. The reaction was immediate and strange all at once. Instead of pressing the attack, the man dropped the machete and jumped into the river. The commenter said he was screaming at the sky while all of this was happening, which makes the whole thing sound even more chaotic. One second the problem was a man coming in with a machete. The next second the man had thrown the weapon down, launched himself into the water, and was yelling upward while the situation spun in a completely different direction.
According to the story, police arrived and took the man into custody without any further violence. The commenter added one more detail that says a lot about how routine or bizarre the responding officers may have found it: they did not even take his name. From the way he told it, the police showed up, dealt with the machete-wielding man in the river, and that was that. No shots fired. No long standoff. No drawn-out aftermath. Just a split-second defensive draw that ended with the threat dropping his weapon and diving into the water.
That was the whole story he gave in the thread. A homeless man with a machete came in his direction, he drew because he believed he needed to be ready to act, the man dropped the blade and jumped into the river screaming at the sky, and police came and got him without incident.
What do you think — if a man came toward you with a machete and then suddenly ditched it and dove into a river, would your adrenaline even have time to come down before police got there?
Original Reddit post: What was a time you had to draw but not shoot?
