From: drury@helix.nih.gov (Richard Drury)
Subject: Re: Carjacking, part two
Organization: National Institutes of Health, Bethesda
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 05:20:43 GMT

doug@UC780.UMD.EDU writes:

[about shooting incident outside CIA]

>Yes, but would you have saved yourself first, or tried to delay the
>gunman? 

Me?  I *think* I know me well enough to say that I would have
reacted instinctively with no conscious thought at all, and that
my first instinct would have been to keep me alive.  Lizard
brain, somebody called it.  Not very chivalrous, but there it is.

From what I can piece together, I'm not sure whether anyone
involved had even the slightest chance of preventing the gunman
from shooting other people anyway.  It's not even clear that 
anyone had a real good shot at saving himself.

The guy in the first vehicle comes closest.  He was at ground
zero, but survived anyway.  He thinks it was because he
immediately flung himself down on the front seat after noticing
that his window had been shot out.  A subsequent shot hit him,
but it wasn't fatal. (That he was able to hit the deck so
quickly makes you wonder whether he was wearing a seat belt.
Well, it makes a perverse mind like mine wonder anyway.)  He
also had the presence and toughness of mind to resurface after
the shooter had passed by his car in search of easier targets,
and drive through the gates into the compound.  I like to think
I would have acted as sensibly.

The other one you wonder about was the covert operations guy
who just quietly died in his VW.  His vehicle was second or third
back, so there was at least the possibility that he had a few
seconds to react.  Nobody is saying whether he was armed, but
that wouldn't be any big surprise.  He *was* sitting on the far
side of his car from the gunman.  I think the fatal complication
was that his wife was sitting next to him, on the side nearest
the gunman.  My guess is that his protective instincts overcame
his survival instincts and froze him in place.  The gunman
didn't waste any time taking advantage of that.

>Just what DO you do when some person sticks a high powered rifle
>up to your window and opens up? 

Tough question.  Most of these people were completely boxed in
by other traffic, so there was no question of using their cars
to run over the gunman or run away from him.  And the fact that
it *was* a high powered rifle means that the sheet metal of
their cars wasn't going to provide any real cover.  Concealment
maybe, but not cover.  So, it seems like the principal function
of the cars in this case was to keep the targets from moving
around so much that the gunman might have trouble hitting them 
:-(

I hope I would do instinctively what victim #1 did.  That is,
cease to be a clear target as soon as I knew I *was* a target.
Given a second or two, and a favorable position vis a vis the
shooter, I would also try to get the hell out of the car (wife
or no wife).  Only after taking myself out of the crosshairs
would it even occur to me that I was in a position to save other
lives.

>For an alleged wacko, he got away pretty smooth.

Yeah, it kinda makes you wonder just how wacko he really is.  But
regardless, I still question his long term chances of getting
away with whacking CIA staff members on the agency's own
doorstep.  Maybe it isn't the same place as it was 20 years ago,
but I bet they still don't take real kindly to this kind of
thing and will be leaning all over the local and Federal law
enforcement people to nail this guy.  Maybe they will even use
SEALs :-0
--
Richard A. Drury                    National Institutes of Health
drury@helix.nih.gov                 31/B3C27, Bethesda, MD, USA