This bodycam footage shows just how fast a gun can be drawn from a concealed position inside a car.

Did you see when the gun came out? The officer had less than a second to react.

This is why the most basic advice given to people, even in a concealed carry class, is to establish "trigger threshholds" for action - if the threat violates them, you shoot. Because you don't have time, literally no time, to think things through in the moment.

Hands kill. Hands grab guns and shoot them.

If someone is telling you NOT to do something, NOT to reach into that drawer or behind your back, and you do it, they are not going to hesitate out of consideration for your mental state.

They want to live.

Here's a second traffic stop where a gun comes out of fucking nowhere.



By the way, that rifle was inoperable. Today this would be called "shooting an unarmed man" based on that, I'm sure.

Here's a third gun that comes out of nowhere. This officer catches a bullet and needs medical aid from bystanders.

Note how the suspect just outright ignores the officer and walks away. The officer aimed his taser, not his gun. He almost died for it.

That officer had the drop on him. If he'd had his gun out, he would've won that race.

But he had the taser out first.

Another factor - officers often have an idea who they're dealing with when they roll up on them. Why do they wait before approaching when they pull you over? Dispatch runs your plate and tells them if the car's registered to someone with a rap sheet. https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1297829191673470977

If they KNOW the perp has a history of violence and see him ignore commands and reach for something? Yeah, do the math.

Here's a video where a man

Walks away from officers
Ignores repeated commands
Gets in his vehicle

Watch how this one turns out and tell me - how did using taser, THEN baton before his gun work out for the cop?

Speaking of, it's not just guns that come out of nowhere. Knives do too, and they'll kill you even faster than a gun.

Also, about this video again - note how brute strength and aggression counts for a lot in a fight, and can overpower even a trained, armed man.

Now what if he had a knife?

This is why cops point guns. It's the only semi-reliable defensive option.

Chasing noncompliant suspect. Suspect pulls gun.

Officer lives because his gun was in hand instead of his taser.

Another car, another gun that comes out of nowhere in about a tenth of a second. Are you starting to see a pattern? It happens fast enough coming out of a pocket. A car gives perps even more concealment and many more places to hide or store a weapon.

All of this, by the way, is why police impersonators are so batshit insane. Traffic stops are INSANELY dangerous.

Cars are also the most common place for a weapon to be stored. A coworker of mine was threatened with that once at work - "I've got a weapon in my car!"

What should we take away from this?

GUNS COME OUT OF CARS VERY VERY FREQUENTLY
9 TIMES OUT OF 10, MURDER ATTEMPTS ARE PRECEDED BY NONCOMPLIANCE
HAVING LESS-LETHAL IN YOUR HAND IN A STILL DYNAMIC SITUATION IS JUST ASKING FOR DEATH
DEATH IS 1/10TH A SECOND AWAY

These factors are endemic to the mechanics and physics of interpersonal violence. "More training" can't change these basic facts, consequently the benefit of making every cop Bruce Lee is relatively limited and above all - we can't afford it. Show me where that money comes from.

But ABOVE ALL, keep in mind that cops want to live as bad as anyone else.