Defending Your Family From an Armed Attacker: A GA DGU

Picture a family reunion in the front yard. Roughly twenty people, kids and older relatives among them, on a Sunday evening in Leesburg, Georgia. Five minutes later: rifle fire, people diving for cover, a 62-year-old woman on the ground next to her 77-year-old sister.

That is what witnesses say happened on June 7 on Autumn Leaf Drive in Lee County, according to WALB. The family got several things right before a shot was fired, and the things they got right are the things you can train.

What reportedly happened

Around 9 p.m., the family was in the yard when a car rolled past. A man leaned out of the car window, shouting racial slurs at the group. The family let it go, and the resident called the Lee County Sheriff's Office once the car left.

About five minutes later, the car came back. This time he was reportedly wearing body armor and carrying an AR-15-style rifle. People in the yard spotted the gun from a distance and started running. Then he opened fire.

Ramell Green, a Marine veteran, said a round flew past him as he stood in the middle of the street. He grabbed his firearm and returned fire while moving. His rounds hit the gunman, who was wounded, treated at a hospital, and booked into the Lee County Jail.

Disengaging was right. It still didn't end it.

The family's first move was textbook. A stranger throws slurs from a car and they choose not to engage. No chasing, no shouting match, no escalation. That is exactly what you do with a problem that is driving away from you.

Doing the right thing did not buy them safety. It bought them about five minutes. Disengagement controls your behavior, not the other guy's. Sometimes the threat leaves for good. Sometimes it goes home, puts on armor, grabs a rifle, and comes back.

They called the police too, which was smart. But the car returned in roughly five minutes and the deputies did not. “When seconds count, help is minutes away” stops being a slogan once you live it. That window is yours to use: move people inside, put walls between your family and the street, get off the open ground while you wait which sounds good in theory but who would actually expect some racist jerk to come back with a gun?

This was a complex fight, and you start at a disadvantage

Two details stand out once the shooting started. People saw the rifle from a distance and were already moving before the first shot, which is awareness doing its job. And Green returned fire while moving instead of standing flat-footed in the open. I don't know if he was trying to close distance for an easier shot, get a better angle that removed innocent people from the background, or perhaps something else.

Be honest about the matchup, though. A pistol against an attacker in body armor carrying a rifle is not a fair fight. The rifle reaches farther and hits harder, and the armor covers the high-percentage targets. What carried the day was not gear. It was a defender willing to move and put rounds on the threat instead of freezing.

Now think about what that defender was actually asked to do. An ambush he did not start, in a yard full of kids and grandparents, against a moving target, while moving himself. Every second the threat keeps shooting is another second one of those twenty people could be hit. That is about as demanding as pistol work gets, and you do not rise to it by accident. Our Pistol Intelligence (PIQ) course breaks defensive shooting into five core pistol skills and shows you how to build each one, how to measure where you actually stand, and how to master them, so that when speed and accuracy both matter at once, you have already done the work.

The takeaways

• Disengage when you can, but do not assume it ends the threat. Walking away is the right first move, not a guarantee the problem stays gone.
• Use the gap. If a threat leaves and might return, move people to cover while you wait on help.
• Move while you fight. Utilize cover, change the angle for safety, and get closer as needed in order to get hits.
• Respect the gear gap, but know it is not the whole story. Decisiveness and trained skill carry you through a bad matchup.

This situation, a group of family members hanging out in the yard, isn't uncommon or inherently dangerous but it can be a target for sick and twisted people with an agenda. Around twenty people, kids and seniors in the open, an attacker who came back armored and armed. The reason this is a defensive gun use story and not a massacre is that at least one person there was prepared to act and knew how.

That preparation comes down to two things: the skill to stop the threat and the knowledge to handle what follows. If you want all of it in one place, Guardian Nation membership includes free access to the PIQ course, American Gun Law, and every other online course we offer, alongside the rest of the training and community that comes with it.