Lessons from Miami shootout for civilians?

[PeterCartwright]

I think the first, and most important, lesson for civillians is that if you are only armed with a handgun, don't go looking for trouble, and do everything you can to avoid it because your handgun is underpowered and won't guarantee you a decisive victory.

Now that strikes me as unassailably good sense! And it's certainly in harmony with Lobo's first reply.

To my law enforcement friends: I suppose there must be civilians who actually go looking for trouble while armed, though I've never spoken with anyone who was quite that brain dead...at least not any who spoke about such things openly. As for me, I'm more concerned about blundering into an armed shake down at a "stop-and-rob" or, perhaps more likely now, in a pharmacy. Anymore, I make a point of looking though whatever glass is available before I enter the former. Pharmacies (or, in the case of my wife, a stand alone clinic which houses meds) are more troubling. To add insult to injury, the clinic is a "no carry zone" in my state. In some settings, I suppose one should add car jacking and armed break ins to that list. In such cases, it would seem to me, circumstances and/or architecture could conspire to leave one as trapped as the Miami feds...perhaps with the same outcome. I guess the response I'll try to follow is to be as vigilant as possible so as to NOT blunder into trouble and to train as best I can to respond ruthlessly and skillfully if I find myself trapped.

PC