Abomination said:
You're assuming perfect reaction time of the person being surprised here.
Typically the first shot in any combat is the most decisive. A wounded individual's capacity to defend themselves drops significantly.
Who shoots first, especially when the other party is completely unaware of the shot taking place, far more often than not survives the conflict.
"Home fiend advantage" means diddly squat when you're not prepared for combat and your attacker is.
Likewise do you assume some inherent skill in the robber's side.
Have you shot a gun? Have you been shot at? Have you lived in an area where shootings happen often?
Sadly, these are a series of questions that I can answer yes to.
If you're acclimated to it, yes, your response and reaction time is heightened. You're not going to be Captain America, but you will drop the second you hear a shot.
I'm speaking as someone who had to be drilled on how to stay at my cousin's house. And who survived several drive-bys. There wasn't "Cloudy, with a high chance of drive-bys today". It was going to the corner store to get an Icey, and then dropping the second a loud sound happened and flattening myself against a concrete pillar. I wasn't even a teen then. And I saw people literally 4 times my age doing the same thing when they were just trying to get food for themselves.
Shooting a gun is not an easy event. You are trying to tame an explosion. It's something that can be done reliably only by training. This is a perfect example of the randomness [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV_qzhfpk4k] of it. One person got a bullseye the first time. Another missed the paper. Someone after that completely took his hand off the gun after the gun was fired (sadly, he was the guy who just bought a gun 6 months prior). If you have no training, the element of surprise means nothing. If you don't know how to properly handle a gun, hitting where you want is just about luck.
Again, this is why I keep talking about training. Having a tool is not the same as being prepared for combat. That's like all these weirdos who store up guns hoping for the zombie apocalypse because they want to be Daryl. You have the tools. That doesn't mean you know how to use them.
Do those zombie fetishists have the cardio to survive? The ability to scourge for food or grow it if need by? Do they have any other protection or resources other than guns? No? They just want to live out a power fantasy? Wonderful for them... won't help them in the slightest if a real emergency happens.
It's akin to a guy insisting on bringing a parachute on every flight he goes on, but never took a skydiving course... and today just happens to be the day that the plane is going down.
His chances of surviving are infinitely better than people without the parachute. But he has to be lucky to make it work if he never bothered to learn how to operate it.
To your point, tools mean diddly squat if you don't know how to use them. By the way, that goes both ways. Having a gun for protection means nothing if you don't know how to use it to protect yourself. And even then, it's just a matter of luck. Like I said. All we're doing is increasing the odds.
