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You can use a cart full of groceries as a buffer.

SewTexas wrote:If it's dark in a WM parking lot? My "zone" is huge. Let's say they've headed straight toward me, I've changed direction once or twice, still heading toward me, I tell him to "stop, back off", all of my bags have already moved to my left arm, my phone in my left hand, my right hand moves to my waist, if he keeps moving toward me, my hand moves beneath the hem of my shirt....never gone beyond that.
The one time I've done this his eyes saw where my hand went and he veered off a different direction. My gun was never, ever visible.

It was a coincidence that night, but I learned something, never do big shopping at night, alone, no more that you can carry on one arm. Everything else I had learned on this group.

The same thing happened to me except in broad daylight. When I squared and was ready the guy backed off apologizing even though I never made my firearm visible. Three minutes later he robbed someone else at knife-point before I could get security out there.

Glad you caught a smart one and stayed safe. Good job!

Lots of good responses that mirror what I also do, so I'll just add one more thing that I haven't seen yet. As much as possible I advance prepare for that encounter. I don't walk out into the parking lot until I'm ready - meaning no tucking my phone in my pocket or shifting bags. And then I think about exactly where my car is, but I don't walk to there and instead I intentionally go down another row and when I get to the right place, make a sudden turn to cut between the cars in that row to get to mine. And I even go as far as planning if at all possible to be turning to the left to get to my cars location as that keeps my strong side outside the pivot point and clear. At that point, if someone was then suddenly coming towards me to ask for whatever, they clearly have bad intent as they couldn't have been able to just stumble upon me as I cut through cars to get to mine. At that point, I'm simply keeping my 21' circle clear.

MONGOOSE wrote:You can use a cart full of groceries as a buffer.

yes, you can, but i think the cart can end up being a distraction, plus bg's will come up when you're putting the bags away. At night it's much safer to do quick shopping or with "a buddy".