Good Guy with a Gun #325: Henderson, NV

The robber will have the gun anyway. It’s not really a tough conversation. | Original incident: September 21, 2024

Sep 21, 2026

These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is somewhat updated from the calendar version.

Just before 4 AM on a Saturday, a 33-year-old man was approached outside a Henderson apartment complex by a man with a gun already in his hand. The man wanted his phone and his wallet.

The 33-year-old had a gun of his own. He fired multiple rounds and hit the man.

Several people called 911 about the gunshots and a man lying on the ground. Officers and paramedics tried to save him, but he died there.

He was 36-year-old Brandyn Tesch. The man he’d tried to rob wasn’t hurt. He stayed and cooperated with detectives.

Anthony Robinson lives at The Well, the complex where it happened. “We saw it on the Ring app early in the morning and everybody was freaking out in the neighborhood,” he said.

“I heard two or three sirens at first and thought maybe they were going to the Henderson Hospital, but then I’m like there’s too many sirens going on and realized it was at my apartment complex. It was alarming to hear that at 4 o’clock in the morning.”

Then he discussed the conundrum a lot of people feel.

“Obviously, the person protecting himself needed the weapon, but the person who was trying to commit a robbery should not have had one, so it’s an extremely tough conversation and situation to have to have and be in.”

I understand the feeling, but I don’t find the conversation all that tough; logically, it’s not a conundrum. Only one of those two men walked up to another man with a gun in his hand, and he was a criminal who wouldn’t have followed whatever laws Robinson is considering to solve the problem.

A more straightforward take came from a neighbor named Mariah, who’s walked the area alone many times. She said that “self-defense in that instance is definitely understandable.”

That doesn’t mean Tesch’s death is less of a tragedy for those who love him. His obituary says he loved fixing up cars and selling them. He left four children. But he left them by his own choice.