The guy was not bright. Someone orders you at gunpoint to transfer your domain name... you do it. Less risk of dying and the ICANN dispute resolution is going to be really straightforward.
The attacker in this case:
* Was not just threatening the victim, but physically attacking him even as he complied with the attacker's instructions.
* Was committing a serious felony for which he would be facing a long long prison sentence even if he left the victim alive (as demonstrated here!), meaning the rational self-interested course of action would be to execute the victim after getting what he wanted, to stop him from identifying the attacker.
Whether or not I'd have the courage and presence of mind to do it myself in the victim's place, resisting in this case seems to me like exactly the correct thing to have done, and I suspect it saved the victim's life.
This isn't a junkie wanting your wallet. This is someone forcibly entering your home with weapons and assaulting you.
You have to assume that once you have given up the thing he wants, you remaining alive isn't high on his list of priorities.
The victim lived. He did the right thing.
It's a pretty wild story for being about a website domain name.
TLDR; in a 10ftx10ft room I want a knife.
Yes a gun is not a reactionary weapon you have to pull the trigger, it takes time to process that the victim has now moved to being the attacker and usually if you are within arms reach it is too late for the original attacker to react and pull off the shot before he has lost at least total control of the gun. This is why cops maintain distance when they have someone at gunpoint.
Conversely a knife is a reactionary weapon if you jump at me and I flinch you get cut. Not a whole lot of ways to disarm a knife unless the attacker is actively attacking with it, thus exposing his arm.
This is why 9 times out of 10 in a fight between a person with a gun and a person with a knife, at striking distance, the person with the gun will fair far worse than the person with the knife. The person with the gun has to reorient and shoot again, the person with the knife just has to flail. Knife also leave more damaging wounds when used as a penetrating weapon and have more chance of hitting vitals or an artery.
Here is a great training video of how effective a knife is against someone armed with a gun: