In defense of others

I like the examples of people at least doing something such as challenging the aggressor to stop, staying on scene, and calling the police. This type of intervention seems to work alot of the time. Yes, the agressor could turn his attention to you but if you armed, you have alot more options to deal with it. The key thing here is to do something to stop the obvious unlawful assault on a person instead of just walking away and maybe making the 911 call as you leave. Sometimes all a thug needs to see is someone is watching and not backing away. Doing this amounts to courage. Some people act courageously and some don't. They'll explain it away as "I don't want to get involved or its too risky." But what it amounts to is a lack of courage in that particular situation.

A fight is a fight. An under cover officer making an arrest of a resisting suspect will look like a fight or an arrest. It's best to sit back and be a good witness in those types of situations. Those situations won't be a man kicking a defenseless person in the head multiple times to the point of near death. We've heard it a million times, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men doing nothing." Prepare your mind, train yourself, use sound judgment, and follow the right post incident procedure and I believe you'll be just fine when the time comes for a good man to do something.
 
Disarming someone with a gun is not as hard as it may seem, especially if you have the right technique and know what you're doing.
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I like to point out when this is mentioned that it is not that hard IF the person with the gun doesn't also have the right technique know what they are doing. Sucessfully disarming someone who knows basic retention skills is not easy to do.
 
Sucessfully disarming someone who knows basic retention skills is not easy to do
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That doesn't mean that it can't be done or shouldn't be learned. My point is that if I don't feel that I absolutely HAVE to use a gun in a defense of others situation then I absolutely wont.

However, in an SD or HD situation where there is a clear and present threat to my own or my family's safety the gun is coming out in a heartbeat.
 
In San Antonio, and not to far from where I live, a SWAT officer got into it with a burglar and was disarmed and then shot dead. Quite a tragedy. It does happen.

Also, being a big guy so H2H is not a threat is an interesting take. In the Insights Defensive Knife class, a large gentleman made that statement. The teacher who was a shorter individual pointed out that some aggressive shorter guys will like to take on large people and that H2H can turn to Knife to Hand quickly. He got into a verbal argument with the large guy in a scenario and then with the trainer knife, 'stabbed and slashed' him significantly in a few seconds.

Getting into a physical altercation robs you of the safety of distance and doesn't necessarily mean you will carry the day or the other part won't escalate with you not at a disadvantage. You have no idea what is concealed by the other person.
 
It's easy to peck away on a keyboard about how I would wrestle an alligator to save a dog or come to the defense of a mugging victim and pull out my gun if necessary after getting all the facts straight, but my gut tells me a major deciding factor would be if my family or myself was in danger.

Another factor, and possibly a selfish one, would be if my 4 year old was with me when I came upon the danger.

I would be very reluctant to put her in any danger for my heroics nor risk the emotional scars she would carry from witnessing a violent encounter involving her father.


Nevertheless, I have enjoyed the insight from reading some of the responses.
 
PAX is right. If you knew you might have help by rushing in and being physical, that would be better.......I doubt that will ever happen, though.
 
Many people are attacked in plain site of others that do nothing every year.Happens all the time. Why?
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I read an article some time back entitled "A nation of Cowards." The author was criticizing people for not arming themselves when the law allows them and for not taking action when action is desperately needed. Here is an excerpt:

It is impossible to address the problem of rampant crime without talking about the moral responsibility of the intended victim. Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers.
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In the case listed in the above post by markj, both the victim and the witness failed to do anything. The victim didn't prepare herself to fight off an attacker and made poor decisions after she was threatened on the bus. The witness didn't either and failed to act when a woman needed help. Hopefully that taught her a lesson that she is responsible for her own safety.

Now of course there are many many brave citizens who will arm themselves and take action when it is necessary but there is an overwhelming number of people who are content wallking through life as sheep depending upon the protection of a police force that can't get there in time to stop the actions of a criminal. The reason we have criminals walking around unchecked is because they know that relatively few will fight back and others will likely not intervene.
 
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The reason we have criminals walking around unchecked is because they know that relatively few will fight back and others will likely not intervene.
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That is a horribly simple synopsis of a rather complicated issue. We had plenty of criminals walking around when folks regularly fought back and regularly intervened. Many criminals plan on and prepare for resistance on the part of their victims.
 
Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it.
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Meh, I understand what he/she is getting at with the failure to arm, but I just don't buy it. I think people walking up on most quasi-criminal-looking situations call the police rather than intervene because they don't know what is going on. I think that is the RIGHT choice - regardless of how you feel about crime.

Some things are more obvious (a brutal assault on a child, the scenario where the robber fired on the teller, a man holding a gun to any cashier). But if someone is in a struggle with another, even a man with a woman, how do you know what you perceive to be the BG is actually the good guy winning the fight for his/her life? And how do you know your actions will not do more to aggravate the situation and further endanger everyone?
 
GSUeagle1089 said:
I'm not a big guy by any means but I'm stronger than a lot of people with 60+ pounds on me and I've been in mixed martial arts and wrestling for several years. I'm confident enough in my ability to beat some punk down (actually more confident than I am in my shooting) that the ONLY way I am pulling a CCW in this situation is if he has a gun and is more than 10ft away. Disarming someone with a gun is not as hard as it may seem, especially if you have the right technique and know what you're doing.

HD and SD are different stories though.
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I'm at that age where AARP keeps trying to get me to join, so I am not that confident in my ability to go toe-to-toe with some scumbag. And I won't if I can help it.

I don't have John Wayne's script writers helping me out. Nor Mickey Spillane to make me a tough guy. My first weapon is my voice - shouting for the attacker to stop, telling him the cops are enroute, etc. If he comes towards me, out will come the 16" Maglite and I'll find out if I remember all my Koga baton techniques (is it three from the ring, or three from the sky? :D). If he has a knife, he gets to see my gun and about 2 seconds to comply with instructions. If he pulls a gun, I hope his tombstone reads "He pulled a gun, when he shoulda run". Don't play fair with thugs. Stay ahead of them in force dynamics.

The reason we have criminals walking around unchecked is because they know that relatively few will fight back and others will likely not intervene.
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That's only part of the answer. The other part is getting rid of D.A.'s who feel it's their duty to punish citizens for getting involved and stopping a crime. And not allowing thugs who get injured while committing a felony or crimes against a person to sue.
 
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The DA's (in some parts of the country) are dangerous to our country. Our founding fathers did not believe it was primarily the police force's job to prevent crime. To be even halfway effective we would have to become a police state and throw out the constitution. Crime prevention is primarily a job of the citizens. This is one reason we should be armed.
 
I never thought I was tough anyway. At my age now, I surely don't......and watching the little guys fight on UFC discourages me even more. You just don't know what you may be getting yourself into out there because these guys don't look all that bad. They are dangerous, though. :eek::barf:
 
Personally, I do not think people are likely to be dissuaded from coming to the aid of a third party in a situation involving violent crime because of what a DA might do. Nor do I think liability risk exposure involving a true felon is a major issue.

I may be wrong on those.

The real risk as I see it lies in not having a complete understanding of what has transpired to create the situation. Should one step in and muck it up and kill or injure someone who turns out to not be a dangerous felon, he will have put himself in a real bind. And why should he not be charged or sued for any damages the result from his mistake?

You see someone--or two people--grappling with someone who is resisting violently. Should you intervene? How do you know? Looks like an assault in progress. But maybe it's an arrest, an attempt to restrain someone having a seizure, or these days, a domestic disturbance.

If it is domestic violence, do you really want to get involved? If you say yes to that, what makes you different from a peace officer, who will not do so without help. An how will you feel when bot parties complain to the police about your having assaulted them? Remember, you don't automatically wear a halo or a white hat, and someone else is not automatically a bad guy.

No, there are very good reasons to intervene only when the facts indicate it is really necessary to save life.
 
The DA's (in some parts of the country) are dangerous to our country.
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I've never really thought of it that way. But then again, I'm in Texas - where even if you are put through the rigor of indictment, arrest, and trial, you are tried by a jury of your peers...other Texans.

I'm reminded of the incident in Houston where a guy opened fire on two guys running away from robbing his neighbor - the case against him didn't even make it past the grand jury.

(Then again, many of the reports indicate that they started coming at him in his front yard - but he was still there because he went out of his house, despite the please of the 911 operator to stay inside. Tossup on whether he intervened as a third-party to a totally separate incident or not. Grand Jury clearly felt that it was the latter.)

Not intending to instigate a debate on the Houston case - just pointing out that in even controversial incidents, your location probably has a lot to do with the consequences of jumping into a situation with firepower.
 
Our founding fathers did not believe it was primarily the police force's job to prevent crime.
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That might be because when the founding fathers were around there were no police forces. The job had not been invented yet.
 
I'm reminded of the incident in Houston where a guy opened fire on two guys running away from robbing his neighbor - the case against him didn't even make it past the grand jury.
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I'm not trying to derail this thread, but I would feel remiss if I didn't point something out about this case.

There was a Detective sitting in a car that witnessed the whole incident. Without that Detective's testimony to the Grand Jury I have no doubt that Mr. Horn would be facing a murder trial.

No, I was not there, or involved in the case in any way. I just talked with someone that was and is very familiar with the case. That one little fact is most often over-looked or not known by most people when they are talking about this case, yet it changes things significantly IMO.

If you spend your time avoiding trouble, trouble will find you soon enough. There is no reason to go looking for it.

Biker
 
That one little fact is most often over-looked or not known by most people when they are talking about this case, yet it changes things significantly IMO.
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It does, in fact! Thanks for letting us know.

I didn't find that fact in the articles, although now I vaguely remember from discussing it in my crim law class that the 911 operator was anxious for the guy to shoot at anyone - because there was a plain-clothes cop either nearby or on his way to help (must have been that detective). On top of all the other concerns, she was worried that the guy would inadvertently shoot at the cop, mistaking him for a BG.

Add it to the list of many considerations that a split-second decision can't always account for when intervening, even in defense of others!
 
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