tape said:
I really don't think anyone would know what they would do if it happened to one of us, you don't know unless your there at the time, It's easy to say "I would do this or that" after the fact.
But this is
before the fact. The value of a forum like this is that it gives us a chance to consider the possible consequences, good and bad, of various courses of action, before we're confronted with a given situation..
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread..." I'm not a fool, I hope, and I'm certainly not an angel; but perhaps the reason angels are more cautious is that they've been around a bit, have had a chance to think things through, and perhaps even discuss things among themselves -- as we're doing here.
As others have noted, cops hate responding to these incidents, because they are risky and unpredictable -- and the police are
paid to respond. I wouldn't ever intervene in a situation involving domestic violence between third parties if I knew that's what it was -- and in a situation in which I didn't know what was going on (someone trying to break in a door who might be a husband/boyfriend/ex, or might be an unrelated home invader), I'd be even more reluctant -- just because I didn't know.
The chances of making things worse in such situations are just too high, IMHO. I'll call 911 (and have done so in the past when neighbors' fights seemed to be escalating past the verbal), and I'll stay alert to what's going on, but I'm not remotely qualified to intervene in such disputes, and I'm not about to start shooting at anyone when I don't know what's going on.