SgtDemeo and DoItRight,
You're right, they did absolutely NOTHING that was OVERTLY threatening.
Can you seriously tell me that you never perceive threats based on age, gender, clothing, behavior, demeanor, "gut instinct"?
Me personally, I may be a victim of false thinking and stereotyping, but when I am in a situation where I am unarmed and alone, my internal radar goes on much higher alert if I am placed in a situation where retreat/escape is blocked or at best, difficult, if not unlikely, and four young males who are unkempt, wearing clothing and generally behaving in ways that are generally associated with (insert your choice of: bikers, gangs, drug culture, skinheads, punk, gangbanger, etc), who are present inside a business, with no apparent reason to be there (not shipping anything, nor picking anything up, nor even making an attempt to speak to an employee or "fellow customer") than if four female senior citizens, dressed and behaving in ways that lead me to believe they might be part of of some garden club or civic or religious group, had me 'cornered' in the same situation...!
"Profiling" may not be politically correct, or even illegal if done by government agencies, but if individual citizens who may be potential victims don't do a certain amount of 'profiling' as part of their ongoing risk assessment, then IMO they are probably at greater risk for that decision.
Not to say that it isn't POSSIBLE that an 80-year-old grandmother, driving a Mercedes and wearing expensive jewelry and expensive designer clothing might not approach you without warning and kill you at the local QuikMart, but ignoring the clothing, age, gender, behavior, etc. of strangers you encounter may be done at your own risk.
These four young men appeared to me to be nervous, fidgety, restless, speaking in somewhat hushed tones, laughing nervously at times... it really appeared to me that they might be considering robbing me and the cash register at the counter - and even now I'm not really convinced that it wasn't own their mind and for some reason they decided against it. I'm not at all convinced they actually knew anyone who works there - that itself may well have been a ruse to 'explain' their presence. The employee at the counter didn't say "They're not here right now", he said "There's no one by that name working here."
I would have done absolutely nothing today any differently if I had been well armed than I did unarmed. But I still think this may have been a high-risk situation that the potential perpetrators walked away from, for whatever reason. Thank God!
sgtdemeo wrote:
"Jay1958, please tell me if I missed something in your story that would make anything that these 4 men did seem at all threatning. lets recap... they came into a buisness during normal, operating hours. they stood away from you, idd not approach, or for that matter, do anything physical to imply that there was a threat. they were, as you say, "talking and Cutting up among themselves" . again, still nothing even remotely threatning. i am sorry, but i can't see what about these men was do disarming to you. Explain, please."