Who is important?

G

Gus-gus

New member
Yesterday morning (5am) I was riding my motorcycle home after a long night at work. I ride thru Tacoma, WA. There were 30 or more black guys about age 20 or so fighting in the middle of Highway 99 and 200th street. There was one unconscious on the road or dead. 2 others were being beat by 3 or 4 other black guys each. There were a couple cars ahead of me who couldn't make it through the mess and they turned right in front of me. I swerved past the cars and darned near hit one of the thugs. Then decided the best part of not hitting him was leaving.
Riding a motorcycle and then needing to brandish a hand gun is a tough transition at best. Full gear, helmet, earplugs, gloves, heavy coat and boots which don't work well for walking.
But it made me think about the process a bit more and the situation where danger and protecting others might make sense.
Honestly I don't think I would have stopped even in my truck. Is that wrong? I feel for the dudes on the ground, however pulling a gun might escalate the situation to gun play quickly. I just don't know if my fears and caution was the right things to do.
 
I'm not sure why your first instinct was to pull your weapon in this situation. :confused:

You came upon a scene where there was a scuffle ...
You have no idea who or what may have started it and you yourself were in no immediate danger, therefore a better option would have been to simply call 911, in my opinion.

Riding a motorcycle and then needing to brandish a hand gun is a tough transition at best. Full gear, helmet, earplugs, gloves, heavy coat and boots which don't work well for walking.
But it made me think about the process a bit more and the situation where danger and protecting others might make sense.
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The fact that you have a CCW permit does not mean that you are responsible for the protection of others.
That's what the police are for.


JMO
 
If a lone police officer came upon 30 people fighting in the street, I'll bet he would retreat and call for help. Your gun doesn't turn you in to superman or give you the power to determine the good guys any better than anybody else. Exit the area rapidly and call 911.
 
Getting involved in such a volatile situation, not knowing anything about what has led to it, is, to me, foolish or suicidal. There are so many karmic variables constantly changing it's very difficult to unravel who deserves what in most situations. Unless it's CRYSTAL CLEAR that I'm actually doing "the right thing" (rare situation)... it's none of my business.
 
Calling 911 was an option if I had been able to, but I have 45 minutes from the scene to my house. My phone as well as my weapon are exceptionally tough to access. at 5am the road isn't exactly safe, until I am fairly close to home. I am not making excuses, just explaining the situation. It would have been 30 minutes before I could have found a place to stop and disrobe enough to be able to call 911.
Plus there is the issue with my hatred of police. I have no use for them since they are the janitors of crime.
To me 911 is for ambulances, firefighters, automobile wreckers or emt's.

Every time I need a cop they are an hour away.
 
Gus-gus,

I'm a rider too... you really need to find a way to make your phone accessible in short order. I ride with full riding gear, armored pants, jacket, gloves, full-face helmet, and I can access my phone in a matter of seconds by one zipper in the pants.

If you ever dropped your bike or hit a deer and no one was around, you don't want to have to take 15 minutes and remove all your gear to call for help.

In the situation as you describe, there is no direct intervention that makes sense. Unless you're got a select-fire rifle and several reloads with some real cover and back-up in an Apache, you don't take on 30+ people. Besides which, you don't know who's the "good" and who's the "bad" or if there even is a "good".

However, it is not safe to not be able to access your phone. That situation can and should be rectified.
 
Calling 911 was an option if I had been able to, but I have 45 minutes from the scene to my house. My phone as well as my weapon are exceptionally tough to access.
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:confused:
I'm not sure why being 45 minutes from home is an issue if you're carrying a cell phone. And I understand both gun and phone may be "tough to access" but your first choice, as I understand it, would be to access your gun.
Bad call, IMO.

As griz pointed out, even a trained officer would have called for backup.

at 5am the road isn't exactly safe, until I am fairly close to home. I am not making excuses, just explaining the situation. It would have been 30 minutes before I could have found a place to stop and disrobe enough to be able to call 911.
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I don't know the circumstances of the road that you were on but I'm having a difficult time imagining any road that you would have to drive on for 30 minutes before you would be able to stop. Especially on a motorcycle. :confused:

Plus there is the issue with my hatred of police. I have no use for them since they are the janitors of crime.
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If there is such a hatred for police, why are you trying to emulate them with this conception that the "protection of others" is your responsibility?
 
Sounds like you did the right thing, get on your bike and ride.

If I came upon the scene in my car I would have hi-tailed it out without stopping to help. No offense to the people on the ground, but a whole gang of people assaulting others? Not much one guy can do, and drawing a gun and issuing orders ("cease and desist!") is sure to escalate the situation to a level you're not prepared to go. 20 violent gangsters? Not even the police would want to get involved without full backup.
 
Definitely keep on riding. You may have even stumbled on a gang "initiation." Not unusual for members to beat the living crap out of prospects, who let them, for that purpose. Fairly common practice actually.

Had you stopped, you may not have made it home.

Call 911 if you can and keep right on truckin'
 
Peetzakilla made the two points that are most cogent:

In the situation as you describe, there is no direct intervention that makes sense. . . . [Y]ou don't know who's the "good" and who's the "bad" or if there even is a "good".

However, it is not safe to not be able to access your phone. That situation can and should be rectified.
Click to expand...
 
Staying would have been a Bad Idea, but you are indeed making lots of excuses for not calling 911, excuses which are all complete crap.

I don't know about Oregon, but in my state it's against the law to operate any motor vehicle while wearing a hearing impairment device, including riding a motorcycle while wearing earplugs.
 
You'd like to think that the good guys are on the ground and it's the perps that are assaulting him, but how can you know that? It's possible that the good guys finally caught up with the guys that raped their sister or something. I don't like cops either, but this would not be the situation to refrain from calling them which would only hurt the guys being beat down. I would call it in.
 
I had encountered a much smaller version of this, 3 guys in a park picking on 1 guy, they weren't beating him senseless but anytime he tried to get up he was kicked or punched back down then pummeled a bit more. Getting directly involved was the last thought on my mind, first one was call 911. During my call to 911 I was amazed at how many people stopped to see what was happening as I did, but no one else was even going for or on their cell, I really hope if I'm ever attacked and overwhelmed, a group of people don't just stand there without calling 911. Heck even if I'm attacked and manage to successfully defend myself, I'd rather have the cops be called and prone me out too while they figure things out, than not have them be called at all.
 
If you did decide to intervene, what would you do? Which of the 30 people would you shoot first and when would you stop shooting. Those questions would be raised at your trial.
 
IMO, getting to a safe location and NOT calling 911 is as irresponsible as it would be to have stopped at the scene.

Many times in these kind of incidents is exactly how some innocent person catchs a bullet by one of the thugs involved eventually pulling a gun and unloading it not caring where the bullets that misses his/her intended target lands. Which many times is most of the rounds fired.

Would seem to me the only obligation you had was to get yourself out of harms way and despite your disdain for LE, call 911 either from your cell phone or by stopping in a close business of some sort(gas station,store etc) if available and see if they would call.

Making the call to 911 could save someones life.

Not making that call and reading in the paper the next day that some little innocent kid got killed I guess would present the question to ones self as to "if I would have called 911 could this have been prevented"?
 
I tried to imagine myself in your situation as I am also a motorcycle rider.

This is an overwhelming crowd and if I came across it, I would find the fastest and safest way to exit the situation. Once out of range of whatever that was, I would call 9-1-1 and let them deal with it. On a motorcycle, there are many more options for getting off the road and stopping then there are in a car, regardless of the road conditions and time of day or night.

You may want to consider alternative options for getting to your cell phone and/or firearm while riding your motorcycle. Awhile ago, I purchased a surplus U.S. Army Helicopter Pilot Holster. It works well with my 1911 or other large semi-auto. It basically keeps the gun across the chest area so when riding, all I have to do is unzip my jacket just a little and I have access to my firearm. My cell phone case has a clip on it which I secure to one of the holster retention straps which also makes it very easy to get to simply by unzipping the jacket slightly.
 
I was recently watching an episode of "Sons of Guns". They built a machine gun for a motorcycle handle bar. I was thinking to myself, self, what possible purpose and use would that be? Then I read your post :D
 
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