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anygunanywhere wrote:Way back in the good old days when men were men and the women were women, criminals were dealt with appropriately and the justice system meted out justice appropriately and you could count on this fact if you decided to intervene in situations.

It ain't that way anymore and if you act as if it is you very well may lose more than you bargained for.

The Annoyed Man wrote:

Soccerdad1995 wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:

rotor wrote:TAM, at age 74 carrying a .380 with 6 in the mag if I pulled my gun I would have to use it and reload with as many as were involved. Not a situation I want to be in. I know the court decision that says police don't have to protect. They didn't say I have to protect someone else. I think of the 3 guys in Oregon I believe that tried to protect 2 Muslim girls on a train and one was stabbed to death for his effort. The girls ran. I am not the type that would not help another person. I pulled a guy out of a truck after an accident that was covered in diesel and could have gotten both of us killed. This particular situation with so many kids would have been tough to handle by me unless they just stopped and ran. I am just not a young man like I used to be. On the other hand, I have gotten to be an old man because I am no longer young and stupid. I had an unruly gang of kids do this to me as a kid in the NYC subway system and nobody intervened so I know what it is like first hand. Now I believe that NYC has cops on every train. The other issue is that one of these kids might have had a gun too and I could have ended up in the morgue. No easy answer here. Easy to be brave on a forum, tougher to be honest.

Everything you say above is true, which is why I expressed some doubts of my own above. BTW, I've seen "unpleasantness" on a NYC subway car too, although I wasn't beaten senseless. But I did have to defend myself. Fortunately, it turned out OK other than some minor bumps and bruises. I was also jumped by a gang once while walking back to my apartment from the local grocery store. It happened on E 83rd St, between 2nd and 3rd Avenue....which was supposed to be a decent neighborhood. Again, I came out of it a little scuffed up but relatively unharmed. I also remember Bernhard Goetz, although by that time, I was back living in SoCal. I remember thinking at the time, "good for him.....too bad it happened in NYC though". But the reason I "challenged" you a little bit (for lack of a better word), was to say that surely you have your limits where you would intervene......for instance the hypothetical child molester I posed in my previous post. I don't think any of us are purists when it comes to our default position. There are always some exceptions where the moral imperative overrides the self-preservation imperative.

It's also important to ensure that you fully understand the situation. In your "child molester" scenario, what happens when it turns out that the teenage girl is really a very young looking 19 year old who is role playing with her much older boyfriend? Personal morality aside, this is a (mostly) legal situation aside from public indecency, but hardly a case that justifies deadly force.

There is a tendency by some (not you) to ask hypotheticals of "would be use deadly force in XYZ scenario". But whenever I envision these scenarios it always starts with verbal commands and/or questions like "Stop", "What are you doing?", "Are you OK?", and goes from there. In these types of cases, I would need to be prepared for the situation to escalate to deadly force but I have a hard time envisioning a shooting scenario in public that doesn't involve some type of escalation. At home in the middle of the night is a different story.

I should have used more specific language. I was thinking "adult man, 5 year old girl".