Caleb asks some questions, knowing many of us carry. I’ll do my best to answer.
You’re eating at a restaurant with your family and a group of shooters burst in to the restaurant and light it up, Mumbai-style.
No choice. You have to return fire even if you think you’ll die. At worst you’ll delay the shooters long enough for your family and others to get away to safety. At best you save yourself.
You see a 3rd party being violently attacked and in clear threat of death or grievous bodily harm.
I believe you have a civic obligation to intervene. If you really believe in a universal citizen militia, I don’t see how you can believe otherwise. The entire idea of such a thing is that every citizen has an obligation to others, and towards the common peace.
You see a young mother having her child forcibly ripped away from her by an obvious bad man.
Same as above. But, the problem is:
Assume for the sake of argument that in all the above situations the bad guys are clear, the good guys are obvious, you’re carrying your regular carry gun, and lethal force is clearly justified.
Almost nothing in the real world is ever that simple. When it comes to assisting third parties, you need to be supremely cautious. There are plenty of instances when it wouldn’t be so cut and dry. I’m going to get away from that situation, or just be a good witness for police. The real world is seldom so forgiving as the situations Caleb is gaming here.
http://www.warriortalknews.com/2010/06/should-you-act-get-involved-or-get-away.html
Yeah, this is designed to result in an answer of gun use. Inherent bias if it were trying to be objective.
In reality, there’s very little short of someone expressing means and intent to harm me that’s going to see my gun come out. Current social and legal climate means everyone else is on their own.
Scenario: lady being bodily shoved, kicking and screaming “rape!” into a car by a couple scraggy guys.
Shoot them?
Explain to the judge why you fragged two undercover cops taking down a murder suspect.
To me it pretty much is, if it’s really cut and dry… do your civic duty. But it’s never really that cut and dry. I’m not generally going to think less of a person who does all the right things, which doesn’t necessarily have to be responding with lethal force.
In the third scenario, what if the person taking the child is the father who is the legal guardian of the child (but you don’t know that)? I might try to stop him from leaving but I don’t think I would shoot anyone. Many of these “stolen” children turn out to be non-custodial parent issues.
The follow up to Caleb’s posting was that he wanted to know of those people who would act, if they had considered professional training on how to shoot under stress so there would be a lower likelihood of shooting a bystander.
I do agree that unless me or mine are threatened I don’t break leather.
To quote a friend of mine WRT the last two questions:
if you walked by a stranger’s room in a hospital, and heard the doctor telling him that an operation that ran (depending on complications) between $100,000 and $300,000 was the only way to save his life, would you immediately volunteer to cover that expense with your own money? Because that’s exactly what you are doing when you come to somebody’s aid with your lethal force. If you have a family, would it be fair to them? The way I look at it, it had better BE somebody in my family before I risk that much.
Given reality, Harold, I think the way you’re looking at it is correct. But I think it’s a damned shamed our society has come to that.