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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".

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.

flechero wrote:What kept creeping into my mind was that calling 911 from the train would most likely draw them to you!! And then I had to admit to myself that I normally do not carry enough ammo to take on a crowd... if the first few shots don't scare them away.

For a few years, I rode Dart to work... I am glad I moved to the country.

I hope I never have to make the decision to jump in and help out in a scenario like that- because I think it's a no win situation.

This is one of the reasons I switched from carrying a .45 to carrying a "wonder nine". Capacity to weight ratio. I ALWAYS have at least one spare magazine, and more often two. But when I was still EDCing my XDM45, that was a LOT of weight to lug around. My 9mm guns weigh less, even with slightly higher capacities. Assuming two spare mags, with my G19, that's 46 rounds. I added +2 round pinky extensions to all my G26 mags, so that's 37 rounds with that gun. I have a third spare mag for my G19, but I don't usually carry it.....but I could if I needed to. I understand that the likelihood of actually needing that much ammo on hand is very small, but as they say, the only times you can have too much ammo are when you're swimming or you're on fire. But with my physical condition, weight is big factor.....hence my switch to Glock 9mms.

nightmare69 wrote:TAM, I should've added that nobody wins when you spray OC in a confined area. You and everyone else will get a dose, I know I did everytime we had to use it.

Yeah, I mentioned that possibility above, about using it in the confines of a train car. I agree that it is not an ideal environment. Even so, it is an option I need to explore. Until now, I had avoided it, mostly because, between a gun and spare magazines, a knife, and various other crap, I didn't want to add another item to my belt or pockets. Maybe it's time to reconsider.

rotor wrote:Bernhard Goetz did the right thing but he was in the wrong state. I personally have been accosted by a group like this in the New York City subway system as a kid. Nobody helped and fortunately I wasn't hurt. At my age now though, I would be no match for those kids unarmed and if I did pull my gun I would have used it. My role though is to protect me and mine and I didn't get a LTC to protect you and yours. That's the job of the police.

The Supreme Court of the United States begs to differ: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of ... ._Gonzales

The Supreme Court reversed the Tenth Circuit's decision, reinstating the District Court's order of dismissal. The Court's majority opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia held that enforcement of the restraining order was not mandatory under Colorado law; were a mandate for enforcement to exist, it would not create an individual right to enforcement that could be considered a protected entitlement under the precedent of Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth; and even if there were a protected individual entitlement to enforcement of a restraining order, such entitlement would have no monetary value and hence would not count as property for the Due Process Clause.

The general interpretation accepted by most legal scholars and law enforcement agencies is that police do not have a duty to protect. Since it is not part of their duty, it is also not part of their job. To the extent that an individual officer actually protects a victim from an assailant, that is on his/her own initiative. His job is to intervene in, disrupt, and stop (in so far as is possible) any illegal behavior he observes......the operant word being "observes". If he didn't see it, he has no duty to protect you from it. In the context of the above video, the officer is obliged to intervene in an illegal action he observes while on that train car, but he has NO obligation to prevent that illegal action from happening when he is not riding in that car where he can observe it taking place. The OBVIOUS inference is, "if there is no cop riding in the car, you're on your own".

Rotor, I actually do understand where you're coming from, but surely you have your own personal list of exceptions, do you not......those exceptions which let you look at yourself in the mirror every morning? For instance, you're taking a walk through a public park, and on a secluded part of the trail you came upon an adult man sexually abusing a little girl, you'd interfere, wouldn't you? OR.... would you call 911 and observe from a safe distance, while the molestor has another 10-15 minutes with the girl before the cops show up?

One of the hallmarks of any civilized society is that it protects its weaker members. A society that does not do that may still be a society, but it is not a civilized society, with all the benefits of civilization.

Like a lot of the older members of this forum, I am limited in what I can do physically today, compared to what I used to be capable of. That does up the stakes. The escalation continuum gets shortened when you have fewer options. OTH, I feel like I would be compelled to do more than just call 911 in the above video. Nightmare69's suggestion to use pepper spray seems like a good option, although I don't know if deploying it inside the confines of a train car would be the best idea or not. Maybe exiting the car at the same station where the gang exited and using it there might be an idea to investigate. I'll have to think on it longer. But what I do know is that maybe it is time for me to look into OC spray for EDC, to give me another option besides having to shoot someone. Because also like he said, if you draw the gun, you'd better be prepared to use it. Drawing the gun may have the desired effect with a single person who is older, and maybe a little more street wise. But with a gang of teenagers? Egging each other on? Not a prayer. You pull the gun on that crowd, and Nightmare69 is right......you'll probably have to shoot someone, and are you ready for the legal consequences over protecting a stranger? It's a difficult choice to make, if you're a person with a conscience. I don't have all the answers, and I'm honestly not sure what I would have done in this situation.

The one thing I would NOT have been doing would be riding a DART train through Oak Cliff at midnight. I realize that not everyone has that choice, but I do, and I choose to exercise it and avoid places/situations where the statistical probabilities of this kind of thing are higher than other places/situations.