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Re: What should I do in a situation
Posted: Sun May 03, 2015 8:25 pm
by The Annoyed Man
Skiprr wrote:srothstein wrote:jmra wrote:winters wrote:I carry a gun to protect myself and family. Not other people.
So if your wife was being raped you would like me to call 911 and be a good witness?
What I would want, what I expect you to do, what I would advise as best for you, and what you are legally obligated to do may be completely different things. I expect you to act in accordance with the law and your best interests. That is probably to be a good witness. I would also advise, in the general sense, the same thing.
What I want is for you to either intervene to help protect her but you are under no obligation to do so and I recognize that getting involved may be against your immediate best interests. If we get into a philosophical discussion of the danger to society by allowing crime to occur, I may try to convince you that standing by as a witness is not truly in your self-interest but I don't expect many people to act in the "enlightened" self-interest mode over the immediate self-interest mode.
This.
While determining what is and is not a crime is sometimes difficult, if you believe an assault to a person is being committed should you intervene?
I say yes.
And I agree, but there are many levels of "intervene", from calling 911, to calling for help from others, to jumping in and getting your own knuckles bloodied, to drawing your gun and shooting the apparent bad guy. I'm not against helping. What I am against is helping in a way that complicates things for the person you're trying to help......and I think that takes a degree of discernment which might be curtailed in the heat of the moment. So my advice is: act
carefully - meaning
think for a moment before you execute.
Re: What should I do in a situation
Posted: Sun May 03, 2015 11:33 pm
by gemini
jmra wrote:gemini wrote:jmra wrote:winters wrote:I carry a gun to protect myself and family. Not other people.
So if your wife was being raped you would like me to call 911 and be a good witness?
....and thus the start of the "great divide". Or split.
I believe it is a legitimate question. If you are not willing to render aid to someone else's loved one do you expect someone to render aid to your loved one? Obviously the queston is rhetorical because I would act according to my convictions regardless.
read my post from May 1. We are in agreement. I too would assist in some way. Call it built in response or simply
lessons from my father or my upbringing. I just hope that someone would assist if it was my daughter, wife etc that
needed help. Or a Leo; he's someones son, brother, husband. Maybe it's a native Texan thing.
Re: What should I do in a situation
Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 5:53 am
by jmra
gemini wrote:jmra wrote:gemini wrote:jmra wrote:winters wrote:I carry a gun to protect myself and family. Not other people.
So if your wife was being raped you would like me to call 911 and be a good witness?
....and thus the start of the "great divide". Or split.
I believe it is a legitimate question. If you are not willing to render aid to someone else's loved one do you expect someone to render aid to your loved one? Obviously the queston is rhetorical because I would act according to my convictions regardless.
read my post from May 1. We are in agreement. I too would assist in some way. Call it built in response or simply
lessons from my father or my upbringing. I just hope that someone would assist if it was my daughter, wife etc that
needed help. Or a Leo; he's someones son, brother, husband. Maybe it's a native Texan thing.
Re: What should I do in a situation
Posted: Thu May 07, 2015 1:41 pm
by goose
C-dub wrote:I would ask the officer if he or she needed any assistance and then help if the answer is yes. Otherwise, stay out of the way as much as possible. However, if it looks like the officer is in real trouble and may not be able to respond I'm going in.
This is where I land. I have called 911 during a possible child abduction. First asked "mom" if she wanted help, then called 911, then put gas station hardware between myself and the "perp" while I talked to the operator. Thankfully, that one ended well. My first thought here is, while on the phone with 911, to get the cop car between me and the perp. Then get close enough to ask the officer if (s)he needed assistance. Then respond in kind based on the officer's request. If the officer isn't responding I would be up in there as best as I could.
I agree that there are too many variables for a cut and dried answer, but that is where I would land first and adjust as needed.
Re: What should I do in a situation
Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 10:10 am
by TexasCajun
Here's one possible outcome of a situation that closely resembles the OP
http://bearingarms.com/armed-citizen-sa ... homa-city/
A rookie Oklahoma City police officer became separated from his partner during a foot pursuit and managed to close in on the robbery suspect they were chasing. The suspect managed to get control of the officer’s baton and started striking him in the head repeatedly, and the incident might have become another murder of an officer in the line of duty if it wasn’t for an armed citizen stepping in to save the day: