Fight or Flight and concealed carry.

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i agree with the OP. my CCW is there to protect me and mine, anyone else probibly should have been carrying in the first place.

theres too much risk involved in it. are you sure your shooting the bad guy and not some one who already interviened to help.

example. man A starts attacking woman B.man C comes in to aid woman B. B runs off for her own sake, and you stumble upon man A and C in conflict. maybe C wrestled a knife from A. Maybe C produces a gun but is in reality an undercover/off duty cop. unless you 110% sure that some one is in mortal danger,and you know who the players are and what happend. the best i think you can do is call for help

personaly i would like to help people. and i wish out world accepted, you assult some one, you risk getting shot. but it doesnt.
 
This is a very personal issue and everyone has their own idea of what is right. I would hope that all of us that have chosen to take the training to carry would have the mindset to be willing to aid others in need. I can't imagine that I could turn away from someone that was in imminent danger of being killed and not try to intervene. I think a large part of what is wrong with this country is the mentality that "It's not my problem". It may not be our problem, but it is our responsibility to help.
 
example. man A starts attacking woman B.man C comes in to aid woman B. B runs off for her own sake, and you stumble upon man A and C in conflict. maybe C wrestled a knife from A. Maybe C produces a gun but is in reality an undercover/off duty cop. unless you 110% sure that some one is in mortal danger,and you know who the players are and what happend. the best i think you can do is call for help
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Jeez, use your eyes and ears and your instinct of right and wrong!! If it looks like someone is a nano-second away from having open heart surgery right there on the street in front of you...act! If your not sure of what you are seeing, wait until you are. This isnt brain surgery.


We have become a nation of pansies paralyzed from worrying about what the jury might think.

my CCW is there to protect me and mine, anyone else probibly should have been carrying in the first place.
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Reminds me of the truth behind the bumper sticker: "People suck". I am quiting this thread before I lose all hope in mankind.
 
You need to review the laws of your....

state. Some states are passing "castle doctrine" laws to protect you from civil action against you by the shootee....The shooting will still be reviewed by the police though. If it is a bad shoot, you are toast......chris3
 
Does any one know if the Good Samaritan Law applies when it comes to firearms and situations the poster is talking about?
 
Creature ~

It's not about things. Things can always be replaced.

This is about protecting my own family from the devastating emotional fallout of getting it wrong. It is about protecting my children from losing a parent to jail or worse. It is about protecting my marriage from being split up by an imprisonment for murder or manslaughter. And yes, it is also about protecting my children's inheritance and my ability to hold a job -- consequences that can be expected if I lose the gamble, but which are really secondary concern to the awful risk of killing the wrong person and having to live with myself afterward.

The life of an innocent stranger is absolutely worth as much as the lives of my own family members (by my personal moral lights), but I'll not risk my family's togetherness and happiness on anything less than an absolute certainty. Why not? Because my family's lives are worth as much to me as the life of a stranger who may not be in danger. Even more so if the stranger I save (by killing an innocent man) later turns out to have been the aggressor in the situation. (See the bit about killing the wrong person, up above?) Nothing but a certainty -- an overhwelming certainty -- is worth taking a gamble that size with my family's happiness.

One of the things I have learned through my training: the greatest physical danger to an out-of-uniform police officer who intervenes in such situations actually comes from other cops when they first arrive on scene. "Friendly fire" is a horrendous oxymoron for the kind of devastating tragedy which can happen when someone goofs up during a rapidly-developing, stressful, chaos-filled, confusion-driven event. The point to remember? Cops (who have lots of other tools at their disposal) sometimes kill the wrong person when they arrive at the scene of a life-or-death struggle, especially if they did not see the entire prelude and don't know the players.

Bottom line?

The entire issue is nowhere near as simple as people want it to be, and certainly not appropriate for bumper-sticker slogans without critical thinking. Knee-jerk, emotional reactions may be soul-satisfying, but often leave out crucial information. The more training you've had, and the more you learn about how these things often work in real life, the better you will be able to make realistic, reality-based decisions when you need to.

pax
 
I don't live a very exciting life. I spend a lot of time sipping coffee in a local conveniance stores parking lot. I do carry, and have never had to use my weapon. The clerks do prefer me being there, especially late because usually merely the presence is enough to ward off a would be robber. Upon many nights of sitting on my tailgate in said parking lot, I've contemplated scenarios where I would intervene, on various levels. Already I HAVE confronted shoplifters, chased brats who have stolen beer down the road and recovered the beer after they've dropped it. I have put thought into what I would do if I was to catch glimpse of someone holding a gun on "Sonny" the night clerk, and have come to the conclusion that I would try to call the authorities, but not given that chance or if I concluded by the assailants behavior that he would fire that weapon, I would draw my gun and send him to whatever god he worships for judgement. We are provided some protections in the law in WV in the regards of using deadly force to protect ourselves or "Others" that may be in danger of loss of life. Though I'm sure a hotshot lawyer would try to warp the scene to it not seeming like a deadly threat to me or the clerk. Ultimately, killing a BG and saving a innocent clerk is something I can live with, not doing so and being left to only give a description of the murderer and such to the law, all the while I had a gun...I'd never sleep right again.
 
Before you pull that weapon out of its holster you had better be 100% sure that you are right.

That said, I could not live with myself if I saw someone in a life threatening situation that I had the power to stop, yet did nothing.

Someone said doing the right thing is not always easy and risk-free. If we had a smiley hammering the crap out of a nail I would put it here.
 
Pax wrote:
Creature ~

It's not about things. Things can always be replaced.
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Regarding your lengthly reply, there must be some kind of disconnect.

I was not talking about killing the wrong person and the repercussions sure to ensue..or about things.

I was not talking about blindly defending someone on scetchy-at-best information.

I am talking about the members here who have stated unequivically that they will not act to prevent harm coming to anyone other than their family, let alone a perfect stranger.

What I most definietly AM talking about is there comes a point in a situation that is unfolding before you where you as an observer/witness are convinced in the deepest part of the animal brain that something is very wrong and that someone is about to come to serious harm. Pax, without a doubt you are right that the decison to intervene should not be taken lightly. But the mental process to decide to do something about a bad situation is and should not be difficult. And I have already decided to not let certain things happen around me if I can help it, armed or not. I only hope my courage holds out when that moment happens.

Many people have survived a sudden attack by some-one else's split-second decision making and willingness to take the risk. But many more people have died as a result of someone not being able to make a decision during a sudden life and death situation. Worse yet are those that have died because someone was not willing to take that risk. How we can speak of our children's inheritance at the expense of our fellow man's life is mindboggling to me. My comments were about those who are so paralyzed by deliberation and weighing the costs of their own personal well-being that they have become unwilling to even offer the protection that they afford themselves in an unyielding denial of the fact that a stranger's life might just be worth the risk.

And surely those that continually offer up that "make 100% sure that you are right" statement must know by now that nothing in life is a 100% sure thing, except death. If I have to be convinced 100% that the building is going to fall down on my head before I decide to move, I must one lucky person to have gotten this far.
 
Many people have survived a sudden attack by some-one else's split-second decision making and willingness to take the risk
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and little kids holding 3 Musketerr candy bars get shot by the same split second decision

My comments were about those who are so paralyzed by deliberation and weighing the costs of their own personal well-being that they have become unwilling to even offer the protection that they afford themselves in an unyielding denial of the fact that a stranger's life might just be worth the risk.
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i dont care what happens to me, i dont want to go to jail and learn that "fist" can be a verb, but i will gladly save a life. i donate blood, i know CPR, im in the bone marrow database. i can save life. im just not ready to take life unless im 100%
 
I'm thinking that it is better to pull earlier and not fire which MAY deescalate the situation. The worst thing that could happen is I would be charged with brandishing or if the other guy tried to attack, I would have a better opportunity to defend myself. Obviously if I can run away I will, but I think getting out of a situation without killing someone would be the best scenario. Am I crazy, stupid or correct in my thinking?
 
and little kids holding 3 Musketerr candy bars get shot by the same split second decision
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Where the heck did that come from?...I never said anything about not being accountable for every shot taken. Statements like that only cloud the issue and distract us from the center of this discussion.


i dont care what happens to me, i dont want to go to jail and learn that "fist" can be a verb, but i will gladly save a life. i donate blood, i know CPR, im in the bone marrow database. i can save life. im just not ready to take life unless im 100%
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I have done all of those things as well.

So I ask: what would you need to be 100% sure? Would you need to have been with the victim for the entire 24 hours of that person's life before hand before you would pull a gun to defend him or her? An hour? A minute? 10 seconds? This is what I am getting at folks...
 
Where the heck did that come from?...I never said anything about not being accountable for every shot taken. Statements like that only cloud the issue and distract us from the center of this discussion.
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its to say when you act with out being sure, bad things happen just as easily as when you dont act.

So I ask: what would you need to be 100% sure? Would you need to have been with the victim for the entire 24 hours of that person's life before hand before you would pull a gun to defend him or her? An hour? A minute? 10 seconds? This is what I am getting at folks...
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long enough to know whos the agressor and whos the victim. and to know that harm is going to happen.
 
What if they're play-acting or in the middle of a practical joke?
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Back when I was (more) young and (more) foolish....

Two buddies and I decided to stage an "abduction."

- We dropped off my first buddy (much smaller than either of us) behind a movie theater. He walked around to the front of the theater, and got at the end of a line of ~50 people waiting to buy tickets. (many of whom were students at our highschool)

- Buddy #2 and I tore up in his camaro, came to a screeching halt in front of the theater, jumped out of the car, "beat him up" in a performance worthy of WWF, shoved him into the back seat, and peeled out as we sped away. Many of the "witnesses" recognized us and were laughing quite hysterically, others just stood there with looks of shock or confusion on their faces.

- As we pulled into parking spot at McD's, still laughing about the whole thing, another car boxed us in, and the father (with 2 kids in the back seat) partially exited the vehicle to ask if buddy #1 was okay. We assured him he was, and we explained our (dumb) stunt. He just rolled his eyes and left.

How could this have turned out differently if a CCWer was in line at the theater? What if the guy in the car had a CCW?

We were stupid, but a "John Wayne" hero could have gotten involved and caused allot of trouble for everyone.

Just an example of how things may not be what they appear to be.
 
long enough to know whos the agressor and whos the victim. and to know that harm is going to happen.
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That is what I am getting at. And at least you would lend a hand. Others here choose not to no matter what happens if it doesn't involve themselves or a family member.
 
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