Not your gunfight, but you get involved anyway

I'm sure that's true. But I've also been helped by strangers when I'm in trouble. Call it karma, I don't know. I don't stop to help in cities or major highways. But out here in the wild west, if you are broke down or stuck out in the boondocks, it can be a deadly situation. Anybody who drives right on by somebody who is in trouble out there, has just put some bad karma in their account.
 
Kleanbore said:
There are predators who successfully bank on that reaction to attract their prey.
Click to expand...

Couple of incidents in my state in recent memory. An attractive woman with the hood up on her car flagged down a passerby. Boyfriend hiding in the ditch shot and killed the good Samaritan. Couple of teenagers with a disabled car held up jumper cables. When a driver stopped, a third teenager killed him with a .22 rifle.

These days almost everyone has a cell phone they can use to call for help. Unless it's an extreme situation - single car accident or car fire - I let them request assistance from someone else. If I stop, I'm aware, cautious, and armed.
 
Very interesting thread that roped me into reading every reply. Hard to argue with most (if not all) responses as everyone is wired differently and articulated their responses fairly clearly.

I don't like hearing the good guy/gal with a gun discussion in the news as its almost always posed by the other side in a facetious fashion as in 'if only a' or 'where was the' when innocent citizens are wounded/killed as if to say that would have prevented it. Gun advocates need to do a much better job of pointing out that interceding in situations such as those is not the role of citizens who are carrying. My primary reason for carrying a gun is to protect me and mine, not the unarmed who may be present in my proximity when something bad goes down. I've chosen not to take the route of others who weighed the risk and decided they can call 911 and wait for the armed response. I've thought this through many times and my first option will almost always be to attempt to withdraw to cover and wait for the thin blue line to arrive. ONLY when pressed and unable to take this route will I draw and engage.

However, since we're speaking about a very specific instance here with known factors....Had I been standing in my dining room or driveway and saw some of this go down I would have made sure I knew the location of my wife, ensured she was safe, withdrawn to cover, called 911 and kept an eye on the situation.

Like someone above already stated "no two of these situations are alike" And while I’m very committed to my course of action as mentioned above I know for a fact I wouldn’t be able to abide with 2 peace officers bleeding to death on the driveway across from my house while I have the ability to try and assist. A line from one of my favorite movies comes to mind “there’s things that gnaw on a man worse than dying”. I live in a small town and odds are I’d run into their widows. I need to be able to look those women in the eyes with a clear conscience.

Far as I’m concerned I’ve not really read any wrong answers to this situation so far. Maybe mine is but if I lived through it at least I’d be able to sleep.
 
lemaymiami said:
As a general principle encouraging citizens to refrain from acting as law enforcers is pretty reasonable - but that has its limits..

Would you stand by and do nothing while watching a young woman get raped?

Would you stand by and do nothing while watching a man being beaten to death by another armed with a baseball bat?

At what point do you act - even knowing that you place yourself in grave danger by doing so?

I won't provide a single answer to these questions - but every citizen probably needs to consider - just how to respond - or not at all. Well in advance of that once in a lifetime event.
Click to expand...
I know I'm a little late to the party on this one, but I think back to when I was growing up and just ask myself what my father would do. He's been dead almost 40 years, but he was a likeable, no-nonsense tough old coot. There's is no way he would stand by in any of these instances if he saw someone in trouble.

When I was about 12 years old we were out running a trot line in a lake near San Angelo, TX, when all of the sudden we see a larger boat carrying 8 or more men, women and children capsize because they got too close to the spillway (even though there were plenty of signs not to do so.)

Immediately my dad headed our boat to the closest bank, ordered me out of the boat and to stay put, and he headed towards the capsized boat. He was able to get 4 kids on the first pass, drove up into the concrete ramp of the spillway where he deposited them then went back and got two women and one other man. Took them where he had left the others and then went back and started diving into the water trying to rescue those left. He was able to come up with the bodes of two men, both already drowned, but could not find the last one.

Now there were other boats in the area, but none of them excepting one, did anything to try to rescue anyone. I'm sure today they would all have been recording it on their phones.

The county had to airlift the survivors from the concrete ramps on the spillway because they deemed it too dangerous to mount a water rescue, but they all survived. Three men drowned, but seven others survived because my Dad quickly assessed the situation and acted. He was just a regular guy, working as a driller on an oil rig at that time, former Air Force veteran, but it wasn't his nature to not try to help. Honestly, before that day I had never seen him in water over his head and assumed he couldn't even swim.

He was my Dad, but I don't think he was unique among the type of men I grew up around in West Texas. I often tell people West Texas was a different world than the rest of Texas I found when I went to college in Waco in 1985 and then into the military at various posts around the US and the world.

I could pontificate and blame the media and politicians or THEM for dividing us and making us hate those who are different than us. But if we are so easily swayed, what does that say about ourselves to begin with? I don't have any answers. I just ask myself what my Dad would do and then, hopefully, try to do what would make him proud.
 
Body camera footage has been released. I’m reopening the thread because it gives a more complete picture of the incident.
 
Some comments about the citizen's actions:

The citizen jumped into this fight to help defend the two injured deputies at obvious risk to his own health and safety. From the news story, we know that he made sure that his family members were in a safe place before he ran to aid the deputies. Being willing to help others who are in obvious danger is laudable.

The bad guy's doorway appears to have been something like 20-40 yards away, yet the citizen's shot cadence was more appropriate for a target 3-7 yards away. I doubt that he was using aimed fire to engage a specific target. If he had a specific target, better to slow his cadence and put precisely aimed shots right where they needed to go.

The citizen shot to slide-lock, and did not immediately perform an emergency reload. This may be the only time I've ever seen or heard of a citizen needing a second magazine during a gunfight.

It appears that both deputies were down on the ground and not in a position to defend themselves when the citizen fired.

When finally taken into custody, the bad guy had no apparent wounds. Shots from the deputy's AR and from the citizen's handgun did not appear to have hit him.

After shooting, the citizen took a position behind concealment that would allow him to engage the bad guy if he re-emerged from the house. Since the bad guy was using birdshot, this position was probably also cover.

The footage showed the citizen kneeling over one of the deputies, but doesn't show him rendering any meaningful first aid, or providing any first aid supplies. Its a good idea to have a grab-and-go first aid kit available at home and in vehicles (if not on your person), and to have thorough first aid training.

The citizen appears to have communicated with dispatch via radio, as well as with other deputies who responded after the first deputies were shot. He focused on facts (deputies have been shot in the head, need additional units). He only communicated during a lull in the gunfight and while he was behind cover.


Did the citizen save the day? Tough to say for sure. He may have helped. But at least he does not appear to have made a bad situation any worse.
 
Last edited:
I watched the video and I want to be careful to say this right, as a Citizen Defender what the police did in this instance is absolutely irrelevant to me. They are police and they're going to do police things.

What's important for me to learn from is what the citizens did.

From what I saw they got the cops under cover and began to provide First Aid. That's proper and correct.

The only thing that I question is that Mag Dump with all those non-combatants around. Those bullets went somewhere.
 
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gryphon1911 said:
It saddens me to see fellow people here that could have the means to potentially save a life sit back and say they would not help. You don’t know how long backup is going to be.
Click to expand...

I can think of a lot of reasons someone would say this.

First, you don't want to be involved in a self defense shooting and have the cops find a bunch of wannabe cop or wannabe hero posts on your social media.

Second, (maybe this should be first) you don't want to get shot by the attackers.

Third, you don't want to get shot by cops when backup arrives. Or any of the options between that and getting thrown to the ground and handcuffed while they sort it out.

Fourth, you face the possibility of criminal penalites if you point a gun at someone or shoot someone.

Fifth, you face the possibility of civil liability of you shoot someone, or even render medical assistance to an officer.

Almost everything that can come out of this is bad for you and your family.

At worst you die. At best you go home with the satisfaction you did your good deed for the day. Very easy for me to see why a rational person would close the curtains and ignore it. Take emotion out of it, and it's really the only rational response.

Glad it worked out for these guys.
 
The link was deliberately posted to explore the whole story.
But the key takeaway -- irrespective of revisionist apologia -- remains.

"I didn't want to get involved."

.
 
MEHavey said:
The link was deliberately posted to explore the whole story.
But the key takeaway -- irrespective of revisionist apologia -- remains.

"I didn't want to get involved."
Click to expand...


ONE person (who was also drunk) said that

There's some pretty clear evidence that the times absolutely faked that story. They're even some reports that NYPD started the story to cover for their extremely long response time.
 
This entire string has been a back & forth overlay of that line.
"I didn't want to get involved."

Read the whole thing re KG -- start to fiinsih
There's enough truth there to make the point ...
re not my brother's keeper
 
MEHavey said:
This entire string has been a back & forth overlay of that line.
"I didn't want to get involved."

Read the whole thing re KG -- start to fiinsih
There's enough truth there to make the point ...
re not my brother's keeper
Click to expand...
The only point that the Kitty Genovese story makes is that the newspaper will lie to you.
 
I will come to the aide of any Police Officer whenever I can and do whatever it takes to help them .
The Police need all the help they can get and as a law abiding citizen if I can help them I will .
If there is any way I can help them I will ... it's the right thing to do .
Gary
 
DeepSouth said:
That’s the rub, I can think of scenarios worse than that. Potentially living with wrong decision.
Click to expand...

Like dumping a mag into a house when you don't know who's inside?

I can think of scenarios worse than death, too, like hitting the guy's son. (Fortunately, he wasn't there.) Or you get yourself shot, and a cop gets killed trying to save you. Or you just get shot in the spine and you spend the rest of your life with your wife changing your diaper.

When you could have just stepped back and let the cops wait out a barricaded suspect.

There's almost no situation in which the cops are already there and you make it better by not staying in your house and minding your own business.
 
wayneinFL said:
Like dumping a mag into a house when you don't know who's inside?

I can think of scenarios worse than death, too, like hitting the guy's son. (Fortunately, he wasn't there.) Or you get yourself shot, and a cop gets killed trying to save you. Or you just get shot in the spine and you spend the rest of your life with your wife changing your diaper.

When you could have just stepped back and let the cops wait out a barricaded suspect.

There's almost no situation in which the cops are already there and you make it better by not staying in your house and minding your own business.
Click to expand...

Exactly!
Many things come to my mind, you listed some of them but by no means all of them.
 
Night Rider said:
The only point that the Kitty Genovese story makes is that the newspaper will lie to you.
Click to expand...
That is entirely, unequivocally, and classically wrong.
But if you read only one story, one source, one voice, one "history," for one message....
you won't have a clue as to what really happened in fact.

And that's not isolated to the KG story.

;)
.
 
MEHavey said:
That is entirely, unequivocally, and classically wrong.
But if you read only one story, one source, one voice, one "history," for one message....
you won't have a clue as to what really happened in fact.

And that's not isolated to the KG story.
Click to expand...


Let me try saying it this way, you posted that story because as you said you were trying to communicate a point.

I had to take a conflict resolution class a long time ago at work and one of the things that they talked about is until I understand what you're trying to tell me you haven't communicated.

Two people have responded to your post to tell you that you haven't made your point.

You keep pointing to an example that I've already told you I absolutely discount and you keep trying to tell me that example proves your point.
 
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