Here’s an interesting story.

Basically, petty crime occurring (someone grabs someone else’s duffel bag and runs off, victim shouts for help). A citizen with a concealed carry permit pulls over to help out, draws his gun on the criminal and says “Stop, Police.” and works to detail the thief. However, a second armed citizen sees what’s happening and thinks that is a crime going down so he too stops to intervene. Eventually the police show up and things get sorted out.

The intentions of both citizens are good. Frankly, having more people that are willing to be helpful and not stand for criminal behavior? That’s a good thing. But the first guy to identify himself as police? That’s not good. My hope there is the guy either gets let off or only lightly punished because he did not have criminal intent in what he was doing; it’s certainly not worthy of a felony charge.

It does demonstrate a real issue however: that things may not always be what they seem. There’s stories of a bad guy coming out of the store he just robbed and complaining to the by-standers in a manner to make those by-standers think he was the victim and thus they help the bad guy get away. Things aren’t always what they seem, and we have to be careful. I do have thoughts about what would happen if I was in a self-defense situation with many others around, and there were other “sheepdogs” in the mix as well. What could happen? Could signals get crossed? Could the chaos of the situation lead to unintended things happening? It’s a situation that I don’t have an answer to, but have wondered if there is something that could be done and thus taught in schools as a part of “training and tactics” to aid in such situations. I don’t know.

But me personally? I don’t think I would have gotten involved in such a situation. To me the question to answer is “is this worth dying for?”. Petty theft? I don’t think it’s worth dying for. Actually I should check that. I may have gotten involved (all depends upon the specifics of the situation), but to pull one’s gun… that has to answer affirmatively the “worth dying for” question.

My Story

I think about what happened to me just this past Saturday evening. The family and I had gone out to dinner, then over to the bookstore. We left the bookstore, heading across the parking lot to our car. I noticed a man and a woman walking through the parking lot on a path that would eventually intersect with us. They appeared to be having some sort of a fight, a little physical, a little heated verbal exchange, and they kept walking in our direction. They appeared intoxicated, and by their appearance possibly homeless. Wife saw them too and became concerned, I just looked at her and said to get herself and the kids to the car. I was certainly in code orange, but didn’t think this would be a problem… they appeared to just be a drunk couple having their own spat, but with that level of irrationality going on who knows. Better safe than sorry. I kept my eye on things while Wife got the kids and herself into the car. As I was going to get into the car, the woman crossed behind our car and shouted to me “Want to buy some DVD’s? Brand new!” I just gave a firm “no thank you”. She kept walking; in fact, she never stopped. My guess is the fight was over the DVD’s, or at least her saying that to us was no true offer of sale… just something to piss off her male companion. As we pulled out, we saw the man had sat himself down on the curb and looked sad and upset whereas the woman had kept on walking.

I don’t know what the story was, and frankly I don’t care. My concern was for the safety and well-being of my family. There was a brief moment where both Wife and I were concerned of a physical altercation as it looked like the man might have opted to hit or otherwise rough up the woman. If that had happened, I may have intervened but initially from a distance (e.g. verbal commands, getting Wife to dial 911). I couldn’t stand by to let someone get hurt like that, but on the same token I had to ensure I didn’t put myself or my wife and children in danger either. Exactly what I would have done, again, impossible to say… all depends upon the exact situation and how things would unfold. But my guiding principle is keeping my wife and children safe; all else is secondary. In the end the question remains: is it worth dying for?