The punch, it’s alleged, was consensual — a mutually agreed-upon yet ultimately tragic attempt between two high school students at making amends.
The lone blow outside a Lake Roesiger cabin early Sunday morning ended one life and landed an 18-year-old classmate in the Snohomish County Jail for investigation of manslaughter.
Full story here. But if you don’t want to read it all, the gist is one kid hit another kid’s car. They had a bit of a confrontation about it, and in the end opted to settle their differences by letting one punch the other. By all accounts it was a consensual and mutually agreed upon resolution, even shaking hands and smoking a cigarette together. The one kid punched the other kid, who fell down, struck his head on the pavement, and never regained consciousness.
It seems evident no one meant harm here, just a way to settle a debt. Alas, it’s turned into a terrible situation, and I hope things will turn out as best as they can for all involved.
I present this story as yet another illustration that empty-hands can still be deadly.
Horrific wounds have been caused by screwdrivers and spoons as attackers look to circumvent knife-carrying laws by switching to “improvised weapons”.
[…]
Doctors say a trend has emerged of teenagers being stabbed in the rectum – a practice known among gangs as “dinking” that can leave the victim requiring a stoma bag for the rest of their life.
[…]
Chris Aylwin, a consultant surgeon at St Mary’s hospital, said: “There seems to be a decreasing value of people’s lives. One of the more worrying features that we have certainly seen are stabbings around the buttocks and thighs. People don’t do that without good reason.
[…]
Duncan Bew, the clinical lead for trauma and emergency surgery at Kings’ College hospital, said: “There is an intention to leave someone with an outward sign that they have been punished by a gang – a stoma bag or some other injury to ‘clip their wings’.”
UK essentially bans guns, so people turn to knives. Now knives are being severely restricted, and so they’re turning to screwdrivers and spoons and other improvised weapons.
Ban all you want, it doesn’t stop people from engaging in the base behavior (how’s that “War on Drugs” working out?). If evil people wish to do evil things, they will always find a way. Instead of focusing on the tools, how about focusing on the root evil(s)? You only have so much time, money, and energy in your lifetime, so why waste precious resources on ineffective solutions?
Statistics Tell Certain Stories
According to City Hall, the number of knife assaults causing injury rose 7.7 per cent across London between April and September this year, compared to the same period last year. There were 335 incidents in September – 51 per cent up on the 222 recorded in March.
People love to quote how “gun violence” is low in the UK, and that it is. Maybe it is support that “banning guns” leads to less “gun violence”. But “banning guns” does not lead to a safer society, a society where there is less violence.
People like to quote homicide and murder rates as indication of how things are getting better or worse. Alas, murder rates only tell part of the story, because for it to be murder the victim has to die. Every year medical ability improves, and these days if you make it to the Emergency Room with any sort of vital signs, your chances are extremely high you will live due to the miracle of modern medicine. Thus, at most your attack will only be classified as “aggravated assault” – what used to be called “attempted murder” – and consequently “murder rates going down” are in part due to good ER’s, not reduction in crime.
Consider the contents of the article: the very intent of the attack is not to kill, but to severely maim and inflict not death but a lifetime of agony and suffering. How does this affect your statistics? And do the statistics really matter when you’re the one spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair with a colostomy bag?
Get Medical Training
A week after Joel was attacked, the trauma team at the Royal London saved a 16-year-old stabbed in the leg. “It was a really deep wound,” Mr Konig said. “That struck me as real intent, and that was just shocking. [In a week] we had one dead, one survived. Left alone, these people would all die.
“Passers-by were excellent at putting pressure on his groin and stopping him bleeding to death right there. If members of the public are having to come to your assistance to stop you bleeding to death, it’s like soldiers relying on their buddies in a war zone. If we have to start educating people how to stop someone bleeding to death, that does change things.”
This doesn’t mean you need to be a medic, an EMT, or anything of the sort. But get some basic First Aid training. Then maybe get some more advanced care in things like Wilderness First Aid, or other training that goes beyond “boo-boos and bee stings” to help you deal with things like severe bleeding and when and how to use a tourniquet.
Carry some form of medical equipment. Heck, my Dad has always carried a single Band-Aid in his wallet: it’s not a tourniquet, but you’d be amazed at how often it’s come in handy.
Some People Are Just Sick
I’m sure you are a positive person that surrounds yourself with other positive, uplifting, productive, contributing, and generally “good” people. Thus chances are you may not realize or really fathom that the world is filled with horrible people. Thankfully they are a minority, but they are still there and all it takes is one to ruin things.
Some people are just twisted and sick. Consider the attackers in this story: they are out to cause their victim a lifetime of suffering. I mean, intentionally stabbing someone in the rectum to cause the victim a lifetime of difficultly? How fucked up is that? Sorry for the language, but there’s no other way to describe such a vile, despicable act. It’s truly the mindset of a sick individual.
It’s important to accept the world contains such scum. You don’t have to like it nor tolerate it, but admitting and accepting they exist improves your ability to address the realities of the problem.
Real Solutions
Mr Bew is a trustee of Growing Against Gangs and Violence, a partnership between the Association of Surgeons, Metropolitan Police and Home Office that aims to end gang and serious youth violence through proactive work and “pupil power”. This Autumn it has reached 17,080 students in 70 schools in 11 boroughs – four times as many students as two years ago.
He added: “Trauma centres have made a massive difference to mortality and morbidity in the last couple of years, particularly in that younger group. The challenge for us is how we stop the kids coming to us in the first place.”
“I never thought something like that could happen here.”
“This is the good part of town.”
You’ve probably heard – or even uttered – these phrases. Crime happens in a place you wouldn’t expect it to, and phrases like these come out. The reality is, crime happens everywhere – no where is immune. But certainly, there are areas that can have a higher tendency for crime than others.
Force Science Institute News #268 contains an article on “What locations are riskiest for you?” In this context, “you” means law-enforcement officers. And while I tend to look at things from a private citizen standpoint, this is still information worthy of note.
The study looked at data from the nation’s second largest municipal police department (Chicago), and constructed “a “risk terrain model” that links an officer’s relative danger of felonious injury to the presence of certain environmental factors.” They looked at 991 batteries (“serious bodily harm or death, including firearm threats and assaults) against CPD officers over a 12-month period. They examined where those tended to occur across the city, at a granularity of about 1-city block. They also considered other “potential risk factors”, locations likely to be trouble spots like apartment complexes, night clubs, homeless shelters, laundromats, convenience stores, etc..
From their analysis, they determined an “exceptionally strong” statistical correlation between batteries against officers and proximity to 11 environmental features.
In a descending order of risk, “police who handle calls for service at locations with foreclosures, problem buildings [sources of complaints about criminal activity], bars, schools, gang territories, banks, apartment complexes, liquor stores, clusters of service requests for malfunctioning streetlights, grocery stores and/or retail shops are at a greater risk of felonious battery,” Caplin writes.
At the upper end of this list, calls “within three blocks of foreclosures and/or within a dense area of problem buildings pose as much as two to three times greater risk of battery to police officers” than calls to locations at the lower end of the spectrum, he says. But even the lesser locations on the list present a significantly higher danger than the average among all the cells analyzed.
Of course, the risk is even greater at locations where more than one of these “model features” is present.
The specifics are unclear, but Caplan theorizes that the behavior of people can be influenced by the geographical features around them. “The nature of certain places may be perceived by offenders to be opportune locations to behave aggressively toward police,” he writes.
For example, “foreclosures may be high-risk due to the absence of invested caretakers who would otherwise serve as ‘eyes and ears’ within the area. This void of guardians may serve as cues to certain suspects that the prospect for instant freedom from criminal justice authorities is better had with aggression toward police rather than cooperation.”
Rather an interesting take-home. Of course, like any study it really is a call for further study: to have the study replicated in other cities, other jurisdictions, other departments, both within the US but also abroad. So, take the study results for what they are.
Out of curiousity, I asked Tom Givens how this data compared to his (ever growing) data set of student/civilian incidents. His response:
John,
That all makes sense from a law-enforcement perspective. Bear in mind that these are police officers responding to calls for service. That takes them to foreclosed homes, ghetto apartment complexes, and such locations that the typical middle-class CCW holder is far less likely to frequent.
In our civilians experience the most dangerous places are gas station/convenience store, shopping malls and parking lots in general. These are the places where your typical CCW holder has the highest chance of interacting with strangers, and thus with criminals.
Hope this helps.
Tom
Either way, this information does give you an idea of where there is greater risk, and lends into John Farnam’s quip about personal safety: “Don’t go to stupid places, associate with stupid people, and do stupid things.”
Is your safety based in the reality of the world around you? or in your limited purview?
Granted, we can only be based in what we know, so the question is really a matter of how much do you know? How much awareness do you have of what’s going on around you?
As an example, a few weeks ago when I was at the gym and the police came knocking because a shop a few doors down was burglarized. I had no idea the shop had been broken into – they went through a back door, which of course I never saw. Had the police not come knocking, I would have never known.
How much do you speak with your neighbors? Did you know that one of your neighbors had their house broken into? It wasn’t on the news, it wasn’t in the papers. Usually it takes having regular communication with your neighbors to know what’s going on around you. Of course today, many neighborhoods have groups on Facebook or use sites like Nextdoor, but however you communicate, so long as it’s there to keep you informed.
I thought about this due to a conversation I had with a loved one. That loved one doesn’t quite get one of my jobs, and does think I’m a bit paranoid. That I take steps to keep my house safe from burglary be it outside lighting, alarm system, guard dog… it’s all rather overkill to this loved one because they’ve never experienced anything that would give them a need for such things. Well, after you’ve had your house cased, after you know some neighbors have had their house and cars broken into… yeah, you really would prefer to not be a victim.
But that’s often how it goes for many people: they come around because something happened to them. You find many women that never considered owning a gun, until that crazy, abusive ex came calling. I myself grew into this world because shortly after getting married and having my first child, Wife was assaulted while out on a walk in a “good part of town”. Yeah, often our perceptions are founded in our own ignorance of the world around us — because we just don’t know what we don’t know.
So I pay attention to police reports. I pay attention to the FBI Crime Statistics. I try to seek out information about the dangers around me. Yes, you have to keep it in perspective, and yes I can see how some people would think this is paranoia. But why should seeking knowledge and doing responsible things with that knowledge be considered paranoia? Or really, should we let being called “paranoid” bother us so much, since the label is being applied by those so obviously ignorant?
From what’s been reported so far, it seems what we’ve got are some random people with a heavy dose of “crazy”, attacking other people with an intent to inflict harm and death in a horrible manner due to their crazy.
Where are the calls for hatchet bans? or machete control? Because you know if these attackers used guns, it would become fuel for those bent on banning guns. Why aren’t we seeing calls to try to control this sort of violence? Is this sort of attack somehow less worthy of your political attention?
Or maybe perhaps it’s not about the tool/weapon. I mean, I think it’s pretty clear what’s in play here isn’t guns or hatchets or machetes, but plain old crazy.
So why aren’t we working to ban crazy? I mean, if bans are so effective at stopping things, don’t you think a law against crazy would be the most effective solution?
Of course we know there’s no reality in making that solution happen. Thus we look for other solutions, often things like “gun control”.
But let me ask you something.
Look at the NYPD hatchet case. What got things to stop? Was it legislation? Was it a ban on hatchets or the fact that murder is already illegal? Did they pee or vomit on their attacker? Was it talking to the attacker, be it begging and pleading, words of love and kindness, or stern words?
No. It was a swift and violent response on the part of the NYPD officers, using guns to stop the attacker. There was no ability to call for help; only the people immediately on site right there right then were able to respond.
Are guns, and swift, violent responses always the right answer? Certainly not! In fact, the overwhelming majority of problems in our world are not going to be rightly solved by the muzzle of a gun. However, there are some problems in this world that cannot be solved any other way.
For every solution you offer as an alternative, I ask you to consider the viability of that solution — with intellectual honesty. Would you equip those NYPD officers with your solution? Will your solution enable them to go home to their loved ones at the end of their shift? Will your solution be effective at keeping other innocent people on the NYC street from being brutally murdered? Will your solution effectively stop the danger, the madness, the crazy?
What if you were faced with the same imminent danger? If someone were charging at you wielding a hatchet with every intent on embedding it in your skull, can you honestly believe your solution will keep you alive? Are you willing to put it to the test?
A ban on crazy – just like most bans – doesn’t stop bad things from happening. Effective solutions may not always be palatable, but we must always be honest in finding and applying those solutions.
One of the men lifted his shirt to display a handgun tucked into the waist of his pants, [Lt. James] Espinoza said. Moments later, five or six other men began beating up the 37-year-old coach. One of the men used a set of brass knuckles, Espinoza said.
A group of 6 or so men come up to you, with obvious ill intent (I’m sure they didn’t have smiles and rainbows on their faces, given the backstory). One flashes a gun at you. Then they start beating on you.
I would think any reasonable person would conclude the coach was in grave danger, that his life was at stake. If you wouldn’t reach this same conclusion, please tell me why.
Seeing the attack, the coach’s wife pulled out a gun and fired a warning shot into the air, Burris said.
The coach broke free of his attackers and went to his car for a second gun, which he pointed at various people in the crowd, Espinoza said.
I believe the wife’s response to be reasonable. I don’t think it was tactically sound nor safe (insert discussion of why it’s bad to shoot into the air, why warning shots are a bad idea, why it’s good to receive education in not just marksmanship but also threat management and legal implications of use of force, etc.), but generally speaking her response was reasonable. As well, I believe the coach’s response was reasonable as well. Again, I don’t think it was tactically sound (insert discussion of why it’s important to have gun on person and not stored far away, although in his case he may have had to do it for “youth coaching” reasons). Nevertheless, in the eyes of the law, the response by the man and woman are considered reasonable.
The coach who was involved in the clash and pulled out a gun after being attacked has been relieved of his coaching duties, [Jeremy Burris, director of the Tigers football program] said. His wife was also dismissed from involvement with the team.
“He’s been a great role model” for kids, Burris said of the coach, who has been with the Tigers for a few years and worked in the league for at least 15 years. “He’s really helped.”
Despite that background, Burris said, “you can’t take weapons out around children.”
Facepalm. Major facepalm.
Why can’t you take weapons out around children? Please, Mr. Burris, explain your statement.
“Nothing like this has ever happened in this organization,” said Burris, who said he has been affiliated with the Tigers for 20 years. “We pride ourselves on zero tolerance for anything that goes on.”
Ah, the beloved – and brain-dead – “zero tolerance” policy.
Was either the coach or his wife pointing their guns at the children? Were they threatening the children? Were they endangering the children?
Or have you considered that the coach was getting the living tar beat out of him? Have you considered what would have happened to this man if he and his wife did not take out a weapon around children? Maybe that “great role model” would be in the hospital, or dead. What good would that have done the world, to lose someone that’s contributed to the betterment of our youth for 15 years? Please explain how such a good man becoming crippled or dead would be a better thing.
Have you considered the message your action sends to those very youth?
That defending yourself is a good way to lose your job. Your choice is to lose your job or lose your life.
That hiding behind blind policy is an unthinking and cowardly thing to do. There is no consideration of the man’s years of service and demonstrated commitment. No, because this man was committed to continue living so he could continue to serve your community’s youth for another 15 years, that commitment deserves punishment.
If he’s “really helped”, why don’t you try to help him as a small return for all his years of service.
Austin is one of the fastest growing cities in the US. As more people move here, it puts greater strain on the limited resources of the city, and the city infrastructure just cannot keep up with the population growth. Consequently, police response times are increasing.
On Friday evening, four of the 10 officers working in Northwest Austin responded to a top-priority call, meaning 40 percent of all that area’s officers were busy at the time. In that sector, Adam, records show it takes an average of nearly 7.5 minutes from the time someone calls 911 to the time police arrive for a top priority call.
Think about that. Not only is it taking 7.5 minutes to respond…
“If they’re calling up and there’s a burglary in their residence, seven minutes is an eternity,” said Commander Donald Baker.
…but almost half of the officers on duty are focused on a single incident.
In the Adam and Edward sectors, officers responded to nearly 93,000 calls in 2013. Each shift should have about 12 officers on patrol, but Baker said he’s not fully staffed and many times officers are off for vacation, sick time, military leave or training.
93,000 calls in 1 year. For the sake of discussion, let’s over-simplify some math. Let’s assume then there was 46,500 calls per sector. That then breaks down to just under 4000 calls per month, about 120 calls per day, about 5 calls per hour, 1 call every 12 minutes. And 60% of those 12 minutes are taken up in merely responding. But of course, when police arrive on the scene, they aren’t going to be there for a mere 5 minutes. And when nearly half of the officers on duty are responding to a single event, and when they can’t even be fully staffed during a shift, when a response may require calling officers from other sectors and now those other sectors are even more understaffed… can you see why police response time is deteriorating?
Note, this is also average response time. That means some response times will be faster, and some slower.
“I found that to be a little bit long to wait for an attack, basically,” said Austin resident Devin Richardson describing the last time she called police.
Richardson said she’s called police at least twice in the last nine months. The first time it took 20 minutes for them to respond to a domestic disturbance at a neighbor’s house. The second time, she said, it took nearly an hour an a half after a neighbor’s dog attacked her daughter.
“As a mother of three who are very young, it definitely concerns me that it takes so long to get here for something,” Richardson said.
As well, consider this is response time. There’s more time involved. You experience the event, you have to register that police need to be called. You have to get to a phone. You have to dial 911. You have to wait for 911 to pick up and actually connect you to an operator. You have to relay all the information, which then the operator must process and then relay to a dispatcher. Then the dispatcher must relay the information out to the police. All those things? They take time too… precious seconds, precious minutes. The total response time has increased.
I’m not trying to be hard on the police. They have a tough job, and this is just an unfortunate numbers game where they are getting the short end of things. Does this mean Austin needs more police on the street? Certainly. But even if they get the additional 59 officers proposed in next year’s budget, that doesn’t amount to much. Consider some officers will retire or leave APD. Divide the new hires over multiple sectors, multiple shifts, and the net gain per sector per shift is perhaps 1 officer. It’s something, but barely.
Baker and and those who live in the area agree that as Austin continues to develop and grow, something needs to change sooner rather than later.
“If something happens and it takes them over an hour and a half to get here, what am I supposed to do?” asked Richardson.
Emphasis added.
I’ll tell you what you need to do.
You need to stop relying on the police to be your savior. It’s sorely evident they cannot be there when you need them. Will they try? Yes. Most police will work to protect and serve, and will do all they can to help you. But the painful reality is in the numbers, and the police simply cannot be there and respond in the seconds needed to intervene in a life-threatening situation.
This isn’t just a call to “get a gun, learn how to use it effectively, get a carry license, and carry everywhere”. Yes, I think that’s part of it. But it also is a call to do things like get first aid training, and training beyond putting band-aids on boo-boos (learn how to use a tourniquet; how to treat burns; etc.). It’s taking steps to make your home a less-inviting home for burglars (illuminate your exterior, get and use an alarm system, etc.). It’s a commitment to make changes in your life that invite less trouble (e.g. “don’t go to stupid places, don’t hang out with stupid people, don’t do stupid things” — i.e. stay away from 6th Street).
But it really starts with an acknowledgement that your personal safety is your own responsiblity — you cannot and should not put it in solely the hands of others because, despite their best desires, they just may not be able to be there when you need them.
Seems they are driving around, see a woman and a proper environment (e.g. alone, no one else around), pull over, run up to hear, rip her purse off, then jump in the car and take off.
What can we learn?
Awareness
Honestly, I’m not sure if “awareness” would have helped here. Everything unfolded quickly, and unless you were jumpy about everything around you, the sounds were normal sounds of the city: a car stopping at an intersection, running footsteps (lots of joggers in this town).
We have to realize, no matter how much training and education we have, while that certainly helps us fare better, it doesn’t make us invulnerable. Shit still happens. So when it does, what can you do in response?
Fight Back
I cannot blame the woman for her reaction: purse came off, she started to fight for her purse via a tug-of-war. It’s a natural reaction, but one she was destined to lose. It doesn’t matter how much you are pro-feminism, pro-women’s rights, etc.,the laws of nature are pretty clear: males are (designed to be) stronger than females, and in a test of strength like a tug-of-war, the man is likely to win.
So what I wonder is, what could the outcome have been like if the victim had a different mindset? Instead of trying to retain her purse by tugging on it, she went on the offensive and tried to retain her purse by attacking the snatcher?
Another thought is if there was enough struggle, the attacker’s accomplice in the car might jump out and join the attack. No telling what might unfold. This is where weapons help, because multiple attackers is force disparity, and weapons are a force equalizer.
– What could you do to prevent the attack in the first place? How do you hold your purse so that access to potential thieves is limited? How close do you allow people to get in public spaces? Is that distance different for men than it is for women? If so, why?
I don’t carry a purse, so my advice may be of minimal value. But I have played the role of a purse snatcher in force on force training sessions in the women’s self defense classes I teach. I’ve found that purses held under the arm (like a football) are the hardest for me to take. I would strongly advise women to carry their purses in this manner to reduce theft attempts. I don’t like having the strap wrapped around the woman’s body or neck. The strap may cause injury if the woman is dragged by the attacker, especially if the attacker is in a vehicle like she was here.
It appears in this video the purse was over her same-side shoulder. What if she had the purse across her body (e.g. purse on the left side but strap over the right shoulder)? Granted there’s what Greg said, but certainly such a carry method makes it harder to obtain a purse. Would the attackers have driven on and looked for another (easier) victim? Hard to say, but I do wonder.
As well, she was walking alone. Why? Sometimes it’s unavoidable, but what could she have done to prepare? Could she have kept a canister of OC spray in her right hand, ready for immediate deployment?
Consider the contents of your purse. Since it’s something that could get stolen, are there contents that you may not want to keep in there because they are too precious to lose if stolen? Can your contents be replaced? This is one reason people discourage carrying a gun in your purse, because purses are traditionally such ripe targets for theft – and now they have your wallet, and your gun. Not just the “gee, now there’s another gun for criminals to have and use” but also it means you cannot access yours while in-fight. Same goes for kubatons or OC spray or any other weapon – in your purse isn’t useful to you, once you lose control over your purse.
What did you see?
What did you see in the video? What were your learning points?
A 78-year old man was pumping gas, when 2 thugs approached him, knocked him out, and robbed him. Watch the video, it’s key to understanding this event.
The big thing that stood out to me was the mindset of the criminal.
They don’t think like us.
They don’t think like normal members of society. These two scumbags had no reserves about walking up to an elderly man, punching him, letting him fall to the ground (concussion, and yes falls can kill a person, especially an elderly person), rummage through his pants for whatever the might find, then leave him – bleeding – on the ground.
All they cared about was a quick score, and they were willing to do it at any cost.
I know you could never do something like this. I’m pretty sure you are appalled by this behavior.
Given that, it’s important to realize we cannot apply our same standards to people like this and expect them to comply. Reasoning does not work. Laws do not stop them. More laws will not stop them either. If you want to stop a criminal, you have to speak their language, and the law isn’t it.
Awareness
I’m not going to claim to be the ultimate tactical guru that’s got his head on a swivel and is always in “code yellow” – because I’m human, and it is impossible to always be in code yellow (gotta sleep sometime, right?). Nevertheless, there are times when we need to make an effort to ensure we stay mindful of our surroundings, such as 4:30 AM at a gas station.
It’s unfortunate the victim had his back turned for so long. He never looked up from what he was doing, never kept his eyes open to see what was going on around him. This may not have prevented the attack, given there were multiple attackers and they obviously had planned to flank him then come up and surround him, blocking him in.
Keep looking at what you are doing. You’ve pumped gas a million times, you know what’s going on and probably could do it with your eyes closed. Given that, divert your eyes and attention elsewhere. Do you really need to stare at the gas cap while you screw it in? Or can you use your eyes to ensure the cap is seated, then look up and around to keep your attention on other things while your hands blindly screw the cap in?
It’s hard. We all get task fixation. We all let our guard down. But look for opportunities to break your fixation (SCAN! SCAN! SCAN!).
No Escape
I’ve started to make it a habit that when I pump gas to:
Pull up to the pump, as far away as I can from the pump
Minimize time between the car and the pump
When I pull up to the pump, of course you have to come close to the pump, but you don’t have to kiss it. Yes, you have to gauge the hose length, room on the other side (for someone using the next pump over), and other such measures. But the key is, the more room you can have between you and the pump, the more room you have to move, if you have to move.
The thing is, the pump is a wall, your car is a wall. Now there are only two ways in or out (or worse, leaving your car door open like this gentleman did, and now you have 3 walls and only 1 escape route). In this situation, the attackers knew this, with one closing in from the front, and the other from the rear. The guy in front was the initiator, the distraction, and the guy in the rear was the heavy that did the dirty work. Yeah, it seems they had a plan and had experience (and success) in doing this before. They weren’t stupid.
Make sure to give yourself an escape. Don’t fence yourself in between your car and the pump. Yes, you will have to to some extent because you have to get in and out of the car, you have to work with the pump, but just keep it short. While pumping, flip up the little gizmo that keeps the pump going automatically, then walk out of the area. Use it as time to walk around your car and look at your car (a useful maintenance tip; maybe you’ll see something that needs fixing or that your tires need air), but don’t just focus on your car – use it as time to get a good look all around the area. So many people focus their eyes and attention on the pumping – don’t; focus on everything around you. When the pump clicks off, finish your work quickly and get back in the car – don’t linger and tend to things. You can’t avoid being in this “funnel”, so just keep the time minimal.
A Gun
No, I don’t think a gun would have helped the victim here. What would have helped would have been skills to avoid the confrontation in the first place. I always go back to SouthNarc’s (Shivworks) “Managing Unknown Contacts” (MUC) skills, because Craig’s stuff is some of the best for dealing with this sort of thing and avoiding trouble before it starts.
The way a gun might have helped is that often when someone chooses to carry a gun, they also choose to have a different mindset about themselves. They tend to be someone more aware of crime and the possibility they could be a victim. They tend to be people that pay more attention to what goes on around them. And if this situation went far enough south, well… realize that a muzzle pointed at you speaks a language criminals understand.
But on the subject of guns, I did note the fact this happened in California – a very restrictive state when it comes to guns, at least for law-abiding citizens. It’s quite obvious from the video of the armed-robbery that those who don’t care about the law don’t care about the law, including gun laws.
Laws should enable good people to live their lives. Alas, gun-control laws rarely work out to enable good people; they tend to only embolden and enable bad people.
What do you see?
When you watch the video, what did you see? What is something we can learn from this?
A burglar in Georgetown ran away with empty hands and an eyeful Wednesday night when he was confronted by a nude, pistol-packing homeowner.
[…]
“I have a tattoo of the grim reaper, my hair is sticking up all crazy and I’m naked,” said the homeowner, who asked that his name be withheld for safety reasons. “I’m not sure if (the burglar) was more afraid of me or the gun.”
Stuff From Hsoi 