@engineer,
OmSigDAVID wrote:When I needed my gun, I was glad to have it handy, when a criminal shot out
my driver's door window, 3 inches in front of my face.
engineer wrote:Actually, it was your story of pulling a gun to counter someone shooting out your window
that got me going down this trail. As I recall the details, it was late at night
and someone drove beside you and shot out your window.
You pulled and displayed your gun and they fled.
(Please correct the details if that's not correct.)
The reason that got me thinking is that your response was what
I would expect from someone armed, but almost certainly the wrong one
(although it worked in this case.) If someone shot out my window, I would disengage
and call the police. I think that would be the optimum response
even if I had a gun with me. Once you show the gun, one of two
things are going to happen.
a) The other person will disengage or
b) a gun fight will occur.
While forcing the other person to disengage might make me feel all manly,
it's no better than me disengaging and calling the police.
A gunfight is clearly an inferior scenario.
Engineer, if u 'll examine your analysis more carefully, I believe that u 'll find some disabling flaws;
I 'll point some of them out:
1. U assume, without proving, that disengagement was
possible and safe.
2. U assume that it is
POSSIBLE to
call police. This occurred long
before I considered getting a cellfone.
I did not notice any pay fones around (tho, admittedly, I was distracted) and I do not feature getting shot
while dropping a dime in the fone. (Even if I
had a cellfone, it woud take police
time to arrive,
especially since I did not know exactly where on the road I
was, at that moment.
When seconds
count, the police are only minutes away,
while I was taking
incoming gunfire; is that acceptable for a fone conversation? Maybe u think that 's OK; I don 't.)
On the point of elapsed
TIME in an emergency, I saw something on TV; true story,
from a recorded 911 call. A woman 's car broke down out in the country late at nite, driving with her children.
She pulled to a stop. There was a pay fone nearby. She explained her distress and asked for assistance.
During that call, a loud crash was heard and recorded.
A truck had hit and crushed the left side of her car.
Her child behind driver's seat was crushed.
It took emergency personnel
over 40 minutes from the time noted of that recorded crash
on said 911 call for them to arrive at a
fatal accident involving children,
presumably, with lites & sirens.
3. U assume, in conflict with the known evidence, that a gunfight had
NOT already started.
I 'm here to tell u that it
HAD, indeed.
4. U encourage me to
ASSUME, with
no predicate evidence,
that the
NEXT gunshots (however many thay may be)
from said criminals will
not inflict grievous, permanent personal injury or
fatal wounds upon myself.
(I don't think that 's good advice.)
I cannot begin to guess
HOW u 'd "disengage", Engineer,
with the predatory car driving abreast.
Be advised that rather than
waiting to find out how accurate the next gunshots were going to be,
I was preparing to
DEFEND myself, when I heard a
scream and noticed an abrupt departure of the car
that had been theretofore driving abreast of me.
That I
"displayed" my gun was
INCIDENTAL to my defense.
I was
not about to just let them blast me whenever thay felt like it, and
HOPE for the best.
engineer wrote: I was listening to the story of a convicted killer in CA who was seeking parole.
He described how he went from an assistant store manager to a convicted killer.
Drugs were involved of course and he started resorting to armed robbery to get money.
One night, he failed to get the drop on his victim and the victim opened up
his briefcase to grab for his gun. Seeing the gun coming at him,
he shot the man through the pocket of his coat and killed him.
When I read your account, I remembered this story.
When you showed your gun, it would have been a reasonable conclusion for the passenger
of the other car to assume their life was in danger and shoot you. [U mean, like he did not do that ALREADY!]
You believe you defended your life by pulling your gun; I think you risked it.
Lemme get this straight: according to your vu of things,
my life was
not in danger when the criminals' slug hit 3 inches in front of my face,
nor thereafter,
UNLESS I began to defend myself ??
Is that your position ??
I infer that u suggest that I demonstrate to the criminals how
DOCILE &
humble
I can be in surrendering myself, my life, into their
discretion? Is that your recommendation?
I shoud appeal to their mercy and let
them decide my fate ?
Not
THIS American.
engineer wrote:But the take of my original post is that some people who are carrying
have a distorted sense of how to resolve issues and that the articles
I posted reflect that. Note that I found a lot of them just over the
last week. I recall an interview with an author who described how
his inner city neighborhood had gone downhill and how he started
to fear groups of teens on the street. His response was to get a gun,
but soon he found himself intentionally doing things to antagonize those same teens.
So just don 't do stupid things like that.
engineer wrote:Having a gun seems to encourage people to put themselves in harm's
way by distorting our sense of personal safety. Of course, that
doesn't apply to everyone and there are people who can carry
responsibly, but as the articles I linked to show, there are plenty of people who can't.
It is a fact that people have
been KILLED
while changing flat tires on the road.
Perhaps u believe that is a reason
not to carry a spare tire in your trunk;
I don't see it that way.
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