imported post
Ohio Patriot wrote:
A few things:
1. When you see two people going at it, how do you know who is good and who is bad? Just because Person A is beating the crap out of Person B doesn't automatically mean Person B is the victim. For all you know, Person A is defending himself against Person B, and perhaps Person B deserves the beating. You just don't know. In this particular case, it is likely the woman was the victim, but I wouldn't bet my life on it.
2. That guy probably beats her up every night. (Ask any LEO, and he'll tell you the "daily beating" is a lot more common than you think.) How much do you want to bet she is back with that guy, right now?
3. In many of these types of situations, the woman will get mad at you for stopping her boyfriend/husband from beating up on her. Yea, sounds crazy, but it happens more often than you think. Now you have TWO people coming at you- the drunk boyfriend/husband AND the woman who was getting the beating.
4. My handgun is a defensive weapon. It is my tool for defending me and my loved ones against serious threats. It is not my job, nor and I trained, to come to the aid of strangers.
5. When you come to a stranger's aid, you are usually risking your life for someone who is not armed. Ask yourself this: Why do they care so little about their own safety that they choose to go around unarmed? Why should you- a person who cares about his safety- put your life in danger for someone who apparently doesn't even care about their own safety?
Just a few things to think about...
1. :shock::uhoh:You're dead wrong. If Person A is beating the living daylights out of person B and person B is not trying to fight back except to guard against blows, A is the aggressor and B is the victim. And nobody "deserves" to be beaten within an inch of their life.
2. Doesn't matter. If she decides to stay in an abusive relationship, she's made her choice, but if OP hadn't made the choice to stop that beating she may not have survived to make hers. "An hour of life is still life"; you do whatever you can to prevent death even though it may be inevitable.
3. Which is why the gun is the better option than getting into it hand-to-hand. If both of them turn on you a gun is far more effective at holding them at bay and/or stopping them. Yes, I know of exactly the phenomenon you speak of (it's basically Stockholm Syndrome) but the possibility that she may have rationalized his behavior to the point of defending it violently is not to be outweighed by the very simple fact that her life may have just been saved. She can rationalize being beaten to death all the wants, but there's no questioning that she could have died. It goes back to choice; by saving her life, you are giving her the chance to make the choice to protect it herself from that point forward. Whether she does or does not is not your immediate concern; to assume she wouldn't is tothrowherawayas unimportant, and there is no code of morals in which any of us have that power.
4. This is probably the point I agree most with. However, loved one or stranger, we are all human, and have the right not to be murdered. Though playing the hero when escape was anoptionhas gotten more than one person in legal hot water, there's legal and then moral; you have to ask yourself if you could live with yourself if you learned that woman had died, knowing you could have stopped it? For me, it would be very hard to do so. For others, it's all too easy.
5. We get converts to the 2A, OC/CC cause every day on this forum and others. If you were to ask one of them why they didn't think their life and those of loved oneswere worth protecting, they'd simply say "because I never thought about it that way before". I myself have only been an advocate of gun carry (open and concealed) for about 9 months, and if you'd asked me why I had never fired, much less owned, a firearm for the first 25 years of my life I'd tell you I never thought I'd need one.
but then again I do understand why it should be there.