jmra wrote:VMI77 wrote:jmra wrote:Sad story. The neighbor is a hero. This story makes me think about all the times members of this forum have stated that if its not them or their family in danger they would call 911 and be a good witness. This approach would have been a death sentence for this woman. Thankfully there are still people around like this neighbor. I know if someone were attacking my loved one I would want someone to do more than call 911.
I salute this Good Samaritan and pray that he is blessed and the Lord brings him peace knowing he had no choice but to take a life.
I think the operative word here is "neighbor." So presumably, the shooter knew who was who and what was what. He likely wasn't walking into a situation cold and probably knew the mother somewhat and the son's history. That's different than seeing two strangers fighting in a parking lot somewhere. Ambiguity is the enemy of intervention when the choice is life, death, or prison.
A friend of my father tried to stop a man from beating a woman in a parking lot. They BOTH turned on him and he ended up the worse for it. We don't have law enforcement powers or immunity so we need to be very careful about putting ourselves into a situation that we don't fully understand.
According to what I read the injured woman did not know the neighbor who shot her son.
I didn't read the article but that only slightly changes the situation. I've had neighbors I didn't know, but still knew they were my neighbors, and still knew something about their situation. Enough to know, for instance, that a son was a problem kid and someone to watch out for. He might only have known that the kid was a meth head and not even known he was the woman's son, but he wouldn't have been making a cold read on the situation. To the shooter may not even have known or recognized the woman and simply read the situation as meth head attacking a woman, still a different situation than complete strangers tussling in a parking lot. Or maybe he didn't know either, didn't know anything about the situation, and was just lucky what he did turned out to be the right thing.
If you're making a cold read you're taking big chances. Take the same scenario, but it's a young man who appears to be attacking an older woman in a parking lot. You call out to him, stop, or I'll shoot. He doesn't stop, you shoot. Then it turns out that the woman is the assailant....she has a gun below your sight level and the man was trying to stop her from shooting him. All I'm saying is that if you interfere in a situation you know nothing about it may be more ambiguous than it appears and you're risking serious injury, death, or prison.
In fact there have been similar real-life cases where what looked very much like one thing turned out to be very much another thing. I read about one incident where a security guard came across a man straddling a woman, struggling over a knife, the woman yelling "rape, help me." The security guard shot the man and saved the woman. Trouble was, the man was an undercover or off-duty cop and the woman was a nut case who had attacked HIM with a knife. The security guard was certain he was doing the right thing....turned out he wasn't.
I'm not arguing that one should never intervene to help another that isn't a family member or loved one. I am saying if you decide to make a choice that is essentially life and death for someone else and for yourself, you need to be sure you really understand what's happening and who's who, and not merely assume that the scene before you is exactly what it looks like.
"Journalism, n. A job for people who flunked out of STEM courses, enjoy making up stories, and have no detectable integrity or morals."
From the WeaponsMan blog, weaponsman.com
