I almost shot a young man on Friday night (long)

[Buzz]

Originally Posted by Paul F

I like your secondary analysis Buzz. It points out that good training is a big help to prevent those instinctive reactions to situations that are new to us.

My observation is that a guy with a knife threatened to kill a guy.
A guy with a pistol almost killed a guy.
A bunch of guys with rifles might have killed a guy.
A guy with weapons training almost killed a guy by severing his leg artery with his own weapon.
A guy with no weapons made the peace.

Hi Paul. I agree that anyone whose profession places him or her at elevated risk of robbery or assault should recieve some level of training not only in methods of self defense (armed and unarmed) but also in conflict management and negotiation.

I don't necessarily agree though, with the POV that in my scenario the weapon was the common denominator or root cause of all the evil. I view weapons of any type as mere tools, incapable of good, evil or initiating any action on their own. It is always the person weilding the tool (or not) who has ultimate responsibility for the good or evil that he commits.

Also, you left out the first two important steps in the actual escalation:

A guy with no weapons attacked a guy with a concealed pistol.

A guy with a concealed pistol repelled an attack from a guy with no weapon without drawing his pistol.

I am not happy that my early decisions helped place me into a deadly situation, but the fact that I was armed had no bearing on that. I would have gotten out and approached the driver regardless. As it did pan out, I am glad that I was armed, trained and practiced with my pistol. I'm fine with unarmed combat so I still would have handled the first guy easily. Defending successfully against the armed guy and his other cohort (possibly more than one) in an unfriendly crowd would have been unlikely at best. In that scenario, the first line of your synopsis would probably read:

A guy with no weapons helps a guy with a knife to kill a guy with no weapons.