A severe beat down

[dcb188]

I know, my esteemed colleague from just one state away :)
But MitchellCT, don't you like the A....... Island idea??????? Cheap/simple/gets them away from us/absolutely no expense as they raise their own food/out of sight out of mind etc etc

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[MitchellCT]

I know, my esteemed colleague from just one state away :)
But MitchellCT, don't you like the A....... Island idea??????? Cheap/simple/gets them away from us/absolutely no expense as they raise their own food/out of sight out of mind etc etc

Alaska has unpopulated islands.

A lot of them.

Harsh climate too...

[dcb188]

So you do agree but in a very crafty way, not openly saying yes or no and yet suggesting places :) Ya gotta love it! Maybe one of the candidates will go for it. No, first we have to find one who wants to fight crime in general, as a first step, THEN the island comes later.

[Yoda]

Leaving the limited protection of your vehicle to go find a place to hide on MLK does not seem like a wise choice.

I always leave enough room in front of my car so I can drive around the car in front. If you are boxed in and bullets start to fly, I would say that the box will likely open up.

Be a good witness, call 911.

[micahsrad]

I agree that the situation that America is in right now is not helped by being a good witness or speeding off in your car. It is true that you could get hurt or killed providing assistance in the situation but it(to me) is the right thing to do. The fact that the guy was a suspected "Hood-rat" in my eyes has nothing to do with it. The same thing happened to a childhood friend of mine people were being good witnesses and he was beat to death in front of them.

[HotGuns]

My two cents..

Every time that someone gets beaten,abused, killed, or whatever unpleasant fate may fall upon them... it is one step closer to you.

You watch someone getting almost beat to death, and your first thought is "what about me" ?

Am I the only one here that sees something wrong with that mentality?

And you wonder why the world is in the sorry state that it is in and why people will do such things.

They do it because they can get away with it. They do it because they know that people have been brainwashed into thinking that they cant help. They do it because there is little fear of retribution and they do it because they can. They know that most people will run and hide when in the midst of trouble and choose not to get involved.

We can rationalize and justify any number of arguments for why we choose not to act. Fact of the matter is, when we do that, we have become part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

I'm reminded of the parable of the "Good Samaritan".

A traveler, walking along the road happens to see a man that has been beaten to a pulp. The guy is laying there,bleeding, bruised, to the point of drifting in an out of consciousness. He sees the man and realizes that he is not of his race, that the man is not like him.

The traveler is fairly well off. I have often wondered what went through his mind.

Other people had walked by this injured man. They rationalized why they shouldn't or wouldn't help him. They might not do it because it wasn't considered the "tactical" thing to do. They might have got blood on their fancy clothes. They may have had some racial thing going on. They may not have wanted to enrage whoever thrashed him by helping him and possibly put themselves at danger. They may not have wanted to be late for supper. They may not have had enough time time to help in their otherwise busy day.

The traveler instead did the right thing and tended to the beaten and bruised man. He carried him to an Inn and paid for several days stay so that the man could heal and recuperate. He even went to the Inn keeper and told him that if the man needed more time than he had paid for, that he would return in a few days to square things up and make it right.

The traveler chose to be part of the solution rather thantake the easy way out by just walking past the man and ignoring him. By doing so, he advanced humanity just a tiny little bit, rather than hindering it as others did by choosing not to act.

We all have to make a conscious decision at some point in our lives to either be part of the part of solution....

or we can do nothing and be part of the problem.

Its no different today, than it was a couple of thousand years ago.

[micahsrad]

I am so glad that there are people like you in the world

[dcb188]

Me, too.
The only problem is one thing. When you jump in on one side against the other, you have to be sure you know who is the BG and who is the good guy, because you are later responsible for that. Legally. And we can say we don't care about the law but you would if you were charged with a crime because you jumped in on the wrong side. As long as you are on the correct side, you are okay.
Example: A guy is beating another guy. The guy on the bottom just robbed the guy on top. You don't know this. The guy on top is beating him because he has a gun or whatever, but again, you jump in and help the guy on the bottom. Wrong side.
Example: You walk into a bank. Up against the teller window is a bewildered young guy with a briefcase at his feet, his hands up, and this guy in a beard and jeans holding a gun on him. You fire at the guy with the beard. He was a plainclothes cop who just stopped the young guy in the middle of a robbery after he passed the teller a note. Wrong side again.
Besides that, if you know which side is which, we should always help. But we have to know who we are helping and who we are hurting, or we could pay the consequences. This is just the way it is, and the law is not designed to protect bad guys. It is so people will think a little bit before they just hop in and say oh well, I will help this guy, and he is not the good guy. So you make things worse.
All that aside, we should always help folks in any kind of trouble, crime, anything at all.

[Yoda]

This is a self defense forum. We all want to do the right thing and there may be times when we have the information to be the hero.

The poster did not have a weapon, was in a bad part of town, was probably smaller in stature and was boxed in. That does not bode well for being a hero.

If you are an off duty cop, or something similar then I could see some more aggressive tactics. Some of the language in this thread seems to be condoning vigilante or "pseudo-police" type actions. Am I misreading it?

I might try and help someone that was being taken advantage of depending on the circumstances, but I sure don't want to feel like I am contributing to the downfall of society by not stepping in as Batman.

[havegunjoe]

First define "Punk" and "thug". I guess I would not inject myself to defend a "punk" or "thug" if they matched what my definition is. I would however call 911, give and take down as much information as I could like license #, descriptions, etc.. In general be a good witness. I don't care if "punks" and "thugs" kill each other as long as they leave innocent bystanders out of it. When they move to the innocent I will help defend the innocent against them.

[HotGuns]

Some of the language in this thread seems to be condoning vigilante or "pseudo-police" type actions. Am I misreading it?

I think so.
Is helping your fellow man a police type action ?
It wasn't where I went to school. It was expected and actively taught.

First define "Punk" and "thug".

Kind of hard to do without knowing the person. Looks can be deceiving...ecpescially with the styles now a days..

[Supertac45]

Not if you live in Texas they won't. God you gotta love Texas.

You got to love Michigan also. I would have intervened.

[Krmnnghia]

Sorry I haven't been able to respond at all...been working on my car all night. I did attempt to call 911 but my phone is so damn small I fumbled the numbers a couple times. As I was fumbling the traffic opened up and the 2 guys in the truck in front of me were intervening so I decided not to stick around. I am smaller than the guy giving the beat down and I seriously have no formal training on defending myself. I would have been walking into a beating myself. This being one of the worst parts of Lansing you have no idea if thug #1 has 3 buddies in the area that will see you, pull over and proceed to knife you or whatever. Lansing really is a nasty city. We had a guy blocked in at our office and beat within an inch of his life with a tire iron because he merged to close to a hot head on MLK. Ugly Ugly place.

[hinkleid]

An incident happened yesterday that really made me think about scenarios and why we have this section of the forum...For the record I do not carry yet...my paperwork is still being processed.

Around 4pm I leave work and hit a side street that lets out onto MLK Jr BLVD. (This is a VERY bad part of the city as it is in almost every city. We have knifings, armed robberies, rapes, carjackings you name it. This would be the reason I will be carrying soon.) MLK is a 4 lane 45mph street with a center turn lane. I pull across the street to the far lane and am blocked in on all sides by traffic waiting for the light to change.

Out of nowhere a car pulls up into the parking lot to my right and almost hits some punk on his bike. The punk stops and says something that did not look like "Howdy Sir" to the thug in the car. The thug jumps out of the car which is stopped halfway in traffic blocking me and runs to the guy on the bike. They are 5 feet from my car. The thug grabs this punks jacket and pulls him from his bike, sweeps his leg and slams his head into the concrete. Instantly my mind is trying to figure out how to remove myself from the area. I honk multiple times but the cars in front of me will not move as they want to watch the fight. Meanwhile the thug is picking the punk up a foot off the ground and slamming his head into the concrete multiple times. It was a miracle this kid was still alert.

As far as I was concerned this thug was going to kill this punk if he kept slamming his head into the pavement. Now had I been armed I could have(lawfully) jumped out and attempted to get the thug to back off and wait for the police to arrive but I have a family and they are my priority. My concern really was what in the hell can I do to protect myself. I was blocked in on all sides and no one was moving. A gun could be pulled at any minute and I would be right in the line of fire. I decided to wait it out and drive off when I got the chance. Luckily 2 guys in the truck in front of me got out and were twice the size of the thug. They pulled him off and told him to get the hell out of there. 30 seconds later I was able to pull away but they were all still arguing.

If you were armed would you help the punk? Would you get out of your car and be ready to bolt from the area if a gun was pulled.


*Here is the kicker...as I move away from the area an officer is driving towards the incident and I honk a few times to get his attention...he never even looked up from whatever he was doing in his lap/seat. He drove right past the incident.

This is Darwin's theory of evolution in action. If I have learned anything in this world is that acts like this are statistically not random. Along the way, the guy that got the whoopin' probably slept with the guy's gf, the guy's sister, "jacked his bling", or sold him some bad weed.

This would not be my fight and would only alert 911, telling them of 2 hooligans fighting and tying up traffic. Had this been an elderly man or woman, or something that appeared random, then yes I would do more to assist. When one gets older, the drama wears off and no time to get involved in BS like this.

[top_gizmo]

First question to all... If it were a young girl getting her head stomped into the concrete would you still just watch? I for one am not a hero, but I can never sit and watch injustice, armed or not.