And this is so common? Crazy people deciding to kill you on the streets, using a concealed knife?
It’s a lot more common for there to be people like the McMasters family or Zimmerman, deciding that someone is a threat because??
Or people making a mistake and think they are shooting a deer only it’s a horse carrying a young girl.
I’ve dealt with my share of actual crazy people ( amateur diagnosis but …) one of whom was attacking someone else (no weapons but not a sure bet that he wasn’t armed—he was definitely crazy and hopped up on something). That’s not even counting the so called normal guys who were attacking girls/young women, sometimes me. That sort of thing is extremely common. Extremely. It’s not that often women decide to pull out guns to kill would be rapists.
What’s way too common is not the crazy guy with a 4 inch blade but the ‘perfectly normal’ crazies who walk around with guns and use them in crowds.
Did you miss the fact that the guy has already used potentially lethal force against an employee??
My uncle, who grew up hunting, and was a very good marksman (as was my father and my grandfather) and who served in WWII and so was extremely proficient with firearms was robbed in his own farmhouse. The thieves shot at him with his own gun, narrowly missing him and my aunt. My uncle was the only person I've known that I would say was perhaps tougher than my father--but then, I didn't know my grandfather until he was an old man. I understand he was something else. So, my uncle, who was in his mid 40's at the time, extremely strong and fit, extremely proficient with firearms was disarmed and nearly killed with his own firearms in his own house in his own kitchen. I am just not that sanguine about most people's ability to defend themselves with a gun, not to mention hitting only their target and not some innocent bystander or to be disarmed and have their own weapon used against them.
Things that I have defended myself against, without any weapon at all: Several attempted rapes and varying degrees of sexual assault. Twice, I threw a guy who was easily twice my size (under 100 lbs, under 5'2) over my head. Don't ask me how but I did it. I do not know martial arts. Another time, a guy who thought I was...what is now referred to, I think, as 'cock-blocking' him with regards to a friend who was extremely not interested in him decided to teach me a lesson by wrapping his bike lock/chain around my neck and pulling it very, very tight. I stopped someone from assaulting my then boyfriend. I stopped a long line of guys who were about to take turns on one of my friends who was quite drunk/ nearly passed out on a bed. No weapons used, except for that bicycle chain/lock.
My father talked a much larger drunken neighbor who was armed out of assaulting another neighbor who was actually in the bathtub at the time. The drunken neighbor was on a rampage looking for his wife (who had escaped in another neighbor's car) thought his wife was being hidden by the neighbor in the tub. Her husband drove truck and was on the road and she was alone with two toddlers. The drunk even tossed my dad his wallet when the cops came to take him away.
My grandparents were held up at gunpoint on their farm in the mid-60's.
Other relatives were victims of an armed home invasion with one being held at knife point for hours while the other was forced to drive to where the thief thought he could cash a check. They were rescued by SWAT teams and no one was hurt. No shots fired.
My son's girlfriend thwarted an armed attempt at carjacking her car. Their neighbors were victims of a car jacking (different neighborhood).
None of these are experiences that I or anyone else involved would like to go through again. We were all lucky that no one got hurt---including the attackers.
A couple of my cousins served in Viet Nam, one as a sniper. I will NEVER forget the look on his face when, at his homecoming party, my jerk of an uncle (different side of the family than the other one) asked how many he had killed. He went paler than pale, even for a white boy. It is no joke to shoot someone. No joke at all. We do not live in a cowboy movie or a Liam Neeson or Denzel Washington movie.
I grew up in the home of someone who was an excellent hunter, as were my uncle and grandfather, marksmen all. It was impressed upon me very, very, very strongly that one NEVER pointed a gun at anything you didn't intend to shoot and you NEVER shot for any reason except to kill (or at a practice target). The angriest I ever saw my father was the time I wanted to try out the new scope on his rifle and drew a bead on my sister. He and I had just cleaned that rifle and two others: we knew it was empty. But he made it extremely clear to me that even though I knew and he knew that the gun was loaded, we could have been wrong and it was NEVER ok to point a gun at anything you didn't intend to shoot and you NEVER EVER pointed a gun at a person. It still makes me shiver to remember his voice. And I don't blame him. I was being a thoughtless asshole show off and it was very dangerous.
I do understand that some people feel differently than I do and feel the need to be armed in order to protect themselves.
