Originally posted by rpm
Nils is thinking big picture. You guys are thinking small screen.
If you have no children and nobody depending upon you then playing hero may be an appropriate response. BUT, if you do then descretion is the better part of valor.
Do you really want your loved ones to become collateral damage if you screw the pooch over a billfold?
Sometime in the early 90s, I was walking with my dad in Paris, France, in the underground mall (sorta) of La Defense esplanade, a central public place of Paris'. As we were about to step up a stairway at the end of a stub in the mall layout, with a few pillars placed concentricaly with the stairways' foot where such a pillar would have been, two people went from bickering to fighting, and within seconds one had a gun out.
This is France, gun-free country like a lot of others, yadda yadda.
At this point my dad freaked out, as it had probably been a while since he'd run into the middle of firearmed conflict. He wasn't freaked out for his life but ours, my two little brothers' (then toddlers just recently walking on their own) and mine. All I remember was him hiding us behind one of those pillars. It was luck that no shot went off because the guy holding the gun was sweating like hell and obviously afraid of what he'd gotten himself into by pulling out the gun. Had he not been afraid, he'd have had time to plug as many people as his mag capacity allowed, since just about everyone ducked for cover.
Anyone with a CCW in the public could have pretended to be unarmed, and would have had plenty of time to incapacitate the bugger from behind one of those pillars, especialy considering said bugger's target fixation (he must have stood still pointing his gun at the other guy a minute or so before that other guy wised-up and charged).
Another instance pretty much identical happened in Canada, in Toronto, years later at a Harbourfront music festival, late at night. We weren't really near the gun toters that time, but close enough that the run-away stampede was pretty bad even for me at 13 years old or so.
There was plenty of space and cover for a few CCWs to put down anyone pointing their guns at anyone not involved in what was probably a gang fight.
You don't have to live in fear to avoid getting hit by buses. You don't have to be paranoid to recognize threats to you, and take precautions for their prevention as well as resolution if prevention fails.
It's simple fact and nothing extraordinary. The one constant in anti-gun rethoric is the near-paranoia that anyone will pull out a gun and go on a rampage. Only insane people do that, and they're few in numbers, as well as easily detected.
My dad carrying a gun would have put a quick and good end to the first anecdote. No paranoia needed.
