If I have no choice, of course. But would I leave safety to go and protect...stuff? No. None of that has real value in the end besides what we place on it, and no stuff is worth more than my life, my family's life, and if I'm being honest, most likely the life of the person that is stealing from me. Don't get me wrong, there are some genuinely bad people out there that do a lot of harm to people and society as a whole, and those people may (or may not) deserve death, but that's not for me to decide. I'm not judge, jury, and executioner. It's stuff and none of it has more value than my life or the life of the person who is there.
If I had shot the guy that punched me in my car, I'd have to live with having taken some guy's life that had probably just had a really shitty day. Maybe someone forced him to eat a tomato while watching a baseball game and drinking a PBR. If home dude was coming at me with an axe? Different situation. Point is, you don't have to kill to defend in every defense situation. You should be able to deescalate situations, especially if people spent as much time training those skills as they do at the firing range. But if killing to defend life is the only option, then yes that's the option I would take. I personally would exhaust every other option before that, and with any luck be smart enough not to run head first into an avoidable situation.
I've been thinking about this a bit. I agree that you should not go out looking to get into an altercation and stuff is just stuff and can be replaced most of the time. At what point does you and your families quality of life after an incident affect your life, liberty and Pursuit?
If your business gets destroyed and it bankrupts you, you can't do X for your children now, isn't that worth fighting?
If I am sitting in my car and someone thinks I cut them off and hits me in the head with a brick, it's not unthinkable that I would have some mental or physical issues after that which may mean I can't do my job anymore and my family suffers.
Would it be less difficult for you to deal with watching your kids play and not being able to play with them because home dude hit you with a brick than to think he should have handled his shit better and not gotten shot while committing aggregated assault? I think it's also worth noting here that there is a middle ground between sitting there and taking it and pulling a gun and shooting the dude. If you can't de-escalate, punch back to the limit of your ability then use force equalizers.
I hate the generalizations like "they" because people are so tribal. In situations like I'm talking about it's not "they", it's the one or two or 5 people directly trying to harm me or my family in a direct manner, with intent.
I understand putting yourself in the other persons shoes and trying to see if from their perspective, I just struggle with how someone looting, hitting innocent people in the head with bricks or pulling passers by out of cars and beating the shit out of them, thinks they are fighting for equality, race relations or police fairness. I think they are just a criminal element. Not rebels fighting for the cause.
Many of these rioters or protestors think you don't deserve your business because your white privilege is the only reason you have it. That is an unsustainable model. It doesn't lead to positive cultural change. I think we were headed in a positive direction before. There were 15 unarmed black men shot by police in 2019 with 300 million interactions between police and the public. That is amazingly low. The stats were headed in the right direction. So now seems like the most illogical and unreasonable time in my life to riot and protest for equality. The majority of people are against treating others differently based on their skin color. If not the majority, more than ever before in the history of the US and it was trending the right way.
Blaming store owners or people trying to drive to a destination without planning detours due to riots or marches seems like saying, She shouldn't have worn that dress if she didn't want to get raped. It's just wrong in my opinion.
I also think violence is just part of the human condition. The riots and looting and killing and beating of both sides isn't going to stop until there is either enough violence to deter people, or the threat of enough violence, meaning government backed and approved violence, to curb people's appetite for rioting, looting and beating the shit out of innocent bystanders.
