I witnessed a woman and her dog being threatened.

[defacto7]

91. I'm glad you replied.

To assure the argument doesn't become one-sided I will have to agree with you. No argument here. People shouldn't have to worry about dogs jumping on them or chasing them let alone biting or otherwise threatening them. That's not what the op is about. In an open society there has to be some reasonable acceptance of other people's rights and a reasonable amount of offence should be tolerated by all of us. The op is about unreasonable lack of tolerance and threatening behavior. Yes the tiny dog was barking... so what? It didn't jump on him, it didn't bite him, it was just being a chihuahua. I've seen plenty of dogs do unreasonable things and I've seen dog owners allow things that should not be tolerated. But there is an increasing intolerance of anything that is offensive to someone even if it isn't doing harm and in this case to the point of dangerous uncivilized reactions. These uncivil reactions can be infinitely more harmful mentally and physically than a bark even without a gun.