stand your ground. yes? no?

[spin]

4. Here's a scenario to consider. ...

You are a middle aged man or woman in fair shape. You have a carry permit and have a concealed handgun with you.

A man walks up to you on the street, pulls his handgun or a knife and demands your wallet. Your attacker is a much younger individual and appears to be in top physical condition.

What do you do? Obviously you have good reason to fear for your life. If you have ever stared down the barrel of a gun you will understand that even a tiny gun looks absolutely enormous. A .22 caliber revolver looks just like Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum Smith and Wesson when it is pointed at you. If you have ever looked at the wounds a knife can cause, you definitely would not want to be stabbed or slashed with one.

One choice you have is to draw your legal firearm. If you shoot your attacker and you live in a state that has "stand your ground" law, you probably will not face prosecution after the authorities review the evidence. If you live in a state that does not have this law it is possible that a zealous prosecutor will charge you and say that you could have safely turned and ran.

It is true that most street predators are not target shooters so your chances of surviving without getting hit by a bullet are better than 50/50 if you run and the attacker just stands and shoots at you. Still it is possible that he will run you down and then shoot or stab you several times.

So personally I am not fond of the tactic of running from a deadly encounter. Of course in my case, a prosecutor or my defense attorney would realize that I am 67 years old and handicapped. I don't run, I limp fast.

Even when I was younger and in far better physical condition, I was not fond of using the tactic of running away from a possibly deadly encounter. I took a course in jujitsu largely oriented on how to disarm an attacker with a gun or a knife. It's not as simple as it looks in a movie but with lots of practice you can use martial arts to give you a good to excellent chance of surviving an encounter such as I am describing.

However my instructor told the class to only use the tactics he taught when ABSOLUTELY necessary. He told us to try to appraise our attacker. His advise was to just give him our wallets if he appeared rational and sane. He pointed out that while you can always replace your money, credit cards and ID it is not always easy to replace your health and dead is dead. If the attacker appeared high or drunk and irrational and angry then it might be wise to fight as you have little to lose. I forgot much that I learned in that class but I still would follow my instructors advise.

So I do support "stand your ground" laws but I feel they need to be carefully written. For example if you start an argument and it appears that it will become a fight, you should do your best to simply walk away even if it makes you look like a coward to others. I also learned this in my martial arts class.