I know my society and the culture that forms it. Likelihood heavily in favor of the women being the ones.
In a student-prank-gone-wrong, the nicest, sweetest male teacher at my school got tasered by the strongest taser you can legally buy, the sort of thing a female jogger might carry here in the U.S. This guy–the sweetest, most non-aggressive person I know–said that after the initial “bweaaaa” kind of feeling, all that was left was this overwhelming, hormone-fueled ANGER. It was all he could do not to hit the (perfectly sweet, and obviously very stupid) student who did it. I tend to think that shocking or pepper spraying a violent, enraged attacker MIGHT give you a few minutes head start, but you damn well better use it, because the sort of person who attacks an apparently unarmed woman is the type of person that will become that much more violent and irrational when hit with shocking, unexpected pain.
From your stats:
'Nuff said about your gun fetish.
The women kept the murderers relatively calm and thereby prevented further violence. You seem to have a problem with that. Pity.
I see, I know little of Puerto Rico so I can’t comment, but that does seem rather unfortunate (I’ve been mulling over what word to use there but can’t seem to find the correct one that doesn’t sound patronising)
On the topic of the thread, it really was a rather surreal event and I’ve heard a few eyewitnesses say that at least partially the reason people didn’t react the way we might expect them to is that they thought it had been a simple car accident and the two men were trying to help the victim.
But television and the movies may give a false impression of how people may actually react in an extreme situation, not so much arm flailing panic as a somewhat confused ‘what the hell just happened’.
True or false: Crime in Britain is up at the same time crime in the US has been going down.
If most violent crime was caused by people feeling threatened, then women would almost never be victims of crime.
The brave woman who tried to calm the attacker didn’t live because of her actions, she lived because the killer wasn’t interested in killing her. This guy wasn’t an angry and upset tiger escaped from his cage, it was an intelligent human being who committed a premeditated act. He just simply didn’t have plans to kill anyone else that day.
The USA has by far the highest incarceration rateof any country in the world. The USA’s incarceration rate is over 465% higher than the UK’s incarceration rate, but despite this, the murder ratein the USA is 400% higher than in the UK. When comparing the UK with the USA, Americans are neither as free nor as safe. But of course the facts make little difference when conversing with people who have entrenched beliefs and limited interest in looking outside their own walls.
I’m not providing you with a rationale, I’m simply telling you the way it is. The vast majority of the UK public are happy with our gun laws. A 2005 Gallup poll showed only 5% in favour of less strict gun control than existed at the time (16% were happy with the status quo, 79% were in favour of stricter gun control). I don’t doubt that similar results would be obtained today.
As a nation, we simply don’t seem to like guns.
Bingo.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some correlation to not seeming to like getting shot.
In which case there would be no reason to shoot him, would there.
I think crime in Britain is going down, last I heard. I don’t understand your second statement.
Had he been planning in a society where he could expect people to be armed he would likely have planned differently. I know it’s only speculation, but I know I would certainly plan differently for the two scenarios.
Yet we also have lower rates of assault and rape, and home invasions are very rare here, mainly because you’d have to be out of your mind and suicidal to barge into someone’s house to victimize them.
The UK has traded a lower murder rate for huge increases in crime across the board. The result: British citizens report feeling less safe than Americans and have less confidence in the police. That’s according to my link earlier, BTW.
It is jolly inconvenient.
OP request: Please stick to the OP.
Along the lines, that is, on the same topic but with your own conclusions, not necessarily a reply to the guy (remember, think about some social section–remember, they differ-- of your community’sor countrymen’s possible response, not the individual victim) as this column:
MAY 24, 2013 6:00 PM
To the Slaughter
British lions come up lambs in Woolwich.
By Mark Steyn
He’s dripping with blood and waving around the knife he just used to cut someone’s head off. I can’t see a reason to not shoot him.
There are worse things than death, like never feeling safe in your own home, or even in your own body. As my wife often says, people die. But when they get raped, or their domicile is invaded and they are terrorized within, they also die. Their lives are never the same.
And you know what makes it the worst? Helplessness. People can handle dying if they have a fighting chance. What people can’t handle is being victims, and British law requires people to be victims waiting for the authorities to save them(which doesn’t usually happen).
Seems like he is trying to foment hatred against Islam.
Yeah, and how’s that working out for you?
Actually, in well over 95% of real-life situations, there’s no attack, no need for self-defense, and no criminal at all.
As for “making the people feel helpless”, I rather get the impression that the women involved in this incident didn’t feel helpless at all. Despite not having any weapons, they still managed to stay in control of the situation. That actually sounds empowering, to me: While Americans are made to feel like they’re helpless without weapons, Brits are made to feel competent in themselves.
If this would have happened in America the woman would have been knocked to the ground and her teeth kicked in if she was very lucky that day.
I don’t know. Why do you think, as it was so aptly characterized above, the fantasies of would-be vigilantes and internet tough guys are better evidence as to what would happen than what actually did happen when this set of facts actually came to pass?
Internet tough guys love to wax on about all the things they would have done differently. Isn’t it fascinating, therefore, that such behavior is almost never encountered in real life when these scenarios (Woolwich, Newtown, etc., etc.) do occur, as they have on multiple occasions. What a marvelous coincidence that these internet tough guys, who are legion on the internet, never seem to be in attendance when these outrages are taking place!
Or perhaps they’re just full of shit.