Yes.
Do you think your odds would be better or worse after losing a struggle with the robber?
She didn’t lose the struggle. Depends on the situation. In the linked article, the robber put his gun down. That improves the odds somewhat, as was demonstrated.
I don’t remember who said it. WWI ace, anyway. Might’ve been repeated by a WWII RAF Squadron Leader. Basically, ‘Do something. Even if it’s the wrong thing, it’s better than doing nothing.’ Anyone can puff all day about how they’d handle a given situation. But in the end, no one knows what he’ll do until he’s in the situation. There’s no way to tell whether the OP’s robber would have or would not have killed the woman. But she made a decision based on her situation and the robber was wounded. Maybe nothing would have happened to her if she’d done nothing. Maybe she would have been killed. What actually happened is that the robber was shot, and she wasn’t. And he was arrested.
.
True, I guess the point I’m trying to make is that the odds (most of the time) are against you. I guess I can concede that in some extreme situations it may be appropriate to act, but these situations would be very far and few between. My problem with stories like these is that it implies a message for people to take a stand in these situations, when in reality the person was extremely fortunate to not be hurt or hurt another innocent party.
Well, I’ve got a string of patients who were convicted of 1st degree murder for gunning down their unresisting victims. So I don’t think it’s necessarily “far and few between (sic)” as far as that goes. There are a lot of psychopaths out there who often believe eliminating all witnesses is a good policy. And psychopaths make up about 20% of the prison population, so they make up a good percentage of the persons committing violent crimes.
One needs to judge their own particular situation, and take what action they deem best. Having done that, then they need to put up with the Monday Morning quarterbacks who weren’t there, don’t have all the facts, but sure do have strong opinions about what would have been the right thing.
What other facts are there about it? We both read the article. I probably have over 100 armed robbery reports from banks, within the last year, in which no one was shot or injured after meeting the robbers demands.
Are you saying that you have a better chance of surviving a robbery overall by resisting the robber?
I think that the important thing to recognize is that there is no such thing as ‘having a better chance’ in these situations. A man with a gun aimed at you is already demonstrating violence, and is not a man that is going to follow the rules of statistics. If we want to look at numbers, he should kill you automatically, because zero witnesses lower the conviction rate dramatically.
To say that this person ‘got lucky,’ even though they did the wrong thing, is the same thing as saying that those who didn’t resist, and were shot, did the right thing, and 'got unlucky."
In situations like this, I immediately think of 9/11. Before that day, I would have been of the opinion that anybody that fought back would have been a jerk, because common wisdom was to ‘let the crooks get what they want, and they will leave.’ Who would have thought?
Best wishes,
hh