I have never been in this situation with a family member outside of my brothers when we were kids and the fights were no big deal anyway.
I have been in this situation with friends or groups many times. My response was not always the same. It is amazing how fast our minds will evaluate these situations and how quicly we come up with very precise plans or attacks. A small group of us was once attacked by a larger group on Venice beach. My associates all appeared to run, I decided to follow. Out of the corner of my eye I see one of our guys on the ground taking a bad beating. I ran over kicked the guy in the face who was on top of him, lost my ballance fell in the sand and was bounced on and beat up. We both got beat up, he was possibly beat up worse than he would have been had I not tried to interfere. Sometimes we can make the sitation worse but if we do that we may have to live with the cosequences of your loved one feeling like you abondoned them. Real life can be a bitch.
That is an idiotic statement. By that logic, the POLICE should not use violence to protect you either. Also, the police do not arrive instantaneously (unless you live in some strange alternate world in which Nightcrawler, Superman, or the Flash answers 911 calls). The cops are unlikely to arrive in time to save your loved one from a beating.
Maybe you’re one of those pacifists who thinks that the lives and health of aggressors is equal in value to those of their victims. That attitude always annoys me, and it would frighten me were it not self-limiting. But if it expanded, it would only result in rapists, muggers, and murderers being granted free reign.
I read the back and forth and you seem to have this vision that you would be the only one with an adrenaline rush. That such a spike of adrenaline overrides everything else - pain included. That’s not always the case unfortunately. I’ve gotten into a few fights in my time and yes, sometimes you do block out pain (I got what’s known as a boxer’s facture from a fight that I didn’t feel during the fight).
If a person knows how to fight and regularly practices fighting then you are pretty much toast - even if you are full of adrenaline and you are 300lbs. Granted you still have a ‘punchers chance’. Your inexperience in fighting would greatly handicap you and would probably lead to your getting a sever beating.
I think you have a very naive/romantic view of what fighting entails.
That said, is it possible that you would win and be the hero of the day? Yes. I don’t think it’s very realistic though.
This would be my view/hope.
Ideally I’d like to believe that I would beat the hell out of all five attackers. Realistically I would hope to occupy them long enough for my loved ones to escape.
I would try to get them to attack me. Whoever they’re attacking doesn’t deserve to be hurt, but I do. I would even help them hurt me because I deserve every cut and bruise. I only hope that whoever I’m protecting realizes I’m not worth it and leaves me to get beaten without intervening themselves or calling for help.
Assuming you are serious, this kind of bullshit will get both of you killed. In a serious fight no one is going to stop to “switch hostages” or whatever, messing around like that will just get you both hurt or killed. You need to strike first and hard and take down the threat, you can hurt yourself later when it is safe.
I still feel like this topic is somehow a gotcha, like someone will say oh so you’d kill your mother in law for hurting your spouses emotional state with words or something. Because the question as is really only has one answer, ask the frailest woman how she would react to an adult beating her child, there is only one answer.
Pacifism is an invitation to abuse. It only works in cultures that include shame, guilt or any kind of ethics. That would leave out the United States, where often the only answer is being more powerful in one way or another.
Lots of people here seem to insist on fighting the hypothetical. No, you don’t have your gun. Or a knife. You and overwhelming odds. That is all.
grude and skald are wrong. Women have been raped in front of their husbands. Men beaten and killed in front of their wives. Not because the spouses were mentally imbalanced or corwards but because they were held at gunpoint and knew they could not stop the event. Read about wartime atrocities. Those who were forced to witness their loved ones being harmed were not imbalanced or cowards.
The op though sets up a bar type conflict … and yes, if there is a reasonable, even long shot, chance that I can provide an opening that my loved one could escape serious harm then that is a no brainer. In reality I do not need to win such a fight and wouldn’t. Presumably I want to protect my loved one more than the attacker(s) wants to harm him or her. Ideally I make the cost of it not worth it to the attacker, who could retreat and escape easily and aim for easier pickings another day, or, barring that, just survive the beating. Few in that circumstance want a murder charge against themselves.
You’re fighting the hypothetical now, hell what if you are hit on the head first and then bound and forced to watch your kid get kicked to death? That is why I hate answering these kinds of threads, someone always has a <gotcha!> Wartime rape at gunpoint is so, so, so far from what the OP suggests it is disingenuous to believe me and Skald are insulting the victims of it. We also were not suggesting the relatives of holocaust victims were cowards for not attempting a commando rescue.
If someone says they are a pacifist and don’t believe in violence so they would watch from a safe distance while their loved one is beaten to death in the modern day on a public street not in wartime, bit different? I don’t even believe someone who says that, when you actually face that kind of violence you can’t even think rationally a kind of animal thinking takes over.
I probably shouldn’t have even answered because I can’t imagine a scenario in the immediate future by which my wife or son would get into a bar room brawl, and they are the only two people I’d defend with violence. Anyone else including friends or strangers I will call 911 and attempt to scare off the attackers, but I’m not risking getting put in a wheel chair or an urn for your butt.
Honestly, it wouldn’t even occur to me to call the cops in the heat of the moment. By the time those assholes showed up we could both be dead. Plus the assailant isn’t going to stop their attack while you phone the local constabulatory.
It’s never happened, but if it did I truly hope that I would lose my goddamn mind and do whatever it takes to save my loved one as well as lay a beating on the attacker. The only time I came close to that was when I was 16 and my then-boyfriend and his friend got into a drunken fight. His friend was a BIG boy - I was about 98 lbs at the time - and I gave the guy a black eye.
I usually carry a Swiss Army Knife with a liner-locking blade. In a pinch it can help out in a fight. But because of this thread I’m starting to carry a stronger knife.
Or maybe they have their own reasons for not wanting to fight…
No idea, but in any case, statements like these (“Anyone who doesn’t help is either a liar, crazy, or a coward”) can sometimes put a damper on discussion (or at least opposing views), so here’s my hope–as the OP–that people try to avoid replies like it.
In line with that, here’s a pdf that purports to be a list and summary of knife laws for the 50 states and certain cities within each state. At least this list is a place to start researching for your particular area.
I am not a lawyer, this isn’t legal advice, and you really should double-check the applicable laws in your area. Preferably with an attorney.
Depending on the circumstances, I would yell out for assistance. If none were forthcoming, I would put myself between the assailant and my loved ones and have them go for help.
I haven’t been in a fight in over 15 years, but I still know how to get someone to the ground quickly and make them stay there.
I wouldn’t discount adrenaline, either. I don’t know about women picking up cars, but I remember one fight where I grabbed a guy off the ground by the belt with one hand and threw him. I’ve also picked up a wriggling and thrashing 250lb+ pig and threw it into the back of a pickup truck. I doubt I would have attempted either of those things if I wasn’t coursing with adrenaline.
Because the question as is really only has one answer, ask the frailest woman how she would react to an adult beating her child, there is only one answer.