I see on the news this evening that members of the Guardian Angels are offering to pump gas at certain gas stations in the DC area, in order to help motorists who are afraid to get out of their cars.
Now, i live in Baltimore, i was in Montgomery County on the day the sniper attacks began, and i’m going back down to DC this for a visit this week. I’m not a paranoid type, and i know that the chances of something happening to me personally are slim, but i still might feel a bit nervous about standing in the open pumping gas in that area. However, despite this, i still feel there would be something immoral about asking someone else to take that risk for me. I was wondering what other Dopers thought about this.
Just to expand a little on my own feelings before opening the floor to debate, i want to say that i don’t necessarily disagree with asking other people for help in certain instances. For example, if some big guy was about to beat on my ass for no reason (i try not to give people a reason), and some Guardian Angel who knew how to fight offered to protect me, i’d probably be quite grateful. But it seems to me that in order to accept such help, it would need to be reasonably clear to me that the person offering to help me had a better chance than me of coming through the encounter unscathed. But this surely cannot be the case with the sniper situation. No matter how well they can fight, these Guardian Angels are no more bullet-proof than i am, so i feel that to ask them to stand there and pump gas for me would be improper.
And please, don’t turn this thread into a debate about:
a) the Guardian Angels
b) gun control (there is a thread on this elsewhere in SDMB)
Yes I would. But I would set the pump trigger and get inside the station without delay. I might even try to use the car and pump for as much cover as I could get out of them.
What Dan and Jonathan said. You can’t lock yourself in your house until the problem goes away, because (a) the problem might not go away–they might never catch him, and (b) even if this problem does go away, wait 15 minutes, there’ll be another one along, maybe anthrax again, or smallpox, or Arab-lookin’ men in a Denny’s muttering under their breath…
I think I would probably try to be as normal as possible, within common sense limits (I might put off unnecessary trips to the mall). I don’t want some sniper ruling my life.
But wouldn’t it make sense for these GA guys to be wearing bullet-proof vests or something? That seems to me to be an obvious thing to do, considering the circumstances. IF they are doing so, THEN I might take them up on it, because they are then far more likely to come out of a gunshot unscathed, or relatively so. And they’re being somewhat intelligent about their service.
I think this is illegal - or at least against service station rules - in some places. I could have sworn I’ve seen signs at the gas stations that say that one must stay with the car at all times. I guess this might be so that people don’t leave their cars there, go into the minimart for some Ho-Hos, and stay in there for a while as a queue builds up behind their vehicle at the pump.
if someone took a bullet for me,
i’d have to devote my life to making the world a better place mother theresa style to offset the guilt
and i’m way too selfish for that.
“there are worse things you can do to someone than kill them”
-chuck palahniuk
I do it all the time, so not all stations enforce such a rule. I would ascribe the rule, assuming it exists, to safety concerns. The nozzle could fall out and spill some gasoline before the thing hits the ground and the trigger shuts it off. Or the trigger could fail to work and pour fuel out onto the ground.
I thought they disallowed the self-serve gas nozzles that could be locked on?
Anyway I agree with the OP. What possible benefit is there to a gaurdian angel getting hit over me. Seems some of those G.A’s have a pretty low sense of self esteem. They are willing to get shot so someone can drive their car?
It’s good to know that there are others out there who prefer to try to go on with life as normal, and who would/do pump their own gas. However, only Carnalk has really addressed the question that i was hoping would be the main focus of this thread. Maybe the thread title was too simplistic, but what i was hoping to get was not so much a sense of simply whether people would pump their own gas (it seems that most people would), but whether those who choose not to, and allowed the Guardian Angels to do it, are making a morally and ethically valid decision.
The chances of this happening to someone personally, as mhendo said, are pretty slim. You know this, people know this, yet some are still frightened of getting out of their car. Maybe the GAs are taking an almost non existant risk to help people live their life? If you had a friend with a arachnophobia, would it be “a morally and ethically valid decision” for them to ask you to risk the spider jumping up and biting you and remove it from their bedroom so they can go to sleep?
