280PLUS said:
I'm sorry, I spent a number of my formative years in places where having a reputation of not taking any bull and maybe being a bit of a loose cannon did in fact help keep MOST of the would be criminals at bay. Even the bigger nastier ones. I actually DID move away from all that years ago but I guess that thinking lingers with me and I see it as a positive trait when it is appropriate to the situation. I got the sense that Mike and Mike's neighborhood are on edge because of the break-ins and that this led to his reaction. Right or wrong I can understand how he was feeling, at least a little. I became incensed at the beating that was being unleashed upon him by members of this board, some with very little time here. That was my motivation for joining into this ruckus. If he screwed up, he screwed up. Maybe he'll think differently should something similar happen in the future. It's not the place of members of this board to berate another member because they don't agree with his actions. Calmly explaining your reasoning to him is one thing but I believe I saw a bit of a lynch mob attitude in this thread myself. And I've seen that attitude here before...
I'll be shutting up now.
A few things:
First, he brought it up for discussion, not the other way around. He may have expected us to wave our THR pom-poms in the air for him, but sadly that did not pan out that way. I know the feeling, I expected the same thing from my response in the "canned hunt" thread and got nowhere fast...so I can sympathize with him.
However; have you ever heard the phrase, "an armed society is a polite society"? It works both ways you know. As a responsible firearms owner with a LTCF (CCW, CCL, CHL, CWP etc...) I know that if I were in a position of employment that required me to go into different neighborhoods alone, I would carry my .45 with me on the job. It's just part of my mindset to do so.
Just for the sake of an argument, imagine for a moment that I or someone such as myself was the pool guy in this case. Now, since he does not post on THR I cannot presume to know what his mindset was, but I can think of a variety of reasons why he might have felt it was okay for him to gain entry into the yard without confirmation from the home owner.
a. perhaps I did knock but received no answer (perhaps I am a light knocker) and I called my boss and asked him what to do. Suppose the boss says, "Jerry, the guy that used to have your route would climb over the fence to get in when they were not at home, so just go ahead and do that, we're allowed". So maybe I do it because I'm young, dumb and don't know any better, or perhaps the way I was raised gives me the notion that since I am not there to do any harm, I am there in a professional capacity and thus even though under normal circumstances it would be wrong and illegal, my boss says it's okay and I know I'm not there to hurt anything, so I go ahead and do it.
b. Suppose I was trained by my employer to do things that way, perhaps I was told, "just hop and go and be on your way, don't bother knocking because they should know why you're there, they hired us to clean their pool, they'll see you cleaning the pool and won't mind, just don't go snooping around or peaking in windows".
c. perhaps I had a particularly troubling episode with my spouse and wasn't thinking right. Maybe I just did it because I did not want to deal with people that day.
Now, none of these things makes it okay to do what I did, but at that moment, in my mind I was justified and honestly had no ill intentions.
Imagine now that we're at the confrontation scene, perhaps I'm not completely with it (doing a boring job all day does not promote mental agility), all I see is a dog coming after me, I don't even notice the guy at the first moment, my instincts kick in:
I shoot the dog (and if I ever saw a large dog coming at me, I would do just that in all honesty). Now we have a dead dog, a PO'd homeowner and pet owner with a gun drawn yelling at me, while I have my gun in hand. That makes for a situation where too much needless tension and chance of disaster have been introduced for no real credible reason, or at least one not credible enough to justify a dead pet and an armed showdown.
Perhaps instead I don't see the dog, my peripheral vision sets in and all I see is a man with a gun. In my mind, I am not doing anything wrong, I certainly don't have time at that moment to entertain the effects my actions might have had when jumping the fence, all I see is a man with a gun. If that were me, there would have been gunfire. Now we have one or two decent folks caught in a bad situation that could be both wounded or killed.
The point is, there is a better way to handle this without giving up the ultimate advantage. No one is suggesting cowering in the home scared and wetting your pants, but that the best solution probably doesn't lie there, nor does it lie in making a rush on an unidentified person without much credible observance of threat or intent, it is likely somewhere in between.
If the pool guy had a CCW, this could have been fatal. Ask yourself, is having your fence jumped by the pool guy who only wants to clean your pool a good reason to kill him, even if you only knew after the fact? Is it good enough reason to die? You're not bullet proof, and there is always someone better than you out there, maybe today is not your day.
You had distance, cover/concealment, the element of surprise and no indication that the subject was armed or a threat. Was there really a need for this?
Quick story of something that happened in Pittsburgh this past spring.
A friend of mine is visiting his dad on a Sunday. It's early in the afternoon. My friend parks his Cadillac Escalade in the driveway in front of the house. He goes down into the basement with his mom to help her move some furniture up to the second floor. His dad is hanging out in the living room and as he passes by the front bay window, he notices someone in his driveway. There have a been a few car thefts in the area over the last few months, so he gets all riled up and decides he and his 870 should go out and let this goof know that he does not want him on his property. As he comes out of the door, he racks the shotgun. The guy in the driveway hears this, ducks and covers behind the rear of the truck and draws his Sig P220.
The homeowner says something to the effect of "get on the ground!"
The guy behind the SUV yells back, "hey Burt, it's me, chuck, your neighbor!" Chuck also happens to be an ex-Marine, a State Trooper and one hell of a shot.
"Well what in the hell are you doing?" Burt asked, pretty irritated at this point.
"Uh, looking at the SUV with the for sale sign in your driveway, at 1'o clock in the afternoon."
The son had put a for sale sign on the SUV as he wanted to sell it. This could have very easily gone to gunshots, and two lives could have been forever altered for the worse over a hasty over reaction in broad daylight and a misunderstanding. My friend had a talk with his dad, as did Chuck.
People do odd things when they are cornered or feel that way, things they might not otherwise do. I would say 70% of successful confrontation resolution is giving the other person a way out and leaving them with options that are mostly beneficial for you yet are also feasible for them. When you rush someone with a gun, you leave them little to no option and more importantly, no time to think things through, which is a recipe for disaster.
Ad as a side note, spare me the
bad neighborhood spiel. You don't see this type of behavior in the real bad areas, because folks are more likely to be armed and have a serious intent to do you harm if you provoke them. You might think it would be the opposite with more guns, but in the urban areas that I grew up in (and I'm not that old, nor am I far removed from the ghetto), you never pulled your gun to intimidate or scare, because nobody in the hood is afraid of guns. We grew up with them, we grew up with people being shot in our playgrounds while we hung on the monkey bars, people dying on our front porch steps, we know the deal, and we're all armed for that very reason. You never pulled your piece unless you intended to kill whatever was in front of you, guns are not a deterrent in the ghetto.
No, you see the type of behavior described in this thread more from middle-class yuppie would-be's who wouldn’t know a ghetto or a truly “bad area” if they didn’t see one in the movies…in neighborhoods where people might be armed, but "might" is a far cry from "most assuredly". My experience in the more rural areas would be the same as in this thread, only I don't think I've ever known anyone to order someone prone. Most country folks I know would most likely have the gun in hand, but not pointing it at anyone and ask the subject what they were doing.
