Situations of doubt

[Grognard Gunny]

I am curious about this situation. I am not a lawyer and do not know the laws, but it appeared that you injected yourself in to a situation in order to protect somebody else. However, did that person ask you for such help? If you felt that you needed to protect the elderly gentleman without his request to do so, would it have been better to simply help the elderly man to retreat? Once retreating, the scenario is over. However, if the other guy(s) then attacked you upon your retreat, would they have been initiating a brand new scenario, one in which you then would have had legal justification to fire upon your attacker if you believed that you were in imminent danger of great bodily harm or death?

My objective was to defuse a screaming contest between supposedly grown men that the "kids" were being forced to be witness to and my fellow "Brothers" saw fit not to try do defuse earlier than my arrival. Nothing more than that, nor was I contemplating a means by which I could manipulate the situation so I could shoot him. My objective was pacification, or, at the very least, examination of the apparent "problem" at a much reduced decibel level. In short, discussing it like gentlemen.

It was NOT my intent to intervene on anyone's behalf, just to bring the pot back from the boiling point. (I had no idea if the "elderly gentleman" wasn't the instigator, I did not try to prejudge.)

As it turned out, from the aggressive actions and indications of the "coach", it was then that my thoughts turned to mutual defense if necessary. I was not willing to let this "thuggee" open up on anyone, for any reason, when he had not been "threatened" with bodily harm in any way.

If it had not been for the kids.... I would have never thought any more about it. Just an unnecessary arguement between two supposedly grown men. As I wrote the Pastor, however, the fact that the kids saw their mentor and coach "loose it" that badly.... they are either not going to have any respect for him at all or they are going to be scared to death of him (as in "mad dog" scared of him). Neither situation is satisfactory for "coaching" kids of that age.

GG