[quote]zecarlo wrote:
All you have to do is look up the Dept. of Justice stats on assaults and robberies. Around 20% of aggravated assaults involved a weapon and 5% of the time it was a firearm. The location was either close to, or at, home or on the street. Over half the time the victim knew his attacker. So you are safer in a bar than in your home when it comes to assault. [/quote]
You have a point, but those stats are a little misleading the way you are presenting them. Very few “bar fights” result in assault charges unless there are serious injuries or other extenuating circumstances. Conversely, almost all cases of domestic violence do result in charges(if police are called). This causes the home to appear much more dangerous as a result of how incidents are reported/recorded.
As far as location “on the street” can and often does mean on the street outside of or near a bar(often around just after closing), as opposed to actually inside the establishment. If you legitimately don’t believe that large quantities of alcohol being consumed by large numbers of young males contributes to violence, then I really don’t know what to tell you. It just does.
Regarding whether the assailant is known to the victim: “Known to each other” does not necessarily mean any intimate acquaintance, just that the 2 individuals were not strangers prior to the incident. 2 guys with an ongoing beef are “known to each other”. So are a woman and her ex-boyfriend. The story really changes when you factor in gender. WELL over half of female victims of assault know their attackers, often in a romantic context. As important as this problem is, it simply does not mean that the average person, especially the average 20-something male who is likely reading this thread, is safer in the bar than at home.
[/quote]
The problem is that when people ask about self-defense they usually mean actual self-defense, as in unavoidable, have no choice to fight. If a bar is known to attract lowlifes who get drunk and fight you have a choice about going there. So either choose a place that attracts a better class of people or don’t go to one at all. Isn’t the first rule of self-defense to take steps to avoid danger in the first place?
The problem is that when people ask about self-defense they usually mean actual self-defense, as in unavoidable, have no choice to fight. If a bar is known to attract lowlifes who get drunk and fight you have a choice about going there. So either choose a place that attracts a better class of people or don’t go to one at all. Isn’t the first rule of self-defense to take steps to avoid danger in the first place? [/quote]
First - alcohol fucks everyone up, not just low class people. Violence will happen at the nicest places and shittiest places.
But yea, telling people to avoid bars completely is just unrealistic. Shit happens. The best idea is to be able to spot trouble once it is starting.
In my statements I was talking both about fighting and self defense.
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
All you have to do is look up the Dept. of Justice stats on assaults and robberies. Around 20% of aggravated assaults involved a weapon and 5% of the time it was a firearm. The location was either close to, or at, home or on the street. Over half the time the victim knew his attacker. So you are safer in a bar than in your home when it comes to assault. [/quote]
You have a point, but those stats are a little misleading the way you are presenting them. Very few “bar fights” result in assault charges unless there are serious injuries or other extenuating circumstances. Conversely, almost all cases of domestic violence do result in charges(if police are called). This causes the home to appear much more dangerous as a result of how incidents are reported/recorded.
As far as location “on the street” can and often does mean on the street outside of or near a bar(often around just after closing), as opposed to actually inside the establishment. If you legitimately don’t believe that large quantities of alcohol being consumed by large numbers of young males contributes to violence, then I really don’t know what to tell you. It just does.
Regarding whether the assailant is known to the victim: “Known to each other” does not necessarily mean any intimate acquaintance, just that the 2 individuals were not strangers prior to the incident. 2 guys with an ongoing beef are “known to each other”. So are a woman and her ex-boyfriend. The story really changes when you factor in gender. WELL over half of female victims of assault know their attackers, often in a romantic context. As important as this problem is, it simply does not mean that the average person, especially the average 20-something male who is likely reading this thread, is safer in the bar than at home.
[/quote]
The problem is that when people ask about self-defense they usually mean actual self-defense, as in unavoidable, have no choice to fight. If a bar is known to attract lowlifes who get drunk and fight you have a choice about going there. So either choose a place that attracts a better class of people or don’t go to one at all. Isn’t the first rule of self-defense to take steps to avoid danger in the first place? [/quote]
I agree that avoidance/prevention is best. I was simply addressing your statement that you are safer in a bar than in your home.
Also, the idea that fights only happen in dive bars “known to attract lowlifes” is not accurate either. Any establishment (and surrounding area), especially one that has a large capacity and caters to younger clientele is relatively high risk, regardless of how nice a place it is.
I’m in bars several days a week and have been for years. The myth of the bar is just that, a myth. For every young punk bar you show me I’ll find you ten where it’s just a bunch of old fucks sitting alone and drinking their lives away. A lot of people frequent bars in restuarants and no one is fighting there either.
In actuality even getting into a fight as an adult is remote.
[quote]JRT6 wrote:
I’m in bars several days a week and have been for years. The myth of the bar is just that, a myth. For every young punk bar you show me I’ll find you ten where it’s just a bunch of old fucks sitting alone and drinking their lives away. A lot of people frequent bars in restuarants and no one is fighting there either.
In actuality even getting into a fight as an adult is remote.[/quote]
Depends on how you define “adult” I guess. Working with guys in their early 20’s, I can think of plenty of occasions where people have showed up on Monday morning showing visible evidence on their faces of the weekend’s festivities. Some of these guys were belligerent assholes who doubtlessly asked for it. Others were decent guys who were targeted by assholes looking to scrap it out. Admittedly these guys go to “young Punk” bars as opposed to “old fuck” bars, but so do most guys in their 20’s, being as how there are rarely many attractive young women drinking at the Legion or the lounge in the airport.
On any given weekend night where I live police will attend multiple numerous fights on the street outside bars. Local PD has a dedicated task force working weekends to keep a lid on it and it’s definitely helping. However, it is a virtual certainty that someone will be getting into it on any Friday/Saturday night you go out. These are usually the typical, relatively harmless “monkey dance” type of deal, but every so often someone gets stabbed, stomped or cracks their head on the pavement. Every once in a great while someone gets shot (but this is absolutely the exception).
[quote]JRT6 wrote:
I’m in bars several days a week and have been for years. The myth of the bar is just that, a myth. For every young punk bar you show me I’ll find you ten where it’s just a bunch of old fucks sitting alone and drinking their lives away. A lot of people frequent bars in restuarants and no one is fighting there either.
In actuality even getting into a fight as an adult is remote.[/quote]
Sometimes it’s a myth and sometimes it’s not. I’d say that 95 percent of the times I go out nothing bad happens, but during that 5 percent where shit goes bad, it goes VERY bad.
I have seen fights at nice bars, shitty bars, little bars inside Chinese restuarants, blue collar bars, college bars…you name it.
So I don’t really know what to tell you. I’m glad the places you go never have any incidents and the cops are never called. Good for fucking you. But don’t go acting like the idea of bar fights is some far fetched thing that only happens in movies.
There are plenty of bars out there, and I know a few right around here, where there were fights - and good fights - every fucking night.
And the bigger the bar or club, the more dangerous it can become.
[quote]JRT6 wrote:
I’m in bars several days a week and have been for years. The myth of the bar is just that, a myth. For every young punk bar you show me I’ll find you ten where it’s just a bunch of old fucks sitting alone and drinking their lives away. A lot of people frequent bars in restuarants and no one is fighting there either.
In actuality even getting into a fight as an adult is remote.[/quote]
Depends on how you define “adult” I guess. Working with guys in their early 20’s, I can think of plenty of occasions where people have showed up on Monday morning showing visible evidence on their faces of the weekend’s festivities. Some of these guys were belligerent assholes who doubtlessly asked for it. Others were decent guys who were targeted by assholes looking to scrap it out. Admittedly these guys go to “young Punk” bars as opposed to “old fuck” bars, but so do most guys in their 20’s, being as how there are rarely many attractive young women drinking at the Legion or the lounge in the airport.
On any given weekend night where I live police will attend multiple numerous fights on the street outside bars. Local PD has a dedicated task force working weekends to keep a lid on it and it’s definitely helping. However, it is a virtual certainty that someone will be getting into it on any Friday/Saturday night you go out. These are usually the typical, relatively harmless “monkey dance” type of deal, but every so often someone gets stabbed, stomped or cracks their head on the pavement. Every once in a great while someone gets shot (but this is absolutely the exception).[/quote]
Now, relating to personal experience - I got into several pretty good scraps when I was about 18/19, and one could have ended in serious injury. So it really made me think twice about fighting.
I went a good seven or eight years without getting involved in another - and that’s because I either wasn’t there on the night it happened or that I walked away from it or left before the trouble started. Sometimes I was involved, and sometimes the instigator, but nothing ever happened pretty much more by luck than anything else.
Last year, bang, after not getting into one in years I got into a big brawl in a city around here that I should not have been involved in but I was drunk enough to not care.
And although I’ve dodged problems since last spring, there have been plenty of them around me, and again, I’ve dodged them more by luck than anything else.
After the Giants won the Super Bowl, however, I helped defuse a very ugly situation in a New York bar that, if it had gotten to the fighting point, would have been guaranteed to land us in jail.
Keep in mind that I don’t hang out with good people. I never have. Water finds its own level, as they say, and no matter where I go I get to hanging out with people on the lower ends of things. So that probably contributes.
But again, don’t act like shit never happens just because YOU don’t see it. There’s a lot going on around you in the bar environment that you’re probably not aware of.
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
But again, don’t act like shit never happens just because YOU don’t see it. There’s a lot going on around you in the bar environment that you’re probably not aware of.[/quote]
Quoted for Truth.
This is essentially a universal principle and should be applied as broadly as possible.