[quote]RBlue wrote:
[quote]admbaum wrote:
[quote]RBlue wrote:
[quote]admbaum wrote:
If someone attacks you, smashing their face in to preserve your life is the RIGHT thing to do. The old guy got away and the goon attacked him. [/quote]
I think a little shove to the chest barely qualifies as “attack”. Smashing in his face was a complete over-reaction, and I hope you were joking about “preserve your life”, because otherwise you’re seriously blowing it out of proportion.
Neither party was in the right, both were egging each other on. We didn’t see what started the whole thing, but they were BOTH acting like “goons”. And the old guy proceeded to lie about it, as the other guy clearly didn’t hit him in the face.
[/quote]
Any physical contact out of anger constitutes an attack/assault in Texas. All due respect, would you have just let someone put their hands on you like that? And no, I was no joking when I said “preserve your life”. If that “shove in the chest” happen to be accompanied by a knife would it have been more or less of an attack? Someone comes at you in an aggressive manner, are you going to look at what they are attacking you with or are you going to respond to preserve your life? I dont know where you come from but around here, any physical altercation is potentially a life and death situation and you need to handle yourself accordingly. [/quote]
BOTH sides were verbally aggressive, so where, exactly, does the attack start? I don’t disagree that the shove was out of line, but I think it’s important to look at degrees of aggression. We’re all going to interpret their actions in different ways (as none of us can read their minds to know their motivations), but it seemed to me that the old guy was simply trying to fuck the other guy up, not preserve his life. He was looking for any excuse to get very violent, and then lied about what instigated it after the fact.
I’m fairly certain we’re not going to agree about this, so I’m going to leave it at that.[/quote]
Name calling isn’t assault. the guy moved away from the other, the other guy followed him and threw a punch. It could not be more cut and dry. I’m absolutely positive that if a guy walked up and started hitting you with weak punches, you’d feel the need to defend yourself.
Next, if the response was really over and beyond what was appropriate, the younger guy wouldn’t have been running his mouth afterward. He continued to threaten afterward.
After threatening violence, following after the old guy, and getting up in his face, I think the old guy would have been justified throwing the first punch, the guy was a threat to his well being at that point.
The guy started a fist fight, and got punched in the face. how is that not appropriate?