I can agree with that. I’m not going to try and read someone’s mind if they make that kind of threat.
I would qualify this by saying that the threat has to be credible. A 110 pound woman threatening to kill you because you want to break up with her, unless she has a weapon in her hand, is not a credible threat (though definitely a great case for a restraining order and for reconsidering your taste in women). You want to be able to explain to a cop, judge, or jury why you reasonably didn’t believe you had any choice but to do what you did given what you knew at the time. I think Penny ultimately prevailed because he was able to do that.
I understand, and would be as judicious as possible.
When I say “self-defense” I don’t mean “kill and find an excuse”.
It’s not the 110 pound woman I would be scared of, but the 9mm bullet behind a 3 lb trigger pull.
And when the gun is already out, you’re fucked.
The expressed threat of killing me is a line I have already decided I won’t tolerate.
I’ll take him/her at their word.
1 Like
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a cop when I worked bar security. He was there with his wife who tended bar but they were both off-duty and there as customers.
Long story short, I was working the door outside and saw the lights flashing, which meant get inside, there’s trouble. Trouble that night was a late 20-something athletic ski instructor who became irate and threw a drink at the bartender. I confronted him in prayer position to talk him into walking outside, which he wasn’t receptive to.
He initiated contact by grabbing my wrists as they were in prayer position, which I quickly cycled out of and grabbed his own. He knew how to play that game and we were basically dancing with each other in this battle or each other’s wrists as I was walking him to the door.
A local dude who worked with mentally ill people rear-clinched him and dragged him out the door for me. A few minutes of threats followed before someone talked him into a car and he split.
After all that the cop busted my chops and said it looked like I got my ass kicked. I mentioned that nobody was hurt at all, I got the dude out and also mentioned that his presence was one of the reasons I wasn’t particularly worried about getting hurt. This led me to ask what his take would have been if, after him putting his hands on me, I just clinched him against the wall and then took him down.
He said, “It would have been reasonable.”
In general you can escalate force to the point of stopping the threat.
Interpretation will matter, especially if somebody dies, but this is the gist of self-defense law.
It was definitely one of the more borderline cases I encountered in my little side job, not necessarily legally but with regards to my own judgement of it in the moment. I almost always erred on the side of minimal force, but that guy was extremely close to getting choked out. He was an athletic and stout guy but hammered and not nearly as big or strong as me.
Civil suits suck, especially when you have assets.
As Penny’s still in the process of learning, even staying under the mantle of legal conduct doesn’t stop someone from coming after your present and future assets. That was always one of my bigger concerns with that side job.
Even though I’d still enjoy a shift, I’m all done with that. It’s too risky in 2024, especially if something happened where I had to put my hands on a member of a leftwing victim group and it didn’t go well. There’s just a lot more fuckery all around compared to when I did the job, including local jackasses of all skin colors and beliefs, Hell’s Angels and other 1 percent OMC gang members from in-state, and out-of state drug dealers who will show up.
Interestingly, their best bouncer today is, like Penny, a Marine who learned most of his hand-to-hand stuff in MCMAP. He’s doing just fine.
lol, so these guys will change things.
They’re not going to sue you though. If you do escalate, make the decision to take it as far as you think they might first.
In my observation they’ll pick a place they like though, and make it “theirs”. They’ll usually help you bounce at this point, asked or not.
But I get the overall point. It’s always a judgement call.
And to the broader thread it’s nice to see perceived threat maintained as threat, in NYC of all places.
Yeah they did a bike night there all summer without any major problems. The owner is glad it has subsided. One of his doormen at the time was a hang around and obviously trying to get in as a prospect. Their local affiliates have been regulars at the place for a really long time.
It is one of those jobs where you can definitely hurt people and get away with it, and plenty of doormen are there to do just that.
Civilized and intelligent black america really wants nothing to do with people who think like you, disregarding your skin color.
My observation from my criminal law days is that these fellows like to keep things low-key so as to avoid law enforcement attention. That is, unless and until things pop off with a rival club, then it’s a free for all (see, e.g., Twin Peaks shootout in Texas in 2015).
1 Like
They stay active but low profile.
I’ve loosely met a few of the Texas version while riding a motorcycle around.
A buddy and I were at a backroad ice house and he was talking about a tenant served eviction papers who wouldn’t leave, and what a fiasco going through legal red tape was.
One of the 1%ers I’ve met heard and offered to show up with some buddies, a phone jammer, zip ties and shotguns with beanbags for $1,000, lol.
They don’t play around.
But they won’t cause trouble for no reason for sure.
The Texas thing is a little suspicious. Obviously LE was nervous with two rival 1% clubs together, but strong rumors have it the police were the ones shooting. The whole meeting was a peace treaty thing.
They still do. There are still white supremacists having their cracker rallies in uneducated red states.
1 Like
It was a pretty minor incident but these guys showed up on the front steps of my state’s Capitol building last summer.
I only post because their costumes make me laugh. Who said ski goggles over balaclavas was the best look? Something about it seems sexual. And why is the leader wearing a cowboy hat?
1 Like
So how are we defining racism now?
Is the idea that racism can’t exist without institutional power still a thing?
About the same number of the same types showed up in my town a couple years ago. All masked with sunglasses and no explanation of what their goals are, but a whole lot of hay made out of them showing up.
We had several hundred marching under the Black Lives Matter banner, which to me is worse because their extremist and racist views actually have political power. My guess is that most members in both groups have a similar level of knowledge about the history of their ideas, their policies and the kind of likely outcomes they lead to.
1 Like
Chill dude. 100% correct verdict it appears.
1 Like
Considering we are discussing self defense, I am curious what other men think about this.
Something I dislike very much is stranger men putting their hands (and arms, as you’ll read) on me, even if gestures are friendly. I will give two examples.
In the first example I went out alone to an event at a bar in 2018 alone because we couldn’t get babysitting that night. I sat on a couch in the bar and a stranger parked himself next to me while his girlfriend stood next to us, which isn’t bad in itself because it was a large couch that numerous people could sit on without invading others’ space. We got to talking, which I didn’t mind, even though he was clearly drunk. At one point he leaned into me with his whole body and hugged me with one arm, with his drink in the other hand. When I felt his body on me, my blood boiled, and yes, I felt fearful. I looked him square in the eyes. He realized I was angry and uncomfortable, quickly got off of me, and asked if I was alright. I wanted peace and to control myself, so I brushed it off, said everything was alright, chuckled a bit (a fake chuckle), and got back to small talk. During the conversation, I told him and his woman that I thought I had a fight on my hands, which likely wasn’t something I should have said. They both apologized, and said the guy wanted none of that.
In a second example from this past fall, I was at a party at a catering hall for one of my wife’s friends. I get up early, even on weekends, so at 11:30 or so, I was tired. I sat on a couch by myself, probably looking sleepy, while my wife went to get a drink. Some drunk guy there with his wife comes over to me and said something silly, “Hey bro, you’re my favorite guy here, because you don’t give a fuck.” I chuckled (a fake chuckle), and said, “Thanks”. My wife came over and the guy starts bugging me to get up, live a little, and urges me to dance with my wife. My wife wanted to dance, so I got up, mildly annoyed from him, and started dancing with her. He got to talking to me, and like in the example above, he starts showing unwelcome affection and put his arm around me as if we are friends. He goes back to the couch and every so often, when I stop dancing, he calls my name and says something or other about how I should dance with my wife and have a good time. As in the first example, I grew increasingly irritated with him, all the while faking friendliness.
Considering I am regrettably untrained in martial arts, and am not an enormous man (I’m 5’10" with a medium frame, though it’s obvious I carry a decent amount of muscle at 200 pounds in clothes), in both instances, being unsure of whether these annoying drunk men had solely friendly social intentions, or something else in store for me (they didn’t turn out to) my plan was landing a first shot if either flipped the script. And no, I am not talking about “seeing red” or even thinking I’d come out alright from violent situations but pondering what I would do.
I am friendly, open to talking to people, and often have men and women strike up conversations with me when out and about, not often in night life because I am a middle-aged guy with a family who doesn’t go to such venues much, but at the gym and doing everyday stuff. When I go out to night-life venues, I am not looking for problems and am obviously up for a fun time. Is it reasonable, knowing that attacks on people are sometimes preceded by “jokes” and seeming friendliness, to be on edge when men act as described? I cannot relate to this and what is irksome is that in such encounters the onus is on the person minding one’s business for dealing with them. What if am unreceptive in these situations? Are these people going to flip if I don’t give them the attention and behavior they want? I think these are reasonable questions. In both cases, these men who turned out to not want trouble didn’t know I had self-defense on the mind.
I do not mind brief physical contact (a bouncer’s pat on the shoulder after checking ID for example), just not the sort of interactions as described above. Am I off for contemplating self-defense in such situations? I’d like other men’s opinions on this, if you have some. @Njord @twojarslave You two seem to have much social experience. Have you seen things start off with fun and games on an innocent person and then head south? Perhaps that one violent incident I experienced and mentioned above has tainted my thinking because it did start off with a stranger “joking”.
You didn’t ask me, but here’s my .02.
A guy with a woman in tow is a totally different situation than a single guy acting “friendly” or “joking” around. With the single guy, definitely have the antennae up and looking for warning signs. With a couple, unless you’ve been hitting on the guy’s woman, very likely the dude is just being friendly because he’s drunk. Could be the guys like to posture to their woman that they’re cool dudes who can chat up the crowd, so to speak.
2 Likes
I doubt it, but I’m pretty hyper vigillant and REALLY don’t like people getting grabby, or in a lot of cases, even too close. Too close it about 3 feet. At two feet, I warn them to back up. Any closer and its my hands that start moving.
I don’t go around drunks much, but I do know that they’re feeling and interpreting things that aren’t necessarily true or happening.
2 Likes