Would you use your weapon to stop a stranger from being raped?

[zebov]

A few comments (hopefully not too long-winded):

First of all, every single situation is unique and one cannot apply the same blanket answer to all situations. Think about the following two scenarios: (1) You're walking down the street a block behind a woman. Suddenly a guy jumps her out of the shadows and stabs her in the arm while stripping her clothes off and begins to rape her as she screams bloody murder for help. (2) You're at a drive-in theater next to a high-school couple who are snuggling during the whole movie. The guy is drinking and toward the end of the movie you notice them starting to get a little more involved when she starts softly saying "stop" and then yells "somebody get him off me!" These two scenarios are completely different and I think would warrant completely different responses, but both fall under the same "woman obviously being raped" category. Yes, you should stop both. But one would likely require physical intervention (ie. guns a-blazing) while the other one could likely be stopped with a simple "HEY YOU!"

When I lived in Austin, TX, I heard an altercation between a man and woman just outside my apartment door. There was a lot of bumping and the woman was saying "I can't breathe! You're choking me! I can't breathe!" intermingled with cries for help. I, as many of you have agreed with, could not let this continue without me trying to stop it. I was armed with nothing but my scrawny body (mistake #1) and stepped out of my door while my wife had the phone ready to dial 911 (mistake #2). All I had to do was say, "What's going on?" and it distracted the guy long enough that the woman took off running. The guy was scared stiff (which if you've seen me is hardly even imaginable). He started making up stories about his girlfriend (who had just fled running as fast as possible with tears streaming down her face) having an asthma attack. Suffice to say, this ended without anyone being killed. The cops eventually showed up but I didn't talk with them--I wasn't the one who called them. My guess is that those two aren't dating anymore. The point of this story is that there was obviously, at least in Indiana, a legal right for me to use lethal force in this situation. A man was literally strangling a woman in front of me. However, had I used lethal force "shooting before asking questions" the end of this situation would have been much grimmer for everyone involved. Looking at this situation I realize my two mistakes were not being armed in case it was needed and not having my wife call 911 immediately, before confronting the man. I do NOT think I made a mistake by not immediately killing the guy as soon as I stepped out the door. Those that truly, honestly, believe that was a mistake are fooling yourselves and have obviously never been in the situation.