[MLeake]

Difference between tranquilizers and firearms: noise (much less) and immediate result of noise (dead or wounded and frightened animal). I would suspect the pack to not scatter as a result of tranquilizer darts. It would probably take them a while to make the right associations.

Edit: In the case of a pack, quick kills might be counter-productive, if one's goal is to scatter them. Nasty though it may sound, I'd think a few gutshots would be much more effective than a few brain stem hits. Screaming and wailing in direct response to gunfire is probably going to have a lot more impact on the other pack members.

In military terms, this might be viewed as "shaping" or "preparing" the battle space.

Note that when Alvin York took down 8 Germans in one incident, he shot the rearmost first, then worked his way forward, so the ones in front wouldn't spook. Had he wanted to scatter them, instead of kill them, he would have shot the leader and worked his way back, so the rest could see the first ones die. By his own account, he had learned this trick from hunting.

As far as seeing wild animals... I doubt poprivit is the only one to have seen predators in the wild. Probably several of us have done so, from a truck, or a boat, or even while afoot. (Or in the water... I've run across African game during vehicle tours near Praetoria; gators in any number of places canoeing Florida; a couple sharks while SCUBA diving; even have a pack of coyotes that regularly hunts out behind my west pasture - hear them most nights when I'm home, walking the dogs.)

Pax, an acquaintance fell off a barn while working on the roof. He broke his pelvis; nasty injury. That makes him an expert on falling, unexpectedly, while trying to toss away the chainsaw he'd been using to cut a beam - IE an expert on that type of fall in those circumstances.

I've had to jump from a 9' platform (shelf about 3' below the top of the 12' wall) in training, though granted it was onto sand. Bigger worry than impact, per se, was twisting knees or ankles, as happened to some of my classmates. As we were going for times, there was no hang and drop from closer to the ground, we were going as fast as we could (600 yards of sand, and a dozen or so obstacles, with a goal under 3:30). IIRC I ran a 3:12; the badge time was 2:55. I'm just an ok athlete, but raw ability doesn't always directly correspond to willingness to try.

Falls can injure; there are techniques for minimizing the damage, which one can proactively employ. One can still get hurt, even badly hurt.

And again, note that once the number of dogs were pointed out (having not seen the video, I assumed two or three, in error), I revised my strategy to shoot and scatter first, then enter. The point remains, if the kid had not been dead yet, somebody would need to get to him to try to stop bleeding while waiting for the cavalry - or to keep the dogs from thinking about coming back in the interim.

Hal, what is that quote we CCW types like? "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away," I believe. Yet you think waiting five minutes in this instance was reasonable?

Glenn, people can learn to live with a lot. That doesn't mean they necessarily ever stop hearing that inner voice whisper, "Coward." You say I keep missing your point. That may be, but you keep missing mine.

You say people are making outrageous claims; I ask, have you never read of or known people who were driven to self-abuse (drug abuse, alcoholism, successive abusive relationships) or even suicide by guilt or self-recrimination? Just because it doesn't automatically have to happen, does not mean that it doesn't.

You say that you are the expert; I don't dispute that. But, can you ethically guarantee the outcome of a course of treatment for one of your patients? Or, are you only allowed to say what the statistics support?

Can you ethically diagnose a person you have neither interviewed nor tested? If not, how can you say with authority what a given individual will or won't do, or can or can't live with? I'll grant you that you can give a good statistical analysis, but that's as far as it goes.

For that matter, is "Normal" a universal thing, or does it vary by culture? If it varies by culture, is that only ethnic or religious (for instance, the Japanese traditionally viewed suicide as a normal response to a major failure), or can it vary by occupation and social group (are "normal" views on the appropriate time and place for violence going to be the same between a group of US Army Rangers and a group of obstetric or pediatric nurses)?

As far as amateur psychology goes, what would you call Shakespeare or Dostoefsky? Seems to me some of my psych profs used Hamlet and Raskolnikov as examples of psychological issues in literature; seems to me those works pre-date modern psychology...

Ok, now I'm done with the psych arguments.