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Caution should be exercised when starting threads involving mental tendencies towards excessively violent responses, and the carriage of weapons. Not only for the sake of the OP avoiding possible problems down the way, but for the sake of not giving the anti's some free ammo.
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Actually that is the most helpful comment you've made. Yes I had apprehensions about starting such a thread especially in light of some of the same 'Walter Mitty' responses I've seen on this forum. But there is a general problem of violence in our society, I suspect more so in its unarmed portions. While I've had the conjecture for a number of years that carrying concealed weapons has a general
civilizing effect on the human animal there has not been any significant discussion about that recently.
It would seem to me that in a situation where someone is going out of their way to incite a riot (such as the TV producers in this case) there is more complete inhibition against physical violence if the offended person has the means to wreak lethal havok. On the other hand an unarmed (older, weaker and outnumbered person such as myself) might have less inhibition against it especially if they've had some sort of past training which includes such residuals as "...protect and defend...".
This TV show made a singular point of the fact that nearly nobody intervened and of the scant few who did there was at least one case where a passerby became outraged and charged the actors, trying to beat them down. I strongly suspect that the show originated in California or New Jersey or some other area where there were nearly no armed citizens. I also suspect that if it had been filmed in Mississippi (by virtue of the fact police estimate 80% of the citizens remain armed) there would have been so many citizens quietly coming up to tell the kids to "leave now and don't look back" they would have had a distinctly different show.
A training solution helps but is not the answer. In my catchment area of about 150,000 the law enforcement agencies have managed to reduce the number of LEO shootings of unarmed people, especially mentally ill people to about one every 10-12 months by virtue of training, the use of TASERS, hiring specific mental health officers and other methods. Thirty years ago when I lived in a city of about the same population LEO shootings of similar unarmed citizens were about 2 to 4 a month. But there continue to be mistakes, failure of training, failure of discipline and general cussedness of mankind.
So you still don't want to tell us that if Kryptonite gets into the water and your iron willpower and Ranger training discipline both break down would you have less chance of flying off the handle if you were armed or unarmed?
(OK I've got to admit that wading in kicking and punching thing was a bit overly dramatic but that's the funny thing about anger. No matter who you are or what your training there is a time that you'll lose your cool. The question is whether you know your own weaknesses in that regard or not.)