Quote:
Why?
Force may be used when immediately necessary to prevent harm, assuming all other elements of justification are present. One need not wait to be struck.
If one is defending against something less than deadly force, deadly force is not appropriate.
There are pros and cons of using pepper spray. It may not work against some individuals. Wind may prevent its effective us
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I keep coming back to this in my mind and its a good question. Why am I willing to allow my aggressor to land the first strike?
I am in reasonable physical shape. While I understand that situations like this are unpredictable I have been hit enough in training to believe (perhaps wrongly) I can react reasonably well to a thrown punch. So to me I have, at least partly, mitigated the risk.
Separately I know that I have absolutely no idea how to tell if someone is actually going to throw that punch. I have not been involved in one of those verbal altercations since I was in my 20s and looking back, even when I was entirely a jerk, those verbal altercations did not escalate to physical fights if either party was willing to back down and even then it was, the vast majority of the time posturing. Now I am more than willing to back down.
If I *knew* my attacker was going to throw the first punch I might be willing to strike first. Truth be told I am still working that one over in my mind. However because I cannot know this I am having a hard time figuring out when one would deploy force (either a strike or pepper spray) prior to the other person actually striking or attempting to strike you.