View Single Post
Old November 1, 2005, 06:59 AM   #1
Glock 31
Senior Member
 
Join Date: October 30, 2005
Posts: 541
The Art of Self Defense

This thread should be used for actual non-fiction personal accounts and responses to said accounts.

One night I was jogging around town cause I had gotten into this whole healthy thing, which is fine. But when I do I always carry. This is before I quallified for a concealed carry permit. I would wear bdu style pants, a shirt, and an on the belt, open carry, holster. Weapon of choice was a Bersa Thunder .380, good gun for weight and relative stopping power. This night consisted of 9 1/2 miles of jogging and speed walking, (i'm not Lance Armstrong afterall). About halfway I was stopped on the street by the local PD, made to "assume the position" for the first time in my life, and searched. All this I will say I did not mind at all, they are just doing their jobs and I applaud them for it. And since I had nothing to hide I fully cooperated, (not that I would have resisted had I something to hide). Anyway they ran the numbers on my gun, everything came back fine, and they let me go about my buisness, explaining there had been numerous break-ins in the area recently and where just being safe. Mind you this is at about 3 a.m. and how often do you see someone with a holster, urban camo colored pants, running down the street. I use what I have, I can't afford the best jogging gear. Anyway about ten minutes later I made the mistake of running down a very poorly lit street which was a fairly main thoroughfair during daylight hours, but can get nasty at night. I noticed a hispanic male in black pants and white wife beater, (local colors here for the south side locals being black and white), leaning against a wall kind of weaving back and forth. I jogged past him on the other side of the street. He proceeded to try to get my attention and I could hear words like, "hey man" "****" "hey can I talk" "you ain't got to be afraid". Normally I would take no alarm to words like this but I was jogging and as I looked back, so was he, after me. I picked up the pace and he hurled some surly and drunken insults my way and continued to keep pace with me about 30 or 40 yards back. I was approaching an intersection where there was a gas station and better lighting, unfortunately it was closed. I turned the corner and proceeded up a fairly steep hill and apparently he gave up as I didn't see him emerge from the shadows into the lights of the intersection. Again, bear in mind, I am still moderately over weight so I am not use to running long distances but oddly enough I didn't have a problem through all this. Once I got down the other side of the hill and a good ways beyond, all the while looking back to make sure he had indeed stopped chasing me, I slowed to a walk, drew my gun and racked a round into the chamber and reholstered. At this point in time I was under the impression it was illegal to carry a gun with a round in front of the firing pin, in New Mexico however this is not the case. But I didn't know that in case you were wondering why I was a carrying a gun for protection without it being ready to fire. Nothing further occured that night but I assure you I was looking over my shoulder the whole 5 miles back to my house. That made it about a 9 1/2 mile trip total. Impressive for an overweight man in my opinion.

Here is the purpose for the this thread.
In New Mexico, you are not required to pursue all avenues of retreat before employing deadly force, you CAN stand your ground and fight.

Should I have used deadly force in dealing with an adversary I could have easily considered to have disparity of force on me as I am not a fist fighter and that he was in much better shape than me? He did pursue me for a good two blocks, and, as I suspected that he was a gang member, probably had buddies somewhere nearby.

If I had used lethal force, would I have been justified? Your thoughts and experiences please.
Glock 31 is offline  
 
Page generated in 0.02973 seconds with 8 queries