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Comment by chasd00 | Hacker News Reader

The one time I was mugged i got sucker punched from behind right behind the jaw. I went down like a load of bricks and it was a full 3 to 5 seconds before I even knew what was happening. By the time I had my wits back 4 guys had me pinned, beating me up, and going through my pockets. I could have had pistols in both hands and it wouldn’t have made any difference.

I think there’s a place for concealed carry but I doubt it helps much with the kinds of ambush attacks joggers see.

(I was skateboarding in Deep Ellum (neighborhood in Dallas TX) when I was mugged)

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I have been mugged, in dangerous places, as a young adult. I think that being armed in those situations would have greatly increased my chances of being more seriously harmed. Those experiences taught me to be more aware of potentially dangerous situations. Although I'm not against personal firearms in principle, I believe that teaching greater awareness rather than arming is a more productive approach to safety.

More weapons in any conflict only lead to less safety, not more. I've been trying for a lot of years to tell US gun proponents this but I have never managed to have it land.

A lot of US gun owners are too prideful, they simply want the freedom to carry. Telling them there’s risk in that only taunts them because they want to feel they’re protecting their family.

This can be true (and I think it is for certain individuals) and one can still be a proponent of the right to have a choice whether to be a passive victim or take responsibility for one's own physical security. Personally, I'd rather do the latter.

There's also a case to be made that mathematically, you're likely to have a short career as a mugger if one out of every, say, 5 individuals you target is likely to be armed. After all, why don't muggers target police officers?

Yet your conclusion, spoken as if it is a universal truth, is wrong in many instances.

There have been numerous events of a concealed weapon holder killing an individual intent on a mass murder event that's just getting started. They generally get zero media play because they don't fit the narrative of gun -> bad.

Regardless, telling people they can't choose the means with which they can reasonably defend themselves is authoritarian and evil. Nobody can guarantee safety, thus, nobody can rightly deny the right to defend oneself how best it seems to them to do so. Some dangerous circumstances are unfortunately common which do not wait for the police, let alone courts.

When affirming stuff like this, you should really add sources.

Off the top of my head, there was a shooting in a mall food court stopped by a concealed carrier in Indiana a month or two back, and another in a Texas church maybe 2 years ago.

I hear about them every so often, I don't compile or keep a list.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

Numerous! Wow. More than one??? That's nifty. Maybe they should be cops.

Anyway... to the topic at hand. How do you feel about violence toward ladies? It'd be nice for one conversation about self defense and violence against women to not be detailed by stupid arguments about concealed carry or open carry or men get ouchies too.

Can we please talk about how this shouldn't be reality? How women should feel afraid? How one in four women should be the victim of sexual assault by the time they reach adulthood? Because that's what's happening and why these articles get written and what we should be discussing.

Team goal: call out bad behavior by men and boys, in an effort to denormalize the behaviors that lead to violence against women.

Cool?

Wrong metric: you're assuming the safety of a violent assailant matters. And it does, just not near as much as an innocent. You must weight by justice.

I got jumped walking my bull mastiff.

One guy wrapped me up from behind with my arms pinned to my sides. He was beyond fat and we fell with his full body weight slamming on top of me.

While he held me I was kicked from both sides of my head repeatedly.

I went out for a few seconds and came to laughing(wheezing), while they were rifling through my pockets. This got me a few more kicks.

I was laughing because had they picked literally any other time I'd walked Tinkerbell they would have gotten my wallet, and if they'd done it earlier that day- the brand new Note 3 I'd just purchased.

I only left my stuff because I hadn't yet purchased a screen protector and my biggest fear was a scratch in the screen (but not getting jumped!).

My dog was huge, but I was glad she'd stayed away. I couldn't imagine coming up on someone walking that big a dog.

Sometimes shit just happens.

I am 1st Dan in Tae Kwon Do, 2nd in Tang Soo Do, was lucky enough to take boxing lessons with some pretty cool people, even Butterbean.

I made sure all my kids got the same and then some, with their primary focus Jiu Jitsu as I believe ground game is of utmost importance in self defense, something I was lacking in for years.

Just because nothing I knew could help me in that one super shitty situation doesn't make the years I spent learning moot.

It's definitely helped me far more times than not.

If these women are potential targets, they should protect themselves however they can.

My issue with guns is a person is more likely to pull a trigger from fear than anger, or it could be taken and used against you.

I used to have a CCP but thought it might get me in more trouble than help.

Nowadays I've been considering getting one again. It's beginning to feel like most people are carrying (here, in California- I know that's not true but that's what it feels like)

We never know what's going to happen, we can only try to be prepared and hope for the best.

New business idea: Wearable that sends out a shockwave if the user gets attacked. The user could adjust its sensitivity, i.e. if they're attacked from a certain angle or they're hit with a certain amount of force.

I'm mostly kidding, but if you're attacked from an unsuspecting angle then no amount of armaments will protect you from that first punch.

So armor, basically, repelling the fist with the good old normal force.

That sucks, sorry that happened. It's just one experience though. Last night our TV news featured a female jogger who was slowly followed by a car for a while, and was terrified until she got to someone's house and got some help. Being armed would have made that less frightening, and if it turned into an attack she would have had decent odds since she was well aware of the threat.

From what I've read about sexual assaults, they often start with intimidation, while the attacker works up the nerve and gauges how his target responds. Robbery by an experienced team isn't the same sort of thing.

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