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it's going to be a case by case thing. It's also going to depend on your priorities.

-my first priority is always that I get myself and my family home safely
-what do you feel is right in the situation
-are children being victimized

There is no ONE right answer.

If I see a couple of twenty-something year old men engaged in fisticuffs, calling 911, advising them that I've called 911, and being a witness is enough. If I see an adult man in the middle of really beating up on a child or raping a woman, I'm going to draw down on him and "invite" him to stop. If he doesn't stop, he gets shot. Somewhere in there, I'll call 911. If the attacker is assaulting my wife, son, DIL, or grandkids, he gets shot first and 911 gets called afterwards. In between those kinds of extremes, there is a whole range of available responses, determined by my relationship to the victim and by the severity of the attack.

IN SPADES

You have to ask yourself: "Is there any information I could be missing in this situation?"

In my CHL class, the instructor showed us a video of multiple people chasing, grabbing, and dragging a teenage girl into a van, as seen by a Wal-Mart/Target parking lot security camera. The girl was kicking and screaming, trying to get away.

What level of involvement is appropriate here? It looks like a kidnapping.

Turns out, the girl had run away from home, and her relatives were trying to retrieve her to bring her home.

Most people would feel the need to "do something." But then again, most people would just fall under the spell of the bystander effect, hoping someone would help out, without them actually getting involved.

So, do you approach the alleged kidnappers with a gun drawn, commanding them to stop kidnapping the teenage girl, or do you dial 911 while recording video and noting the license plates and direction that they drive off, also following them? In different scenarios, one may be too much, or one might not be enough.

However, with more cut and dry scenarios, it comes down to your conscience. If someone in a hood and mask comes into a convenience store, pointing a gun and demanding money from the cashier - there's not a lot of information that you could be missing here. It's up to you if you choose to engage the threat or try to escape. Personally, if I were in that specific scenario, I would engage the threat if I had an advantage. If I did not have the advantage, I would wait until I did. Typically this would be when the robber takes his attention to the cashier or the cash, or something else distracts him.

Remember that you will be judged based on what a REASONABLE person would do with the information that you had AT THAT TIME. So the short answer to "when to get involved as a third person" - to me, at least, is when it is what a reasonable person would do - but also when you have a justification covered under Texas Penal Code - either explicitly or under a defense of necessity.

If you do ever find yourself in a situation where you need to defend yourself, remember, don't talk to the cops beyond, "He attacked me. I feared for my life. I need my lawyer." Don't say "I shot him" or "I killed him" - there's plenty of time for your story to come out when you have legal counsel.

Most of the attorneys I have talked to advise to say only when you call 911..."I have been the victim of a crime" give you location, and stop.

And say nothing to the police advising them you won't speak to them until you speak to your attorney.

They are not there as your friend or buddy. They are not there to "help" you. They are there as professional investigators who have a responsibility to present any facts they discover at trial to your benefit or ill. That includes anything you say. And any evidence they find will be used against you in court if possible by the prosecutor.

So be careful and pre rehearse this scenario before it happens so you don't say something ill advised.

tex

If you do ever find yourself in a situation where you need to defend yourself, remember, don't talk to the cops beyond, "He attacked me. I feared for my life. I need my lawyer."

I have been taught slightly differently. In the end, I don't think there is one right answer, but here's my speech:

1. There's the perpetrator.
2. I will sign a complaint against him (or her).
3. There is the physical evidence. (Point out any, including weapons dropped.)
4. There are the witnesses. (Point them out.)
5. I will cooperate fully in your investigation after I have consulted with my lawyer.

At this point, I shut up.

As for scenarios, no two are ever the same. Getting involved as a third person is risky. Two stories I've heard, the first one true, the second, only hypothetical, but possible:

1) A man with his family saw a big man [not in a car] fighting with a woman in a car in the parking lot. He did not interfere other than be a good witness. Car jacking? Domestic assault? Early stages of rape/kidnapping? Nope. The woman got away, dragging the man and injuring him. Turns out she had just robbed the store of $1000 worth of jewelry and he was an off-duty cop.

2) (Not true, yet) Man comes upon a woman being sexual assaulted. He draws on the attacker, causing said attacker to release the victim. She runs away and he doesn't know her. She won't come back and say anything, perhaps from fear or embarrassment, perhaps cultural taboos. Cops pull up and the attacker yells to them about some crazy drew a gun on him for no reason. Man's word against the attacker's and the cops see Man holding gun.

A personal scenario I almost experienced: I was just getting out of a meeting at a restaurant in a strip center last Oct. I stayed behind to talk for a few minutes with the property manager. Then I wondered down the center to a Party City store to check out their Halloween decorations. On the way, I notice some police in the parking lot, but didn't think anything of it at the time.

When I got to the door, it didn't open. I checked my phone and their hours sign and it was still open. I tried the door again and an employee shouted at me that they were closed. Strange. As I passed along the info to a few other people behind me who were headed there, one of the employees, a teenage girl, came and walked down the center. She was visibly upset/distressed and said as she passed us they were just robbed at gunpoint 2 minutes ago. Had I not stopped to chat, I would have been in the store when it happened. Yes, I'm a HLH, and I was CCing.

I thought hard about that. What should I have done? One can never truly tell until it happens, but I eventually settled on this: The store management is probably more concerned about lawsuits if people get injured (my fault, robber's fault, doesn't matter) than the money lost. Therefore, they would not want me to interfere. So long as the robber was only threatening violence at others, I should not draw or give any indication I am carrying. I would click the safety off if I could without being noticed however.

If I was far enough back from the cashier, as I likely would have been in the aisles, then I would get on my cell and dial 911. Part of me wonders if I should have let the robber see me on my cell. Might he have then threatened me, or worse, fired off a shot at me, giving me every reason to draw and shoot, or might he have decided time was not on his side and run, possibly aborting the robbery. Safety me says stay hidden, but then would I be able to live with myself. I don't have an answer to that.

Great advice on what to do after a shooting from Massad Ayoob:

https://youtu.be/pCZXZMYyRl4

Too many variables. The example my first CHL instructor gave was "You are walking in a park, you see a young adult male on top of and tearing the clothes off of a young adult female with duct tape over her mouth and her hands bound, do you shoot?" about 2/3 raised their hands saying "yes". He then said "You shoot, the woman begins to scream, you take the tape off and she tells you that they are kinky wierdos and were role playing and that you just murdered her boyfriend... you spend the next 10-20 in prison."

Far fetched, sure. Completely off base, nope.

As has been said, there is generally little harm in drawing down and issuing commands. The action generally ceases, and they get a chance to explain anything that might change your decision, and you get a chance to not kill or injure someone unnecessarily.

Clear cut issues like one person chasing down and stabbing another repeatedly would warrant immediate action with no additional information necessary. Even in self-defense, you can't chase someone down and stab them... so that is pretty easy to figure out. Most everything else, it might do some good to get a bit more info, and people are typically forthcoming with that info when you have a pistol pointed at them.

You can easily re-holster a pistol, you cannot call back a bullet.