I consider you an honest poster, so I don't want to descend into semantics or point scoring or arguing for the sake of arguing, please don't interpret my responses as an attempt to move in that direction.
How is that equivocating? Have you never heard someone say they got in a fight with the wife or coworker? Doesn't imply physical violence, right? If it sounds odd to you, I'm happy to switch to 'confrontation' or whatever. Not just an argument, though. We have arguments on these threads. Drejka had more than a difference of opinion going on.
My apologies if I misunderstood you, but in the context of a conversation about SYG and self defense I took fighting to mean, well actually fighting rather than a metaphor for verbal disagreement. I might say "I got in a fight with my boss at work today", but if the person I was talking to said "What, a real fight?" I'd know the distinction they were drawing and so, I believe, would most people. Genuinely, maybe there's a subtle difference between British and American semantics in this respect.
SYG in practice. Some whacko walks up and picks a fight...er, initiates a confrontation with me, especially with my kids around, and no way I am turning turtle. He's staying where I can see him and with me standing if at all possible. Why would you trust Captain Cuckoo to play nice when he is looking for unsolicited confrontation? I'd be assuming he planned ti ramp it up with the parking as a loose justification.
Is it SYG if you get out of your car to confront them? That seems unlikely to me. If you don't trust Captain Cuckoo I think you'd be safer in your car with the doors locked on the other side of the car park than standing nose to nose with him leaving your kids in the car alone. She doesn't act like she's scared of him, angry, yes, but not scared. She's in the wrong and doubles down, yes people do that all the time but it doesn't make them right to do so.
Yes, but parking i n a handicapped spot gives him the moral high ground. He looks like a good guy, even when gunning... er, looking for trouble. Beats the hell out of claiming someone bumped into you or whatever alternate excuse he might use to pick a confrontation.
Cause no one ever picked a fight over a football team. Maybe this is a cultural thing, but up to the point that he pulled the gun out he would probably have been considered a 'good guy' in the UK. Healthy people without permits parking in disabled spaces is considered a bad thing and third parties attacking the person pointing it out is considered worse. I know Don't you honestly think the narrative about the events leading up to him hitting the ground would be viewed completely differently if he'd hit his head and been seriously injured or killed? The events would have been the same but we're projecting the end of the confrontation back.
Once again, not defending the shooting but I see the escalation from a verbal disagreement to physical violence as a significant step up in the confrontation. These weren't two people confronted by a third who kept ramping up the pressure until they were forced to act. All three of them actively increased the level of threat at one stage or another. Frankly I think that when these three people ran into each other it was going to end badly for someone.
Anecdote: This has me thinking about a good friend I now have. We met completely by chance in a pub and got into a conversation about this subject. I was rather drunk at the time and I remember saying to him "It doesn't matter if I call you the ugliest lanky bastard in Earth, if you throw the first punch in response to words, you're in the wrong." That's the position I hold ( I'd also extend that to escalating to deadly force in the face of a non lethal, to your knowledge, threat).
