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.
Thank you for that. So many threads get bogged down in the BS, and it's great to see that proactive attitude to keep discussion constructive.
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.
IME, saying 'picking a fight' normally means a verbal confrontation that is intended to escalate, though not necessarily to the physical. In this thread's context, your criticism is fair; the subject matter is floating between the different types and it is far clearer to draw a sharper line between the descriptors of conflict types.
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.
This gets a little tricky. I think she is still standing her ground, just adjusting to a better defensive position. There is no way I would want to be a literal sitting duck in a fighting (literal) situation, so I see her getting out as doing two things: opening the door forces Drejka temporarily away from the car, and puts her (Jacobs) in a far better defensive stance. True, she may have simply been posturing as the badder bad-ass, or genuinely been so, but I would see it as improving your defensive position rather than escalation of conflict.
A lot of this would be dependent on what we don't know. Was Drejka foaming at the mouth, saying 'move this jalopy (thanks to TBD) or I'll make you wish you had', or was it more a quiet 'why are you parked here? There are plenty of available spaces'. Which of these two was the prime aggressor hinges on their words, I think.
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.
Good question. I don't think it would, except for the additional sympathy for the accidental consequence. I would still see it as a busybody looking to jab a finger in someones face, and some of those someones have less respect for law and order than you might like. More below, re anecdote.
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.
You're right, these cats were the perfect storm of personalities to result in disaster. Many people would interact in similar manners, and that's why I place far more blame on Drejka. He initiated it out of the blue, and evidently kept going even after she clearly was not moving. He could have browbeat, and if she was not shamed into moving,
been on his way, or called police. But he evidently kept going, escalating.
Drejka initiated the unnecessary confrontation. He pressed it, evidently relentlessly enough to draw the attention of others. And of course, he escalated to lethal force. This does not excuse McGlocklin or Jacobs, but they did not start or end this. They were Drejka's target du jour.
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).
You would be absolutely right, legally. Would that console the mourners at your funeral if things went south? This may be a difference in view we have: if Mr. Policeman is not around, legality is very very secondary to me. Others may have no compelling desire to comply with law, and as posted upthread, I would also prefer to deal with the legalities after I and others have made it home intact. That's why I blame Drejka so heavily. While there is nothing necessarily illegal about playing parking cop and initiating a confrontation, it is (to resurrect my previous expression) picking a fight. That you might very well get, and in spades. IMO, you can't cry victim when you go out of your way to provoke the response. I don't want my tombstone to read 'Here Lies Thermal. He was legally right'.
