Comments on: Armed Citizens: Extreme Caution is Required in Third-Party Defense Situations, Especially Those Involving Police https://www.shootingnewsweekly.com/gun-nation/armed-citizens-extreme-caution-is-required-in-third-party-defense-situations-especially-those-involving-police/ Sat, 04 Jul 2026 18:26:37 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.4 By: uncommon_sense https://www.shootingnewsweekly.com/gun-nation/armed-citizens-extreme-caution-is-required-in-third-party-defense-situations-especially-those-involving-police/comment-page-1/#comment-187759 Sat, 04 Jul 2026 18:26:37 +0000 https://www.shootingnewsweekly.com/?p=40240#comment-187759 As far as I can imagine, the only time that I would intervene to defend a third party is when I saw the attack happen (and the attack was obviously an attack). Plus I would only act if I am able to act immediately, not minutes later. Meaning, my “window of opportunity” to intervene isn’t much more than 10 or maybe 20 seconds after the onset of the attack. Any longer than that and I risk (in a huge way) someone (whether citizen or police) mistakenly determining that I am an attacker and deserve deadly force to stop me.

I suppose there could be a few other situations where I would intervene minutes after the onset of the attack: those would almost all have to be in settings where there is no one else to misidentify me as the attacker.

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