This story has exactly ZERO to do with "honor." His 12 year old daughter was sexually assaulted.

He wasn't defending her honor, he was defending her against a molester, and he did it by yelling at the thug. I don't see anyway a guy, with his wife and daughter, defending her against a molester, could possibly NOT be considered reluctant when he's attacked by 8(7 adults, 1 teenager) thugs.

Except we, as permit holders, are required(attempt) to walk away, rather than confront the individual(s).

Yup. If the active assault was done and over, he should have made himself a good witness.

(says the guy with no daughters.)

I kind of see two "events" in terms of "what if father had been carrying"
1. He used appropriate (unfortunately in this environ) verbal only action in response to somebody physically touching his underage daughter in the “no fly zone”. Maybe he wasn’t reluctant, but it was verbal and as far as he thought, the event was over.

2. The thugs called in back up and started a confrontation in which the unarmed guy was obviously in danger of great bodily harm or death. From the sounds of the injuries, GBH and death could still be on the table, too soon to know how his eyesight will be affected, too soon to know if that bleeding on the brain will lead to scar tissue that’ll cost him a stroke down the road.

I sure don’t see drawing down on the one or two thugs that were handled verbally in event 1, but event 2 seems a pretty clear “justified shoot”. If the police hadn’t arrived and the thugs decided they wanted to “finish what they started” with the girl . . . . unarmed dad was in no shape to prevent that. Yuk, says the guy with a daughter.

If this was my daughter(I have 2 boys), I would have verbally accosted/confronted the perps for doing what they did--rather than walk away. That is how I would have defended my family's honor/integrity. I guess I am too self-righteous.

Valleyfair is posted; I won't be spending my money there anytime soon. That said if I were to go, and given these recent events, I'd be carrying a couple of extra magazines beyond what I normally carry

There is no such thing as a safe retreat with wife and daughter in tow, when there are 8 thugs coming at you.

Reluctance is almost definitely not an issue. A 12 year old can't possibly consent to being assaulted by an adult. Unless the father offered up his daughter, his reluctance can be safely assumed, as far as I know.

Reluctant doesn't mean 'dragged in, kicking and screaming'. If you wait for that standard, you're in trouble.



Lethal force is authorized "when necessary in resisting or preventing an offense which the actor reasonably believes exposes the actor or another to great bodily harm or death", and great bodily harm includes "bodily injury which creates a high probability of death, or which causes serious permanent disfigurement, or which causes a permanent or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ or other serious bodily harm." Getting kicked in the face until your eye orbit breaks and your brain bleeds has got to qualify.



As the guy with two daughters, I second the yuk.

Wow...just wow, says a mom with a daughter.... My family and I won't be going to Valley Fair any time soon if this is the way Valley Fair welcomes law abiding citizens (posted property). And it will be interesting if these thugs had been reported earlier but Valley Fair didn't do anything at the time and allowed the behavior to continue and escalate to this ending....

Wonder what they will say... "At least no one got shot and seriously injured or killed because we don't allow guns on our property"???

Hopefully, they will be sent to prison and experience their own sexual assault.

The whole thing is yet another reason for Castle Doctrine

I went to a carry class last Saturday, and I learned something (I know that some of you that know me can't believe that but...) There is a legal DIFFERENCE between the USE of deadly force and the THREAT of deadly force. Bearing in mind that the escalation from the second to the first may be needed in the blink of an eye and if you threaten you MUST be prepared to carry out the threat should the situation deteriorate further. A threat of deadly force in a situation like this may have been sufficient to disperse the gang and minimize the beating received by the Father in this case!

More food for thought on how any of us might intervene in a situation like this.

I'd like to think so. But there are prosecutors out there who don't agree, and juries are a crap-shoot.

We have a Castle Doctrine, what we need is a "Stand Your Ground Law" removing the duty to retreat, and damnit, we were close this spring! We need to get our collective asses together and get our friends and family to call, write and show up at the capitol about this, and bring up this attack, hell use it to our advantage since it's in the media lime light.