Kid and girl attacks a man randomly. Should adults be allowed to fight back?

reply to post by Xcathdra


Thanks for weighing in on the legality of defending yourself in a situation like this.

For what its worth, I do agree with you that part of this is because of the attitude change that, "if you are under 18 nobody can touch you for any reason." As you say, many kids and many adults fully believe this and its born out by stuff like this you see happening.

Thinking back when I was a teen (decades ago) I honestly have no idea what the child protection laws were back then. I'm not sure that it matters and I can say without a shadow of a doubt if me or my friends did something like this we would have gotten our butts beat. If the person we did it to didn't do it then bystanders would, our parents certainly would have and if was anywhere near school grounds the principal or coach would make it so we couldn't set down for a long time.

I'll even go so far as to say that if we been those kids and the guy fought back and broke our noses the deputy would likely say, "You got what you deserved. Do that again and I won't say nothing if they shoot you. No go home!" I knew both deputies in our little town. Looking back they were good guys.

Would that kind of stuff be the right way to handle it today? I dunno. I can say there was a lot less of this kind of stuff back in the day when things were handled that way though.

reply to post by Frogs


What occured back in the day and waht occurs today are completely different, which is to say it shifted from growing up learning to respect other people to the who gives a sh#t attitude. (sarcasm)Society has done a good job at raising peoples children, while at the same time parents have gone from being involved to its someone elses issue, anda lot of people see school as nothing more than daycare with the expectation the teachers should be the defacto parents.

Since the Supreme Court rulings about Minors and their rights, how a situation like this is handeled is up to juveinle authorities and the PA's office.

In my state, if I respond to a call where a person was shot and killed, and the suspect is 16 years old and he surrenders the moment I get there, I cannot arrest him. I can detain pending a juveinile officer's response, but absent the juvenile officer, we dont have authority (in my state anyways) to take action on our own.

Our society today is to touchy feely, where we reward bad behavior and punish those who behave.

reply to post by Exuberant1


Fantasizing? Please.. What part is fantasizing? I have no problem putting down some strange child if he for no reason attacks me and becomes violent. I kid talking smack is one thing, you just smile and move on.. no point getting in an arguement with a child.. but if the kid thinks he can rob you or just attack you.. yeah, he's getting smacked.. and brought to his parents. where I will say, "I apologize, but your child attacked me and I had to restrain him."

If that happened to me, boy oh boy, I would bend that brat over my knee and give her a good spanking... then I would stand her up and give her a good verbal scolding while I pointed my finger at her!! After that, I would put a dunce cap on her and make her stand in the corner so her friends could see. Next I would have a word with her mother!

She would think twice about attacking people on the subway again! Darn kids!

Some of the solutions do this problem are hilarious

If someone is trying to cause you harm you should have a right to defend yourself. Even if they are kids, they're old enough to make the simple choice of violently attacking someone. At the age of 6 I knew not to attack someone unprovoked and my parents did not teach me that. It's common sense and it's better for someone to be taught a lesson when they're young instead of later when the pick a fight with someone when they're older who wouldn't be afraid to defend themselves. I don't believe that poor parenting is an excuse for an innocent person being attacked by some stupid kids