When you impede people with guns from doing what they intend to do, you place yourself in peril. You should always be careful with people who have the ability to hurt you and kill you. If you do anything in life to unnecessarily raise tension, and as a result of that raised tension, other people make bad decisions that result in tragedy, you deserve blame. Don’t raise tension among people wielding guns, even if you disagree with them.
There is a distinction here between moral rights and tactical reality.
Tactical Reality: From a purely safety standpoint, de-escalation is almost always the highest-percentage play. Agitating someone who is already on edge and holding a lethal weapon introduces volatility that can easily spiral out of control.
Some conflicts are avoidable unforced errors. If the goal is to survive and go home, introducing friction often works against that goal.
You cannot control the other person’s emotional state or training, but you can control your own inputs into the situation. If you input aggression or unpredictability, you increase the statistical likelihood of a violent output.
