Quite.
The last time I was in such circumstances … as I felt my body lunge towards them, my brain kicked in and (in less than a second), considered the potential outcomes and informed me that putting my steel toecaps to use … whilst perfectly justified under the circumstances … would result in the jury seeing me as the aggressor when shown the CCTV footage, rather than the victim of a mugging attempt gone tragically wrong, and that, on balance, it was better to run (at least the first time ¹ anyway).
Which is pretty impressive, I reckon … given that my body was already acting of its own volition and moving in for the kill ².
It’s just as well, though: if I’d gone with my instincts, I’d’ve had to go looking for his mate ³ in order to resolve the matter … and there’s no way of explaining that away as self-defence — “I was in fear for my life, so I went looking for another of my would-be assailants in order to preemptively defend myself to his death” … there’s just all kinds of awkwardness that follows that particular course of action ⁴.
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¹ Once I’d done that the first time, the record would be set: any further encounter clearly not at my instigation and any action taken, therefore, clearly justifiable self-defence.
² In my defence though, I was rather peeved: I’d gone out of my way to avoid the situation and they’d subsequently gone out of their way to engender it nevertheless — so, I don’t think it unreasonable that I should’ve taken it amiss and been feeling really rather negatively inclined towards them as a consequence.
³ Seriously … what kind of mugger calls for help?
⁴ It’s very difficult to persuade people that you aren’t a cold-blooded killer, just a rationalist preventing a recurrence of the problem (by putting a stop to it once and for all before it can), when there’s footage of you hunting down, brutally assaulting and putting someone in the morgue — irrespective of who has the moral high-ground, the optics aren’t on your side and there’s a subsequent “No, I don’t feel any remorse; on the contrary, I’ve done the World a favour by putting them out of its misery and would do so again in a heartbeat … What do you mean I’m a sociopath?” awkwardness that, really, it’s better to avoid, if possible (however much you might wish it weren’t).
