Here’s the thing: If you’ve got a gun on you and you intend to stop someone from doing something, you let them know you’ve got the gun from far enough away that they can’t get at you.

I’ve written before about how I stopped an assault on a woman in Seattle, a little over ten years ago. Now I was several stories above the action, leaning out of my kitchen window, yelling incoherently and shaking a lever action rifle like a Sand Person from Star Wars, but it worked. I didn’t have to point the weapon, just let the guy know that I’d had enough of watching him beat the shit out of his girlfriend and the situation might jump up a notch if he didn’t stop immediately.

What you don’t do is abandon your safe position, car, etc. and approach the suspect on foot, especially when he hasn’t done anything more suspicious than walk around and look at things while being black and wearing a hoodie. Getting into physical altercation range is what cops are paid to do, cop wannabe’s not so much.