These situations aren’t always so clear cut, I don’t think. I don’t have a gun so that wouldn’t have been an option for me but I probably wouldn’t have called 911 and have tried to break the fight up with a two by four which wouldn’t have worked either and would have been stupid. I would have panicked too.
I found the news story here and they have some of the video … and … I’m not a gun person but I’m just not sure a gun would have been the answer here either. Say she’s an average, even possibly a somewhat above average shot … looking at the video, what would be the chances of her actually getting a solid shot at one or both of the pit bulls in the first place and without killing or wounding one of her own dogs? Particularly in the time she had to do it?
A couple of other things. When you call 911 the operator assesses your emergency: fire, police, ambulance, dispatches emergency personnel to your location immediately and stays on the line with you. To be there, to try and calm you down and to try to get more information, like whether or not your packing heat, to keep you from doing something stupid, all that stuff, to get information about what situation officers are getting into.
The woman herself admitted she was panicked and babbling like an idiot at times and possibly, the most responsible thing the dispatcher “could” have done was try to disarm her while the authorities were on the way. It endangers both the citizen and the first responders if they show up to an emergency and someone is armed and panicked. Cops don ‘t like those kinds of calls. But, it in the end, it would have been the woman’s choice to have listened to the 911 operator or not. Just saying, a 911 operator who has just sent police and EMTs to an address can’t exactly encourage people to remain armed. And also, what apparently saved her dog’s life was that emergency personnel arrived in time to treat the dog because she called 911.
It’s a great story though. In the news report I linked to above, they said, and you can see it on the video, that the other woman’s other two dogs tried to help the one under attack by trying to herd the pit bulls away. Good dogs! They’re the heroes. :-)