Yes, we all want to put in a good response saying that we are good citizens to our fellow humans, chivalrous, and am willing to risk injury to become a hero. It all sounds good and looks good on the computer screen in the generality of the question where it is easy for the person responding to emphatically claim they would intervene, but in reading so many other posts here and on other forums, many by those who have responded here are not fools and would NOT play the hero when you knew that your chance of success would be quite low and your chance of severe injury or death quite high.
Even with such really good better-than-nothing self defense pistols such as a P32, you never hear someone saying, "Sure, so there are 10 guys involved in a gang initiation rape situation and I can see that at least 8 were armed. Realizing the woman's life and honor were in danger, I whipped out my trusty P32 and immediately took command of the situation where all 10 guys immediately surrendered to my larger than life presence and respected fire power."
I added in the P32 part because so many posters seem to carry one when they don't want to carry big, can't carry big, or just because it is the only gun they always have with them.
We all say we will be Johnny on the spot to help, but we never admit that we might completely screw up in the process because of tunnel vision or immediate threat fixation. None of us want to admit to ourselves that we are going to be like the guy in Arizona last year who saw a mobile burger stand get hijacked at a stop sign/light and being a gun carrier, immediately lept into action, approached the truck, maybe shooting as he did so, and while taking care of the situation from the driver's side door area - pointing his gun into the cook area, the driver for the hijackers simply ran him down where upon one of the hijackers picked up the would be hero's gun and shot him several times. None of us think we are going to be like the overweight cop wannabe from Glock Talk who attempted to intervene in a robbery where he apparently did not have good situation awareness and ended up being killed and his gun stolen as well.
None of us are going to knowingly enter a situation where we feel we have little or no real chance of survival. None of us are going to knowingly do something stupid like intervening in the rape situation above when chances of success are low and chances of both you and the victim getting hurt or killed are high because of the overwhelming numbers against you and overwhelming firepower against you.
Yes, most of us will help when we can and when it isn't tactically stupid to do so. Just because we carry guns does not mean we have to use them (as noted by DadOfThree) and being helpful does not always mean that we have to put ourselves in immediate danger. As he noted, yelling at the bad guys may be enough to draw attention to the situation and make them aware that they are not getting away with a perfect crime, that there is a witness, and so they may flee. That it just one possibility. Remember, it is often better to be a live good witness than a dead hero.
