What Would I Do if an Assailant Threatened my Daughters? (7 of 7)

This is the last post in seven-part series called "A Pragmatic Case for Pacifism." For a link to the table of contents for the entire series, click here.

It’s been a long time since my last post, partially because there has been so much going on in my life in the past few months. Most significantly, my wife gave birth to our second daughter two weeks ago. Our baby is beautiful, and it has been a pleasure for me to see my oldest daughter – who is now 2 years old – get a long so well with her sister. There is nothing in this world more precious than children.

This has gotten me thinking about the most common question that is posed to pacifists, which I would like to address as the last post in this series: “What would you do if a violent person threatened someone you loved and you had to kill them to stop them?” This is the concern that keeps many people – who are sympathetic to the theories and mindset of nonviolence – from crossing the line and becoming full-fledged pacifists. They may agree with everything I have written in the previous six posts. They may believe that we should abstain from violence 99.999% of the time. However, so long as the possibility exists that a violent person could threaten someone they love and that killing them could prevent it from happening, they aren’t willing to relinquish their right to kill if that which they love most is under threat And, as a result, they don’t feel like they can ask other people or nations to relinquish their right to kill when they things they love are under threat. Now, I can’t and won’t deny that the possibility that killing could save an “innocent” life [E1] – however slight – does exist. And how do I answer the question, when it is posed to me? What would I do if a violent person threatened the lives of my daughters, and I knew that the only way that I could save my daughters was to kill the assailant?

I would kill the assailant.

That’s not the answer you were expecting, was it? I was supposed to say, “No, I wouldn’t kill them even then.” But I can’t say that, because – as much as I value and believe in pacifism, as much as nonviolence seems like the most ethical and best way to live – I value my daughters more. I would not put my own need to "hold to some moral principle" above their lives. And that is essentially what the question is trying to suggest that pacifists must do. It asks people, “If you want to be a pacifist, then you have to love nonviolence more than you love anyone or anything else. Are you willing to put this ideal above everything else you care about?” Of course you’re not willing to do that. Neither am I.

But that in no way undermines my absolute commitment to nonviolence. Although it appears that I’m cheating, that I’m trying to make an exception to nonviolence and still call myself a pacifist, I’m actually not.  I can answer, “Yes, I would kill” to that question and still be a pacifist because it is a fallacious question. It contains a false assumption about the world: namely, that there would ever be a situation in which I could know with a high degree of certainty what the outcome of my actions and the actions of others will be. [E2] To be more precise, it actually makes three assumptions: (1) that my attempt to kill the assailant will succeed in saving my daughters; (2) that I can know what the assailant would do to my daughters if I didn’t intervene; and (3) that this is the only thing I could do to save my daughters. But I can’t know any of these things, for they require a person to know both what will happen and what “would have happened.” Therefore, I can answer “yes” and still be a pacifist because I believe very confidently that the scenario posed in this question will never occur.

Maybe an analogy would be helpful here. If you read my blog, then you know I am a Christian, but that doesn’t mean I believe that everything Christians say and do is right. For example, I recognize that Christians sometimes create arguments against atheism that are fallacious and even manipulative. Imagine that a Christian were to ask an atheist, “If you knew that the only way that you could save your loved ones was to pray to God, would you do it?” that would qualify as a fallacious and manipulative question. It’s framed to make the atheist look bad either way. For if they say, “No, they wouldn’t pray” then it appears that their hatred of religion outweighs the love they feel for their families. But if they say, “Yes, I would pray,” then the Christian would be tempted to declare that, in their heart of hearts, they really do believe in God. But neither of these implications is true. The atheist can simply reject the premise that anyone could ever know that praying would save someone and explain that this is why she doesn’t pray. Similarly, the pacifist can simply reject the premise that anyone could ever know that killing would save someone and explain that this is why she doesn’t kill.

 Now, you may be thinking, “Fine – you can’t know with certainty that killing an assailant would save your daughters, but even if you believed there was a reasonable chance that it could, shouldn’t you do it?” Before we answer that, let’s consider the three specific assumptions built into this question to see how reasonable it is to kill someone in order to save someone else.

(1) How confident can we be that our attempt to kill the assailant would succeed in saving the person we love? That depends significantly on who we are and what the circumstances are. In my case personally, as someone who is not very physically imposing and who has never fired a gun in my life, it would be very unwise for me to assume that my attempt to kill an assailant would work. It is more than likely that I could fire a gun and miss, attack the assailant and fail, and by doing so, put my daughters in greater danger than they were in before.

Now, this may seem pretty obvious to those who know me, but in actuality, it is quite hard for me to admit. Like most men and many women in the United States, I have been conditioned to view myself as a superhero who hasn’t blossomed yet. [E3] I want to believe that – if I were put in the right set of circumstances – I could figure out a way to defeat evil with a combination of my skills and wit. [E4]  I have had to make an effort to face my own limitations, even though in my case it should be pretty obvious that I have them. Now some of you may be better equipped than me to take on an assailant, but I would argue that this “conditioning” causes all of us to overestimate our chances of success, to fail to see how much could go wrong in a John-Wayne style rescue. Even in the best-case scenario, where a trained combat vet discovers an assailant threatening their family without being noticed, there is still a small but significant chance that the attempted rescue could fail and make things worse.

(2) How confident can we be that an assailant will kill if we don’t intervene? Again, that depends on the context. Let’s go back to this image of a masked assailant pointing a gun at my children. If I ever faced that scenario (and I pray I never will!), then my paternal instincts would certainly kick in to tell me that they are in mortal danger. But that may or may not be true. Yes, it is possible that the masked robber is a sociopath who is willing to kill children. It’s also possible that he hoped to break in silently and stumbled across them by accident, or that he was desperate and hoped the bluff of holding a hostage would be enough to get him what he needs, or that he himself thought he was ready to kill but he finds himself faltering when faced with the actual situation.

So it’s quite possible – in fact I would argue “more than likely” – that an assailant pointing a gun at my family does not intend to kill them but is looking for a way out. However, if I attempted to fight or kill that person and fail, it could startle him or push him over the edge and inspire him to go through with it. So, if I am being a responsible dad and am not just indulging in my instinctive fears and my inflated self-image as a would-be superhero, then I would assess the situation, determine how likely it was that the person intends to kill and how likely it is that my attempt to kill him would work. I believe that in majority of real cases where people are at gunpoint, the safest and most logical option is not to attack. However, I will concede that there are still a few circumstances in which attempting to kill the assailant seems like it would work and it reasonably could save lives. An active shooter situation is probably the best real-world example of this. What about then? Before answering, let’s evaluate the last assumption: that killing the assailant is the only thing that could work.

(3) How confident can we be that nothing other than violence would work? In strictly philosophical terms, we can’t be confident about this at all. There is no way that a human being could conceive of every alternative possibility to violence at the moment he or she realizes that their family is threatened and conclude that – out of all of them – violence is the best option. No, in the heat of the moment, our flight or fight instinct kicks in and tells us that there are only two options: kill or get away. But there are always more. You could distract an assailant so that your children could get away. You could bribe them. You could film them or shame them or appeal to their humanity. You could reason with them about the consequences or jump in front of your children to shield them with your body.

None of these are guaranteed to work. All of them could fail – just like attempted to kill the assailant could fail. Of course, you can increase your chances of succeeding by preparing for such a situation ahead of time. If you go to the shooting range every week, then it increases your chances of stopping an assailant by killing him/her. Similarly, if you engage in de-escalation training, it increases your chances of stopping an assailant by talking to him/her. And we should do this. Everyone should invest some time in protecting their loved ones. But the question is – how will we invest? How will we work toward safety and security? And I choose to invest in nonviolence.

Why not both? Why not do the de-escalation training and hold on to a gun as a “last resort”? Because there is no such thing as a last resort in those kinds of situations. Or to put it more accurately, every choice is a last resort. If you try to negotiate with someone, you give up your opportunity to attack them by stealth. If you throw your body in front your children, you made your move, and now it’s the assailant’s turn to make hers. Similarly, if you attempt to kill someone, you blow your chances at peaceful negotiation. If we really want to be prepared to engage evil, then we have to commit to a type of response, we have to condition ourselves to react in emotional moments in a specific way. And the way that I have chosen to protect my family is the way of nonviolence.

Conclusion

So you see, pacifism is not an unrealistic ideal that people are expected to adhere to at the cost of everyone and everything they love. It is not a way of avoiding conflict or “doing nothing” in the face of evil. It is a choice to engage with evil in a particular way, the way that Jesus introduced to the world nearly 2,000 years ago. So what would I do if a violent person threatened my daughters? I would use all of my training and every resource at my disposal to try to rescue them nonviolently, which I believe is the safest and most practical response.


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End Notes

[E1] I put innocent in quotation marks because I realize that it is problematic to define people as “guilty” or “innocent” in general, because that suggests that some are deserving of death and others are not. However, it is fair to describe that people are guilty or innocent of particular actions or in particular circumstances, and this is a shorthanded way of conveying this.

[E2] I discovered this assumption from reading John Howard Yoder’s insightful book, What Would You Do? Yoder actually identifies several other assumptions as well, but I highlighted the ones I believe are the most important.

[E3] It’s worth noting that this question is usually directed at men, and part of the reason it is so potent in our culture is that it often appeals to implicit concepts of masculinity. “What would you do if your mother, wife, or daughter was threatened? Would you be man enough to save them?” I suspect that we often claim violence is necessary because we believe that violence is the most honorable response. When a man learns that an important female in his life has been sexually violated, for example, he is supposed to physically threaten the assailant – whether or not that is actually helpful for the victim. Men, we have to acknowledge that this influences the way we think about this issue if we want to actually help the people whom we love feel and be safer.

[E4] – I wonder how much this irrational instinct that we are somehow exceptional convinces people to go to war. Everyone who goes to war knows that people die, but I suspect many people think, “Yes, but it won’t be me. I am smarter, stronger, or better than the average fighter.”

I am speaking outside of my experience here, so I am open to correction, but my impression is that part of the pain that people experience when they return from war is that this illusion has been crushed. They realize that they survived not primarily because they were “superior” or somehow deserving, but because they got lucky. None of us – even our greatest military heroes – can guarantee victory or even survival in a mortal struggle.