Properly, “salmagundi” describes a salad or cold plate made from disparate ingredients that may include meat, seafood, eggs, cooked and raw vegetables, fruits, pickles, or something else. Metaphorically, the word is sometimes used to describe a chaotic confluence of things, ideas or people, forming an incoherent mess. That is how Ethics Alarms will use the term going forward. An Unethical Salmagundi (U.S.) will describe one of those mass collisions of people, situations and institutions that are devoid of ethical logic, discipline or comprehension. An ironically named U.S. will be more disorderly and incomprehensible than an ethics rain wreck, and impossible to sort out. Here is an example from the weekend’s news:
Commuting back to her Queens home via subway, a 40-year-old woman was confronted by Matthew Roesch, a homeless man who repeatedly asked her for money after he held the emergency gate open for her at the 49th Street station near Times Square. He blocked her way, then insisted on a handout.
The targeted victim ignored the demand and kept walking, and Roesch followed, telling her that he would take her purse by force if she didn’t give him cash. When Roesch, who is reportedly known to police for such conduct, grabbed for the bag, bystander John Rote pulled out his gun, pointed it at Roesch, and shouted, “Get the fuck away from her!” When the aspiring mugger didn’t react fast enough, Rote fired several rounds in his direction, giving the woman an opportunity to escape.
Police arrested Roesch quickly and he was charged with attempted robbery. Rote fled, but was arrested at his job the next day. He admitted shooting and told police that he deposited the gun in the East River. The woman he rescued is completely incoherent.
She told the New York Post that she regards Rote as a hero, and would like to thank him. Then she said she wishes he rescued her without using a gun—the first time I’ve ever heard of read of someone saved from a crime who criticized the matter in which she was saved. She then added that she doesn’t believe that citizens should be carrying guns.
“Of course, I am happy that that man tried to help me and that nobody was injured during this incident, but it’s scary to think that people are carrying guns around the city. I understand why people do it, they see it as their only means of protection,” the woman said. Her hero was charged with criminal possession of a weapon, criminal possession of a firearm, reckless endangerment and menacing.
Yeesh. New York City is irresponsible and incompetent, allowing habitual offenders like Roesch to make commuting an unwanted adventure. Roesch, of course…
…is irredeemable. Rote…
…is an idiot. Police say he wasn’t firing at the mugger but merely trying to scare him away, but it is just moral luck that he didn’t kill one of the estimated 40 other commuters of the platform. Carrying a gun and not knowing how to use it safely is an abuse of the right. Throwing the gun away after such an incident demonstrates total confusion: if he was determined to play Good Citizen With a Gun, then he ought to have been forthright rather than acting like Michael Corleone after he shot Sallozo. But if criminals are going to be allowed to run amuck in the city, citizens will arm themselves—and for good reason.
Meanwhile, the woman at the center of the drama needs to figure out what she thinks. She doesn’t like guns, she calls a man with a gun who rescued her a hero, then says what he did was wrong. She, like all citizens, has an obligation to give serious thought to the issues involved before she opines on them again.
Nobody connected to this incident, as well as the community it occurred in, seems to have the ethical instincts of a herring, which, interestingly, is a common ingredient of salmagundi.
Unethical Salmagundi!
Yecchh.
Ethics Alarms 
I don’t know how many times I’ve told people, “You never pull out a concealed hand gun unless you are ready to actually shoot someone center mass. You never brandish a concealed hand gun to scare people. You never fire warning shots of any kind – ever. A concealed hand gun is a last resort tool to prevent life threatening violence.” PERIOD
John Rote’s actions do not conform to these standards.
A robbery deep underground a few feet from electrified railroad tracks is per se life threatening violence.
Being attacked in an isolated area, especially by someone looking as alert and with it as Rote, one cannot presume mere dispossession of material objects. Being attacked near subway tracks weights the dice of moral luck that victim and/or perpetrator get knocked off the platform into the path of an oncoming train or directly onto the third rail. (Shooting a gun in an enclosed concrete tunnel is also weighting dice, as an errant shot could go or ricochet anywhere).
thisisrichinct wrote, “A robbery deep underground a few feet from electrified railroad tracks is per se life threatening violence.”
Wrong, dead wrong.
thisisrichinct wrote, “Being attacked in an isolated area, especially by someone looking as alert and with it as Rote, one cannot presume mere dispossession of material objects. Being attacked near subway tracks weights the dice of moral luck that victim and/or perpetrator get knocked off the platform into the path of an oncoming train or directly onto the third rail. (Shooting a gun in an enclosed concrete tunnel is also weighting dice, as an errant shot could go or ricochet anywhere).”
There is no evidence whatsoever that the woman was attacked.
Please don’t carry a concealed firearm, thisisrichinct, using you’re kind of logic will land you in prison for manslaughter.
The Secret Service in D.C. just shot at three people trying to break the window of a unoccupied car. Rules for thee…
Interesting. I there a link to the full story?
The woman, who is the victim here, is a fool for waffling around about the use of a firearm that prevented her from being robbed. I think if we were to dig into this woman, we’d find out that she is likely an anti-gun advocate of some kind.
Ya think?
Roesch, who’s actions are clearly ethically, morally and legally wrong, will likely find some big city attorney to sue Rote for everything he’s got in civil court.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Steve W,
If someone charges you with obvious ill-intent and you pull your weapon fearing for your life but do not shoot because the individual reverses course, is that still considered brandishing?
Batman,
You haven’t presented enough information to make an informed decision. How do you know there is ill intent and is it life threatening?
Steve,
The questions you pose are always the case, more or less. I suppose that is what jury trials are for. Unless the would-be assailant has already made contact, it is always a judgement call. If contact has been made, it may be too late to draw a weapon, and therein lies the issue.
Assume the individual is angry, shouting words of attack, and aggressively moving towards you. They could even be silently moving towards you but in a menacing fashion. A judgment call again as always unless and until contact is made. Brandishing laws can get a person killed.
Life threatening is another judgement call. One punch to the face or throat can be lethal.
Generally, no; self defense is considered an exception to “brandishing” restrictions in most (all?) jurisdictions. Self defense laws also usually encompass defense of another as equivalent to self defense.
Firing a warning shot is almost always a bad idea, for a number of good reasons… although many of them are predicated on the presumption that the firearm holder is the one being attacked. NRA’s “Armed Citizen” reports occasionally note incidents where warning shots seem to have been effective, sometimes maybe unintentionally. I remember one report of a homeowner in Florida fired numerous shots at an invader, either accidentally or purposely missing, but driving him away. The sheriff’s department offered to give him shooting lessons. Some reports credit meer display of a firearm with detering a crime.