Basia Halliop

It's so hard to know...

For one thing, it's not clear to me what exactly your options were where, or rather what consequences they would have had, if we're talking about violence.

You or someone else could have beat him up or frightened him badly. Would this have stopped him from bullying or beating up on smaller people (far away from you) again once he recovered? That's a psychology question really... Honestly, I doubt it... maybe he would have learned that it's stupid to beat up on smaller people where there's a large friend close by, but I personally doubt that would change his basic attitude or behaviour towards people smaller than him.... If he learned to respect you, it would be your ability to beat him up that he respected... so I would not expect him to develop any sudden respect for people HE can beat up, if they are vulnerable (which might include relatively friendless or unlikely to ask for help). If this offered any solution, IMO it would be a short-term, narrow, one.

If you had literally killed him, OK, he would be gone. (You would be in prison for life which would probably have effects for your family and others, etc, but that's another story).
But can one person really make the decision to kill another person, without trial, on the spot, because they frighten someone or give them a broken arm? What is 'bad enough' to merit instant death? What if he WAS treatable in this case? Or might there be larger ramifications to other people? Or what if you learned things the next day that made you realize this was a totally wrong decision? To me this isn't right either.... Nor is it a precedent I'd like to see accepted.

It's a more serious possibility if he was clearly trying to murder your friend or something, but...

I don't know, it's not an easy solution either way. On the one hand, it's unrealistic to assume that love and kind words can fix every single person or situation, on the other hand, just 'dealing with them' is most often not as simple or clear-cut option an option as it seems either.

I know it's a cliche, but isn't the complexity one of the reasons societies have systems in place like the legal system, police, social services, etc? So that people can be supervised and monitored, treated where possible, restrained where necessary, etc? And so that decisions made are made fairly based on agreed-upon principles, and to limit the mistakes of one person's judgment?

They clearly don't always work, but when is it a fault of the basic premise, and when is it a question of the particulars of the system?