[TteFAboB]

Given the different outcomes no single attitude will be the best course of action in every situation. It's a matter of analyzing it and judging your chances. To decide a priori and stick only with either the worst or the best you can imagine or know is to ignore a multiplicity of possibilites and previous cases that unfolded one way or the other. By doing so whenever presented with a situation that demands the contrary you will end up taking the worst alternative, no matter how good your intentions were, if at all.

Considering the best course of action as that which has everybody walking out alive, in a case where a robber is going to kill the victims and no opportunity to succesfully overcome him is ever presented attempting to subjugate him or not is indifferent to an outcome that won't be the best. Even so, tragedy is still better than slaughterhouse. On the other hand, if the criminal will murder someone and he can be successfully stopped inaction is a transgression itself.

Personally, I've done each once. Kicked a gang of robbers out of a house with an old S&W .22 and spared one victim from stabbing or perhaps everybody else, myself included, and remained immobile and quiet in the back seat of a car while a little thief completed his robbery with a knife held to the neck of a front-seat passenger. Although he ran away with his back turned to us, I allowed him to get away as I was sure he was a minor. Won't go wrong with prudency and sound judgement.