> You don't have the guts.

If you challenge a violent criminal like this, you leave him no choice but to shoot you. That goes double if you do it in front of his peers. Either he rises up to your challenge or he loses respect. He's dead if people don't respect him.

People do all sorts of things when they're placed in stressful situations. It's easy to end up making this sort of challenge when trying to drive away an aggressor. Insults, challenges, threatening violence, threatening to call the cops. Sometimes a violent person starts to back down and leave but the victim just has to get that last insult in to teach him a lesson.

Like all people, women are prone to this. Verbal violence can and will escalate a dangerous situation. Sometimes women initiate physical violence against much stronger men: they slap him.