Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Police shoot man running around with air rifle in Wal-Mart (video)

Interesting question. I shop at Kroger. And if I ever see a civilian coming around the corner into my aisle with an AK in his hands - not slung, but in his hands - my first thought is going to be that he intends to kill me.

There won't be a lot of time to look around to see if other people are running for cover or otherwise showing signs of concern.

yes, and you're a civilian not responding to a 911 call meaning that unlike you in the situation above, the policemen knew ahead of time of the possible situation giving them time to evaluate it.

see - we're supposed to understand that the cop had only a split second to apply a common sense approach to the moment he faced shooter but completely disregard that he had ample time to assess the severity of the threat prior to that moment.

that is what troubles me in those defending the shooting.

So if I shoot and kill the guy, I'm good. A responding officer shooting and killing the same guy, it's not.

I don't know if your good, but I understand why you'd react the way you did.

And the rest of your statement, absolutely

Did the dispatch tell the cop only one 911 call was placed?

Did the officers encounter other people before they saw the suspect.

Do all citizens panic? For that matter, do people behave like they are always aware of their surroundings - take for example the subway crowd that the one nutcase pointed guns at while they were too busy on their mobile devices to notice.

In a vacuum, I would have been predisposed by wondering, given the 911 call of man with gun in walmart, why he hadn't shot any one yet, given response times and all and figured he had a screw loose and was waiting for cops - rather than deduce that an unboxed weapon was laying around and he just picked it up and walked casually around the store not getting other items to purchase.

but that's just selective logic again.

I don't know the answers to those questions

but the default answer isn't "shoot now, evaluate later"

if you're a policeman and you're looking for justification to why you should shoot someone, such as "yea, a guy could paint an orange tip on any gun" or "people don't panic because they look at their cell phone" then there is a serious problem

If you can rationalize why you should ignore the situation around you because there is a threat that is life endangering to you and that is the only possible scenario, then how can you ever be trusted to protect the public?

You make an assumption that the cops knew there was only one 911 call. IME that tidbit isn't usually on the forefront of dispatchers minds in these situations

And look at the video, there isn't a whole lot of people around him and you only see a few people in the other screen

You admit you don't know. and then claim you do

It's easy to sit a 1000 miles away behind a keyboard and say what someone SHOULD have done in a highly stressful situation.

You pretend YOU are being "logical" but it's all a delusion when you ignore the facts you don't like

Their justification was they ordered him to drop the gun, and instead of doing that he went from dangling it with one hand to bring it into a two handed grip or a firing grip.

If I tell you to drop the gun, and instead of dropping it, you raise it up towards me and get a two handed grip on it, i'm going to take it that you mean to kill me.

I'm not ignoring facts

Unfortunately I need to leave to go on a camping trip with the scouts so I have to bow out for the rest of the weekend

it was an f-ing bb gun with a orange tip

Isn't this exactly why they make the orange tip?

The cops were in the wrong, period.

you don't have your facts straight Dave.....

Pellet guns don't have orange tips

this:

I see it as murder. Totally uncalled for. Flame away. I don't care.

I watched the video.

They were wrong.

So, they were wrong because the gun had an orange tip.

Upon finding out the gun had no orange tip, they were wrong for another reason.

Well met.

Well. Apparently a GJ disagrees with you. Instead of bitching and whining here. You should get their names and cry and stomp your feet to them

If it weren't for TRH's anti-semitism, I could make a bundle mail ordering sack cloth, ashes, and mouth guards.

You're on a roll today, but that's an outstanding piece of work sir. Well done.