Discussion for article #239116
He wasn’t a shooter. He swung a hatchet and sprayed pepper spray. He had a pellet gun not a real pistol. The TPM headline editor should at least try to keep up.
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And this is prime A number 1 exhibit for why gun control. This crazy drifter attacked a theater and one person was slightly hurt being cut by a hatchet and a few people got irritation to their eyes and lungs from pepper spray. If that gun were real, there would probably be fatalities. And people thought he had a gun, so they treated him as if he had, and it was still the police who came and shot him and not a good guy with a gun.
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This story sounds more like suicide by cop than anything else.
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God damn 10 cops shot at him altogether and it was only after the last 5 opened up that they finally took him down. Wow guns stop people so fast!
Actually this sad case says more about the pathetic state of mental health treatment in America.
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Hasn’t everyone in Tennessee been committed four times?
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Why is it that white criminals have “mental issues” and black criminals are called “thugs”? There seems to be a pattern here.
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Dude has Rick Perry’s Ensmartment Glasses. Consider your dots connected, sir.
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The police description noted the suspect fired the airsoft pistol they then returned fire…
Shouldn’t they have been able to tell the difference by the sound? Seems training on shoot to kill takes precedent over threat assessment, this is a problem.
I’m not saying they were wrong, as clearly there was an active situation with some level of actual danger, but a 5 officer firing squad seems a bit much. I’m not there though, perhaps I’m just sick of all the gun violence from civilians and Cops alike.
But the cops said he did shot the pellet gun at them, and the cops returned the fire. So the headline was technically accurate, but yes, sensationalized. Had he been a minority, I’d be willing to bet he would be referred to as “unarmed” and “executed”. Fact is, you point even a fake weapon at a cop, and you are likely to die. And in many of these cases, it’s suicide by cop. This appears to be one. Pity he was unstable and all that, and he clearly should have been treated. But in this situation, cop was correct. Frankly, even if he did not fire the pellet gun, with all those people around and all the shootings of late, if he does not drop the weapon or even starts to point it at the cop, the cop is correct to shoot him.
I have no problem with the actions of the police officers in this case. In addition to the airsoft gun he was armed with a very dangerous hatchet and was obviously unstable and threatening. I think this case was a clear suicide by cop, not domestic terrorism or even a gun violence case. TPM’s reporting is over the top and way off in a the wrong direction. I wonder if anybody at TPM really reads the stuff the young reporters write before it is posted.
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It really is pathetic how many blatant errors both in grammar and susbstance that we find in stories here at TPM
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I think they do, and realize it’s good click bait. They want and need revenue. I guess it’s up to us to decipher things. Yes, this is looking like suicide by cop for sure (similar to the Brown case if you read the report). This guy was clearly disturbed. And many on the left and right seem to want to throw “terrorism” into everything now too. Many are just mass shootings or hate crimes.
I’m sure there was lots of screaming going on at the same time, plus he had an axe. Plus the cops encountered a cloud of pepper spray, that makes them and others very vulnerable, so shooting at him was fine. He then ran out the back door gun in hand and they shot him. Guys inside would have radioed outside guys that perp with weapons he had already used was coming out. Seems like good police work.
Pepper spray has been known to impair ones aim…
Makes you feel good about your investment in Prime eh?
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Perhaps vollying A bunch of bullets in this situation actually made things more dangerous in light of the tear gas factor?
And I’m sure you should be able to tell an air pistol sound from a firearm discharge, no muzzle flash etc… And a man with an Axe should be tasered not executed by firing squad.
Becoming a Cop means day to day risk. That is part of the job. It seems all too often that officer’s safety (while certainly important) is prioritized over public safety of those which are supposed to be protected and served. The cops put way more bullets in play than a single shooter could have in this situation.
I believe that training for instant action has killed far more innocent people than it has saved. Sure an extra second is a risk for cops, but that,in my opinion is a risk they have signed up for.
I’m not saying this was bad police work, but to say it was good police work,in my mind, accepts the notion of shoot first, ask questions later.
I was not there, so I do not know what they saw just prior to the pepper spray, etc. Seems things went well, only 1 person had a minor injury.