Taking on someone in a wrestling match is one thing. Taking on someone with a gun who just needs to get it between you and him and pull the trigger is another thing entirely. I don’t think anyone should be expected to put their lives on the line to do that if they have a better option available.
It was a long gun, iirc. Not a handgun. Not something that’s easy to maneuver in close quarters.
Oh man… I think SNL could write a great skit with the ‘hero’ guy confronting the shooter, pointing his gun at him and saying,
“Wait a minute. You look pretty young and I ain’t no child-killer. Before I shoot and kill you I’m gonna need to see some ID.”
**I don’t think anyone should be expected to put their lives on the line
**
that, for me, I think is the crux of this -
There’s a continuum from “no risk at all” to “probably gonna die” that we need to be thinking about before we say that using a weapon to kill the mass shooter is justified.
How much risk was there?
Given that a (female) teacher was already wrestling, and that he could “carefully aim” was it possible to help the teacher rather than shoot?
Taking the life of the spree shooter is a big deal - even if we accept that as a mass shooter he gave up his right to life (which I largely do), it still matters. It is of consequence to kill him,
After all, we’re not talking about Kristi Noem killing an untrainable dog here …or are we?
Which is why I said “get it between you and him”, not “aim it at you”. You’re right that aiming a gun at a person you are wrestling is difficult, but just getting the shotgun between him and the teacher would have been enough to rip her in half.
Was the shooter still holding on to the gun? Even a long gun can be dangerous in that situation, so if he was still struggling for control of the weapon then I’d say shooting was by far the best option.
Even if he had dropped the weapon, it would still be a judgement call because shooters often take more than one gun with them, so who knows if he had another one he could pull if he could get his hands free. If you had more than 2 people, the call would be easier because you could better totally incapacitate him with more than 2 people to make sure he doesn’t reach for anything (and then possibly search him once you have sufficient extra people.)
What do you believe the appropriate action is for the public to take moving forward? While fighting isn’t my first choice it’s certainly a viable option.
You think the fact that he was armed with a shotgun might be relevant as well? Perhaps more relevant than his height and weight?
You have absolutely no obligation to make any attempt to preserve the life of someone who is trying to kill you or another person. I just want to remind you that this kid already murdered three people before he was killed.
Not by anyone responding to the immediate threat of getting their head blown off by said shooter.
Is it realistic to expect untrained civilians to be experts in unarmed hand-to-hand combat, to understand the associated risks and be able to made split second decisions based on training they don’t have?
The father who shot the suspect had already witnessed him shooting up a car, shooting out a door to gain entrance and then killing some children and shooting other children and a teacher in a classroom.
How do you expect people to be able to make split second decisions in a situation like that?
Is there any such training that is taught to civilians (who are very much not expected to confront armed killers) at all? It is not covered by military (who are taught to distinguish combatants from non-combatants and, as for the combatants, to put one in them after they are down just to make sure they are dead) training, either.
Of course there isn’t any training. It’s an absurd notion that civilians could be expected to make decisions like that in the heat of the moment.
@bengangmo , are you just asking if it’s possible or suggesting it? If you are asking if it’s possible, what do you think?
I didn’t, and that’s why i think he’s innocent of murder, whatever a video might show about other viable options. And i don’t think anyone would charge him.
I’m just uncomfortable with the narrative I’ve seen, that lavishes him with praise and barely mentions the unarmed teacher.
I doubt most people would. I’m curious what @bengangmo thinks.
But i seem to be in a minority in agreeing with @bengangmo that the life of the teen matters, too.
And also, both the shooter and the teacher need to live the rest of their life knowing they participated in killing another human being. And the teacher didn’t get to make that choice.
Are people saying that the lives of the teen don’t matter? Can you point to posters who said that? I never said that, did others?
I’m just saying that in this particular situation, it’s absurd to expect that a civilian make the kind of decisions that would be asked of them.
The teen’s life may or may not have mattered to any individual, but while they held the gun in their hands, their life did cease to matter in any meaningful way, overshadowed by exigency and the lives of the victims and potential victims.
So, for argument’s sake, let’s take this to a logical extreme. Thought experiment: If the teen had fully surrendered, weapons away, on his knees and arms up, would it then have been wrong to kill him?
How clearly wrong? Would there be any shade of gray left then at all?
If, upon entering that room and seeing three dead kids and a dead teacher, the shooter surrendering in the corner… if the father then decided to walk calmly over and shot the teen in the back of the head in a cold-blooded execution… how does that change the situation?
Would he then be guilty of murder? What if there was no way to tell if the surrender was legitimate or just a ploy? And if were charged with murder, would a jury convict? Would you?
Does it matter if there was one body? Ten? Twenty?
Well, I did, for one. But I don’t expect others to go that far.
It’s not so much that the life of the teen never mattered – I would have much preferred that he had access to counseling rather than weaponry – but that IMO it no longer mattered once he started the mass shooting.
The teen forfeited his right to life and due process the moment he murdered the first child, much less the second, third, and fourth person. After that it doesn’t much matter, ethically, how and when the teen was killed. Of course legally it would, but that’s a situation where legality has more nuance than ethics would demand.
I would apply the same rationale to, say, plane hijackers or public bombers, too.
I think mass shootings are one of those situations where the law and law enforcement just can’t keep up with the reality anymore, and the “good guy with a gun” narrative is both the pragmatic AND ethical solution. That, upon a truly verified and unambiguous threat of this sort, an armed bystander can and should take action in the public interest to end the life of the attacker. Almost like a citizen’s arrest, extended to a “citizen’s execution”. The attacker’s right to life and due process, and their value as a human being, ceases at that moment – or at least are drastically outweighed by their threat to society.
It’s not about revenge or justice. Just removing a threat to society. Once someone engages in premeditated mass murder, there is no going back and nothing left to save.
Would you be untroubled if this had played out as it did except the praise struck a balance you felt proper?
I’m just not getting the concern expressed in this thread over a tragic situation created by a single person. In the aftermath, are we valuing the teenager’s life sufficiently? Could the dad have made a different split section decision in an active shooter situation? Are we praising just the right amount, and in just the proper balance?
I’m glad that asshole Bill Maher didn’t stumble into this thread. He’d harumph up a storm.
Does the life of the teen shooter matter? Absolutely it does.
Does the life of the teen spree shooter matter enough that the dad, or the teacher, or anyone else who isn’t a spree shooter should be expected to put their lives at risk in order to stop him in a non lethal way? No. Absolutely not. When you go on a shooting spree, you forfeit that right for society to have that level of concern about your well being.
Was it ever about prevention, or do we not even start the conversation until the bullets fly?
Absolutely wrong to kill someone who’s apparently harmless and surrendered. As to it being a ploy, you don’t have to put hands on them. Just hold them at gunpoint until someone with handcuffs shows up.
The only small shade of grey would be whether the father was out of his mind with grief or horror, and that’s more a question for the sentencing phase.