Missed the edit window.
One thing that is not clear is how long he took between going out the door, firing off his remaining bullets, and then re-entering the store, as very helpfully, there is a cut in the cctv footage I’ve seen, at that point, or so it seems.
Excellent post, Kobal2. Your summation of self-defense is spot on.
It was just a few seconds. Locrian provided links to 3 security camera videos in post #54. The third link is to the camera outside the store and you can see Mr. Ersland depart the frame and return with no edit.
Your first sentence seems to contradict itself.
Your second sentence seems to be calling people who think Mr. Ersland committed an illegal act abnormal, and it attributes sympathy which has not, for the vast majority, been expressed in this thread. Not condoning Mr. Ersland’s actions is not the same as saying “poor poor robber”.
I am sympathetic to Mr. Ersland’s plight as the intended victim of an armed robbery. But I cannot condone, nor justify, his actions with regard to shooting an unarmed, unconscious, immobile human being.
Ersland didn’t know that
You don’t know that. You are basing that opinion off of the ME’s report. I guarantee you that Ersland will find an Expert witness who will say otherwise.
You don’t know that either. It takes about a second to draw a gun that is secured behind your back. Think you can react fast enough for that? Put yourself in a back brace like Ersland wears. Still think you can?
The video is clear in only this respect.
Yep. And Ersland, with the same 20/20 hindsight we all have here, should never have let the two in the store in the first place. He should have had duct tape and zip ties ready to tie people up, metal detectors at the door, a bigger caliber weapon…
The guy’s hands were visible, and empty.
I also don’t know that "Ersland’ is his real name. I’m basing that off the news stories. But I go by the information I have, not the information I wish I had.
Yeah, I think if I already have my gun out and pointed at the unconscious, wounded man on the floor I can react faster than he can draw an imaginary or hypothetical gun, even if I was in a back brace with one arm in a cast and a peg leg, with a patch over one eye.
It’s clear in many other respects, not just this one respect.
:rolleyes:
This is just ridiculous. Apart from the fact that this isn’t ‘liberals’ speaking, it’s humans - how can they have a hard time getting support but have popular positions?
Further, I’d hope that ‘normal’ people are perfectly able to muster sympathy for anyone, regardless of circumstances. Your lack of logic goes further in assuming that sympathy for one party means no sympathy whatsoever for another. It is possible to think that this is ended in an illegal and immoral way - with the death of a fellow human - not only without suggesting that the dead man was innocent or that the shooter was entirely without cause.
Reducing the argument to black and white, right and wrong is not only pointless but also completely at odds with your own legal system - and that of the ‘civilised’ Western world.
First off, I’m not a liberal.
Next, normal people would, or at least should, muster sympathy for someone who was no longer capable of commiting the robbery as he was laid out on the floor and was no longer a danger and therefore was killed, from the evidence at hand, pretty much in cold blood. The sympathy should go towards the victim of a murder.
Finally, I have plenty of sympathy for the victim of the robbery all the way to the point where he was no longer a victim. Being the victim of a crime, which by the way is no longer in progress, is not license to commit a different and more serious crime. Seems to me that there are these nifty things called laws that address this far better than I.
That would be what happened with the first shot.
The non-spontaneous bit would be the next five shots, the ones fired after reloading.
Maybe the next time the robbery victim decides to live out an episode of Law & Order, he’ll recall what happened in the end of that episode before acting on that decision.
The abortion doctor was murdered because of vigilantism. Which do you prefer, a nation of laws or a nation were people are murdered because other people don’t like them?
Left something out of my post above.
I’m not confusing jack.
Please excuse my slight hijack, but I didn’t quite understand this (not being familiar with US law), does this mean that if a person is murdered while committing a crime his accomplices are implicated in the murder regardless of culpability or not? By culpability I mean that they did not actually kill him.
Wow, an unconscious person, who can be easily shot if he shows any signs of not being unconscious, poses no threat requires 20/20 hindsight to figure out?
You must think Ersland to be really incredibly stupid.
We seem to have that law in the UK, but it is so arbitrarily used as to be nothing but confusing.
I’ve heard of cases where 2 parents have been charged with the death of a child, but because it couldn’t be decided who caused the fatal blow, nobody is charged with murder.
On the other hand, there are cases where a group are involved in an attack on someone who dies, and they all get charged with the murder, but because no one will admit to giving the fatal blow, all are sentenced similarly, if found guilty.
The law makers have had hundreds of years of human history and experience, and still can’t help being asses at times. If they are dealing with property and not human lives they tend to make far fewer mistakes!
Which certainly does not equal unarmed. Just nothing in his hands.
How long does it take you to move your hand to your back and fake draw a gun on someone? A second? Maybe a second and a half? Have you ever done any practical shooting or taken CCW styled self defense courses? You might be surprised as to how fast a determined person can get the drop on you and how equally slow one’s reaction to said event typically is. Throw in a brace that keeps ones upper body rigid and offers restricted movement and you have an even slower reaction time.
And again, this whole unconscious supposition is based upon the ME’s report that could be easily wrong. I posted a link earlier where a woman was shot in the head, through and through, with the same caliber bullet. She made herself a cup of tea while waiting for the police. I read somewhere that the head wound in this case was not particularly serious. I’ll have to find that cite… If it is later found out that he was not “really” unconscious, or that there was a good chance that he wasn’t, does that change anything in your mind?
I get what you’re saying and I agree people have every right to defend themselves. I think you’re over simplifying. If more robbers were killed in the act would they be afraid to make the attempt or would they shoot first? Maybe your attitude would turn more robberies into a gun battles.
I do think that knowing people are willing and able to defend themselves would give real pause to those who thought they could just scare people into handing over their property.
Give me a break. Everyone can analyze this event like the Zapruder film and come up with whatever conclusion they want, based on hindsight, Monday Morning Quarterbacking or whatever pre-conceived notions of self defense, crime and and punishment, race relations, or whatever else trips their triggers. Ultimately however, nobody knows with any true certainty, what happened except for the guy that is alive and kicking. Most of those crying for this guys head see what they want to see and blindly turn away from any shred of reasonable doubt or alternate scenarios.
note he did not keep a weapon handy after he shot Parsons and was making the call. He walked around the store unarmed waiting for the police so he wasn’t thinking of a returning robber.
You do not want to be holding a gun when the cops show up.
The point of more robbers being killed in the act is so that more robbery victims can stay alive. Sometimes robbers shoot their victims after getting the loot. Some people die without having put up any kind of a fight at all.