I don’t get the outrage here. According to the story, Mr. Tirado gestured as if he was armed and said “You want to see my new Ruger?”. By doing that, he escalated the confrontation to one where any reasonable person would consider Mr. Tirado armed and to be in danger for one’s life.
A moment to talk about Mr. Sawyer. I find it despicable that he ran away for almost a day, likely to sober up. I don’t care that he was a cop, that really has no bearing on the story, for all practical purposes he was simply a man who had a CCP. All of the cop hate in this thread is completely immaterial. When he decided to go out drinking, he should have left his weapon behind. That’s the law for civilians with a CCP and it should be the law for cops as well(I dunno if it is). HE HAD NO BUSINESS CARRYING A WEAPON IN AN IMPAIRED CONDITION, COP OR NO.
Still, the fault here lies on Mr. Tirado. HE was the one who indicated he had a gun, HE was the one who indicated that he was going to draw it, HE was the one who invited, no, demanded a deadly response. If someone confronts me over a traffic dispute, and he says he has a gun and makes as if to draw it, and I am legally carrying a weapon, OF COURSE I am going to draw my weapon and fire at him as many times as it takes to put him down. Who wouldn’t and who could blame me? All of the anti-cop RO in this thread is totally misplaced.
Let’s lay this out as simply as possible (in deference to the anti-gun crowd).
You legally have a gun, for whatever reason.
A man confronts you angrily, and gets more and more upset as time goes on.
You try to placate him to no avail.
He reaches into his coat and screams " I bet you don’t feel the same way after you taste my gun, motherfucker!"
So…what do you do?
I know I’ve exaggerated for effect here, but if you do anything other than draw your gun and blow his fucking head off…regardless of what’s in his hand when it comes out of his coat…then you are a fucking moron, and 9 times out of 10 you’ll be a dead fucking moron, and deservedly so.
Why should Mr. Sawyer be expected to act any differently just because he’s a cop? He’s made a number of mistakes, and it looks like they’ll deservedly cost him his job, but the shooting (given the facts as we know them)? Justified, justified, absolutely justified.