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Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

Footage of the shooting: https://youtu.be/r0M6OfQLUGI (warning, graphic content).

This is crazy, the guy walked out with the gun but was pointing it down at the ground. You can hear the cops telling him to drop the gun but started shooting at the exact same time, they gave him no time to respond and likely the guy didn't even know they were there.

The officer in this shooting needs to be charged with Murder as I don't see how you could make the argument that the office thought he was in danger. In the video the officer arrives on the scene and literally five seconds later starts shooting, this is not a "DROP THE GUN", suspect lifts weapon and officers fire. This is "DROP THE GUN" while you're already unloading your mag.

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This guy wasn't just holding a gun. This was an active shooter who may or may not be actively killing people. They don't have a crystal ball, or access to the Ring camera to know what we know. They don't know if anyone is in the house. They just hear this dude shooting and he comes out of the porch with his finger on the trigger and the gun at a low ready position. Charging them with murder would be insane.

One of the drills that police are taught is how quickly a person can move from a low ready like this to aim and shoot. It is literally faster than you can react and pull the trigger to stop him. Worse, a shooter usually can kill you before he even feels your first bullet.

To get a sense of this, watch Jerry Miculek do a V-Drill from a low ready. https://youtu.be/TuNSB9jkpyQ?t=66

Try to pause the video after the first beep and before he shoots. Keep in mind, the police have almost zero information about this person's level of training or state of mind other than that he is already firing his weapon.

In light of Uvalde, we've seen police show incredible restraint whenever an active shooting is in progress. We can't use the idea of people being hurt as contributing to a sense of urgency.

In light of Uvalde, I'm betting a lot of Texas police departments are less likely to give armed active shooters the benefit of the doubt. Uvalde was a different kind of cowardice. Those were police who would rather keep themselves safe than children.

> They just hear this dude shooting and he comes out of the porch with his finger on the trigger and the gun at a low ready position

So if there is some shooting going on, the police are somehow justified in shooting everyone that has a gun? If this is the case, why can't they just shoot each other first and save society from their incompetence?

> Charging them with murder would be insane.

Uh, second degree murder is exactly what they did.

In this country, the government is supposed to be subservient to the People - police officers should have more legal scrutiny of their behavior than the average citizen, not less. Reread this story, replacing "police officer" with "private citizen". A private citizen shows up to the home of someone and shoots them, then claims justification because the victim was merely holding a gun? That's second degree murder. Doubly so in Texas.

"Second-degree murder is typically murder with malicious intent but not premeditated."

This lacks malicious intent. They DID commit manslaughter. However, there are exceptions where manslaughter is permissible. Police are SUPPOSED to be held to these standards just as much as regular citizens. This is probably not the case, but many police officers have been hit with manslaughter charges in the past for bad shootings. The most recent notable one would be in San Antonio October 2022: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/12/1128306894/an-ex-police-offic...

In order for manslaughter to be permissible, there has to be an imminent threat or death or great bodily harm that a reasonable person with the knowledge at the time of the manslaughter would believe to be probable. The police officers in this case will be able to meet every single one of those standards and then some.

Edit Note: Yes, there is a problem where people use self-defense as a means to engage in murder without consequence. For instance: Kyle Rittenhouse. However, proving malicious intent is extremely difficult.

> This lacks malicious intent

How does this lack malicious intent? They deliberately pointed a gun at a person, put their finger on the trigger, and pulled. The intent was to kill, and killing is a malicious action.

The action was not otherwise justified because the victim holding a firearm was not illegal. Even if the victim had been pointing the gun at someone else, it would be unknown whether the victim was themselves only acting in self defense.

> In order for manslaughter to be permissible, there has to be an imminent threat or death or great bodily harm that a reasonable person with the knowledge at the time of the manslaughter would believe to be probable

This is obviously not the whole story. By your framing, someone who breaks into a house would be legally justified killing an occupant who appears to be defending themselves. For the original scenario, a reasonable person would not insert themselves into a situation and then shoot the first person they saw with a weapon.

The Rittenhouse verdict was a sham motivated by politics, and doesn't change the shape of what ought to be. And what ought to be is that if you create/escalate a situation by adding yourself with a firearm, you had better be absolutely sure that your use of it is justified. And that goes regardless of whether or not you're being paid to insert yourself into situations.

Police pull up to sounds of a rifle shot; active shooter. They hear another loud shot. 4 seconds later, someone is peeking around the corner, their hands on the trigger and grip, 30 degrees pointed up. That's 1/4 second away from returning fire, with the firepower to kill every police that showed up, and if they let that happen, any number of civilians thereafter.

'with the firepower to kill every police that showed up'

This claim is dubious. Police officers in Austin wear Level 3A plates which can stop 5.56 which is likely the round that AR-15 is chambered in. Landing 5 headshots in quick succession without getting taken down is something you only see in movies.

Aren’t officers also trained to seek cover first?

I didn't want to go into that. I just wanted to point out that it is absurd to claim that this random civilian could gun down five police officers in the matter of half a second and not get taken down.

Except in this case, the person they murdered was holding that gun in self-defense from the actual criminal.

Millions of Americans have some sort of weapon for self-defense. That might be a gun in their home. That might be pepper-spray in their purse. That might be picking up a knife or golf club when they hear a window break in the night.

The police shouldn't shoot first and ask questions later. They should always, always, always establish what is going on and who is a threat before killing an innocent person who was trying to defend themselves against an attacker.

The way the deceased goes around that corner, he's not even thinking that he's going to take any fire from that direction.

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