The Glade 4.0

Lots of different versions of the story on-line, all of them slightly different but the parts that are the same are:

Young man enters a McDonalds in broad daylight, brandishes a gun and proceeds to rob the place.

Older male customer pulls his own gun and challenges young man, attempting to stop the robbery.

Young man turns and fires on the older man, shots are exchanged.

Older man, a retired Detroit police officer hits and kills his target, younger man misses. Younger man dies.

Overwhelming comments are "He was just a kid (16) why did "they" have to kill him."; "it was just a McDonalds man, no one gets killed for robbing a McDonalds.";

Distraught family of deceased robbery is seen at McDonalds, sister wailing and weeping "Why did they kill my brother?"

My thoughts, the young man was in the middle of committing a felony, shot and fired at an armed man trying to stop him. His age has no bearing on the issue, the location has no bearing on the issue, his family has no bearing on the issue. The killing of the young man was in self defense and the defense of others. The young man got himself killed. Ask instead why he was stupid enough to rob a McDonalds full of people. Darwins Award winner here.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

He 16 and his school photos and the photos of him playing with his sister will be trotted out. All the photos of him "straight thuggin" with his peeps will be omitted. Poor Guy cause while he's in the right he's gonna be killed in the media over this. Thank God for castle doctrine.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

In Cleveland, we were treated to the same spectacle when 3 youths were shot trying to rob a man on his own porch.

Not only were the 3 youths black, so was the intended victim.

Neither a white person nor a police officer was anywhere in sight, but guess what the community reaction centered on?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The headlines say it all: "Teen robbery suspect dies in shootout with retired police officer"
Just that one sentence paints a very clear picture of a young kid victimized by a cop. Good grief.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

**** him. If you shoot a gun at someone, you deserve to be shot back at. If you miss, sucks for you.

You pull a point a gun at someone offensively, don't be surprised if someone responds in kind. Nothing else matters. Man was a cop. He knows you don't shoot to wound.

If this goes the other way we see a picture of the guy in his blue and we forget about it in a couple of days. That's the tragedy.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Really? I read that and get just the facts, without any real bias. To be honest, I'm somewhat surprised it isn't more sensationalized. Something like, "Teen dies in gunfight with retired police officer".

"Child murdered in cold blood by bloodthirsty ex-cop".

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While I agree in a one-on-one situation the former police officer was well within his rights to defend himself, and certainly the would-be robber is clearly at fault for his own death, I question the decision to pull a weapon in a store.

In all likelihood the robber would have made off with cash had no one intervened. Instead according to the article, this turned into an exchange of gunfire, which likely could have hurt bystanders. (and in a McDonalds, could well have been children)

And what if he had decided to shoot a few people in addition to getting the money?

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

...you don't see the problem with this? Should we let criminals get away for fear of hurting someone? Perhaps police shouldn't engage in high speed chases for fear of someone getting hit either?

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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What if he had a nitroglycerine vest and by shooting him he exploded killing everyone. We can 'what if' any number of scenarios. I'm diamondeye has statistics on this but what percentage of robbers (particularly those robbing in daylight so couldn't possibly hope to kill ALL witnesses) just try to make off with the cash instead of shooting randomly?


Compare that with the likelihood of two drawn weapons ending up with triggers pulled.

Compare that with the odds of someone being injured or killed in a gun battle?

In many cases they shouldn't.

We have innocent until proven guilty because we believe that its better to let the guilty free than risk harming an innocent.
Why do you apply a different standard to high speed chases?

If they're leading police on a pursuit, they're already guilty of something.

Rule of law is useless if you're unwilling to enforce it.

I'm all in favor of the public individually injecting a little anarchy into the system, but the legal system needs to take every last possible legal measure to try to ensure the laws it has are enforced. If they don't, more people will break those laws.

Put another way:

If people did not ever interfere with armed robbers, hundreds of times more people would commit armed robbery. This is going to ultimately hurt/more people than a shootout in a mcdonald's once in a while. This is especially amusing using this case as an example, where the guy who got shot deserved it and had it coming. His death in a shootout (where he was the only one hit) is far better than the alternative of him being arrested, which would cost the people of detroit a bunch of money.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

TheRiov's position has nothing to do with the Rule of Law or bystander safety. This is all about some White Guy shooting a Black Kid. It's racial violence, pure and simple ...

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he was an armed robber. Any armed thief who survives should count themselves lucky. Shoot to kill should be the default response unless they surrender peacefully.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

No, we don't have that standard in order to avoid harming an innocent. We have that standard to avoid finding innocents guilty, especially with people gaming the system.

"Innocent until proven guilty" has nothing to do with anything that occurs outside a courtroom and a criminal trial. It is not an excuse to avoid investigating or apprehending criminals. A person who gets hurt by accident in a high-speed chase has nothing to do with their innocence or guilt; it's an accident.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Um...he clearly had a gun, Riov. Starting with an individual who is actively pointing a loaded gun at someone and then speculating that they may actually pull the trigger is not that far of a stretch.




It seems pretty likely that someone using a gun to rob someone would, at some point, pull the trigger even without another gun involved. This was the only statistic I could find right off the bat, but I'm sure with a little research, you could find a bit more info:

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

All things being equal, in general I'm going to trust the instincts of a a retired police officer (who has nothing to gain, and everything to lose) to assess the situation and act appropriately.

What if the robber got away, then ended up breaking into retired police officer's home and murdering his uncle?

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In a slight tangent, does any armed citizen have the right to intervene in the same situation? Assuming the robber's gun is not trained on them, rather an employee who is being forced to hand over money, does that armed citizen have the right to defend another's life with deadly force?

Not looking to stir the pot, just genuinely curious.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Frankly, your analogy is silly. Yes, we can "what if" almost anything. However, that does not make a perfectly reasonable scenario like LKs a silly "what if" in the way your nitroglycerine vest is. Sometimes robbers do shoot people to eliminate witnesses or for whatever reason; they don't tend to be entirely logical, dispassionate, or deliberate in their actions, being uneducated, young, and typically thinking of themselves as tough guys.

Moreover, the "likelyhood of triggers getting pulled if two guns are drawn" is irrelevant; that likelyhood should be 100%. That's why you pull a gun on a robber; to shoot him. Granted, you might be able to surprise him from behind and tell him to drop the gun but even then you need to be prepared to shoot. This is not the movies. The point of pulling the gun is to shoot the robber. Robberies are to be avoided, but once they occur, shooing the robber is just taking care of business. At the risk of repeating myself, you jerk that smokewagon, and go to work.

As for the "likelyhood of someone being injured or killed" (the grandiose nature of the term 'gun battle' notwithstanding for a confrontation between 2 people) that's again, the point. Injure or kill the robber. Yes, the other guy may get shot, but if that wasn't acceptable to him, he shouldn't have pulled out his gun in the first place. As for bystanders, yes, they may get hurt, but there is ultimately no telling what that robber will do and people should not be forced into helplessness just because of statistics unless we had truly overwhelming likelyhood that bystanders would be hurt if there were gunfire but not if the robber were allowed to complete his crime in peace. We don't have that. Contrary to the occasional hystrionics by the media, stray bullet kiddings are anecdotal occurences. In order to kill someone a stray nullet has to A) miss its target B) go directly towards another person (which, if you consider the true volume of space around you and the inverse square law, you will realize is not likely except in truely crowded settings) and C) be unobstructed and then D) has to do fatal damage.

I don't think you're "considering the likelyhoods" at all; you're just imagining the likelyhood of that based on what you think is common sense and the impressions you've always gotten, and that, in your mind, is inflating the likelyhood to wildly unrealistic levels.

Suppose that a police officer on duty had happened by when this robbery occured, instead of a retired one. Should he not confront the robber because someone else might get shot? This is just an open invitation to go commit armed robbery.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Absolutely, at least in states where a person has the right to defend themself. Why would someone make a law that made it ok to defend yourself, but not, say, your mother, or your kid?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Almost all states that recognize the right to defend one's self outside the home or place of business also recognize that it is acceptable for others if placed in the same situation where it would be acceptable for the self (death, grave bodily injury, and kidnapping being common standards).

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Fair enough, though in your example it is your immediate family that is threatened.

Say you are next in line at the McD's, and this occurs? (Assuming you are not related to the employee being threatened)

EDIT - Ninja answered by Elmo. Thanks.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.