Police Shoot Armed Middle School Student

[muttmeister]

I'm not sure it matters what KIND of gun he had if he was pointing it and threatening police officers or others as long as it LOOKED like a real gun. They showed it on TV and it did. There are times when I'm not a big fan of the police (think of the guy pepper-spraying the students at the sit in recently) but if an officer has a gun pointed at him and the perpetrator refuses to drop the gun and cooperate, as far as I'm concerned, he/she has every right to shoot. I have a gun and I may not have the training a police officer has but I can tell you that the idea of shooting to wound instead of kill is one of those things they do on TV that have very little relation to reality.

 

[donna723]

That pellet gun absolutely looks exactly like a real gun! They purposely make them to look that way. The police officers don't have time to closely study the weapon that is aimed right at them, they have to make a split second decision that could mean whether THEY live or die, whether THEY go home to their families at the end of their shift or not. Again, if the boy had just dropped the gun when they told him to, none of this would have happened, but he chose not to.