Except it wasn't a gun fight.
Clearly he wasn't shooting at anyone or they would have known it wasn't a real gun.
So now youre going to give the cops the ability to shoot first and ask questions later?

 

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I'd still like to know how long the delay was between officers running down the hall saying drop the weapon and firing. Or were they firing on the run, or was there no delay etc...


Poor dumb kid everybody knows you don't bring pellet guns to school.

 

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i thought toy guns had to have orange tips or barrels or something

maybe a pellet gun is not considered a toy guy osmethne

 

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i'm not giving them anything. they already have that ability. if someone is pointing what looks like a lethal weapon at someone else, the cops can shoot that person. this is not the first time this has ever happened.

 

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Ok, kalahan.
Clearly youre not smart enough and you've seen too many movies to carry on this discussion.
I'm going back to work.

 

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Neither could I distinguish that from a real gun unless I'd gotten a VERY close look at it.

Further, nobody could distinguish that from a real gun unless they too were looking very closely at it or holding it themselves.

The only way anyone could tell you that they could reliably identify that as a pellet gun from any distance would be if they were personally extremely familiar with that particular model of pellet gun. See, that one is made to look "real" and it has borrowed design elements from 3 very popular handgun manufacturers.

That thing has physical features of some very prominent and modern lethal handguns. Here's a more easily linked picture of it:




Here's a picture of a Smith & Wesson M&P (Military & Police) model in 45 ACP:


Here's a picture of a Springfield Armory XD in 45 ACP:


Here's a picture of a Glock model 21 in 45 ACP:


You could conceivably tell that it wasn't a 45 by looking at the muzzle end of the barrel and seeing that the opening was not as wide as a 45 (0.45 inches in diameter), but identifying a gun by looking down the muzzle is not a good idea, ESPECIALLY when someone ELSE is pointing it at you.

FURTHER, there's nothing saying that you could distinguish it from a 22 caliber pistol from the muzzle end. See, a pellet gun like that is 0.177 caliber which means the barrel opening is 0.177 inches in diameter, and a 22 is 0.22 inches in diameter. I defy anyone from a distance greater than say 10 feet to tell the difference between 0.177 inches and 0.22 inches. That's like trying to tell the difference between 3/6" and 1/4" from that distance (not exactly, but very close to that same comparison).


As for the question about pellet guns vs. toy guns and the orange muzzle cap - pellet guns are not considered toys, but generally, neither are they regulated as firearms. In truth, pellet guns are used for hunting and disposal of vermin and things, hell there are even pellet rifles nowadays that you can kill rabbits with pretty reliably from 20 or so yards or more. New Jersey (and maybe some other states) does regulate pellet guns to some extent, but that is not a national thing. Air soft guns which are literally designed to look EXACTLY like the real thing but which fire plastic "BBs" are required in the US at least to have the orange cap on the muzzle.


As for the question of whether the shooting was justified or not:

IF we are to believe that the officers ordered the kid to drop the gun numerous times and IF we are to believe that he was reasonably expected to understand their orders (i.e. not disabled in some way and spoke English) and IF we are to believe that he failed to comply with those orders, then there is simply no other option that is safe for the officers and other students and people in the school than what they did. Pepper spray and tasers are not options when you've got a gun pointed at you. People who think they are, especially in the hallway of a school have seen too many movies. Further, shooting a person who is pointing a gun at you is no guarantee they won't fire it as well...

It is my own personal and very certain judgement, being quite familiar with many handguns and being able to identify many of them myself by sight from a good distance, that it was reasonable for the officers to conclude that the pistol was a REAL one and potentially lethal and, lacking any indication by the boy or anyone else that the gun was a pellet gun, that they were reasonable in assuming that their or other peoples' lives were in danger.


This is a bad deal, but given the facts at hand, I can't see it having gone down any differently without significant additional risk to the safety of others. It's sad and unfortunate and regrettable. If other facts come to light, I might consider this differently, but given what I've seen, I can't imagine any rational debate of this.

 

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Situations like this are exactly why police have an arsenal of nonlethal weapons.
That kid could have been wielding a slice of pizza. There were no lives in immediate danger. They weren't being shot at. He didn't have hostages.
There was no reason to shoot the kid 3 times.

 

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Dude, I'm not a fan of jack-booted police thuggery either, but your statement is wrong on a number of points:

The gun the kid was holding was most definitely able to be reasonably construed as a potentially lethal weapon.

Everyone in the school was in potential danger. Guns can shoot through classroom doors and possibly even the walls. Yes there were no or very few kids in the hallway at the time but there were kids in the classrooms on either side of the hallway.

The police themselves were in danger. I thought you owned guns man? Don't you know that you can pull the trigger on a gun in a fraction of a second? Maybe you might not hit anyone or anything, but maybe you do, and then it's either a siht storm that a teacher or another student was slain due to the police officers' hesitation or it's an officer that was slain. NEITHER case is acceptable.

As for shooting the kid 3 times, there were two officers that fired, one fired once, the other fired a second time. That is far from an unreasonable application of force.

 

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looks almost real, kid was dumb