Posted on 07/23/2004 7:07:35 PM PDT by Mulder
He shot the perp once outside the van, the perp then entered. At that point the van was open and both individuals appeared in the sight picture. The fact that he shot both twice from the same string of shots, proves that both individuals were contained in the target cross section. The distance was sufficiently large that Mr Beck did not have a sure shot at the perp w/o including the woman.
You made the argument well before, your last post is getting tedious with assumptions about what he saw. I am saying it ~is~ a tougher call than you make it out to be.
No. You are thinking of anger, or rage, not mental defect. The reletively retional pursuit with shooting proves he was w/o mental defect.
"I'd bet that those here willing to fry the shooter would totally lose their mentally facilities just by being shot at, much less taking a round to the head."
You'd lose. Also, he didn't take a round to the head, he was grazed.
Given Mr. Beck's primary motivation of getting the SOB that shot him, I'm sure he would have been disappointed.
I guess I'd tend to think that was a pretty darned good motivation under the circumstances; others may differ.
If someone is snooping around your house at night, and flees as soon as they're aware they've been noticed, there's no way of knowing what their exact intentions were regarding you or anyone else. Part of the reason for the general prohibition against shooting fleeing criminals is that one cannot always be sure what the person was up to, or how much danger they posed to others.
In the extant situation, the man had just been shot in cold blood. Although I doubt he thought things through in detail, I'd say his gut instinct was right on: to do whatever he could to stop his shooter from getting away. Although his motives were far more personal than society-oriented (he did not want to die unavenged), I would suggest that as a citizen he had a right and duty to prevent the escape of someone who had willfully shown himself to be extremely dangerous.
Further, even if you judge that Mr. Beck's actions were unacceptable, I think there should be certain lattitude given to people who are forced into situations of extreme duress. Although I think the term "temporary insanity" is overused, I think it should be reasonably applicable to situations where a person was subjected to trauma outside their control and their judgement was impaired as a result.
To put it another way, even if it is found that Mr. Beck posed a danger to society shortly after he was shot in the head, that would not imply that under 'normal' circumstances he would be any danger to society, nor that the level of danger he posed was excessive compared with that posed by anyone else in the same circumstances.
Nearly anyone can 'snap' under the right circumstances. People have a duty to do what they can to avoid situations where they might 'snap'. People who voluntarily get into a situation that causes them to snap should be held accountable for their actions. But people who are involuntarily forced into a situation that would cause just about any normal person to 'snap' should not be held so accountable.
That's a conclusion based on what is given.
The Glock in a holster inside his briefcase did not allow him to respond to the threat immediatly. Maybe had he drawn his weapon at the get-go, he wouldn't have hit the bystander. Hope he learned how useless his sidearm is when its tucked away in a briefacse.
Needless to say, his response was wreckless and could have killed innocent people. A target shooter should always KNOW where his shots are going to go. He missed his opportunity for self defense. What he did was "apprehend" the perp and injured an innocent in the process. Normally I applaud those who defend themselves..but not in this case.
He did not however have the right to take a shot at that woman. It was entirely unjustified, regardless of what happened to him, or any claim of duty to prevent escape.
The right to life is absolute. Unless you can show the woman was not in Beck's sight picture, there is no justification for the particular string of shots that perforated both individuals twice.
" I think there should be certain lattitude given to people who are forced into situations of extreme duress"
Regarding this case, at trial and sentencing. He should have been indicted for reckless endangerment, or the equivalent. See once innocents enter the sight picture, you keep your finger off the trigger. The shot belongs to a marksman, not the pray and spray expert.
It's easy to armchair-quarterback, but I for one am inclined to cut the guy some slack. Though I would guess we probably differ in the answer to the $10,000,000 question:
Assuming the story played out as described, would you feel society is safer with this guy armed or disarmed?I for one would prefer that he stay armed. His actions weren't perfect, but he could probably do better next time (e.g. plugging the bad guy sooner). There frankly isn't any way of judging how someone will perform in a situation like this until it actually arises, and while it's all very easy for someone to say they'd do things better, I really don't think anyone can know for sure.
Do you think Mr. Beck should be forever disarmed?
The world is better off allowing folks to defend themselves and insisting folks take responsibility for their actions. It is worse off when it fails to address self centered wrecklessness.
This self proclaimed target shooter failed the target shooting test. He's 3 for 17 and popped a woman in a hostage position with pray and spray. In the same string of shots he popped both twice. It's a good thing Beck's shop wasn't located in a mall. You might as well have cut him some slack and let him have grenades and RPGs.
I think Mr. Beck should have been charged with felony recklessness. Otherwise the use of grandes, RPGs for such action is valid. The fed law imposing lifelong across the board denial of rights to all felons regardless, is another question.
That could have been your wife, and babies in the back of that van. Do you want to get a phone call finding out they've all been plugged by a hero twarting the escape of a petty thug?
You're focusing on negative possibilities as being appoximately a certainty. Once the others appeared in the target x-section, Beck should have backed off. It wasn't his call to take, unless he was certain of doing no harm. In any event he must accept responsibility for what damage he caused.
"Logan was about to enter the vehicle of an accomplice get-away driver."
Stretch. He's not even 50yds away. He can see what's going down. The woman probably screamed.
The motive here is payback. He wasn't doing anyone any favors by shooting at that van.
No doubt Beck was as well. And frankly, I think a reasonable person in his situation would have done likewise.
The vast majority of people have an aversion to killing others without provocation. Even the vast majority of robbers, who have no qualm about threatening others with death, have an aversion to actually killing their victims. Logan clearly demonstrated that he had none. Indeed, Logan had demonstrated that he had no qualms about killing even an entirely-cooperative victim; he was thus far more dangerous than a typical robber, as Beck was keenly aware.
Although it is quite plausible that, had it not been for Beck's earlier shots, Logan would have chosen someone else to be his next victim, I can't see that he's in any way to blame for his chosing Ms. Denmark. After all, if I inadvisedly take a 'hit' at a blackjack table and get a card that would have benefitted the next player, am I at fault for that person losing?
As another hypothetical, suppose that you are standing outside a restaurant and see that someone has lined up fifty people against the wall and is shooting one every few seconds. The shooter is between you and the innocent people. What do you do?
If you shoot at the murderer, you'll risk hitting one of the innocent people lined up against the wall. But every few seconds you tarry another of his victims will get shot. Do you wait until you can get a clear shot without anyone else in front of or behind the shooter, or do you say a quick prayer, take aim, and try for the best?
The fact of the matter is that while the notion of "first, do no harm" is often a good principle to live by, one who obeyed it slavishly would often be paralyzed. Like it or not, doing good sometimes requires risking doing harm because risk of harm is not always avoidable.
If you want to exercise the right to keep, bear and use arms, then you must learn how to use it and accept the consequences of your actions.
Your examplw plainly gives the reality of what is. Psychics and the like need not give their opinions. Folks are being shot one by one. The outcome is clear and there's only one way to end it. Beck didn't have any such certainty in the outcomes of his 2 possible choices.
" I think a reasonable person in his situation would have done likewise."
Pondering possibilities is BS. When there's bystanders DON'T FIRE UNLESS YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SURE! If you fire then suffer the consequences.
Snap? Snap is what happens when you here some clymer, that blasts your vehicle, you, or your kids full of holes say, it's because he's trying to save you, your family and the world from harm. I don't care what goes through his mind all I give a damn about is that he don't shoot at me. That includes cops. I don't appreciate it and no reasonable person would either. If you don't mind being plugged in a pray and spray for salvation, fine. I mind, because it's deadly recklessness.
Choosing not to fire means he would not have shot the woman. He doesn't know what would happen later and it's not his right to shoot at the woman, because of that.
In my example, it's not 100% clear what would happen if you do nothing. The bad guy's gun might have just run out of ammo, or it may be that the bad guy only wanted to kill certain people, the last of whom he just had.
What's important is not that someone will, with 100% certainty, be killed if you fail to act, but rather that the probabilistic expected harm to innocents from action is clearly lower than the probabilistic expected harm from inaction.
Suppose Mr. Beck were clairvoyant, and knew that if he did nothing, Mr. Logan would flip two coins and if they both came up heads he'd let Ms. Denmark go uninjured and otherwise he'd kill her [i.e. there was a 75% probability that she'd be killed if he failed to act]. Further, he was very precisely aware of his marksmanship skills and knew that if he shot at Logan there'd be a 25% chance of Ms. Denmark escaping uninjured, a 25% chance of her escaping with non-critical wounds, a 25% chance of her being shot fatally by him, and a 25% chance of her being killed by Mr. Logan [if he gets away with her, he won't bother with the coin flip].
Under such circumstances, should he shoot or not? To be sure, there'd be a chance (6.25%) that his action would kill her when she otherwise would have lived, and also a chance (again, 6.25%) that her actions would result in Mr. Logan killing her when he would otherwise not have done, but despite those risks her probability of survival would have been doubled. In chart form:
| Coin result |
Shot result | |||
| Escape uninjured | Escape injured | Killed by Beck | Killed by Logan | |
| TT | Much Better | Better | Same | Same |
| TH | Much Better | Better | Same | Same |
| HT | Much Better | Better | Same | Same |
| HH | Same | Worse | Much worse | Much worse |
Suppose Mr. Logan knew those precise probabilities. Should he act or not act?
Now you may very well posit that he could not have known any of those probabilities nearly as precisely as I am suggesting, but I think he would have been quite right in judging that Mr. Logan had a very high probability of killing an innocent person if not stopped (higher than the 75% cited here), and that the risk to Ms. Denmark of being hit by a stray bullet was less than the risk she would have faced had Logan not been stopped (he might reasonably have guessed them lower than cited here).
The fact is that Mr. Logan was in a situation where any course of action he could take had a very high probability of turning out wrong. While he chose the course of action that would be more likely to result in him being blamed, sometimes that's what courage is about. If he'd held off on a shot he thought he could probably make, for fear of shooting Ms. Denmark, and Logan then proceeded to kill her, I don't think anyone would blame Beck for holding off but he'd nonetheless probably blame himself--moreso if something happened to his family.
Whether or not Mr. Beck's judgement was perfect, I certainly do not think it unreasonable.
That's why there are reckless endangerment laws. The woman was Beck's target also. He shot her. Once the woman entered Beck's sight picture, he should have backed off and let her handle it until such time as he had a clear shot, or the police show up. No one, including the police, have a right to shoot at innocent people like this. It's that simple. Either do it right, or don't do it at all.
Other people think it is extremely reckless for low skill people like Beck to run around in public making ad hoc life and death decisions in anger and blasting away. That's the wild west scene the grabbers whine about and Beck brought to life. You are responsible for where your rounds go. Make sure they do no damage. If you don't take that care and they do damage, then you must take responsibility for it.
"He fired at an innocent person."
No, he fired at a *guilty* person. The innocent person happened to be in the line of fire. It's entirely possible that he thought she was driving the getaway vehicle. I assume that (her involvement) has been ruled out by the cops.
If someone is in the line of fire and you shoot, you are shooting at them. Bullets follow the laws of physics, not the wishes and intents of the shooter's mind.
"It's entirely possible that he thought she was driving the getaway vehicle."
It's entirely possible that this action was all plot by the grabbers to stage a wild west show for their propaganda machine. Logan was really on a path to turn his life around. The grabbers only chose Logan, because his past fit the poor mistreated person profile and Beck, because he fit the angry gun nut profile. They drugged Logan and subliminally gave Logan Beck's address and promised there would be lots of cash there. They placed a touch of bromine and itching powder in Beck's shop and readjusted the thermostat, so that it was always hot in there. The grabbers did it.
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