You've definitely got the wrong number here. There's no way anybody could mistake me for being "pro-cop". And don't even get me started on the BATFE.
My concern is that I carry concealed and there is a pronounced media bias against such. Those who carry can make mistakes and those mistakes can be fatal.
What would help, however, is a little less tolerance for behavior such as the attacker in this case. I think it very possible that the ex-cop over-reacted. But nobody deserves a free ride to attack somebody else.
The idea that somebody could angrily throw popcorn into my face and that the police would just laugh it off makes me sick.
I haven't studied the concept of "fighting words" but most jurisdictions outlawed dueling long ago. There's a pretty sharp line between arguing over texting and throwing an object into another's face. I don't trivialize such actions. They are indicative of a serious problem.
In the Zimmerman case the media assured us that some wanna-be cop stalked a little black boy and then shot him dead for the fun of it. I don't expect everybody to maintain the mindset that I would expect from a jury, but I see many possibilities for charges less serious than second-degree murder in this case.
In the Zimmerman case there was a legal concept in play that the jury was not to learn anything about Martin that was not known to Zimmerman. The jury was supposed to view the situation from the perspective of Zimmerman and what he knew at the time of the shooting.
I can imagine how I would feel as a member of a jury if I had found Zimmerman guilty only to find out later what a thug Martin was. The jury in the Reeves case will no doubt be in the same situation; that is, they will be told little or nothing about the victim's background.
First of all, supporters of concealed carry need to police our own. When someone goes too far, you give the gun-grabbers ammo by trying to justify what has happened.
And second of all, the cop is the one who drove the confrontation. He seems to have a crusade against texting in movies to the point of absurdity. If he had been rational, he could have said, when told the guy's kid was sick, say 'Oh, OK, but if you have to text during the movie, please go to the lobby' and it would have ended well. Or he could have just moved a few rows forward and he never would have noticed the texting. Instead, he went back to the same spot and escalated the confrontation, something CCW carriers are taught NOT to do. So this is not about defending CCW, it's about condemning a cop who still acted like one after he retired - in the wrong situation for such.
I'm sorry, but throwing popcorn does not rise to any kind of threshhold for fearing deadly harm needed for a response with lethal force. Your feelings as to whether it rises to assault are, quite frankly, immaterial to the larger issues here.
You are running from the truth as fast as you can -- that this particular cop acted badly and tragically.
Continuing to set up strawman arguments against a majority of conservative, CCL opinion on this thread that he is morally wrong (and as of the evidence known today regarded as 99% likely to be found legally wrong) does not help your cause; it hurts it. Getting him off on a technicality would not help your cause, either; it would reinforce existing negative sterotypes of guns, cops and STG.
Such extremely extreme defense of THIS PARTICULAR SHOOTING makes CCL, 2nd Amendment conservatives and FR look like they would rather back a flat-out murderer, only because he used a gun instead of a knife. Stop already.