From your link, Uncle Chip:
The theory his lawyer spun about his fearing for his life didn't begin to jibe with reality and was widely ridiculed, even by Second Amendment absolutists. Mr. Reeves helped start Tampa's tactical response team in the 1990s, so his attempts to portray himself as some kind of scaredy cat added an element of absurdity.Though he's 71, Mr. Reeves is a beefy, muscular man who, at least in his mug shot, retains the intimidating grimace of the cop he once was, but he didn't have the reputation of someone who would shoot a person for something as trivial as texting in a theater.
Even if you take the former officer at his word that he feared bodily harm, what sane person would try to rationalize the brutal act of taking a husband from his wife and a father from his daughter because of a flung bag of popcorn? What happened to his instincts about serving the public?
What kind of person takes a firearm into a theater where, presumably, the other patrons are unarmed? And if he was afraid, why didn't he wait for his son, also a policeman, to return before taking matters into his own soon-to-be-bloody hands? It makes you wonder if he would've shot at the couple if their daughter was present. One shudders to think what he would've done if they had brought a crying baby into the theater.
[bold emphases mine]
Only the most irrational gun enthusiasts are defending Mr. Reeves on newspaper comment boards and blogs. There is a class of very scared gun owners out there who claim they would have done the same thing as Mr. Reeves did under the circumstances. Flicked popcorn kernels constitute assault if Mr. Oulson threw it first.
They believe Mr. Oulson should've been packing heat for self-defense, which would've dissuaded Mr. Reeves from shooting him if he thought there was a reasonable chance he and his family might die in a fusillade of returning bullets. The shooter didn't have a reasonable fear of being shot. We need the homeostasis of the Old West to be safe.
Just as I postulated - the level of absurdity that some posters on this thread have pursued is being picked up by the gun-grabbers.
So Reeves went all postal on someone violating a rule at the theater as he in turn violated another rule at the theater. Telling.