The policy may or may not apply to ex-cops carrying firearms.
Albion Wilde said: " ... pick a fight with a texter, ..."
I have heard no evidence of a "fight" over the texting.
Albion Wilde said: "... leave your seat and then return to the scene of the original fight ..."
There was no "fight" up until that time. Contacting management was the right thing to do. Returning to his seat was the right of the ex-cop.
Albion Wilde said: ... and then pull a gun, no matter what the guy said. Even if he said, “I’m going to shoot you.”
You've got to be kidding me. Florida is a "shall issue" state. Any law-abiding citizen is entitled to be licensed to carry a concealed firearm. If you attempt to intimidate me and threaten to shoot me, I will draw and fire. Why would I not do so?
How would this be any different than if a robber accosts me and says, "Give me your wallet or I'm gonna cut you". You think I need to see the knife before reacting?
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Florida is a “shall issue” state. Any law-abiding citizen is entitled to be licensed to carry a concealed firearm. If you attempt to intimidate me and threaten to shoot me, I will draw and fire. Why would I not do so?”
This is the problem with Florida SYG in a nutshell (I am a FL permit holder).
In your home, in your car, the aggressor and the defender are easy to figure out. But in this situation, the shooter has a presumption that “I was in danger” is truthful, when, realistically, who can tell?
But what about my post’s most important points — all the options the ex-cop had to avoid escalating the confrontation over texting. And by “fight”, I meant a verbal unpleasantness over the texting. No one in any of the accounts I’ve read said that he made a polite request to the texter. One of the accounts said he went supposedly to get a manager but did not actually talk to the manager because she was busy with another customer, so RageHead went back into the theater and again sat right behind the texter, which he most certainly could have avoided. So all the other legalistic hairsplitting does not excuse or mitigate or provide any kind of defense for shooting an unarmed man with whom he had provoked an argument and then gone right back into the same seat within inches of the man he had antagonized.