The situation is more complicated than that. Both men may have reacted based on habit. Habits are lodged in the basal ganglia, the reptilian brain. There is no conscious thought once habit takes over. Text dude, by any account, was checking on his daughter all the time before the theater incident. That may have resulted from guilt over an attack by the family dog that put the kid in the hospital. Over time the constant checking became a habit. Text dude couldn’t help himself even when the kid was at daycare.
The retired cop obviously had been trained to defend himself over the years to the point it was a habit. what you had that day was two reptilian brains reacting to each other. Neither planned what happened. They were both on automatic. It was fight or flight at it’s worse.
Get the book “The Power of Habit.” It’s a fascinating revelation of how scientists discovered that habits are not conscious thought. There’s also an interesting story about how Target knows when women are pregnant even if they don’t.
If you want to understand why intelligent people do things that aren’t logical, read the book.
The cop had been retired for 20 years. One would assume that his training would have worked its way out over that period.
Are you saying that he was in the habit of shooting people that texted or threw popcorn at him???