[spunkets]

"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."

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.

[supercat]

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.

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?

[supercat]

BTW, although Beck's lawyer would no doubt tell him to avoid this line of reasoning, I would posit another question: how should Beck have interpreted the act of Logan opening up the van? It seems to me that even with the benefit of retrospect there there were still only two interpretations:

1. Logan was about to enter the vehicle of an accomplice get-away driver. In this case, the driver would not be innocent and Logan would thus not be faulted for taking less care to protect her than he otherwise might.
2. Logan was about to enter the vehicle of an innocent person for the purpose of robbing and likely killing her (Beck knowing first-hand, of course, that Logan had no qualms about killing his victims). In this case, the alternative to Beck taking a risky shot would be the almost certain death of the innocent person.

I don't know if either interpretation played through in Beck's mind at all, but I can't see any interpretion of events, even in retrospect, where Beck's shooting at the van would have increased the likelihood of harm to an innocent compared with doing nothing.