“A bag of popcorn may not be a deadly weapon, but it can be thrown as a distraction before a deadly attack.”
Anything at all can be a “distraction before a deadly attack”. If I approach you to shake your hand, my accomplice could be sneaking up behind you with a rock to bash your head in. Things like that simply aren’t enough to create a reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm, otherwise anyone could shoot anyone at any time.
Please note that my comment “A bag of popcorn may not be a deadly weapon, but it can be thrown as a distraction before a deadly attack” was prompted by all those making light of the idea of a thrown bag of popcorn being dangerous.
As you say, it’s true that “Anything at all can be a ‘distraction before a deadly attack’”. That includes a thrown bag of popcorn. The other circumstances at the time are important. And I’m not saying the circumstances in this case did or did not justify the shooting. I’m saying a thrown bag of popcorn can be the opening move in an attack.
“If I approach you to shake your hand, my accomplice could be sneaking up behind you with a rock to bash your head in.”
True. Or you might firmly grasp my hand to hold me in place while you draw a gun and shoot me with your off hand. I seem to remember reading about a professional killer who did that.
“Things like that simply aren’t enough to create a reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm, otherwise anyone could shoot anyone at any time.”
“Reasonable” is the key word here. I’ve been threatened with immediate “great bodily harm” and under the circumstances I would have considered a thrown bag of popcorn the beginning of the threatened physical attack. (House Security intervened before anything too bad happened.)
I can’t speak to the laws of all the states or all the nations in the world, but it’s my understanding that in many places the prosecutor or the jury must decide what was reasonable under a given set of circumstances, what a “reasonable man” would do.