Sunday, May 27, 2012

Vallejo Police Kill Suspect Wielding BB Gun

SF Gate reports

The incident began shortly before midnight when two officers responded to reports that a man had pulled a gun on a cabbie and his passenger, as well as a woman walking on the street, near the corner of Sonoma Boulevard and Carolina Street, said police Lt. Lee Horton.

They spotted the suspect, a Vallejo resident, walking quickly outside Lincoln Elementary School.

"The officers told the man to stop," police Lt. Ken Weaver said. "The male looked over his shoulder at the officers and continued to walk away and was reaching into his pocket."

Both officers told investigators they had seen the man pulling a gun and that they had told him to drop it. When he didn't, they said, both opened fire. 

The man died on the street.
Maybe it happened exactly like that, but like many so-called DGUs, maybe it didn't.

What do you think? Please leave a comment.

9 comments:

  1. I think that whenever someone uses a gun, you're reflexively suspicious. Rarely about anyone else, but always when a gun is involved. This tells me more about your mental state than about the situation in question.

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    1. Greg, I told you a million times, this blog is mainly about guns. I happen to be suspicious about lots of other things.

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    2. Arma virumque cano ET ALIA.

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  2. This sort of story keeps happening. There is no good reason to have realistic-looking BB and pellet guns, like many Airsoft guns. You can have just as much fun with a bring orange BB gun as a realistic-looking one, but a bright orange one won't be mistaken for a real one. There are many hundreds of cases a year where realistic BB and pellet guns are used to threaten people who don't know they aren't real. There are many cases of people, mainly kids, getting seriously wounded or even killed by them. And, as in this case, there are cases where people are killed or almost killed by police who can't tell the difference. Time to ban realistic-looking BB and pellet guns (as many cities have)!

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    1. And if you can ban realistic toy guns, how long will it be before you can ban real guns? The picture that you use to represent yourself tells us everything that we need to know. A gun with a knotted barrel--how disgusting. That's your goal, though, isn't it--to see every gun destroyed?

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    2. So, because you fear a slippery slope of gun banning, we should continue to allow these incidents? Are you so biased that you actually claim drawing the line like you do is a good thing?

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    3. How often do incidents like this happen? You want bans due to a handful of events. You want to make social policy on the basis of exceedingly rare incidents. That being the case, I doubt your good faith about any other area of gun control.

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    4. Too often. Use Google before you ask a foolish question.

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    5. We've already established that "too often" to you means a vanishingly tiny number of events, so you'll have to provide more evidence. A quick look at Google showed only one or two events this year, so before you call my questions foolish, why don't you explain yourself.

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