Seems consistent with how these things are supposed to function in the USA.

1. Having a gun is the sine qua non of freedom in the USA. It is the premier human right.

2. Having a gun makes police fearful for their lives. If you doubt that, just ask them. In deference to that fear, police have liberal permission to shoot you. No meaningful limits on how, where, how many times. "Straight up execution"? Yeah, sure.

The whole incident seems particularly American. There will probably be some thoughts and prayers (the gaffa tape of US policy), but nothing else need, nor will, change.

I couldn't quite tell what was going on, but it looked like he was getting near vehicles with people in them. Since he had a gun, they couldn't take a chance that he would hurt someone in the vehicles.

If he had shot a child, people would be screaming "why didn't you stop him when you had the chance?".

It looks like they gave him many opportunities to give himself up, but refused to give him the chance to hurt an innocent.

I could be wrong, but that is my guess. I've watched other police videos of similar situations where the narrative seemed to be that they couldn't risk him hurting a bystander.

You may be right, but the main reason this doesn’t happen much in other civilized countries is that without easy access to guns, most mentally ill people in other countries are not armed. The preponderance of guns in our society is the root cause of all these issues, including why police are so trigger-happy.

They should have just shot the gun out of his hand.

Come on Kay, you should know by now that guns are not the problem. It is the abundance of doors, not enough good guys with guns, etc., etc., etc.

When will we all learn it is not about the guns.

So, go ahead & change the Constitution,

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

The fact that that is effectively impossible to do that due to the system of elected representatives we have in this country (which do not come close to reflecting popular opinion), should not mean that we do nothing. Unfortunately “do nothing” is the predominant policy of one of our two main political parties.

But yes, we should change the Constitution. Or interpret it differently, because, after all, it talks about a “well-trained militia” if I’m right.

Why not just make them join a "well regulated Militia" if they want to own a gun, that would solve a lot of problems.

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TEAM HD
Each day is what you make of it so make it the best day possible.

There are many differences between how countries treat mentally ill. 50 years in the US people like this person would have been locked up so then they would not have had access to a gun even though guns were even easier to get than now. The US has the most mental illness of any country. The mildest cases are treated most and the worst cases treated least. Involuntary commitment is very difficult in US. Other countries allow family members and others initiate a commitment. So there are many factors that contribute to these cases.

What, in your opinion, should the police have done here? No idea what events transpired before this video takes place but the suspect is waving a gun around and certainly seems to be a threat to officers, the general public, and himself. It's recently come to light the police in Uvalde had multiple opportunities to take a shot at the shooter prior or during to the school shooting and passed on those opportunities for various reasons and we're outraged at that inaction (and rightfully so, obviously in hindsight). This case in the video is obviously the opposite of that, but we're still outraged? You, me, the police on the scene, we have no idea what would have happened had they let that man keep walking away. I think you are putting the police in an impossible situation.

They also seemed to be tolerating him waving the gun and acting insane up unto the point they didn't. It would be informative to know why the shooting started at that moment.

Did one cop just decide enough is enough and opened fire, did the guy say something, did he point the gun at them?

Yeah that's what I thought as well, they gave him quite a bit slack on the gun waving. Yeah who knows on all the details...

Not a great analogy, as the shooter had already shot somone (grandmother) from the very start, and transparently announced his intent to kill more. Also the cops who drove by him on his way into the school did not "pass" on shooting him, they misidentified someone else as being the shooter, which is a completely different form of failure to shoot.

I think he was misidentified in one encounter but then an opportunity to shoot was passed on in another because the officer who had the opportunity radioed for permission and permission was not given or not given in time? Who knows. I agree, not a great analogy and very different situations, but still decently valid in comparing police action vs. inaction...

I think what changed is that he got near some cars with people in them. You can see him getting near one in a couple of frames of the video.

Imagine a scenario where he got in the midst of them and started shooting at people and the cops. It would have put a number of civilians in immediate danger. I believe that the cops recognized that and weren't going to let it happen.

The choices were
1 - Hope that crazy guy would come to his senses and put the gun down
2 - Shoot crazy guy who appeared to be suicidal before he got to civilians
3 - Let crazy guy get near and potentially shoot civilians

I doubt that they actually wanted to shoot him, but weren't willing to risk anyone else getting hurt.

I think you know I give law enforcement a wide berth in these discussions. I’m probably sensitive to this particular situation as I’ve cleaned up the mess of a mentally ill person being needlessly killed when less than lethal options were available but not employed. I don’t know if they had that opportunity and I am probably making assumptions in terms of what was happening offscreen, but it certainly looked like the gunfire began while the man was not pointing a gun at anyone and had his back turned to the police, and when they opened fire they kept firing, all of them, well past the point he was on the ground. It appeared as though once they started shooting, they were going to finish him off. He was nearly a stationary target at the time of the first shot and he fell immediately. How many shots fired, I didn’t count, but they all hit him while he was on the ground.

I think that’s pretty fucking excessive, to continue firing well beyond the point at which he appears to pose a threat.

Watching again, from the time he starts falling to the ground until the time the shots stop, at least 20 more shots were fired, likely more, and almost every single bullet was fired after he was falling to the ground.

Why?

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The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W

Did they handcuff him? I’ve been told by apologists that police are punctilious about handcuffing every suspect (pursuant to imaginary requirements), although they otherwise exercise great latitude assessing threats.

By the way, if this mentally ill guy had a knife or a baseball bat, nonlethal force could be used.