Absolutely not. He was in his hotel room, not pointing what looked like a rifle out of his window. People were peeping into his hotel room. Note that at no time did he actually have a rifle.
As for the BAC of over 3 times the driving limit, how is that relevant? Was he driving around inside his hotel room? What exactly is illegal about drinking inside your hotel room?
I watched the video and the officers were shouting at him and made contradictory commands. He was terrified and pleading for his life. How could anyone not realize that, especially trained professionals? If the cops were in fear of this guy, they shouldn’t be cops. They suck at their job.
In my opinion, it was just a matter of time before that hot-head cop with the “you’re fucked” gun engraving was going to murder someone.
In summary, you see a man’s life taken because he had drinks with friends inside his hotel room, had a scary looking object also inside his hotel room which had windows, and was confused and frightened by the police officers shouting contradictory orders as his own fault. Got it. Well, as long as the cops got to go home safely that night, job well done.
He was impaired and had no clue what was going on around him let alone the commands. The kid pulled up his shorts out of pure uncontrollable unconscious habit.
He had done the exact same out of habit a couple times prior as he crawled forward yet did not produce a gun. The officer shot him simply because he defied his orders one too many times and he was not going to have it based on egotistical authoritarianism.
If someone has the unconscious habit of reaching up and adjusting their eye glasses, should they be shot just because they moved to fast to unconsciously adjust their glasses and an officer felt threatened?
He, or someone (maybe one of his friends looking at the sights?) in the room did point the air rifle out the window. That has been pretty well established.
Your reply utilizes just the sort of reasoning that Democrats in Congress and their media have been trying to remove a U.S. president with.
“Absolutely not. He was in his hotel room, not pointing what looked like a rifle out of his window. People were peeping into his hotel room.”
What was done with the rifle to concern people is a major point of this case, and I see that now you’ve been corrected on it and admit that someone was seen pointing the rifle out the window, but it’s important to get the most basic facts straight before you decide someone’s a murderer, and you didn’t.
“Note that at no time did he actually have a rifle.”
He didn’t have a firearm rifle, but he had a pellet rifle. But even just accepting what you mean by that claim at face value, it’s still disingenuous.
I’ve never owned or fired a gun of any kind except for water guns when I was a child, but I’m well aware that any sort of gun or rifle that can potentially cause someone some harm when fired or that could be reasonable mistaken for a “real” gun comes with some serious safety rules. Shaver broke many of them that night, a fact you seem to willfully ignore, unless you’re somehow ignorant of them.
Do you claim, then, that you just don’t know or that you wouldn’t expect there to be safety rules and guidelines for the type of rifle Shaver possessed and used in his work?
Almost instantly through a web search I found pages upon pages of safety rules for such guns. I visited one of them. Here’s a little of what the page says:
“WARNING (in bold): AIRGUNS ARE NOT TOYS. RESPONSIBLE ADULT SUPERVISION IS REQUIRED. MISUSE OR CARELESS USE MAY CAUSE SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH. READ THE OWNER’S OPERATION MANUAL PRIOR TO HANDLING ANY AIRGUN. PAY PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO ALL WARNINGS AND CAUTIONS.
“It is your duty to know and obey all laws governing the use and ownership of air guns in your city, town, province, state, and/or country.”
And then this:
“NEVER brandish, show, or display your airgun or airsoft gun in public.”
And this:
“Do not consume alcohol prior to, or during a shooting session.”
The man and the woman in the room with Shaver testified that he brought out the gun, that one of them pointed it out the window, and that Shaver asked the man, Nuñez, if he wanted to shoot it, and Nuñez told him it was a stupid idea.
This was not a proper “shooting session,” because Shaver broke the rule on brandishing the rifle in public, but I have to say that any responsible gun owner of any type, and the safety rules for all types of guns, will all say that guns and alcohol don’t mix under any circumstances.
So that brings us to this:
“As for the BAC of over 3 times the driving limit, how is that relevant? Was he driving around inside his hotel room? What exactly is illegal about drinking inside your hotel room?”
Again, are you aware or did you just not expect there to be any gun safety rules about mixing alcohol with using or handling the gun?
Shaver worked for his father-in-law’s company, news reports say. Maybe another important area of interest here is what sort of training and instruction he received from his father-in-law and/or the company on the safe handling and use of the rifle, and what the company legally required of him. Typically following all safety rules at a company is officially mandatory, and employees are required to sign off on receiving the training and agreeing to follow all rules.
“I watched the video and the officers were shouting at him and made contradictory commands. He was terrified and pleading for his life. How could anyone not realize that, especially trained professionals? If the cops were in fear of this guy, they shouldn’t be cops. They suck at their job.”
And when asked if he could hear and follow instructions, he said yes. And when asked if he was drunk, he said no. And when asked to affirm that in that case, he’d therefore have no problem following the officers’ instructions, he verbally agreed that he wouldn’t. He also intelligibly answered the officers’ questions such as that there was no one else in the room.
Police officers today also have to consider that people can be intoxicated on a variety of drugs that can have a variety of effects. Watching that video, which is truly terribly tragic and very hard to get through, it is nevertheless very difficult, without the benefit of hindsight, to clearly understand what was going on with Shaver, and whether he might actually pose a threat or not. But one thing was already established: he was very irresponsible in the use and handling of a gun, to the point of indifference to others. Just like alcohol intoxication doesn’t absolve you of responsibility or guilt in the use or misuse of a vehicle, it doesn’t absolve you of either in the use and handling of a gun.
“In my opinion, it was just a matter of time before that hot-head cop with the “you’re fucked” gun engraving was going to murder someone.”
Perhaps, and that might be partly why, personality-wise, that particular officer fired, although, then again, perhaps not. There is so much sick thinking, at the Family Guy level, that is part of our culture today but we are all expected to think and allow ourselves to be bullied into agreeing that it’s just meaningless entertainment that doesn’t actually affect anyone. And if the circumstances reached the threshold that altogether justified the shooting as reasonable, then it’s irrelevant. It wasn’t that cop who told Shaver if he made another false move that they were going to shoot him, but the officer in charge. Brailsford likely took those words as indirect guidance about his superior’s view of the situation and how they should proceed.
Ultimately, a lot just went a little wrong in this case, on top of the major wrongs done by Shaver himself, in which he broke some cardinal rules on the use and handling of they type of gun he was responsible for. Additionally, Nuñez saw the Mesa police downstairs, thought they were probably there because of he and Shaver playing around with the gun, but decided to say nothing. And one of the web pages I linked to says a hotel employee went to the room, asked if there was a problem and Shaver said no and put the gun away. Where that information went, if it could even have made a difference, I don’t know.
But Shaver likely committed some sort of crime just by pointing the gun out the window. Some of the other safety rules:
“Don’t let the muzzle of the gun cross anything you’re not prepared to shoot.”
“Always be sure of your target and what’s beyond it.”
Links:
https://www.umarexusa.com/air-gun-safety