They weren't armed. They only had machetes, "In those early days, we didn't know anything about using guns." I grew up with tons of guns, you don't have guns and at the same time know nothing about them. Had they guns they would have used em instead of shooting fireworks at the gangsters.
You shouldn't let the politics of the situation cloud the obvious. If they didn't have guns, it would not have played out the way it did. That doesn't mean that what they did was good, or that how the government handled it was right. It just means that the availability of guns was a critical determinative factor. That also doesn't mean they were the sole factor, either. It can also be true that the government treated them with kid gloves. But it's pretty clear that they would not have done that if they weren't armed.
(b) The force used being proportionate to the danger
In that case John wasn't attacking anyone at the monent, so no defence. The 4 shots are also way disrpoportionate to the non-danger. And they came within 5 seconds of ordering to drop his knife, which again is not enough time to react (also assuming he could hear it).
In this case the shooting is more of an illegitimate action of offense.
Note that police doesn't just do actions for defence, but also e.g. to enforce some law. But the shooting, 4 times, lethally, of someone away from you, carrying a knife, within 5 seconds of you having told them to drop it, is not justified even under this context. At least it wouldn't be acceptable in any civilized country.
The question posed at the end was interesting. The interviewer said he had asked a number of people associated with horrible shooting sprees like Columbine and Aurora if they would have rather have had a gun, and many say "no." Jonathan Rauch responds with: "Maybe the right question to ask that person was, 'would you have liked someone else ... someone who is comfortable with guns ... to have had a gun in that situation?' ... I think you'd get a different answer."
Who's firing at the police officers and is in the same building as an innocent bystander, 9 year old boy. Seriously, this situation could've easily gone much uglier than property damage really fast.
And yet the only two people who died were the two bank robbers. It sounds like the police were able to eventually take control of the situation even while heavily outgunned. So does adding more firepower on the side of police actually provide more safety when this is an example of the worst case scenario?
Wait a second... How would guns have changed things? Would it have been legal for them to shoot at your friend in this scenario?
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