So, yeah, ha, ha, we'd all like to shoot the dumbasses who text in the dark of the movie theater, so it's easy, at first blush, to call 68-year old retired cop Curtis Reeves, Jr. "America's Greatest Hero" for gunning the shit out of Chad Oulson in Florida because the 43-year old apparently thought his convenience was more important than the enjoyment of the rest of the audience. Then you hear that this was during the previews, not during the showing of jingoistic war porn, Lone Survivor (because, again, of course that was the film they were seeing).
Then you hear that Reeves had already complained to the management about Oulson and then confronted Oulson when the younger man asked him if he had complained. And then Oulson threw his popcorn at Reeves. And then Reeves shot Oulson and his wife. Yeah, texting during a movie is bullshit. But this is about about how unsafe we are under the reign of concealed carry laws, which means that there is an implied threat everywhere you go, not about what inconsiderate dicks do in the dark. Being a douche is not a crime punishable by death.
Now, it being Florida and Florida being ground zero for the lie that is the Stand Your Ground law, which allows a person to kill the fuck out of someone if he or she feels threatened, Reeves has indicated that he is going to claim the kind of ex post facto, pre-crime mindreading that forms the legal basis for the application of Stand Your Ground. That's also known as "getting away with murder."
See, Oulson beaning Reeves with popcorn meets the legal definition of assault. Reeves said he feared getting attacked. However, you shouldn't be allowed to fire a bullet into the chest of someone using popcorn as a weapon. But this is America, motherfucker. And that means we get to have lawyers actually say things like "[I]t becomes more complicated if Reeves considered it to be one step in an escalating response from Oulson. If he feared that Oulson would next come over the seats and physically attack him — and if Reeves felt he wouldn't be able to handle an attack from a younger man — jurors might consider deadly force reasonable."
What did big, threatening, strapping young Chad Oulson look like that a former cop thought he couldn't take? Surely, this was a muscular biker type, probably with tattoos and a do-rag, and his wife was some tramp-stamped meth whore. Who wouldn't be threatened by...what?
Oh. And he had a toddler daughter? And his wife loved him so much that she tried to block the shot, injuring her hand in the process?
So what happened is that a psychotic old pussy had a gun and a grudge against the world. Reeves was itching to shoot someone, and Oulson just got to be the one who finally took the bullet. The Rude Pundit's said it before and he'll say it until you pry this keyboard from his cold, dead fingers: Only cops, cowards, and criminals carry concealed weapons. If you're not a cop (retired doesn't count), you're one of the other two.
The Pasco County Sheriff's department doesn't think that Reeves can claim Stand Your Ground as a defense. Surely, he could have walked away after taking popcorn in the kisser. But the point of Stand Your Ground is that you don't have to walk away, right? Even if you're the one who's wrong, you are allowed to just shoot someone rather than suck it up and walk away, like a fucking grown-up should in nearly every situation.
Don't worry, though. It's Florida. A jury of Reeves' peers will no doubt make the sensible decision, as they always do in these cases.
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