he was beyond trained. from the article:

"Reeves retired as a captain from the Tampa Police Department in 1993, said Laura McElroy, a spokeswoman for the department, adding that Reeves helped set up the department's first SWAT team."

I still don't understand why people feel they need to be armed at all times. Clearly, if this man had no gun on him, this wouldn't have happened.

Police Captain
 

As Red Witch pointed out a sheriff could have been elected and not had any training. Also I believe this was many years after his retirement and we don't know his mental state.

I think that there are greater questions from listening to the views on this forum about law enforcement over time. Some feel that law enforcement is the enemy and don't miss a chance to put them down. Some think of them as officer friendly, always the good guys.


My grandfather (my grandparents raised me) was a police officer for 39 years and never fired his weapon at anyone in Columbus, Ohio. He was a tall, fit man, quiet and not very talkative. I never saw him angry.


So my opinion of what a police officer is, is much colored by my view of him.


I think that there are SOME who may be bullies who want to become police officers these days and want to boss people around. I don't know. I don't have much, actually no dealings with the law.


The people who are law enforcement I am sure are carefully vetted, but still mental illness and personality problems like anger control can happen if someone begins to go into dementia.


It is true that if he hadn't had a gun, those innocent people wouldn't be dead.


But that in itself is not the whole answer here.


Defining the questions become more difficult as I get older and see more of life.

The sheriff reference may have come from the report that an off duty Sumter Co. Deputy sheriff apparently held the shooter until the local authorities arrived.

My point was: If a highly trained and long experienced officer of the law can lose it over someone texting and shoot him while at a theatre with his wife, what does that say about the rest of us who have far less experience.

This is not to slam police. It is to examine the tenet that guns should only be in the right hands. Who is the "right" hand if not this man?

Thanks for pointing out the distinction. You learn something every day.

Lesson learned --- do not text in movie theater :)

It is a lesson to all of us about the consequences of letting anger take control!

There are millions of people who own firearms and who have never broken the guns laws nor used them irresponsibly. Just because one guy is a felonious fool does not, ergo, mean that all gun owners should be punished ... ie gun control.

The basic premise remains intact ... if the guv outlaws legal gun ownership, or restricts it so severely as to accomplish the same purpose de facto, criminals will continue to use firearms irregardless.

This guy should not have carried his weapon into the theater. The FL laws states that, if an establishment so posts, the carrier must obey. in any event, he should be tried for murder 1.

However, I think the correlation between the need for concealed carry depends on where one lives. In the TV bubble for instance, I see no need. Other towns in Central Florida ... not the same. Agree however Wesley CHapel is a nice place.

Someone said that if the retired officer didn't have a gun, an innocent life would not have been lost. Could he not have waited for the victim to exit the theater and then run him over with his car? Should we ban all cars because of some irresponsible drivers?
This gun was obviously in the wrong hands regardless of the perpetrator's former job.

well one would hope that the time it would take for the person to leave, get in his car, and maybe listen to his wife (hopefully) would have given him the time needed to realize he was over-reacting. It just seems to me, that a lot of these incidents, (George Zimmerman, a man in Clearwater who came out to yell at skateboarders and killed his neighbors) are because people had guns when they didn't need them.

I came from a family of police officers. They never wanted to pull a gun because they are trained not to do so unless they intend to use it. And there may be a different breed of police these days. Certainly the job has gotten more difficult. In my father's day the police were respected and people obeyed them. Now they taunt and insult them and if they react at all get complaints filed.

This man was 71 and may have had some age related dementia or something that caused him to reach that degree of anger. I mean the guy was texting during the previews....not the film itself and to become so infuriated to resort to that all the while he sat there breaking the law by having a gun there....

The one man was texting where it was clearly illegal to do it. Then the other guy had a gun where he should not have had it. Does the two violations cancel each other out. Of course the killing still remains. Perhaps the 71 year old man was in fear of his life from the 43 year old man. Zimmerman got away with it so why not the retired officer.

Metal detector
 

It seems to me that since the world is becoming so unpredictable that metal detectors should be placed at the entrance of every public place.... theaters, malls, restaurants, etc. why would anyone need to bring a gun into a public place if there were no other weapons in that establishment? Problem solved.

A husband and father of a young girl DIED .... your attempt at humor is decidedly not funny