Notes on the News: Opinions on a Shooting

I always promise myself I won't go back, that no matter how little reading material there is I won't resort to reading it. But out of morbid curiosity I go back, I open the front page and I start to read the Daily Mail.

It didn't take long for me to get annoyed at what I read.

There has been a story recently about a drunk guy in London who was shot by police marksmen. He was in his expensive flat and waving a shotgun around. He fired it a couple of times and was eventually taken down by the police.

The Daily Mail writer (whose name I have forgotten, and even if I'd remembered I wouldn't print here for fear of giving him more fame than he deserves) made two points about the story.

The first was that the police shouldn't have shot the guy, on the basis that he "only" had a shotgun, a short range weapon that wouldn't do any damage to anybody. This is ridiculous. The guy had a gun, was drunk and refused to listen to the police.

For all the police knew, he had other weapons with him and was highly dangerous. They didn't shoot first and ask questions later (Usually a bad option, as the answerer tends to be dead). They tried to coax him down and he gave them no choice.

The second point that the idiot writer made was that the police were wrong not to have sent the man's wife up to negotiate. He honestly believed that if they allowed the wife up to the flat to talk to her husband, he wouldn't have been shot and would have come down peacefully.

What he failed to take into consideration, in his magical view of the world, was the headlines the next day when the guy turned the shotgun on his wife and pulled the trigger. Would it be the wife that got the blame, for asking to go up? Or would it be the "incompetent" police who allowed her to?

Think about what you are writing for one moment! Why would they risk the life of a civilian on the off-chance a drunk guy waving a shotgun would listen to her?!

I swear now, I'm never reading the Daily Mail again.

:(