I was at an event a couple of weekends ago where I got to shoot a Hellion.
I was impressed. Fun to shoot. Easy to manipulate and move around with. Reloading different compared to your standard AR but practice would make it simple.
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I’m saving up for one. I like to have all of the accessories before I purchase an additional AR platform. So that tacks on a non trivial amount of $$.
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Massad Ayoob has offered a construct of how we could better handle situations of answering the door. This is a framework, all that is needed is contextual language relevant to the current situation or conversation. But don’t open the door acting like Billy-BD. There may be someone Badder than you!
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An opinion is only an opinion. After reading the article, would I have gone to the door with gun in hand? No. If I would have been shot like that, do I hope my wife would defend me like that? Yes. Would I urge her to not, and get to safety ASAP? Yes. Should the cops have been there? No. ■■■■ happens…we are all human, and humans make mistakes. Groups of humans have made grave mistakes in the past, and at the time they all agreed or no one spoke up. Does that excuse what happened? Absolutely not. There should be consequences for the officers involved. Even mistakes with good intentions are mistakes, and we can’t say “oh, it’s ok. You thought you were right”. Just as we won’t be forgiven for collateral damage if we have to defend ourselves and someone innocent dies. We have to recognize that if the cops weren’t in the wrong place, everyone would still be alive. However, if the man wouldn’t have answered the door with a gun, he would still be alive. The cops were probably expecting the possibility of violence in responding to the call, which I feel they might have seemingly encountered. Not making excuses, just my thoughts on the article.
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If LE is at the door 911 is aware of it. They can wait on porch for the time it takes to verify that they are real and belong there.
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Where I live, it is incumbent upon me to know whether they are LE, etc., on official business. So, I must do what I have to do to verify this information, while keeping my gun close while not opening the door. We must know our state laws so that we may govern ourselves accordingly.
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I would say the badge camera footage 100% justifies the officers and 100% proves beyond reasonable doubt that the homeowner unlawfully presented an imminent deadly threat to the officers
Officers knocked (very reasonable, normal knocks) 3 separate times
Officers announced themselves as police 3 separate times
Homeowner the door and came out gun hand looking like he was imminently going to shoot the officers
Anybody have a different take?
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I edited this post.
I think there are a fair number of extremely incorrect statements made in this thread.
Let this be a moment of reflection about jumping to conclusions and unloading a preconceived bias into a situation without enough facts/evidence to go on.
I challenge those who condemned the police to watch this video and rethink jumping to conclusions in the future. And remember, this is exactly what the other side does for actual lawful carriers acting in self defense, guilty until proven innocent is not how this should be treated
Edit: It’s the thumbnail but here is as cap I took of exactly how the homeowner “answered the door”
He opened it and brought the gun up pointing at the police immediately
The police who had announced themselves as police 3 separate times and who were all in full uniform in the front yard
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I still condemn them for being at the wrong house and always will.
Yes, the homeowner was really stupid how they came out the door. However this would NEVER have happened had there been some due diligence as to being at the correct house to begin with.
Fortunately the domestic disturbance they were responding to was not life threatening to the caller as there was no response to their home across the street.
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I suppose I find the word “condemn” to be a pretty strong description of “accidentally knocked on the wrong door”
I have knocked on the wrong door before, more times than I can count in my life, I sure am glad nobody came out trying to shoot me for it, despite the fact that I couldn’t be murdered by the resident had I not been at the wrong address.
In full disclosure I know how easy it is to be at the wrong address, and how imperfect people are, or at least how imperfect I am. I used to deliver for UPS and, yes, knocking on the wrong door happens. I’ve also had people wrong on my door when it was the wrong one. It happens. You don’t get to try to murder people over it, that’s 100% on the homeowner. And these days that includes at night, Amazon delivers 24 hours a day around here now and you can order pizza etc very late. It happens.
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But your mistake did not cause loss of life of an innocent person either…
Just sayin’…
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Correct, my mindset did not cause me to try to murder someone for knocking on my door.
The mindset here that caused loss of life was the homeowner answering the door by rushing out and pointing his gun at the people out there.
100% the mindset that caused the homeowner’s death was the homeowner’s mindset and you are correct, I did not have that mindset when people knocked on my door
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I think this is a pretty serious thing to have the proper stance on.
People legitimately are afraid of their neighbors owning guns, of me owning a gun, of you owning a gun, of your children owning guns, because they legitimately fear that their kid or family member coming to visit them or looking for their dog or whatever will knock on the wrong door and be shot/killed over it. Because they fear the gun owning resident will do what this man did.
It is a completely unacceptable reaction and we need to be unified on understanding and spreading that message.
Fortunately, very few gun owners are…mistaken…enough to take these actions. Let’s keep it that way.
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Wrong address or not, innocents or not. You answer the door and point a gun at the police something bad is going to happen really quick.
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Even if you were 100% certain that the people on the other side of the door were violent criminals intent on harming you and your family, running out the door to confront them all is not a sound tactical move. I can’t think of any good reason to open your door, especially at night, to unknown visitors unless you can confirm they are not a threat.
Perhaps the man’s judgement was severely impaired by drugs or alcohol? Otherwise it’s hard to come up with a logical reason for his action. Proper training likely would have promoted retreating to a safe area and calling 911.
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One trainer said in the class:
“You come out from the holster and keep the handgun low ready. That indicates you are ready to defend but you’re not a imminent threat yet”.
Didn’t work in this case… 
Looks low ready for me 
I’ve just posted my thoughts to show that you must think before act. Not everything we were taught can be applied exactly the same way in different circumstances.
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That of course is a freeze frame of a split second from a video in which the man was moving, he wasn’t just standing like that. The camera simply loses a good shot of the homeowner at that point as the officer is moving and maybe shooting.
And I don’t know what the trainer you are referencing was referring to exactly, because holding a gun like that freeze frame image in a context like this is absolutely posing an imminent threat.
Remember the discussion where people insisted having a rifle slung in front presented an imminent threat? This guy is barging out of his house towards the officers with the gun in his hand raising it with the muzzle in the direction of the officers.
So, I’ll give the trainer the benefit of the doubt and assume he wasn’t referring to anything at all like what this homeowner did.
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Yeah. That’s right. We don’t know how the gun was oriented while the homeowner was coming out.
LEO’s reaction was pretty fast and he didn’t hesitated to shoot…
That might be indication that the threat was present.
Anyways, I’m trying to go over and over again through the whole scenario thinking if there was another option to come out with the gun, but not being the threat. I’m trying to be in homeowner’s shoes and imagine what I would do being woken up at night. I know they introduced themselves as “Police” … but not everyone trust such words during the night.
I think better was to stay behind closed door and discuss… even with gun in the hand.
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This or retreating to a safer area inside the house while calling 911 in either case to confirm they are police seem like infinitely better options than leaving the safety of cover to make yourself an open target for a bunch of people you’ve already decided are threatening enough that you need a firearm in your hand.
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