Marc,

You seem basically reasonable. The problem I have with your interpretation of the facts as they stand is that we have seen where ignoring groups of people walking around armed and “protecting private property” leads. Having ill-defined armed groups wandering around is a pattern that has one result, and it doesn’t end well for the country that ignores the build-up. We are currently ignoring or supporting the build-up. I don’t care if the group calls themselves right-wing, left-wing, patriots, police, federal agents, or rebels. If they are wandering around taking the law into their own hands, then the country is in trouble. The things that have been happening with excessive force, extra-judicial apparently federal agents, groups of armed civilians both from the right and left all point to things falling apart. The idea of shrugging and saying “self-defense” when he brought a rifle to a protest — whether the protesters were armed or not, and I haven’t seen anything to convince me they were armed. It is a sign that there is something seriously wrong with the way our country is thinking. He traveled armed, to another state, with the stated intention of being a vigilante. How is that not clear intent when he ends up shooting people? I don’t care if he was provoked at the specific instant that he pulled the trigger. He had to pack up his gun and ammunition, travel to another state, walk into the crowd of people that he clearly didn’t agree with or like, then when there was a confrontation, he started shooting. Just like he obviously planned, or he wouldn’t have brought the gun. So, how is this different from picking up a gun and walking into a school and shooting? Or walking into the town center and shooting? This young man decided to bring a gun, then went looking for trouble when he didn’t get the trouble he wanted hanging around with the rest of the vigilantes at the car lot. He made multiple decisions well before he pulled the trigger that put him in the position where he would pull the trigger, no matter what anyone else did. He may have been scared at that specific instance, but he wasn’t scared when leaving home with the gun, or when he walked out of the car lot, or when he tried to walk back into the car lot. So, there are a lot of things that could be different about the very end of his little adventure, but the facts remain that he made a whole lot of choices leading up to that last minute or two that left him in the position where he felt that he had to pull the trigger. Not just pull the trigger once, or fire warning shots, but shoot multiple people, multiple times.

And that is where I am coming from. I don’t see a young man who made one mistake. I see someone who made a whole series of deliberate decisions that left him in a position where shooting people was his “best” choice in his mind. From where I sit, that is a horrible thing.