bilgerat57 wrote: Also I noticed that the AR is carried by a single-point sling which allows quick access to deploy the weapon. If I were approaching someone armed in this fashion, I would be apprehensive at best.:
Just as a point, because I have seen several indications in the thread that they felt it was slung, if you watch the video carefully, there is no sling on the rifle. Instead, the chest strap on the backpack, a strap common to most framed packs designed to carry heavy loads, is fed through the ARs carry handle before it was clipped. In my opinion, this is not a safe way to stow a rifle, and a proper sling would have been a much better choice.
For full disclosure before I go into my opinion, I was raised by a man who worked his way up through the ranks from Patrolman to Captain. Had it of been me in this situation, I have a funny feeling I would have been on my way in less than 10 minutes. The biggest part of the problem I have with assigning ultimate blame is I feel there is plenty of blame to be spread in this video. We also have a large portion of the video that is unavailable to us because it was edited down, and starts well after the encounter started. In this situation, we can state our opinions of how the encounter went, but ultimately it is going to take a judge and jury to determine if there were any laws broken. However I do thank all involved in this discussion for the 12 pages of entertaining reading.