handog wrote:This stood out to me during a movie last night.
Bilbo my dear boy, "True courage is about knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one."
-Gandalf the Great
the Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
I'm going to see The Hobbit today, I have high expectations.
But I don't believe an active mall shooter is the place to spare a life. At the same time violating rule 4 is a bad time to take a shot, so I commend him on his discipline of the rules.
I also see frog's point, don't sit there and act all shook up for the camera, man up and say you didn't have a good shot due to what was behind your target, so you took cover. General Patton might have slapped him.
Personally I believe moving to the threat in an attempt to neutralize it would have been heroic, as was done in the New Life Church by Jeanne Assam. But not everyone is heroic, otherwise it wouldn't be considered as such.
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." -- James Madison