The family of the bipolar man gunned down by air marshals after he claimed to have a bomb is suing.

The family believes that the air marshals should have found a nonlethal way of apprehending him.

Let’s review.

He disruptively stormed out an airplane and onto the tarmac claiming to have a bomb in his backpack.

Air marshals confront him, identify themselves, and tell him to drop the backpack.

He refuses.

The ir marshals order him (again) to drop the backpack and get on the ground.

He repeats his claim to have a bomb and reaches into the backpack.

The air marshals fire, dropping him in his tracks.

The air marshals did their friggin’ job.

This is not to say that I don’t sympathize with the family’s loss or the poor man’s mental illness. But in the real world, marshals do not have time to do a full psychiatric workup. They have to make split second decsions and they did.

Some of my bleeding heart fellows will whine that the marshals should have shot to wound or to knock the backpack out of his hands. I know that the Minister of Propaganda won’t join the chorus of limp-wristed lefties - this time. The Minister of Propaganda has served his country in the military and knows that shooting the weapon out of the bad guy’s hand is a silly Hollywood invention. No one with any training will ever shoot at anything other that the center of mass (excepting snipers from a prepared shot who will go for the sniper’s triangle).

I’ve done in a fair number of God’s creatures over the last couple of years. It is pretty easy to aim at a groundhog, control your breathing, and send an accurate round down range. Shooting ground hogs is nothing like shooting bad guys.

When in a situation where the target is fighting back, you don’t have time for calm reflection or breathing control. I have never, thank all that is holy, been in the situation, but I imagine being shot at - even when it is “to no effect” as Churchill called it - elevates one’s heart rate and breathing, two things that play hell with aim. Couple this with the fact that you are shooting pistols with open sights, and aiming at anything other than center of mass is foolhardy.

I have heard a former police officer describe being in a gunfight in a hallway in which both the criminal and the officer emptied their clips - and not a single round found flesh.

So the officers, in putting six rounds into the disruptive passenger in the space of a couple of seconds, demonsrated the efficacy of their training.

So if shooting to wound is out of the question, what was left, offering tea and crumpets as he reached into the bag which he claimed held a bomb?

The only correct answer was to kill the man.

Flame me if thou wilst.