Letter: Pro-gun Fayetteville Reader Asks If A Windshield Wiper Is A Deadly Threat

’ve read the cur­rent report­ing regard­ing Jason Walker and Lt. (Jeffrey) Hash and as much detail as has been released in The Fayetteville Observer. As a gun enthu­si­ast and a CCW per­mit hold­er who has vol­un­tar­i­ly under­gone almost 200 hours of self-paid train­ing, I have one ques­tion. Walker was beat­ing on a wind­shield with a wiper. Is this threat con­sid­ered deadly?

In all of my train­ing, there is one under­ly­ing rule imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the four rules of gun safe­ty. Do not shoot an unarmed per­son. In order to con­sid­er shoot­ing any­one, you must rea­son­ably believe your own life or another’s is in imme­di­ate dan­ger. In oth­er words, some­one attack­ing you with any sort of weapon, includ­ing in some cas­es their hands, may be con­sid­ered a threat to your life.

Granted there will always be gray areas that hope­ful­ly are fair­ly inves­ti­gat­ed after a shoot­ing event that reveals the assailant could have caused death. That may be a dis­cus­sion for anoth­er time. My imme­di­ate ques­tion involves Lt. Hash and Jason Walker. As has been report­ed, Walker was on Lt. Hash’s hood and was beat­ing on Hash’s wind­shield with a wiper blade. In my world that’s pret­ty vio­lent, scary at some point, even-out-of-con­trol on Walker’s part. But not dead­ly, not yet. Crazy, yes, but not dead­ly. If I’m to under­stand cor­rect­ly, Hash was still inside his vehi­cle and had many less-lethal options to regain con­trol of the event. As report­ed, Hash left his vehi­cle and shot Walker. At this point, Walker was not a dead­ly threat. Angry, act­ing out, ver­bal­ly and/​or phys­i­cal­ly abu­sive pos­si­bly. But not dead­ly. If those are the cir­cum­stances there is yet one more impor­tant question.

Why would Lt. Hash not be as respon­si­ble for the out­come as I would be? Put me in that dri­ver’s seat, and I know I’m going to jail sim­ply because I’m not a Law Enforcement Officer. I would be charged, have to spend thou­sands on defense, and prob­a­bly con­vict­ed. Because at that point my life was not threat­ened. I would have had a lot of oth­er options to mit­i­gate the prob­lem that do not involve my gun. Even if I’m not found guilty, my life will be ruined in every con­ceiv­able way. Hopefully, this hor­ri­ble event will be sort­ed out in a trans­par­ent man­ner. I’ll be watch­ing closely.

This arti­cle orig­i­nal­ly appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Letter: Pro-gun Fayetteville read­er asks if a wind­shield wiper is a dead­ly threat