Yes - he could have called the non-emergency police number, taken a picture of the license plate, and filled out a police report. He initiated the confrontation, and propagated it. That wasn't a 5 second conversation about how it's illegal and unethical to park in a handicapped spot. It seemed to be bit of an ass-chewing. I don't think he would have been so impolite if it was a 60 year old white woman without a placard in the parking spot...but that's conjecture on my part.
It just brings up the ethics of interacting with people when you have a firearm on you.
Regarding the push, he drew the weapon as a response to the push and put sights on the aggressor immediately, but he did not shoot. A jury must be convinced that he acted reasonably in that situation. The jury will have to decide if every time someone gets shoved and falls down if they have a right to engage in the absence of an imminent threat of grave bodily harm or death.
Imagine if entering a 6-digit code on your phone would kill whoever you were looking at. If someone shoved you to the ground, and then behaved as in this video, would you be justified in taking the phone out of your pocket and typing that 6-digit code? Because that's what happened here. As soon as the weapon was brandished, the attacker ceased all (non-verbal) indications of aggression. I'm sure the defense will say that when the shover stepped to turn around and walk away, the poor frightened rabbit thought he was taking a step forward and shot him.
That might be enough to wiggle through the presumption of innocence and achieve acquittal, but the shooter is still a murderer. He acted unethically in initiating and failing to deescalate the situation, because he did it with the knowledge that if the situation escalated he might have to use deadly force.
Does anyone really think the shooter would have been initiated and persisted in this confrontation if he was unarmed and the shover was the one parked in the handicapped spot?
"Does anyone really think the shooter would have been initiated and persisted in this confrontation if he was unarmed and the shover was the one parked in the handicapped spot?"
That question has no bearing whatsoever on the case. It doesn't matter at all if he would or would not have started the argument if he was armed or not armed. What matters is his response to being assaulted.
Yes, he could have called the police instead of starting an argument about the parking place. Just because he chose a less sensible course of action does not in any way negate his right to defend himself when physically attacked. Once again, getting into an argument over a handicapped spot is stupid, not illegal. Physically assaulting someone because they are in an argument with someone else is both stupid and illegal. Once assaulted and with a larger younger opponent above him, he had justification to use deadly force in defense of his life.
The "he shouldn't have argued over the parking space so he was not justified in the shooting" logic is akin to saying "the poor guy was shot for shoplifting" when some kid shoplifts, then attacks the store employee who caught him and starts beating him over the head with a blunt object (let's say a crowbar) pulled from a nearby shelf. A witness who happens to be a concealed carrier tells him to stop and ends up shooting the guy when he keeps beating the employee. In this hypothetical case, the shoplifter was shot for trying to kill the store employee, not for shoplifting. In the case in question, the deceased was shot for assaulting and posing a credible threat to the life of the shooter, not for parking in a handicapped spot. Arguing over a parking space does not justify an assault. Once assaulted, the events leading up to the assault have no bearing on the right of the shooter to defend himself.
If you are carrying a weapon, it is prudent to avoid confrontation. Prudence is not a legal requirement, however. There is no legal obligation to avoid all potentially confrontational situations if you are armed. He was well within his rights to chastise the person wrongfully parking in a handicapped spot. It was unwise and a bit of a dick move, but perfectly legal.
Your six digit killer phone app fantasy is nonsensical. No such thing exists, so it could not be "what happened here". What did happen is the man was assaulted and responded to that assault with a legally carried firearm. From the time he drew until the time he shot was approximately two seconds. The assailant turning away began at about the same time he was shot, so would have no significance in his shoot/no-shoot decision. At the time of the shot he was looking at the shooter, and in fact was shot in the chest, not the side. Decreased situational awareness and decreased physical performance under extreme stress are real things, so it is highly unlikely the shooter knew the assailant was starting a turn at the time he committed to the shot
Let's look at the things that had to have happened during the two-second window from the time the shooter drew the gun until he shot. A study of trained police officers found that the go/no-go decision time averaged 0.56 seconds, meaning the average time it took officers in the test to decide to shoot or not shoot was over half a second. There goes a quarter of the two second window. In the same study, the average time for trained police officer to stop pulling a trigger was 0.35 seconds, and most fell within a range of 0.10 to 0.60 seconds. It is safe to assume that a likely untrained older civilian who had just been assaulted likely fell above the average time, so using the 0.35 as a minimum is reasonable, and the defense team could probably convince the jury 0.50 seconds is likely as a "point of no return" on the trigger pull.. Added together - the time for the shooter to decide to shoot, and the time it would take him to stop the trigger pull if he would have perceived the threat had ended [which the defense is pretty much guaranteed to assert that the shooter never had this perception] is about a full second. This means that what matters is the shooter's perception and the assailant's actions a second before the shot was fired, not the instant the bullet hit.
Life does not include a pause feature to allow you to get all the details of a life or death situation as it unfolds. All the shooter's defense team has to do is claim that at the time he shot - or more accurately, the time he decided to shoot - he was reasonably in fear for his life or grievous injury. The defense team does not have to prove this assertion. Instead it is up to the prosecution to disprove it - not convince the jury that maybe he wasn't in fear at the time, or even probably wasn't in fear - but actually disprove it.beyond a reasonable doubt. This is a very high standard, and proving that a person who was legally justified in using deadly force had to have known that the attacker was no longer a threat, decide not to shoot, and stop a trigger pull within a two second window, while under extreme duress following a physical attack, seems next to impossible.
