Periodically, we hear updates on the case of Curtis Reeves, the 71-year-old retired Tampa police officer involved in that notorious shooting death inside a Wesley Chapel movie theater. We know Reeves was denied bail in a hearing and has another one coming up in July. We also hear he’s confident that the second-degree murder charge will not stick.
Maybe it won’t. Never know in this stand your ground environment, let alone a he-said/he’s dead scenario.
But we weren’t there. No one other than the shooter truly knows the state of mind that prevailed. His word will either be first-person honest or consummately self serving. We know the drill by now.
And we also know this. The suspect was armed with something other than Cracker Jacks or Milk Duds. It more than begs the basic question: Why the hell do you go to Grove Cobb 16 with a gun? Because you legally can?
Absent that pistol, of course, we would be talking about lost tempers and an intemperate exchange of hurled invective and tossed refreshments. Confrontational and dumb, but not lethal and tragic.
While we should look to repeal–or at least alter–the easily abused stand your ground principle, we have to reset our conceal-and-carry culture: 1.1 million and counting. A judge and jury will determine legal guilt in the Reeves case, but nobody who brings a gun to a movie is innocent.