Raiders of the Lost Ark (it isn't what you think)

[FUD]

I was going to post this in "Legal" but since it's down, I decided to put it here. Besides, after thinking about it, it might fit better over here anyway (if not, please feel free to move it to where ever it should be).

Does anyone remember the Indiana Jones movie when it first came out nearly two decades ago? About half way into the film, Harrison Ford encounters a big guy swinging a huge sword around. Everyone is expecting a huge fight scene but Jones pulls out his revolver and shoots him and everyone in the audience cheered. However, the public does not do a whole lot of cheering when a legally armed citizen uses a firearm to defend him/herself against an attacker armed with a knife. Instead, the "evils" of firearms is quickly brought up by the media and if the individual is not charged by the DA, then, in all likelihood, he will have civil court matters to deal with as a result of the shooting.

Why is it alright to do this in the movies but not in real life? True, that in the movies nobody is hurt or injuried but if the "bahavior" is wrong, then it should be wrong everywhere -- both in the movies and in real life.

FUD

Share what you know, learn what you don't.

 

[Coinneach]

Raiders was before America became a "kinder, gentler nation."

Around here, if you drop a guy who's swinging a sword, the Sheriff would snicker and say nothing. The DA would throw her obligatory hissy fit, but no one in LE listens much to her anyway.

Funny aside: Harrison Ford's exasperated expression in that scene was completely unfeigned, and that scene did *not* go as scripted. IIRC, he was supposed to use his whip to yank the sword out of the guy's hand. However, Ford was suffering from diarrhea that day and didn't want to do the requisite twisting with the whip. The scene was so cool that Spielberg kept it.

 

[old_yout]

Maybe a little bit of mob mentality? If, in the film, the crowd who had gathered to see the fight suddenly gasped when Indy shot the man and the women swooned, the scimitar weilding man's mother had staggered into the circle and began to wail like any mother would, then maybe the audience would have reacted differently. But, as it was, not too much time was spent on the ramifications of Indy's self-defense and the audience forgets about it as the action continues. Such is life in that rough and tumble time and country, Spielberg seems to say, where men scamper about with not only swords but women in baskets while authority is off somewhere haggling with a street vendor. Or, perhaps, I'm looking too much into it. Just a thought.
But remember, while some lawyers may want to make the line between good guys and bad guys hazy when it fits their agenda, what will they do when some knife-waving maniac comes at them? Cite precedent? I'd rather face jeers from the Friday night Bingo community for gunning down my attacker than recover slowly in the hospital from innumerable knife wounds. But, to each their own.

 

[Ledbetter]

FWIW,

About two or three years ago, a mentally ill man was downtown here swinging a sword around. When an officer approached, he advanced on the officer, sword at the ready. The officer shot him dead and was cleared.

Ledbetter