I spent my morning productively: arguing on the internet with people who are defending the pig who drew the gun on Bushnell and ordered him (the downed man who was on fire) to the ground.

Whenever you argue long enough with people who defend the state backed death squads, they always come back to the same thing: “you don’t know what it’s like out there, you think you wouldn’t make the same mistake?”

They always say that shit like noooooo one else has ever experienced emergencies and violence. A ton of people are in jobs where wild stuff happens regularly, and we don’t start blastin: EMTs, social workers, anything to do with directly caring for folks in bad situations.

Besides which, there were other people there who DID act normally, and called out the guys drawing guns. It makes me sick that people can shut off any perception or judgement when looking at this stuff.

I don’t want to go into detail, but one of the proudest moments of my career is saving a guy on fire. You know what I didn’t do? I didn’t pull out a gun like a coward. A lot of people will freeze, and that’s normal, but pulling a gun is psychotic. But people will act like any other reaction is impossible.

Of course, I don’t whip out my history in that context because it wouldn’t make a difference and no one would believe it. But like, I guess I’m just venting here because I’m working through my own stuff.

They just always talk like cops are the only people who deal with crises, and that the cop-science answer of “shoot at everything that twitches” is the best answer because they’re the only ones with that experience.