The Erik Scott Shooting

Ok, this story has been getting some serious media attention over here in Sin City. Too many questions, too many contradictory stories, too much everything.

Here's the sitch in a nutshell:

The victim/criminal (depending on your POV) was at Costco and got some idiot clerk's attention by doing something the clerk didn't like (story is still fuzzy on this point).

Said clerk sees the individual is carrying a gun at the small of his back.

Said clerk then calls the police.

Store starts evacuating, including said individual.

As said individual steps out of the store, the clerk points him out to the police officers.

Police officers (again, story gets fuzzy...well, let's say static has engulfed the signal completely) order said individual to drop his weapon/put his hands up/get on the ground. Again, the story isn't clear on this point.

Said individual was either disarming or pulling his gun (more static). Either way, the police opened fire and killed him.

From here, it's too much media, too much grieving family, coroner's inquest, lost hard drive data on the DVR hard drives from the store(I don't believe in coincidence).

I don't believe this shooting is justifiable or excusable. I do believe it was preventable. If Mr. Scott had simply put his hands up and gotten down on the ground the police would have disarmed him, probably cuffed and contained him and confirmed that Mr. Scott was a licensed gun owner who possessed a valid CCW permit. They are saying that he had high levels of pain killers in his system and was out of his mind. The man broke his back while serving in the military. I'd say he needed to pain killers just to be able to operate normally.

A quick aside - I have had back injuries in the past that required a morphine based pain killer to control the pain. All it did was stop the pain. Didn't make me fuzzy or scramble my senses or twist my perceptions. Just makes the pain go away.

If LV Metro and the DA wants to convince any thinking individual, they need to release all of the videos and get the stories straight.

I feel bad for Erik Scott's family, but as I said, it could have been avoided. If you want to know who I think is really to blame, look at Costco. The clerk could have, should have treated Mr. Scott as any other customer unless he was truly causing a problem in the store. All of these companies that have moved into Nevada should inform their employees that Nevada is a Right to Carry state and what that means as far as our rights are concerned.