Good Shooting!

by David Forsmark  •  Mar 29, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Cross-posted from NewsRealBlog.com

http://www.davidforsmark.com/2010/03/good-shooting

In his latest superb book, Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell describes the "intelligentsia" as people who are certain how many shots a police officer should fire in a stressful situation, even though they have never even fired a shot on a pistol range.

Today, the Detroit Free Press reports on a protest by the usual suspects over "the controversial shooting of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah." They seem to think that the fact that he was shot 21 times by the pursuing FBI agents he pulled a gun on is significant.

It is. It means that the Detroit FBI office is up to par with weapons training.

I would be worried if a fleeing felon who turned to fire at a group of FBI agents in hot pursuit was only hit 2 or 3 times. Fewer hits on Abdullah would have meant more bullets flying around the neighborhood that might hit actually "peaceful" innocent people.

But the worst contention by the protesters was that Abdullah was "a peaceful man" who was targeted by the government because he was black.

DETROIT FREE PRESS: Saturday's event, co-sponsored by the Detroit branch of the NAACP, the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality and others, was held in one of Detroit's most famous Baptist churches, a sign, organizers said, that Abdullah's death was of concern beyond the Muslim community….

"This is a human concern, not a Muslim concern," said Imam Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, one of the sponsors of the event. "The African-American community has had a long history of this kind of experience in Detroit."

Those sitting in the church Saturday recalled Abdullah as a peaceful man and disputed the government's contention that he was a radical.

Wrongfully accused peaceful clerics who are raided by the FBI are led away in handcuffs, not a body bag.

The FBI raided Abdullah's operation not only because he was preaching the overthrow of the U.S. government, but because he was also trafficking in stolen goods to support terrorist causes.

Abdullah fled the scene and when cornered, turned to fire at the FBI agents. In that case, agents are to fire multiple shots to bring the suspect down. They did.

That's the way it goes—when things go right.

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