"...the enemy within..."

Tell you what.

Let's leave it at what.

Tell you why shortly.


A retired police officer allegedly shot two people, one fatally, during a cell phone dispute inside a Florida movie theater Monday, authorities said.

The dispute began around 1:30 p.m. at a theater in Wesley Chapel when Curtis Reeves Jr., 71, told 43-year-old Chad Oulson to stop texting during a showing of "Lone Survivor," Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said. When Oulson refused, Reeves alerted the theater staff, which escalated the confrontation.

At that point Reeves allegedly pulled out a gun and shot Oulson, authorities said. Oulson's wife, Nicole, put her hand in front of her husband in an effort to protect him and was injured.
Chad Oulson later died from the gunshot.

An off-duty police officer who was present at the scene restrained Reeves until authorities arrived, Nocco said.

Reeves, who retired from the Tampa Police Department in September 1993 as a captain, was charged with second-degree homicide, authorities said.

Nocco said his detectives considered if the case qualified under the state's controversial "stand your ground law," which permits residents to employ deadly force if they fear imminent danger, but decided the criteria did not apply, MyFoxTampaBay.com reported.

"It's absolutely crazy it would rise to this level over somebody just texting in a movie theater," Charles Cummings, a Vietnam veteran who was watching the movie at the time of the shooting, told MyFoxTampaBay.com. "I can't believe people would bring a gun to a movie."


Let's make a deal from the get go.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the Second Amendment.

And injecting that subject into the discussion is, at best, tasteless, at worst, obscenely offensive.

Because a case can obviously be made, a case that even the most rabid anti-gun folk couldn't refute, that this guy could have just as easily have reappeared in the theater with a pipe or hatchet or tire iron and delivered one swift blow with the same outcome.

Discussion, debate and/or second guessing these incidents almost always lasers in on the how.

Giving desperately scant attention to the why.

And, in cold fact, none of us, lest we are clinically trained in psychology and have an opportunity to study all of the empirical evidence involved have any thing close to the right to open our mouths as to that why.

So, here's the deal.

You keep your mouth shut about the how and why.

I'll afford that same courtesy.

As to the what, however....

Already addressed.

"It's absolutely crazy it would rise to this level over somebody just texting in a movie theater," Charles Cummings, a Vietnam veteran who was watching the movie at the time of the shooting, told MyFoxTampaBay.com. "I can't believe people would bring a gun to a movie."

".....It's absolutely crazy...."

Seems like there's a lot of that going around.