As a mental health professional (PhD in Clinical Psychology), who has worked with dangerous populations
OK, credit where credit is due. However, this does not change the fact that someone was killed. I'm sure there are plenty of examples of people being trained to kill others in certain situations that you do NOT approve of. I can only assume that your argument is based on the assumption that there are lots of people with bombs on airplanes and that therefore there is a need to give carte blanche to air marshals. The only problem with this argument is that planes are not blowing up all the time nor are there lots of thwarted plots.
He was traveling from Medellin, Columbia, a place not well-known for security and cooperation with law-enforcement.
So what? Do all people travelling from there get shot? No, apparently only people acting crazy. So, again, behave on the airplane or you are dead. If you want to detonate a bomb, do it without the antics and you'll be fine.
If he had a bomb, wounding him may have prompted him to try and detonate it.
A bomb small enough to go undetected would not do a lot of damage on the ground. It might have killed the agents, however, depending on how close they were. Even if he had some really evil explosives, more than a few pounds would be very hard to conceal. But there was no bomb. There _could_ be a bomb on lots flights, quick, call the cops! Somebody fucked up big time.
They were people doing their job, in a way consistent with their training, in a manner that would be upheld by the court. Given their limited available information, they took steps to protect the greatest number of people.
And I'm saying the job sucks and the US is the only country I've heard of that has armed guards on commercial flights. It's insane to have firearms on an airplane, you cannot start punching holes in the airplane hull at 10 km. The air marshal program is nothing but a dog-and-pony show to give people a sense of security.
But, there could have been a bomb, and it could have taken out the whole plane in the air without the marshals having time to even blink. Because Mr. Alpizar acted up on the ground he got killed by mistake. Tell me again how these agents were doing their part to make air travel safer?
