It certainly is easy to identify the people in this thread who are prone to hysteria and histrionics when it comes to "being safe". They all favor the use of excessive force in any situation where a human being acts in a way that must be subjectively interpreted by armed (and obviously trigger happy) marshalls.

I live in an area where we had a rash of murders of innocent mentally ill people by the police, in the name of "public safety". The outcry was so loud against the actions by the police, that dealing with agitated (and sometimes violent, though not usually) mentally ill suspects is now a mandatory part of police training.

People here see this tragedy in terms that are much too starkly black and white. The fact is, most of the instances of agitated airline passengers will always fall in gray areas in between, just as this case has. Drunks, the mentally ill, people who are claustrophic, have a fear of flying (which can surface at any time in a person's life, and quite suddenly on a flight that isn't going smoothly), are having a adverse reaction medically, or are emotionally distraught for any perfectly legitmate reasons, should be shot in the name of "public safety"???

I don't think so.

To me, the sad truth of this story is none of the other passengers have said anything (as far as I have heard or read) about feeling UNSAFE BECAUSE OF THE MAN'S ACTIONS.

It is ludicrous to suggest that this man's behavior, which apparently wasn't threatening to anyone but himself and his wife, is equatable to the actions of the 9/11 hijackers.

We trust the air marshalls to be able to make these distinctions. That is what they are paid to know. How to tell the difference between a genuine threat to public safety, and one that is merely causing inconvenience and social discomfort to the passengers observing a passenger's unruly behavior.

Perhaps next we should just start shooting adolescents for acting unruly in school as a threat to "public safety" too. And drunks. And people behaving badly in shopping malls at Christmas.