The reaction to a headline of police killing a middle school students is visceral. No reasonable person reacts well to a child being shot dead. But it isn’t always that simple.

In Brownsville, Texas, police  shot and killed Jaime Gonzalez.

Police shot and killed an eighth-grader in the hallway of his middle school Wednesday after the boy brandished what looked like a handgun and pointed it at officers. It turned out to be a pellet gun that closely resembled the real thing.

Fifteen-year-old Jaime Gonzalez “had plenty of opportunities to lower the gun and listen to the officers’ orders, and he didn’t want to,” Interim Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez said.

Shortly before the confrontation, the boy had walked into a classroom and punched a random boy in the nose for no apparent reason, police said. Investigators did not know why he pulled out the weapon.

Since this news broke, it’s been suggested that the reason Jaime brought a pellet gun to school was that he was being bullied.  What this means isn’t clear. Whether it’s true isn’t clear. Regardless, bringing a gun to school, even a pellet gun, is not the way to deal with bullying.

The reaction to this tragedy, and it is always a tragedy when a child is killed, is mixed.  At This Can’t Be Happening, Dave Lindorff writes:

Let me say unequivocally from the outset that, yes, whatever police authorities may say about “justified use of force,” the cops in this instance used excessive force (American cops these days are in military mode, and justify just about any firing of an officer’s weapon). Unless there were other children who were being held hostage by Gonzalez (there were not), or who were near him and being threatened (there were not), the police had no reason to kill him. For one thing, a pellet gun has such a tiny muzzle opening it would be pretty hard to mistake it for the muzzle of a Glock, as police are claiming, unless Brownsville police have very low vision standards. Furthermore, there is the question of why three shots were fired, why they were fired at the chest of a child with clear intent to kill, and of course, there’s that shot to the back of the head, which is simply unjustifiable under any circumstances.

I want to agree with him. I can’t. While the desire that police perform with the scripted precision of an action movie is understandable, there is a line, bound by realistic human limitations, beyond which no one can be held. Not even cops. 

Jaime Gonzalez was terribly wrong and foolish to bring a gun to school, and yet, no matter how wrong he was, it’s not something for which we can ignore the tragedy of his death.  He was terribly wrong not to drop the gun upon command of the police, and there is no question in this instance based on witnesses that he was told to drop the gun.  He didn’t.  Even more foolishness. He might have frozen, unable to process the words or the situation. Stuck, gun in hand, trying to figure out what was happening around him.  Maybe a few more seconds and it would have clicked. The gun would have fallen from his hands, and no child would have died.

These are the sorts of things we think about in trying to make sense of tragedy, excuses and rationalizations of what might have given rise to it.  The next thing that kicks in is how it could have ended differently.  The cops could have shot the gun out of his hand, like they do in Westerns.  They could have gone for a non-lethal, shot, his legs perhaps.  If they had just winged him, then he would have been hurt but still alive.

In every potentially lethal confrontation, there are an array of variables that might have altered the outcome.  Because of our hope that no child dies this way, we painstakingly parse the details to try to find a way that it wouldn’t have happened because we dread it happening.  And yet, as tragic as Jaime’s death is, this time the police weren’t at fault.

The police were confronted with a person with a gun in a school.  It’s possible that they might have noticed it was a pellet gun rather than a Glock, but to expect that degree of nuance under the circumstances is too much.  As I’ve been told many times, very real guns come in all manner of sizes and shapes, and we cannot demand the police to wait until its bullet strikes someone to figure out how lethal it is.

The police commanded Jaime to drop the gun.  He didn’t, at least not quickly enough.  Perhaps, had they waited a bit longer, he would have. Or perhaps he would have fired while they were waiting. 

The police are trained that if they are authorized to use deadly force, they are to shoot to kill. This isn’t a movie. Few people are so skilled that they can shoot the gun from a hand, or wing a person sufficiently to end the threat.  And if the attempt to do so misses, the next shot may come from the other direction and hit its mark. If they shoot, the police shoot to kill.  If not, they shouldn’t shoot at all.  The notion that guns rightly fire but in less than lethal ways is a fantasy we harbor in the hope that the least possible harm can be accomplished.  But guns are real, and they are used in terribly real situations. 

The police are trained that once they start firing, they do not stop until the person at whom they’re shooting cannot do harm.  There was a bullet that struck Jaime in the back of the head, which Lindorff describes as “simply unjustifiable under any circumstances.  If the police stopped, walked over to a fallen boy and pumped a bullet in the back of his head, it would be an execution, But that’s not what happened.

Once the shooting begins, bodies move, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes not. Bullets end up in places that weren’t the target at the moment the trigger was pulled.  When a person spins, or falls, or twists, it could cause a properly aimed bullet to strike an inappropriate place.  It happens in the heat of the moment. It happens even though it shouldn’t.  It happens.

A hundred different things could have altered the outcome in the hallway of the Brownsville middle school, and Jaime Gonzalez might still be alive.  I wish they had.  I wish he was. 

But the police did not use excessive force.  The police did not engage in misconduct. Not this time. They did what we ask of them, and still a tragedy occurred.  Sometimes, tragedies happen at the hands of police, but there is no blame to be imposed.  This is one of those times.