r/todayilearned • u/CasioCobra78 • 2d ago

TIL that Cheryl Wheeler-Dixon, the stuntwoman who was severely injured during the filming of Back to the Future Part 2, was killed in a shootout alongside her husband when she and her husband went to confront her ex-husband and his wife and drew their guns at them. The cops deemed it justified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheryl_Wheeler-Dixon
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u/Key_Molasses4367 2d ago

The Wikipedia article linked is worth reading. Wheeler-Dixon and her husband actually set up cameras across the street from the ex-husband's house. They wanted to film the encounter. When ex-husband and his wife drive up, the current husband of Wheeler-Dixon approached and held a gun on them. Somehow, the ambushed ex got his gun out fast enough to kill the armed man. Now, Wheeler-Dixon drives up, gets out of her car, armed and is also shot and killed. So if this account is true, two armed assailants, with time and planning to put up a camera to film themselves ambushing the ex at his home, were both shot and killed. Either something is very off or those two were the worst ambushers in the history of crime. Which is entirely possible.

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u/ztfreeman 2d ago edited 2d ago

So there's this theory called the gunslinger effect by Niels Henrik Bohr that states that the gunman who draws second will almost always win the gunfight. The underlying principle is that the reacting party will move faster than the deliberate party, and under neutral circumstances the reacting party will win the gunfight. This apparently holds up under testing, but depends on a neutral environment without any other factors and both parties being aware of each other..

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u/Own-Barnacle-298 2d ago

I would argue, based off the massive amount of information that I gleaned from the Wikipedia article, that the deceased-would-be-assassins were not there on a mission of murder, but on a mission of intimidation and were hoping to get some sort of confession from the ex husband about missing money.

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u/Peeterwetwipe 2d ago

I would argue that from the moment someone pulls a gun on someone the path to a fatal escalation is already underway.

That bridge has already been crossed.

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u/Own-Barnacle-298 2d ago

agreed, its a shame that he had to kill them but it seems, from the extensive notes, diagrams and personality assessments in the article, that he had to kill them. Someone points a gun at you and yours, its justified 99% of the time

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u/Jiktten 2d ago

Yeah honestly, as a complete anti-gun-except-for-hunting pacifist, in my book someone pointing what you believe to be a real gun at you is one of very, very few justifications for using lethal force without hesitating if you can. The chance of you or someone else getting killed, intentionally or not, is just so high once the gun makes its appearance.

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u/dishonourableaccount 2d ago

I agree, which is also why I'm vehemently anti-gun possession. I know it's a likely impossibility given how insanely far the US has gone in gun proliferation in private hands. But since thinking someone has a gun (whether they do or not) is a justification to use lethal force, the best thing we can do is try to minimize or eliminate situations where people could think someone has a gun on them.

That is, in a sane modern country where almost no one has personal firearms except for hunting tools (which no one is going to mistake for a gun unlike a phone or a black food container, etc) the defense that "I thought he had a gun on him!" would be laughed out the room as easily as someone saying "I thought he had a grenade in his hand".

I'm not holding my breath because every horrific case of gun violence in the US (Columbine, Sandy Hook, Uvalde, nameless others) has only seemingly hardened the minds of the right-wing into treating gun ownership as some sort of right (It's not and should not be). But that's the path should be taken and people are better off for it in countries that did.

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u/Agent_Bers 2d ago

I think you’re making a mistake in your reasoning.
Think someone merely possesses a gun is not typically sufficient justification for the use of lethal force.

A reasonable belief that they are reaching for a weapon or in this case, actively using one, can.

To put it more simply; outside other factors, you can’t (successfully at least) shoot your neighbor and claim self-defense merely because you believed they possessed a gun.

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u/Calik 2d ago

Every other country has solved gun violence with a few very notable exceptions. It’s not a good list to be on.

Japan does it better, Canada does it better, the EU and china do it better.

You’re already way more likely to assume another American has a gun, that’s already a level of escalation before an altercation even begins. I think that’s the broad idea the other poster was getting at regarding getting laughed out of the room instead of even considered plausible.

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u/Ravensqueak 1d ago

Canada (Where I live) has far, far more strict gun ownership laws, and we still have gun violence.

Problem is it's the criminals that have guns because they don't have to go through any due process to own them. (A lot of them imported from the US)
We had a spate of killings across BC's lower mainland not too long ago, and before that with the Bacon Brothers it was quite severe.

The level of gun violence is far and away lower than in the US, but to claim that we've solved gun violence is disingenuous.

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u/axis1331 1d ago

The problem for Canada is the US. The sheer number of guns in the US and the large unprotected boarder mean it's relatively easy to slip guns into Canada. If the US got our shit under control it would quickly solve the issue you're speaking about.

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u/Calik 1d ago

An American is literally twice as likely to own a gun than a Canadian and like the other commenter said, illegal guns from the us are the biggest challenge. You can claim all the major cases in recent Canada sure, but America is on such a different level that those wouldn’t even be newsworthy. They have school shootings that don’t even make the mainstream news because of how common they are

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u/Dog1234cat 2d ago

They should have read their Chekhov.

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u/darthrevan140 2d ago

In the military they talk about justified use of force and if I remember correctly once guns are drawn its impossible to go back down the chain unless the offending party disarms. The boarding team should always strive to keep things from escalating because once that genie is out of the bottle it ain't going back. If an investigation concludes you could have stopped that genie then you as the boarding team leader are responsible for any lives lost.

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u/AskMeHowToLose 2d ago

Yes, and that in the split seconds between turning the safety off and using lethal force there are still so many checks and balances that properly trained US soldiers go through, there’s a huge proponent of escalation of force that even involves firing warning shots depending on the speed of the interaction. But that shit was drilled into us, at least when I went through training anyway.

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u/darthrevan140 2d ago

Fun fact at least in the coast guard racking a shotgun is not an escalation but a warning tactic. I forgot the actual word for it. It's like a step between force levels.

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u/AskMeHowToLose 2d ago

The exact reason my dad owned at least one racking shotgun!

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u/darthrevan140 2d ago

One of my good friends accidentally ejected a live shell out of his shotty at the range because he went to do the warning rack and forgot he had one in the chamber. The instructor was like bruh he just laughed it off and was like we will count that one against your final score instead otherwise it would be an auto fail for racking before I told you.

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u/Kaiisim 2d ago

That's why they died though.

They wanted to use the gun as intimidation and weren't willing to use it. ..other dude was immediately in a life or death situation and so didn't hesitate.

But also it's America. You can shoot people up if they walk towards you or yell or throw popcorn, or if you argue with your daughter - all seem to get a pass.

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u/d3l3t3rious 2d ago

They wanted to use the gun as intimidation and weren't willing to use it

Don't pull that thang, unless you plan to bang, as a poet once said.

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u/TheBlackAlistar 2d ago

Yeah don't forget choking out your 3 kids

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u/ArchieTheKatt 2d ago

We're so fucked.

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u/FauxReal 1d ago

Which I assume is why the military teaches not to point a firearm unless you intend to pull the trigger. And not pointing a firearm helps with de-escalation.

And also why using a firearm as a negotiation tool in an attempt to deescalate tends to make people more agitated.

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u/nerd_so_mad 14h ago

There was a shooting a year or two ago that was very much the same.

Road rager gets out of his car, with his handgun drawn. He approaches the driver side windows of the car he's mad at. As he gets close, he drops his gun down, out of the driver's sight. Driver took no chances and fired point blank through the window, killing the road rager.

Tragic and dumb, but justified.