Avoiding conflict is a wise choice and one that I'm better at with age than when I was young. There was a lot of dumb ass going on at that event. I suspect that the trio thought that he wouldn't actually shoot. It takes a special kind of stupidity to attack someone who is running around with a rifle. He didn't attack anyone, they did. It might be hard for you to have sympathy for them for the same reason. We do live in an ideocracy don't we.

I have the same objections to glorifying him as you. To quote the fictional character, Kwai Chang Cane, "To kill a man does no one honor."