For many reasons, so there’s no single answer.
In today’s case study, the shooter was drunk, and acted spontaneously.
It started when a neighbor of Joel Berck Young (photo, left), 63, of Maple Falls, Washington, burned trash and the smoke went into Young’s home.
Enraged, Young confronted the neighbor, they argued, then Young got a shotgun and fired birdshot into the air. When two Whatcom County deputies arrived on the scene, and ordered Young to drop the gun, he yelled, “I don’t care if you’re cops. I’m going to blow your head off.”
Both deputies were then shot with birdshot, resulting in significant and permanent injuries. A neighbor emptied his handgun at Young, who apparently wasn’t hit, but that enabled the deputies to get out of the line of fire.
On September 20, 2024, a jury convicted Young of two counts of attempted murder, second-degree (i.e., nonpremeditated), and he will go to prison; he’s also being sued by the deputies, both of whom have retired from police work. (Read stories here and here.)
Shooting at cops, more often that not, will get a person killed. The typical police response is to return an endless stream of fire. A Florida sheriff once sarcastically remarked that his deputies stopped shooting at the suspect only because they ran out of ammunition.
A suspect who lives to tell the tale is looking at having the book thrown at him by the prosecutor and judge. Virtually all states enhance penalties for assaulting law enforcement officers; and typically, a gaggle of uniformed police officers will show up for the sentencing to send a message to the court that they want harsh punishment meted out to anyone who harms a police officer.
Setting aside suicides-by-cop — people who intend to get themselves killed — why would someone who doesn’t have a death wish intentionally shoot at the cops? It does happen a lot; roughly 50 cops (give or take) are shot to death in the line of duty in the U.S. every year (see statistics here).
I can only speculate. Probably they’re not thinking, just acting impulsively, out of anger or fear or both. An escape instinct likely plays a large role. It seems likely that in some if not many cases, people who shoot at cops are either drunk or high on drugs.
Whatever the reason, it’s probably a safe bet there’s no high-order intellectual reasoning happening inside their thick skulls.