Privileged white people's solipsistic inability to project empathy into anyone but the white person getting hit is why this conversation keeps happening, over and over again, because at the core of all this what-iffing and what-abouting is a white person who is using their empathy to put themselves in the shoes not of the people being threatened, not the people being assaulted, not the people being killed for nothing other than drawing breath as a minority in America, but to put themselves in the shoes of a repugnant piece of shit, and then trying to find any possibility for redemption or reassurance that—should they find themselves in a similar situation—there is an out for them to take, if only people would relax their morality just enough to proffer it.
It's not an exercise in seeking justice. It's an exercise in self-comfort. It's a daydream turned into bad faith discussion.