That statement reflects a basic misunderstanding of small arms. If you shoot at someone, regardless of whether you're using less-than-lethal ammunition, death or serious injury is always possible. This was absolutely intentional by the soldiers and those who gave the orders. Don't try to claim it was some kind of accident, regardless of training or lack thereof.

I really love the rising justification as of late of "they didn't know" for reckless manslaughter.

They're called "less lethal" for a reason. It's not a paintball that splatters on impact (and even then, those can also harm). Even a properly shot rubber bullet carries injury risk if you're too close. What's all that police training for?

if you point a gun at someone and pull the trigger, then they die from injuries caused by the shot you fired, you killed them. what goes on in your little secret heart between you and jesus might matter to you, but to the real world everyone else lives in you killed them. whether you meant to shoot them in a non-killing way is irrelevant, doubly so if you never learned how to but decided you were qualified to do it anyway.

No difference. Not knowing does not excuse responsibility. Should have figured it out after first death.

I agree that it's quite hard to draw a line and it's a slippery slope, but what UH was doing certainly isn't comparable to cutting state budget for political or financial reasons.

>And that still does not justify the death of any of them.

Surely everyone is the physical cause of everything that results his action or inaction? We differentiate the world through all the interactions and then we get some langrange multipliers and whatnot, or we do it more carefully taking non-linear effects into account to still get some notion of responsibility.

Surely these people you mention are in fact responsible, and surely that should make them targets in case they increase deaths, destroy people's potential etc?