In this age of shootings at schools and colleges and Universities, why, in heaven's name would a man be waving around a cigarette lighter that looks like a gun?

I think he is one scarey person.

Has he got a pit bull in the house?

The problem with heightened alerts, in whatever area one deals with, is that there will be more false positives.

I had a false positive on a computer going through a standard test at an airport. The swab test checks for glycerine used in explosives. If one uses glycerine in soaps, lotions, sahving lotions, etc. it is possible to get a false positive for explosives test from the keyboards.

The higher the state of alert, the higher the proportion of false positives to true positives.

Was the person wearing a hood? That could make him suspicious. What was he doing with the lighter? Lighting a bomb fuse? Setting the grass on fire?

Erring on the side of caution can be quite costly. Almost anything we do can be considered to be suspicious by others. But not being vigilant can also be costly.

Luckily we typically do not pack guns here as the NRA is proposing, otherwise this person could be a dead dude and the out of town shooter in jail for manslaughter.

Luckily many people who post on here are not police officers. We would have a lot of innocent dead people in this community otherwise.

I hope he kept his receipt for that lighter.

I can't believe it either, I went through airport security with a juice container that was shaped like an air-to-air missile, and they made a great big hairy deal about it. Man, they are way too tense.

What did he think was going to happen ?
Why did he run away when the police arrived ?