An incident at a Texas Walmart Monday vividly shows the danger of a poorly-trained person with bad judgment attempting to solve a problem with a firearm.

First, the typically vapid news report:

When shoppers at a Texas Walmart witnessed a crime against an elderly woman, they decided to take matters into their own hands. And it was all captured on video.

A man was suspected of snatching an 84-year-old woman’s purse and that’s when a number of Walmart shoppers in Waco chased after him and a violent struggle begins.

One woman can be seen holding a gun and when the suspect is able to get free to make a run for it, she fires a shot over his head.

The man immediately drops to the ground then gets back up and starts running.

But the group of citizens quickly caught up and grabbed him just as police arrived at the scene.

The woman who fired the gun is seen calmly walking away.

Police arrested 27-year-old Andre Dawson, and recovered the purse he allegedly stole from the elderly woman.

After media reports of the incident, the woman with the gun made contact with police and is now participating with the investigation.

Next, the grainy cell phone video of the incident.

Let’s break this down and show how this poorly-trained woman with horrible judgement and a gun is a much greater threat to surrounding citizens than the purse-snatching thug.

The video picks up after a crowd of Walmart shoppers have chased and dragged down a purse-snatching thug named Andre Dawson, who had targeted an 84-year-old woman.

There are six people surrounding Dawson, plus a woman in a light-colored tee shirt and jeans on the left pointing a semi-automatic handgun at Dawson and at least four of the six people in the camera’s view.

Dawson has no weapon, is clearly exhausted after struggling to escape, and is outnumbered seven-to-one, and yet this idiot feels compelled to not only introduce her weapon to a situation where lethal force isn’t warranted, but points her weapon in the direction of a half-dozen innocent people that we can see.

But it gets worse.

Dawson managed to pull free, and starts to run. The gun woman turns, tracks him, and then raises her muzzle to fire a bullet several feet over his head at a low trajectory, and which likely slammed into a parking lot, home, business or car somewhere between 1/4 to 3/4 of a mile away, at lethal velocities.

Dawson then either fell or dove directly after the shot, which caused bystanders to think she shot him. As she immediately pointed the gun at his back as soon as she recovered from the warning shot and before he even went down (pictured below), this wasn’t an unreasonable thought.

You’ll note that Dawson’s hands are still clearly devoid of any objects that could be construed as a weapon, and that he wasn’t trying to do anything more than escape. There is was no legal justification for this woman’s gun to be out, no legal justification for the warning shot, and no justification for her drawing down down on him as she is here.

This is assault with a deadly weapon. Dawson committed a misdemeanor. She’s committing felonies.

And the stupidity hasn’t ended yet.

After Dawson realizes he hasn’t been hit, he gets up and starts trying to run again, still clearly and almost cartoonishly exhausted from his struggles attempting to escape a half-dozen people. Several people then run after him again and drag him down.

Unbeknownst to them, they’ve run directly in front of the muzzle of our trigger-happy harpy, who is still “aiming in.” In the screen capture below, she’s pointing a gun at four people.

As the three men overpower the exhausted thug for the final time and prone him out for arriving police, she turns and walks away, and leaves the scene entirely.

It is only after her face was plastered all over local media and the Internet that she finally turned herself into police, where her actions are now under investigation.

It’s easy to understand how decent people will get angry at the sight of Andre Dawson preying on an elderly woman. Everyone in this video is to be commended for stepping forward as good citizens protecting both the individual victim and their community from this thug.

But this woman, whoever she is, went well over moral and legal lines when she introduced a lethal force weapon to a situation in which no lives were in danger. She then compounded her horrible decision-making by pointing her gun at numerous innocent people, and then fired a “warning” shot that was both illegal and incredibly dangerous. Luckily, she did not (apparently) hit any innocents downrange.

This person not only needs to have her concealed carry permit yanked immediately (if she even has one) and her gun confiscated (to get ballistic data), but should face criminal charges for the seven lives she threatened.

Firearms are to be used defensively to protect innocent lives, not to be used to make a point or to be used for reckless intimidation.

If you do not have formal defensive handgun training, folks, I strongly suggest that you get it. If this woman had good instruction and followed it, her gun never would have left its holster.

It’s our duty to police our own and insist on lawful behavior from gun owners.

She clearly doesn’t help our cause, and represents a menace to society.