"They both went for the gun!" (_Chicago_).
In the movie musical Chicago the “They both went for the gun!” scene/song shows how the defense can promote a clearly implausible scenario, but the press will run with it because it is sensational and sells well to an audience that wants to believe in the innocence of a killer whom they consider to be sympathetic.
This “They both went for the gun” claim (like the “He reached for his waistband,” “He had something in his hand,” “He charged the officer,” and “He moved aggressively toward the officer” claims), is typically used by cops who have killed unarmed black men, many of whom have been stopped without real cause other than DWB, WWB, or BWB (Driving while Black, Walking while Black, or Breathing while Black).
In fact, the sheer frequency with which these cops blow these particular colors of smoke up the collective rear end of the populace should be a good reason for always being suspicious of such claims. There just is not enough variety in the claims to make them seem plausible.
Are black men in general so extraordinarily suicidal that most of them—facing an armed antagonist whom they know to be frighteningly willing to kill them—are that much more likely than other human beings to commit precisely the sort of action that they have always heard being used by cops to explain why they had to shoot unarmed people, or attack them en masse and beat them to death?
I think the willingness of so many white people to accept these implausible yet endlessly repeated claims must stem from an inability to recognize that black men are not an alien species. All things being equal, living creatures, human beings included, will seek to survive, not to get themselves killed for no reason.
But somehow a lot of Americans seem to believe that black men are so violent and so self-destructively irrational that time after time after time, if they are stopped by a cop, even when they have not committed any crime (or when any crime they might have committed is so minor that they would face nothing more than a small fine or a few days in jail for it), they will deliberately do the very things they know will cause cops to kill them.
The fact that cops repeat these exact same excuses so often after killing a (usually unarmed) black man suggests that these claims are being unofficially “taught,” passed around as part of their culture, just as Stand Your Ground fanatics advise each other about what claims to make in order to get away with killing someone.
Since these claims are so typically made in in such highly suspicious circumstances, I believe the use of such a claim should automatically provoke suspicion that the cop is covering his rear end after having committed an unjustifiable homicide.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I am glad to see a few people pointing out the absurdity of the claim that Michael Brown tried to charge a policeman who was shooting at him. And besides, I like the movie Chicago. 
