If he was acting in a way as to trick someone into thinking he had a gun, then you can hardly blame the other party for not realizing that he did not actually have one. And for that matter, even with gun control, a US marshal is exactly the kind of person one would expect to still be decently likely to have one.

I agree that America needs gun control, the reason why I haven’t been talking about it as much here is that I think that in this specific instance in particular, it probably would not have helped, and so isnt as good a case for arguing it, as, say, those times when some idiot decides that shooting someone for using their driveway to turn around is somehow justified. I am not doing this as some kind of mental gymnastics to justify private gun ownership. I do not own a gun, nor do I feel particularly comfortable around them. I just don’t feel that the issue is especially relevant to what happened in this case, assuming the reporting of the incident or my quick reading of it have not missed some important details.