Blair shot an elephant

Today something unbelievable happened: The young British official Eric Blair shot an elephant! The people are still in uproar. When the elephant went must and escaped from its owner it caused a huge chaos: It devastated the bazaar, killed a cow, damaged almost everything that got into its way and even killed a man! The elephant’s mahout left in order to run after it but he took the wrong direction and was too far away to restrain the elephant when it was found again.
So Eric Blair had to attend to the elephant before it could go on causeing devastation. He found the elephant standing calmly in a paddy field and peacefully eating. There was a huge crowed of people standing behind the British police man, they knew that he had to shoot the elephant and the wanted some excitement.
But Blair didn’t shoot immediately - he hesitated. Why didn’t he just shoot? The elephant wasn’t out of reach, he couldn’t have missed it even if he was a very bad shooter. Didn’t he want to shoot? Did he felt sorry for an animal? Well, an elephant really is an majestic and pretty valuable animal, but it killed a human! It had to be killed and Blair had to do it! He just like the other British came to Burma to oppress us and make profit! He calls himself a police man, he was the only man with a weapon, he was the only one who could protect the people. At least, that’s what he owes us!
Finally he load his gun and shot at the elephant. He had to shoot three times to make the elephant fall. But the elephant didn’t die, yet Blair fired his remaining shots. He wasn’t dead when Blair went away, I don’t know if he just got tiered or if he didn’t want to see the elephant dying.
How could people like him conquer Burma?