Perhaps the solution to police killings is to disarm the police. The current default--police have weapons and can use them as they see fit--seems not to be working.
Why shooting to wound doesn't make sense scientifically, legally or tactically
31–40 of 107 posts
Re: Why shooting to wound doesn't make sense scientifically, legally or tactically
#32I wonder how the London police manage to keep order without carrying guns ?
Because western European cities are vastly less violent: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/lets-hold-off-cel... . Baltimore, where I live, has 25x the per-capita murder rate of London. Chicago has 13x the murder rate. New York, the safest large city in the country, has 3x the murder rate.
I don't get the connection, it's not cops being killed at a higher rate.
Re: Why shooting to wound doesn't make sense scientifically, legally or tactically
#33Someone needs to invent a "shoot to incapacitate" weapon (that is not a Taser).
That said... we have the technology, today, to make a gun that automatically targets, in a split second and with high accuracy, the arms and legs (and any other part) of a person. So why don't we just do that?
Re: Why shooting to wound doesn't make sense scientifically, legally or tactically
#34Shooting to wound is absurd. However, keep in mind that Bill Lewinski is a pseudoscientist who makes his living justifying killings by police. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/training-officers-to...
No, it really isn't absurd. The German police do it very frequently.
http://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/polizeibericht/article205518...
Re: Why shooting to wound doesn't make sense scientifically, legally or tactically
#35Maybe what's needed are better non-lethal weapons for police.
How about using electro-magnetic waves to alter the brain function temporarily and provoke it to lose consciousness? Sounds like a hard technical challenge, but we can already deliver effective tranquilisants remotely and use electrical discharge to disable the central nervous system. Just find a more efficient way of doing that.
Re: Why shooting to wound doesn't make sense scientifically, legally or tactically
#36The New York Post has just reported that Brooklyn Assembly Members Annette Robinson [D.-Bedford Stuyvesant] and Darryl Towns [D.-East New York] have introduced a "minimum force" bill that would require officers to "shoot a suspect in the arm or the leg" and to use firearms "with the intent to stop, rather than kill." This is what happens when people think TV and movies are an accurate representation of reality. Beyon…
How about loading the first round with blanks. Some times just the sound of the shot is enough to startle and stop a suspect. Shooting in the air would be an option too, but it could be a little problematic, as what goes up, must come down. The blank option would also give an officer a split second to maybe rethink his actions. And if the officer really needs to use lethal force, it's easy to quickly squeeze off 2 rounds, with the second one being the real deal.
Re: Why shooting to wound doesn't make sense scientifically, legally or tactically
#37The New York Post has just reported that Brooklyn Assembly Members Annette Robinson [D.-Bedford Stuyvesant] and Darryl Towns [D.-East New York] have introduced a "minimum force" bill that would require officers to "shoot a suspect in the arm or the leg" and to use firearms "with the intent to stop, rather than kill." This is what happens when people think TV and movies are an accurate representation of reality. Beyon…
Agreed. Been shooting in the military since 2006, and I just left the active duty Army after 5+ years. Was an Infantry Platoon leader...been to a bunch of shooting courses...This idea that you can "shoot to wound" is just not based in reality. Like, at all.
Shoot someone in the leg, huh. Better not hit that femoral! They'll bleed out in ~2, maybe 3 minutes, depending. Better practice your tourniquet. Watch your background, too, because if you miss that leg/arm you don't wanna hit anything else that bleeds.
One thing I've noticed in watching videos of police recently is that they seem really quick to draw their weapons on a target.
Perhaps that's where we should start, with this assumption that citizens are constant, dynamic threats and that cops, when out on patrol, only exist in a constant high-threat environment. Idk. I'm not a cop, but this place has to be safer than Afghanistan.
Re: Why shooting to wound doesn't make sense scientifically, legally or tactically
#38The only instance in which an officer should ever be firing a weapon in the field is to stop a target that is posing an immediate and lethal threat. In that situation, shooting to kill would be perfectly justified. Why can we not address and punish cops who think firing rounds into someone's back as they flee is acceptable instead of trying to mandate that they shoot an extremity (which they will undoubtably 'miss' i…
More important, when they do miss, the bullet will keep going, possibly actually killing a bystander.
Re: Why shooting to wound doesn't make sense scientifically, legally or tactically
#39Perhaps the solution to police killings is to disarm the police. The current default--police have weapons and can use them as they see fit--seems not to be working.
US police have 2nd Amendment rights like anyone else, so that seems unlikely.
Re: Why shooting to wound doesn't make sense scientifically, legally or tactically
#40I wonder how the London police manage to keep order without carrying guns ?
Because the general public isn't expected to be armed with firearms either.