Cops shoot and kill student on campus

The point is that if you need not to kill them, then the gun option is off the table. Special target shots are difficult, and any shot places bystanders at risk.

In cases like this one where a gun is not the right option, the thought/training has got to be "how to we separate this guy from the knife without killing him (i.e. shooting him/using our guns at all).

And I say all this not as someone who is totally against guns, but as someone who has trained with guns, and owns them. They’re good for one thing, and that’s hitting something with a super high energy chunk of metal. That’s about it. Whether it’s a target or a person, the #1 rule is not to point a gun at anything you do not intend to destroy. So… if the idea is to try to defuse the situation and potentially save this guy/stop the threat, yeah, gun’s off the table. These guys need to learn that just because you have it, doesn’t mean you have to use it.

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I get your point, I just disagree with it, and I think this incident is a good illustration of why.

A shot to the knee would have been pretty easy at this range. And if he missed, he or another cop could always go for the second shot.

And there’s multiple officers involved, it would be easy enough to formulate a training routine where one cops goes for the non lethal shot, and a second cop follows up with a lethal shot if necessary.

Here’s an interesting link with a bit more about shooting to wound (not some site I usually go to, but googled):

http://www.forcescience.org/fsnews/40.html

I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. I’m of the mindset that the gun shouldn’t come in to play at all unless it’s a “deadly force required” situation, and am just going to leave it at that.

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All fair enough. But taking this specific incident into account, what exactly do you think the cop should have done? For the sake of argument, lets assume that they didn’t have pepper spray. And lets assume that the cops sincerely thought the tool was a knife. You think shooting to kill was reasonable here?

Agreed; there’s never a guarantee that the shot will hit the intended target so any time a weapon is fired, there’s a possibility of collateral damage.

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Ding-ding-ding-ding, I agree 100%. Their job is to take the risk. So take the risk, dammit.

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There’s a lot of other options long before a gun comes out that the cops didn’t use. For instance, talking for awhile, billy club, thrown objects, calling in backup, backing up one step for every step the person advances.

There are ways to disarm people barehanded. You’d think a cop should be trained how to do that. And should lose their job and pension for treating a gun like it’s a compliance device.

The only reason for a cop to carry a gun is to deal with life threatening situations. I’ve been told this in exactly those words by numerous police officers. Being out of reach of someone who may or may not have a knife is in no way life threatening.

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No, you cannae compare like for like regarding the firearm situation i s’pose but a real knife wielding attacker with an intent to harm…

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This topic is temporarily closed for 4 hours due to a large number of community flags.

I’ve thoroughly cleaned up this topic, removing unnecessary derailing and general rudeness. Posts attacking other users are going to be eaten. Assume good faith on the part of those posting, or flag them if you believe otherwise.

Thanks.

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I’ll miss Dwight

image

This training exists because quite simply it’s far more difficult (and dangerous for bystanders) to shoot at a limb versus center mass. Even at close range this is hard to pull off - especially with a moving target.

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There are 1.1 guns per capita in the US.

Highest in the world.

More than just the cops need disarmed.

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I know the logic, but clearly something is wrong here, in my opinion at least.

Do you disagree? In other words, given the circumstances (no pepper spray or taser, suspect has a knife that he or she refuses to put down, multiple officers on the scene), you think shooting to kill is unquestionably correct?

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Ricochet isn’t a valid concern, that’s only something that happens in movies. Bullets tend to break apart, or splatter when they hit something. They very rarely bounce, or are deflected preserving enough energy to penetrate something.

They shot because they made the decision to kill that person, they aimed center mass because that’s how you stop the “bad guy” when he’s coming for you.

Maybe they were worried that pepper spray would bring this person too close, and put themselves in danger? I don’t know, but I know there are countries where the police aren’t normally armed, and they can handle these situations without anyone dying.

We need better police training.

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would the flow of discussion be different if other workers were chosen by Scout to be the agency of his death - a train or truck driver?

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The “knife”:

https://twitter.com/igd_news/status/909555378580373504

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For anyone still talking about less-than or non-lethal use of a firearm, please examine the image and pick out which area you think 120 grains of fragmenting copper and lead can travel through at 1200 fps, safely.

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I don’t think anyone is arguing that any gunshot will be “safe” to the victim, but rather that some targets are much less likely to be lethal than the “center of mass”. There’s also the option of firing just one shot instead of multiple. I haven’t watched this video and don’t know if they fired multiple times, but they usually do.

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