Most police shootings are within seven feet and three shots are fired, on average. It's pretty simple. You shoot until the threat is eliminated. You don't shoot once, then put your gun down, see if the threat is still coming, and then send another one down range, etc. I don't know how accurate most of you think you're supposed to be when seconds count, but I'd be willing to bet none of you would have a 6" grouping inside of 10' when your life depended on it.
Going to be hard to blame the cop for pulling the trigger two too many times. He could still be wrong if Brown was obviously surrendering and there was sufficient time between the shots, but that's going to be impossible to prove.
I went to this class http://alerrt.org/ It was interesting. There's numerous articles written about police shootings, some of which can be found in that website. http://alerrt.org/files/research/ReactionTime.pdf
Doesn't talk about rounds fired. I mean, I know you can't back up three (because it isn't true) but you could at least say you made it up.
That was the statistic thrown out during the class. You must have a vast knowledge of police shootings and statistics. What if I told you most shootings are with one suspect and one officer and magazines don't get emptied. In the last three we have had two of them only had one shot fired.
If you take the death of Brown out of the picture what you will see is "Marshall Law" and the militarization of the police force. Look at the pictures of those guys _ those are soldiers, not police officers... They even rolling through those city/town streets with military vehicles... Regardless of ethnicity or financial class that's something we all should be paying attention to.
Doesn't take a vast knowledge to have a basic understanding of things like average number of rounds fired. You just have a very low understanding of firearms and shootouts. Typical for police officers in my experience.
Most of that is a function of the actual mechanics of the engagement. I personally do NOT feel that having a six-shooter is adequate to ensure the necessary firepower to survive an engagement - especially if the other guy might have a semi-auto. Why? Because the more rounds you have immediately available (not just through reloads, although reloading a mag-fed semi-auto is certainly much easier than reloading a revolver in combat), the more likely you are to be able to neutralize your target. You are likely to be moving. The other guy is likely to be moving. There may well be more than one other guy. You are going to miss the large majority of your shots in a dynamic, stressful situation no matter how well you are trained. If you do not mace accommodation for that, then you may end up running out of ammo before the other guy does. That is a bad place to be. Have you ever shot IDPA or any similar regime? What is your level of training? Standing still and plinking paper or even steel does not count as training - that does nothing but help the novice to work on fundamentals. No one with any real training would ever advocate restricting someone to six bullets in a firefight unless they wanted them to die. Cops unload lots of lead in firefights because that's what you *have to do* in a firefight if you want to survive. Your target is not going to stand still for you. You are likely to be moving yourself. The immediate stress induced by rapid adrenaline rush makes it all the more difficult to make good decisions and focus on your target, especially with a handgun (it's MUCH easier with a long gun). We can cry all we want about the militarization of the police, but the truth is that at some point they may need that stuff to survive. The real question is: do they know when to use the appropriate tools? That is a training issue, and many departments are lacking in that area. It's definitely an area that screams for improvement, and it might have made a difference in this case. It should be the big takeaway here. Defanging the police will just get more police killed.
What ever happened to "one shot, one kill"? LOL, I know it doesn't always work out that way, but there is something to be said about curbing "spray and pray" in urban environments and IMO you get that FAR too often with civilian police. 9 or 10 shots to take down a big fat guy like in Ferguson is pretty unacceptable. 3 or 4 of those shots only hit his arm.....that's pretty far away from center mass. I get that the officer got his face broken allegedly and maybe had a concussion, but that's still pretty bad.
No, it's pretty normal. As I said all combat is dynamic; the target and the shooter are both moving and both stressed out to the max. LOTS of training can instill some level of discipline that can mitigate this, but it takes many, many years and tens of thousands of rounds expended at the range to get that good. I said before that this one doesn't sound right to me (unless all of the witnesses are completely full of it - entirely possible, BTW), but in general you shoot to end the threat. That means you shoot until the target has stopped moving or until he is on the ground or actively surrendering. Your POA is center mass, but actually hitting it is easier said than done under combat circumstances. Put me at 3M from the target in an isosceles stance with my carry gun and I am going to get a pretty nice center mass grouping that will destroy that particular organ you're shooting for. Make me move from target to target repeating that shot, and the group widens. Make the target move as well, and I am missing most of my shots, getting shoulders, heads, thighs, and everything outside of that and in between. Disarming the cops is not the answer. Training them correctly is the answer. Not only in dynamic shooting, but on when to use lethal force - and when not to. They already get training on the latter, but they need more or better training on it. Obviously.
Great logic... I can play the unfair generalization game too... Blacks are generally showing themselves to be lazy thugs.
Obama said yesterday that he "wants to be careful not to pre-judge this case". Obama has full access to the facts of the case. If he didn't think Officer Wilson was justified in what he did, he would not have said that. This issue is just too important to him personally (like Skip Gates and Trayvon Martin) for him to say something like what he said. He knows that the protesters are going to look foolish once the facts come out. Despite his sympathies being with the protesters, he can't publicly support them because he knows what the police department knows...that Michael Brown robbed a store, violently assaulted a police officer and was on drugs. You just can't defend an individual like that.
Also, take into consideration time and distance. Make me move from target to target with no timer, and I will get good groupings on each target. Make me move from target to target under tight time constraints and I am going to end up missing a lot of shots. How long does it take you to run 30 feet? Most people can do it in under 5 seconds. Most engagements occur at less than 3M / 10 feet. How long does it take you to move 10 feet? Less than a second for most people. If someone is charging you, you likely have *literally* a split second to 1) make the decision whether or not to use lethal force, 2) adjust your POA to center mass, and 3) execute controlled fire to neutralize the threat. All in a split second, or if you're lucky a few seconds. And understand that your first shot is going to be your best shot; recoil and realignment are going to inevitably affect the speed and accuracy of your follow on shots. Just like grenades, it doesn't work like in the movies. Real life rocks your works and the results are going to look a lot different than your brain told you they would.
