SavannahMann
Platinum Member
- Nov 16, 2016
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People like to examine situations where the police died in shootouts to try and figure out how to prevent it again. I’ve mentioned many times that we keep learning the wrong lessons. I am going to further explain what I mean, and how I am not alone. This first video is the Miami shootout analyzed. This is the shootout that saw the end of the revolver in favor of the auto loading handgun as standard for police. The lesson we supposedly learned, was that revolvers were not the weapon for modern police work. It was the wrong lesson.
The video is long. Very long, but it is informative.
The end result is that we learned that revolvers were not the weapon to use. Yet, the real failure was not the revolvers, it was a fundamental failure of marksmanship. The same failure repeated time and time again. The idea that you have to shoot fast, or you will die. The idea that lead flying downrange, is preferable to taking that extra half second to aim. The most powerful handgun right now is arguably the .500 Smith and Wesson Magnum. It packs a literal ton of kinetic energy at the muzzle. In some tests, it punches through class IIIA ballistic vests. In others it does not. This round is a monster, and is lethal beyond the imagination of most. Yet, it is only lethal if it hits the target.
The most powerful round in the world is useless if it misses entirely. You have to hit the baddie before you can stop him. This failure of marksmanship is why the police are following the lead of the FBI and leaving the .40 cal in favor of returning to 9MM. There is more ammunition in the magazine of the 9MM, which gives the cops a couple extra shots to maybe hit the target.
I said this is still happening today. In Stockton California, police fired 600 rounds of ammunition at the bank robbers they were chasing. It has been proven that the police killed the Hostage, and what else has been proven is most of the cops who were shooting, could not see the target. They literally had no shot at the baddies, but kept firing anyway.
600 police gunshots during Stockton bank robbery were 'excessive,' report says
I could post more and more examples, but we see a trend if we look. The training is obviously flawed, the policies and practices is obviously flawed if any cop feels that it is not only justified, but totally appropriate to shoot and shoot some more, especially if they can’t even see the bad guy.
We keep learning the wrong lessons. When I was a boy, there was a shooting in Los Angeles. A boy was shot in an apartment building by police. The boy was playing with his friends, and had a toy gun. We can all imagine the scenario, a hallway poorly lit, a cop walking down the hallway, a figure turns the corner holding a gun in his hand. It is obviously a gun, it is gun shaped. The argument then that I agreed with, was that the cop was justified in thinking this object was a gun. It was a reasonable exception to the standard that a cop had to see the weapon before he could shoot. It was a reasonable mistake.
Then in a couple years, a man was shot holding his wallet, and the argument was that there was no way for the cop to recognize it as a wallet, and could easily mistake it for a gun. The slippery slope had kicked in. Anything was a gun now. The exception had become the rule.
I was in Saudi Arabia when I got a newspaper from my folks in a care package. In it the Anaheim Police had shot a man after a foot pursuit. The non cop witnesses, civilians, all agreed that the man turned and reached inside his jacket before the police shot him. He was going for a gun right? That there was no gun there, didn’t matter. It was reaching for the gun. So now the exception of having something in the hand, had extended to reaching for something. Having a gun as the standard before shooting, had become radically different. The exceptions had become the rule.
The slippery slope had now extended the rule even further. Now, anything could get you shot, and in every case, the cops were absolutely justified. Even when the cops actions were egregious and outrageous, defense experts flocked to the court to explain that the cops were expecting an offensive gesture, a reaching for the gun, so when they saw movement, they expected it to be the baddie reaching for the gun. It is why when a cop shouts show me your hands, and the guy walking towards him raises his hands he gets shot anyway.
Now, take a moment and consider that. The cop expected the “baddie” to reach for a weapon, or aim and fire. So when he ordered movement, and saw it, he started shooting. The cop is excused for being delusional. In fact, the cop is absolutely right to be delusional. It’s normal for cops to see things that aren’t actually there? Don’t we send people to insane asylums for that kind of thing?
We learned the wrong lessons. It is how we got into this mess. It is how we got here. We had FBI agents who could not hit the target with nearly a hundred rounds fired. Two agents emptied two magazines apiece of 9MM and perhaps hit the baddie once. Nearly fifty rounds between them, and they hit nothing.
A couple weeks ago I posted a thread about justified use of force. Lethal force should be your last resort, not your first choice. It should be used only when absolutely necessary. You should fire when you have a target, not just in the general direction of where you think the baddies might be.
I don’t warn of further sliding down the slippery slope. We have already reached bottom. There isn’t any lower we can go. When every shooting by police is justified, no matter how outrageous, and when it takes years to “investigate” the cop who fired on a man holding his hands up, we have hit bottom. Now, we have to climb back up, and a lot of folks are going to be objecting to it. And a lot of people are going to be hurt doing what they thought was right. That is regrettable, but it is simply not sustainable to remain where we are.
The time to learn the right lessons, is now. We should have learned them before, but we damn sure need to learn them now.
The video is long. Very long, but it is informative.
The end result is that we learned that revolvers were not the weapon to use. Yet, the real failure was not the revolvers, it was a fundamental failure of marksmanship. The same failure repeated time and time again. The idea that you have to shoot fast, or you will die. The idea that lead flying downrange, is preferable to taking that extra half second to aim. The most powerful handgun right now is arguably the .500 Smith and Wesson Magnum. It packs a literal ton of kinetic energy at the muzzle. In some tests, it punches through class IIIA ballistic vests. In others it does not. This round is a monster, and is lethal beyond the imagination of most. Yet, it is only lethal if it hits the target.
The most powerful round in the world is useless if it misses entirely. You have to hit the baddie before you can stop him. This failure of marksmanship is why the police are following the lead of the FBI and leaving the .40 cal in favor of returning to 9MM. There is more ammunition in the magazine of the 9MM, which gives the cops a couple extra shots to maybe hit the target.
I said this is still happening today. In Stockton California, police fired 600 rounds of ammunition at the bank robbers they were chasing. It has been proven that the police killed the Hostage, and what else has been proven is most of the cops who were shooting, could not see the target. They literally had no shot at the baddies, but kept firing anyway.
600 police gunshots during Stockton bank robbery were 'excessive,' report says
I could post more and more examples, but we see a trend if we look. The training is obviously flawed, the policies and practices is obviously flawed if any cop feels that it is not only justified, but totally appropriate to shoot and shoot some more, especially if they can’t even see the bad guy.
We keep learning the wrong lessons. When I was a boy, there was a shooting in Los Angeles. A boy was shot in an apartment building by police. The boy was playing with his friends, and had a toy gun. We can all imagine the scenario, a hallway poorly lit, a cop walking down the hallway, a figure turns the corner holding a gun in his hand. It is obviously a gun, it is gun shaped. The argument then that I agreed with, was that the cop was justified in thinking this object was a gun. It was a reasonable exception to the standard that a cop had to see the weapon before he could shoot. It was a reasonable mistake.
Then in a couple years, a man was shot holding his wallet, and the argument was that there was no way for the cop to recognize it as a wallet, and could easily mistake it for a gun. The slippery slope had kicked in. Anything was a gun now. The exception had become the rule.
I was in Saudi Arabia when I got a newspaper from my folks in a care package. In it the Anaheim Police had shot a man after a foot pursuit. The non cop witnesses, civilians, all agreed that the man turned and reached inside his jacket before the police shot him. He was going for a gun right? That there was no gun there, didn’t matter. It was reaching for the gun. So now the exception of having something in the hand, had extended to reaching for something. Having a gun as the standard before shooting, had become radically different. The exceptions had become the rule.
The slippery slope had now extended the rule even further. Now, anything could get you shot, and in every case, the cops were absolutely justified. Even when the cops actions were egregious and outrageous, defense experts flocked to the court to explain that the cops were expecting an offensive gesture, a reaching for the gun, so when they saw movement, they expected it to be the baddie reaching for the gun. It is why when a cop shouts show me your hands, and the guy walking towards him raises his hands he gets shot anyway.
Now, take a moment and consider that. The cop expected the “baddie” to reach for a weapon, or aim and fire. So when he ordered movement, and saw it, he started shooting. The cop is excused for being delusional. In fact, the cop is absolutely right to be delusional. It’s normal for cops to see things that aren’t actually there? Don’t we send people to insane asylums for that kind of thing?
We learned the wrong lessons. It is how we got into this mess. It is how we got here. We had FBI agents who could not hit the target with nearly a hundred rounds fired. Two agents emptied two magazines apiece of 9MM and perhaps hit the baddie once. Nearly fifty rounds between them, and they hit nothing.
A couple weeks ago I posted a thread about justified use of force. Lethal force should be your last resort, not your first choice. It should be used only when absolutely necessary. You should fire when you have a target, not just in the general direction of where you think the baddies might be.
I don’t warn of further sliding down the slippery slope. We have already reached bottom. There isn’t any lower we can go. When every shooting by police is justified, no matter how outrageous, and when it takes years to “investigate” the cop who fired on a man holding his hands up, we have hit bottom. Now, we have to climb back up, and a lot of folks are going to be objecting to it. And a lot of people are going to be hurt doing what they thought was right. That is regrettable, but it is simply not sustainable to remain where we are.
The time to learn the right lessons, is now. We should have learned them before, but we damn sure need to learn them now.
