Police are being trained to shoot children using these “no hesitation” targets.
Apparently the training works, because last night a Virginia cop shot his 16 year old daughter – who was sneaking back into the house after being out with friends. He thought she was a burglar, and shot before he bothered to look.
This has happened for years and years. Anyone with a gun becomes prone to killing ‘accidentally’ since it is so easy to do this.
It is also very easy to run people over with a car or beat them over the head with a baseball bat, but normal humans are wired not to do that.
“This has happened for years and years. Anyone with a gun becomes prone to killing ‘accidentally’ since it is so easy to do this.”
Especially when the person with a gun wears a uniform and everyone else is disarmed by law.
Person in the taregt doesn’t look disarmed to me.
The person in the target is not disarmed, but I thought it was worth responding to emsnews’ comment that “Anyone with a gun becomes prone to killing ‘accidentally’ since it is so easy to do this.” There is a small grain of truth there; armed people will, in fact, always lead to a small number of accidents. The question is, do we live with a small number of accidents each year? Or should we disarm everyone and have the occasional genocide and democide where uniformed men with guns kill millions?
emsnews:
I reckon you must have years and years of relevant personal experience.
How many times in your life did someone with a gun kill a person because it was so easy to do and claimed it happened accidentally?
The rates of accidental shootings (with an increase in armed citizens) is declining and the rates of officer involved shootings are going up. It’s a difficult stat to find as unsurprisingly the government doesn’t have a national database that keeps that data. It’s out there in bits and pieces and you have to look for it as the government does not want the actual numbers known.
There are millions of people that carry firearms for protection every day that kill no one. Here in Florida on any given day a quarter of a million people (other than the police) are legally carrying a weapon without consequence. Your statement is naive at best or propagandist at worst.
I was living in Florida when they made it a “shall issue” state for concealed carry permits. My brother from Missouri warned me that Florida would be “just like the old west with blood in the streets! Every car accident is going to be an excuse for a shooting!” Really, he really said that… I told him that violent crimes would drop. Too bad he did not bet any money.
It’s also legal in Florida to carry a gun in your car without any permit, as long as it’s in a secured area.
No, they don’t.
Properly trained people know Rule 4–know your target and what is beyond it.
emsnews,
can you please explain to me why out of the millions of gunowners in this country very few ever kill anyone??
What is the number, about 50,000 gun deaths a year from all causes against millions of gun owners. emsnews, you are a confirmed moron.
Nope, more like 15,000 or so. Old CDC numbers: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm.
Everyone sees the little girl standing next to her, but how many even notice the little boy seated in the swing behind? You know… the boy whose head is right next to her center-of-mass?
When police are trained that officer safety over-rides public safety, we have a problem.
When we have police ruling the people by fear and violence, we have a serious problem. We have a police state, not a nation of free men.
Government has always been nothing but force. This was clearly understood in years past, but long forgotten in the present. The Constitution was designed to limit that government force, but today, so many citizens prefer the status of “subject” over that of “citizen,” they they are clamoring for more and more government control. Go figure.
Excuse me? Did you notice the target?
Cops are NOT supposed to be suicidal.
You sound just like one of those hippy-dippy leftists.
Young mothers with guns and small children at the playground planning to shoot police is really getting to be a big problem these days.
Are you saying women *cannot* be a threat?
For 40 years the leftists have demonized police, turning inner city (aka “black”) communities against the police departments that were trying to get the criminals and thugs off the street.
Now they’ve got the lunatic conservatives doing the same.
You people are your own worst enemies.
Hey Sharpshooter! I just wanted to make a brief response so that you would not think I was ignoring you by accident.
You mean like the sheriff deputy in California who emptied his pistol into a 12-year-old because the kid was too scared to put down his toy gun. He had a perfect right to hold that toy, BTW. Cops are being trained to shoot at non-existent targets all over the country. That photo is not as bad as the one showing a young pregnant women and her son at a swing set, both of whom are holding a pistol. A real-life scenario that. Modern cops are starting to resemble battle groups on the streets of Iraq, courtesy of our wonderful Homeland Security. Thank you President Bush.
Look at them at work on the streets of a Missouri small town. Suicidal? They aren’t supposed to be homicidal, either, but the incidents of shooting civilians out of hand is increasing. The score for the last ten years: citizens shot by cops 5000+; citizens killed by terrorists 30+.
In Seattle they murdered an elderly DEAF wood carver who had been selling carved fish on the waterfront for more than 20 years. The cop said he was killed because the DEAF wood carver didn’t drop his 2 inch carving knife when told to do so.
In Spokane the preacher saw someone lurking about in his parking lot and took his .45 out to see who it was. The unmarked cop cut him down. Whatever happened to our right to own and bear arms? Now its an unlimited licence for murder by cop.
In Albuquerque a half dozen cops located an unarmed homeless man who was guilty of illegal camping in the nearby mountains. They opened up with their assault rifles, and then put a couple more rounds into him after he had fallen — just to make sure.
The cops are NOT on the side of the people any more. They are Obama’s police state terrorists who try to rule through fear and violence.
Bob, this goes back as far as when Ronnie was in office. Perhaps LBJ. It’s been a long process, taking ages to spread through the country. But now it’s producing fruit.
Training the cops to be paranoid. Seeing every person as a threat. Train the cop to think that every young mother is going to pull a gun out of her purse and shoot a cop. This is intentional. Those who started this line of training years ago knew full well where it leads. It is changing police forces from being part of the population, part of the community, into a group on to themselves until they act and behave as an occupying force.
Exactly. They are training the cops to be cowards even though they have body armor or bullet-proof vests on.
[snip]
Reality is now dawning on the public.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/red-dawn/
Can’t see it here, but some of these pics had prominent stars of David on them. In 999 out of 1000 cases, you would never see these people as aggressors. This is what happens when Left wingers take control of something. This is why you see little children and elderly grandmothers being frisked by the TSA.
There is a Star of David on her skirt, BTW
Some cops are also trained to “shoot to kill” rather than to stop. There is a video of a cop shooting a Rottweiler 7 times. Once in the leg would have stopped it. And the kid in Missouri was shot 6 times. Why? That’s murder.
EVERYONE who is trained to arms is trained to “shoot to kill” numbnuts.
Not really. It’s kind of semantic but back in my dinosaur days it was “center of body mass” or more precisely the middle of the largest part of the body you could sight. You want to insure that your rounds hit the target and you keep shooting until the threat is no longer a threat.
Huh? Where did you learn that?
Firearms self-defense training—civilian or police—is to shoot to end the threat, under a limited and defined set of circumstances (credible risk of serious harm or death from the attacker, castle doctrine, etc.). It is based on the law and it doesn’t mention numbnuts.
Yet I was not trained and didn’t train my wife to shoot to wound. Center of mass. If your going to pull a gun you damned well be ready to use it and use it well enough to stop the perceived threat.
And that brings up my point. When did they stop training cops to not look at the hands? That is where the danger comes from. Look at the hands when trying to determine the threat. What your shooting is a perceived threat to your life or others and your doing so to eliminate that threat. At the time of the action a concern about if that threat is ended fatally or by an incapacitating wound is a sure way to screw up. End the threat. Period!
I agree, rah, on all points. “Shooting to wound” is a ridiculous Hollywood concept and I’ve never seen it as a part of any professional training. The center of mass principle has been broadly adopted for a reason. By definition, criminal attacks usually happen without much advance warning, surprisingly fast, and at close distances. The defender—whether armed or not—is always at disadvantage.
In the cases when circumstances point to a potential developing attack (e.g. bernal’s incident below), watch out for and evaluate hand movements, eye movements, overall body movements, distance, visibility, escape paths, possible cover, background, number of potential other attackers, etc.
—
P.S. I’m only listing it for uninformed individuals like the one at the top of the thread. You sound like you know it well.
The principle of law (as far as I know it): if the guy is dead he won’t testify against you… if alive he certainly will.
The story that gets told is the story of the survivors.
Hope you don’t live in my city if that’s what you really think. Once a robber is down, you do not have the right to continue to pump rounds into him and you will surely wind up facing a grand jury, at least. If he’s too stupid or drugged to stop that’s another matter, of course.
I saw the video of Brown in the store punching the store clerk while stealing cigars. He’s obviously a thug. Then the story comes out that he pushed the cop into the car and punched him and tried to grab his gun so the cop killed him.
This is called suicide by cop. Reach for a cop’s gun after pushing him down, and you deserve to die. Simple Darwinism.
Being “a thug” is NOT an excuse for murder. The worst thugs are wearing blue. The killers should be hanged to restore justice. .
No, being a thug means I believe he pushed the cop into the police car, hit him, and reached for the cop’s gun. That is the reason for the cop to fulfill the thug’s suicide request.
Oh goody, Bob ….
Exactly right for that story. Yet both stories are correct in that cops shooting citizens and armament is increasing and on the rise, and the arms are not being used so much where they are needed most, like inner city Obama land.
It is a mess, and Obama is good at making them
Barnaby Jones was fiction.So was the A-Team. Shooting to stop was an artifact of limiting the violence in television shows to being cartoon like. What’s changed is they are shooting. The number of rounds is just well… they are cops.
You get this type of tragedy when you have an un-interested source (the Federal Government in this case) providing funding for local police and sheriff departments. The Feds pay these departments to adopt short term practices that makes the Federal Government look good in the local communities’ eyes by dealing out mega money and over stocked military hardware, including MOABs for all I know.
This can only lead to tragedies like the one currently in the news. But the next time these funds become available I don’t expect the local residents to remember Ferguson, Missouri, or Michael Brown and object, instead I expect the local community to look right into the camera and shout “Show us the money!”
I hate to say this but as citizens we don’t deserve what we get but instead we earn our fate.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/08/15/what-we-learned-and-what-we-didnt-learn-from-todays-disclosures-in-ferguson/
ESAD!
So that makes it OK for police to shoot their daughters.
My god, the commenter’s here are just as deranged as the people they purport to vilify.
Only one so far.
Perhaps someone is just scared of truth.
People on this website shoot to kill. It’s time for you to die.
Bluntinstrument,
This will change your opinion about gun control …
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/an-opinion-on-gun-control/
My training in the late 70’s and early 80’s was called “Shoot, Don’t Shoot” and we were taught to evaluate the “threat” before we pulled the trigger. That means you looked for all the situational clues to make sure it wasn’t the store clerk or a plainclothes detective or the homeowner or the momma grizzly protecting her kid. It was also done to evaluate the level of all the threats so that you could deal with the scumbags in the descending order of their threat to you and surrounding innocents. It was not an easy course but IMO one of the best I ever took and taught (as an assistant and RSO.) Shooting an innocent was an automatic course failure because in the real world it only takes a millisecond to create an orphan. We were training officers on how to use their most deadly weapons, their senses and their brains. I always thought of it kind of like a corollary to the Hippocratic Oath, first do no harm… to those you should be protecting.
Police officers in this country carry weapons to protect themselves, not to protect you. That liberal / Progressive argument for
disarming citizensgun control, that the police have guns to protect you is hogwash of the first order. I don’t know what kind of training these folks are getting, but it is morally and ethically wrong and dangerous to our freedoms. Welcome to Progressive Amerika where the cops are being trained to shoot anyone they think might be a threat, kill pets and drop flash bang grenades into cribs with babies in them. Don’t worry officer, go ahead and pull that trigger, your administrative leave while the “investigation” is going on will be paid in full according to the union contract. On the other hand Obama’s ROE for our men and women in the military stationed in Afghanistan is getting them killed… they’re not allowed to start shooting back until they get permission. It’s a situation that is worse than bad because people are dying every day to create this new, Progressivedistopiautopia.This stuff gets more terrifying every day and I truly fear for the people of this country when our “protectors” and “public servants” are being systematically taught that “We The People” are now the enemy.
Well Said.
+100
I carry a firearm every day. To me it is as soothing as a Calgon bath. It is my back door out of a dangerous situation.
I couple of weeks ago I was feeling idiotic for having a gun on me showing a property to two nice ladies. A guy drove up and wanted to look at the property as well so I said sure.
The ladies left but when the guy approached the house I could see the crack sweat on him so I backed off, told him to go take a look, that I needed to make a call. I called a buddy and asked him to stay on the phone with me and call 911 if he heard my phone hit the ground.
When the guy came out he started moving toward me, bull – shitting, trying to get close, this that and the other thing. Crack sweat looks like a thin coat of oil on the skin. He was distracted, yakking away, going to his pockets, “wanna see my business card,” and so forth. He just kept coming.
He backed me up fifty feet.
As much as anything I just ran out of room so I put my hand on my gun and told him to stop, get in his car and ride . And he did.
The second to the last thing I ever want to do is shoot someone. That’s the third time anyone I know has used a firearm in a dangerous situation. Only twice was a firearm even presented and one of those the gun wasn’t loaded but good enough to stop an assault with a knife. In each case no one was hurt.
Go Chelsea!
That was a nasty situation—just as foggy and uncertain as they can be.
Bravo. Well handled.
And there’s the crux of the matter. You were armed and NO ONE was hurt. What would the outcome have been had you not been armed? I’m guessing nothing good. From what you said you handled it spot on… kudos. I also carry anytime I leave my home and have been doing so for decades (except for several years living in the Peoples Republic of California.) Thank God I’ve never had to pull the trigger and I hope I never have to. The important thing is that I can protect myself, my family, friends, co-workers and anyone else that’s close… 911 is too far away for life and death.
When seconds count the cops are only minutes away.
Protecting you or anyone is NOT the job of the police. They have PROVED that fact to SCOTUS. Not their job. Just their lie.
Officer Friendly is no more, especially in high density populations. It can still be fairly “Mayberry RFD” in sparsely populated areas without the money to go all butch.
“The mobs of great cities add just so much to support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body.” ~Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1743-1826
I think there are good police departments and bad police departments. But when you shoot a deaf guy for not dropping a two inch knife, that is insane.
Tony Heller, keep up the good work!
Here is my facebook post linking to the story about the dumbass cop shooting his daughter:
People! Please! Don’t let fear get the best of you!
Never discharge your weapon unless you KNOW that your life is in imminent danger!
Never discharge your weapon without KNOWING FOR SURE WHAT and or WHO you are shooting at!
Even if you think someone is an intruder, you can yell, tell them you have a weapon, tell them to leave, retreat to another room, tell them you called the police, etc.
What if it is someone who is tired or drunk and came into your house by accident!?
Walking into the wrong house by accident is not an offense that merits injury or death!
What if it is your own child that you thought was in bed, but they are actually returning home?
http://www.wtop.com/120/3682619/Police-Loudoun-deputy-shot-daughter
Bad shoot. She lived.
She has a bad “pistol grip”. Plus she if left-handed.
Too many questions about the situation to make a snap decision.
The only way “gun control” would have prevented this accident is if we disarm the police.
No Hesitation training was adopted by the military after the world wars, because a very high percentage of soldiers would freeze when provided a shot at an individual target~ they didn’t want to pull the trigger. So, the training started to include pop-up targets and such, so that pulling the trigger became a reflex action cued by motion. It works well. Police need more discernment than soldiers at war do. Soldiers have discipline when it comes to tactics, which minimizes (but doesn’t eliminate) friendly fire incidents that are the natural result of no hesitation training. No hesitation training is the method when winning at all cost is the goal. Training police the same way as soldiers indicates that they are being trained to win at all costs against an enemy. But, police do have a difficult job, and need good training~ especially when it comes to the proper application of self defense amid the citizens that they voluntarily decided they wanted to ‘serve and protect’. There is nothing wrong with the picture in this post, unless it is the only type used (there is a whole catalog of such images/targets from this manufacturer, and they generally represent statistically improbable scenarios). For police, I would suggest a larger scope, or pop-up targets, but only one in ten has a weapon~ with the others holding things like kid’s toys, plastic guns with orange tips, cellphones, hair driers, or other small random objects. Oh wait~ that is how police were once trained, and generally still are~ these No Hesitation targets are still kind of a novelty right now, but indicate a distressing trend… Anyway, No Hesitation training is for soldiers (whom are generally mercenaries being paid a salary to be killing machines, but that is another topic), not police.
Browsing the comments on this post, I must make clear that, regardless of training regimen, a gun is a machine used for killing, and both police and soldiers are trained in what it means to point a gun at someone. When a police officer points a gun at you, it means that he/she has the intention to kill you by pulling the trigger. When I read that a policeman shoots his own daughter while she is trying to sneak back into the house, does he get an ‘atta boy’ for his vigilance? Nope. His general cowardice (undoubtedly stoked by the mythologies in police culture) prompted his action. He gunned down and enemy assailant/combatant home invader without hesitation.
Have you considered the possibility that at least some of the increase in casual police killings of dogs and suspects is part of the fallout from all the Empire’s wars?
Departments are getting DHS grants to hire unemployed veterans of the wars. These are veterans who have been trained to kill and have few other marketable skills. The very individuals who have had to live no hesitation in combat are being hired to “serve and protect” the US public.
A good friend of mine who lived Vietnam still performs a perimeter check before turning in. He cannot sleep if he doesn’t do it.
Survival habits are not easily cast aside.
“When a police officer points a gun at you, it means that he/she has the intention to kill you by pulling the trigger.”
That is exactly one of the things that bothers me about the increasing militarization of police forces. There have been multiple cases recently where police (or other government security forces) have set snipers in place, already keeping protesting but peaceful citizens in their scopes. They did it at the Bundy ranch. They have been reported as doing it at Ferguson. This is bad — and if a policeman is justified in shooting someone who pulls a gun and aims it at him (because the officer fears for his life), don’t citizens then have the right to shoot when someone does the same to them? If not, why not?
Well I’m from Northern Ireland I grew up in the troubles the only thing was killing was planted booby trap bombs tied to lamp posts guns weren’t good then only thing you heard is explosions the bombs were designed to take out the state police and army thank God it’s not like that now over here officers do carry gun’s with rubber bullets but I know if any officer here killed a child he is jailed and dub as a child killer no one has the right to take any child or innocent life period I do agree we have the right to protect our selfs but we are lucky here at least the police isn’t as trigger happy and better trained to tell if someone is a danger or not even if are they use CF gas to the face then there banged up and majority of us Northern Irish folk feel safer on our streets because guns are band from public streets unless you are on a shooting range or you are a farmer shooting pests like crow’s rats and foxes if them poor innocent children was living her they be still alive free from trigger happy officers which I see no difference between them and some mad mass murderer I love to see if they get into heaven to be judge on there actions then I tell you the second they enter heaven straight hell for killing a innocent child life only way to stop that is vote for a new government we do have the power to change any government if they muck up
William, let me introduce you to a very special part of the English language. It is called the “full stop”. It allows you seperate sentences from each other. It is that little dot after the last word in a sentence. A sentence is a group of words that make grammatical sense which cover a single idea or notion that is being put forth. One idea, one sentence, one full stop.
Simples …
He writes the way he talks. Fears leaving an opening for anyone else to get a word in edgeways.
Training program is meant to desensitize police and make them more compliant to actions they might otherwise avoid or refuse.
Logical continuation of the Milgram Experiment. You would think that if government serves any purpose at all it would be to discourage such things.
Holy crap that’s deeply disturbing. Common sense has left the building.
Desensitized police was resensitized and ordered to stand down in Ferguson:
http://twitchy.com/2014/08/16/ferguson-police-stand-down-looters-run-wild-again-local-store-owners-plead-for-help-where-the-cops-at
By the way thanks for the kind words. Foggy, indeterminate, so difficult to determine exactly the right thing to do when exactly the right thing is the only course of action that will preserve life while leaving one unencumbered by the legal system.
I am stunned by the the psychopathy of people who think carrying a weapon makes people want to shoot each other over parking spaces. I replay that incident in my mind, analyzing what I did wrong and right; there were both good and bad decisions that balanced out in my favor.
I cannot help seeing that guy I faced as a soul, hanging in the balance. I pray that he understands how close he stood to the precipice. How it was his choice that brought us to that spot and I pray that he resolves to leave delusion and lies behind. I pray for his salvation. Certainly he has a brother or sister that sees the course of his life and can help him.
I pray that I was a brother to him in that moment, showing him what the course he was on had brought us to.
Killing the Deaf wood carver holding a two inch blade was JUST PLAIN MURDER! Especially since he was probably whittling at the time.
Washington law:
The actual law (revised 2006) http://knife-expert.com/wa.txt
I routinely carry a 2 inch knife to cut open hay bales. They cost a couple of bucks at the local gas station and sit in a jar at the counter.