Posted on 12/10/2007 7:17:07 PM PST by jazusamo
December 11, 2007
People for whom indignation is a way of life -- and there seem to be an increasing number of such people -- repeatedly have outbursts of outrage whenever the police fire a lot of shots at some criminal.
People who have never fired a gun in their lives, and have never had a split-second in which to make a decision that could mean life or death for themselves or others, are often nevertheless convinced that the police used excessive force.
As someone who once taught pistol shooting in the Marine Corps, it has never seemed strange to me that the police sometimes fire dozens of shots at a criminal.
While an expert shooter can run up impressive scores in the safety of a pistol range, it doesn't take much to make shots go off into the wild blue yonder in the stress of life and death shooting.
Even on a pistol range, it was not uncommon to see shooters not only miss the bull's eye, but miss the whole target, which was the size of a man's torso.
Among other things, this suggests that a pistol may not be the best firearm to keep for home protection. A shotgun is far more likely to hit the target -- and far less likely to have to be fired in the first place.
Any intruder who hears the distinctive sound that is made when you load a shotgun is likely to decide that he would much rather be somewhere else, very quickly. Nor is he likely to return.
Getting back to shootings by the police, now -- at last -- there is a study introducing some facts into controversies that have thus far been largely a matter of emotions, rhetoric, ideology, and politics.
This study shows how often the police in New York City miss when shooting at various distances during the stress of actual confrontations with criminals.
Even within a range of 6 feet or less, the police miss more often than they hit -- 57 percent of the shots at that distance miss and 43 percent hit.
As you might expect, there are even fewer hits at longer distances. At 75 feet -- which is less than the distance from first base to second base -- only 7 percent of the shots hit.
Moreover, just because a shot has hit does not mean that it is now safe to stop shooting.
First of all, this is not like an arcade game, where lights go on when you hit something. Depending on where the shot hit, the policeman who is firing may have no idea whether he has hit the criminal or not.
With the adrenalin pumping, the criminal himself may not be aware that he has been hit, if it is not a serious wound.
Even if the policeman knows that his shot has hit the criminal, the real question is whether the hit has rendered the criminal no longer dangerous. If the bad guy is still capable of shooting back, it is no time for the cop to stop firing, because his life is still in danger.
When there is more than one policeman on the scene, there is no reason for any of them to keep track of how often the others have fired. After it is all over, it may turn out that 30 or 40 shots were fired at the criminal.
But so what? It is very doubtful that the criminal has been hit 30 or 40 times.
Only part of the problem is that many people have no idea of the capabilities and limitations of different kinds of guns, much less how much difference it makes if the shooter is in the safety of a firing range or in the stress of a life and death battle.
What is a bigger and wider problem is that too many people feel no hesitation to go spouting off about things they know nothing about.
People who have never run even a modest little business assert with great certainty and indignation that heads of multinational corporations are paid much more than they are worth. People who know nothing about medicine and nothing about economics unhesitatingly declare that pharmaceutical drugs cost too much.
Maybe all this is a product of the "self-esteem" taught in our schools, instead of the academic subjects in which American children trail children from other countries.
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Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
I'm one. But it just doesn't surprise me.
That's why you need a dog, too. The dog is not there to protect you; he is there to make sure you have the time to protect yourself.
“Why’d you shoot him 44 times?”
“Ran out of ammo.”
LOL. How true. I just love this man.
I was advised #4 Buck, even more pellet count and in the confine of a house would still be devastating, with better coverage/less wall penetration. Dont know exactly the size diff, but the balls are still fairly large...8*)
My thought, too. He described the democrat party candidates exactly. Too bad so many Americans don’t understand that.
The Nobel Prize is not awarded to anyone who is the least bit conservative.
It is reserved for leftists, socialists, communists, thugs, mass murderers, and liars.
But then, I think you already knew that.
It takes practice (unless you’re very gifted) to shoot a pistol. Once a year (if that often) being qualified with a GI pencil isn’t enough. At the range I was comparing the police shooters with the other pistol shooters there (who probably shoot about a hundred rounds a week). Last time I was at the range I saw a lady being taught to shoot an automatic by a man who seemed to be pretty good. At first she had trouble staying withing the target frame at 15 yards. After about fifty shots she was hitting the center of the target with a group you could cover with your palm. But you need to stay in practice. I know an ex NY-police armorer and range officer who told me he had cops show up to qualify who couldn’t get their pistols out of their holster.
I qualified expert with the Army’s Colt .45 automatic. Not an easy feat when you consider that the weapons we used were so old that the barrels rattled in the carriage and the targets had been shot so many times they had holes big enough to put your fist through. I was convinced that I would have had a better chance to qualify by throwing the damn thing at the target rather than shooting at it.
I have a feeling that that vote is unanimous!!!
That’s one of the few weapons I was never required to qualify with and I was a 111. I bought a commercial Colt Government Md in the sixties and still have it. They are a fine weapon if one takes the time to learn to shoot it.
It was the hand weapon of choice by the military for about 80 years, so yeah, it was a fantastic weapon. Of course, I think the one I was issued was made in 1911. Still worked fine, but accurate? Not even close. Now, if I had had one that was newly minted with competition bushings, etc. . .
“Any Freepers w/ an opinion on #1 Buckshot vice #00 for home defense”
—Whatever is on sale ;)
A while back here in FL, a thug got a well-deserved dirtnap by brutally murdering a Polk County deputy, killed his dog and wounded another deputy.
An excerpt from a story about his end of life:
“That’s all the bullets we had, or we would have shot him more,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd told reporters.
http://crime.about.com/b/2006/10/02/florida-cop-killer-shot-68-times.htm
I do too, it's a classic line. lol
“Ran out of ammo.”
A lot of years ago a friend was involved in a bar fight, I saw the whole thing and my friend started it. I went to his trial, the fix was in, a plea deal where he would get probation and a fine.
The judge asked him, "Mr. Redfield, I can understand why you might have hit the man once in anger but why did you hit him again"? My friends answer - "He was still twitching your honor".
That smart ass answer cost him two weeks in the county jail.
My first cousin, not a Katlick, retired as a Lieutenant of Detectives on the Manhattan District Attorney’s homicide squad. He picked up a law degree before he retired and went into criminal law, often representing police officers on behalf of the PBA. In his twenty years on the job he never drew his revolver once. His firm came to represent the officers accused in the shooting of Amadou Diallo. He never directly expressed an opinion about the case, but the vibes I was getting was that he had a very low opinion of the behavior of the officers involved.
Considering Diallo didn't have a gun and didn't kill and wound cops or other civilians, I can see why.
He also wasn't even breaking any laws, he was up at 5:00 AM busting his hump delivering newspapers to support his family. The Kops assumed any black man up and about at 5:00 AM was up to no good.
Your sarcasm and sarcastic criticism doesn’t take away from the legitimate point I made: this man, Sowell, deserves major recognition, doesn’t he?
Yes, he does.
But you already knew that, didn’t you?!
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