Wolf Blitzer asks why cops can't "shoot to injure." (courtesy cnn.com)

“On Thursday, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked guest [lawyer] Jeffrey Toobin why police weren’t instructed to “shoot to injure,” instead of kill,” talkingpointsmemo.com reports. “Blitzer’s questions arose during a discussion on the unfurling conflict in Ferguson, Missouri over the fatal police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.

“They often shoot to kill,” Blitzer said of police. “Why do they have to shoot to kill? Why can’t they shoot a warning shot in the air, scare someone off if they think they’re in danger. Why can’t they shoot to, injure, shall we say? Why do they have to shoot to kill?”

TTAG reader F reckons Blitzer’s ignorance . . .

…is on a par with legislators who think the very act of passing a law, no matter how stupid or inconsistent or poorly worded, solves a problem all by itself, like waving a wand, as if intentions alone matter. I am a computer programmer, and I constantly rant about why the damn computer can’t understand what I meant to do. But I also know it’s just a 2 second silent rant and that the bugs are my fault. I wish politicians, progressives, and statists in general could understand something so basic.

True dat. And I’m not happy with Toobin’s answer, either . . .

Toobin said police are trained to “never fire a warning shot” and to “never fire a shot to injure.” He explained that if police fire their guns, they must “accept the risk” that they are “gonna kill somebody.” Adding that: “If you are not prepared to kill someone, don’t fire the gun.”

The rationale behind this, according to Toobin, is that if law enforcement is taught to fire warning shots or to shoot to injure instead of kill, people will be shot “too often.”

Uh, hello? Cops — like all civilians — shoot to stop a lethal threat. NOT TO KILL. Click here for Mike McDaniel’s most excellent article on the importance of that concept.

Jeez.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

132 COMMENTS

  1. I’m quite critical of police misconduct but cops don’t shoot unless for the purpose of killing. They have a plethora of non lethal tools, their gun isn’t one of them Blitzer is being a dolt.

    • How about just not shooting in the back unarmed people running away? How about not shooting unarmed people surrendering with their hands in the air? How about not murdering people in handcuffs?

        • I was going to post this link but I have given up on this discussion. It is clear that the majority opinion here is that if the cops weren’t militarized, what ever that really means, Big Mike the angelic gangbanger would be free to continue his depredations and all would be peace and harmony.

        • Time to get body cameras on every single cop in the country. Studies show that complaints go down dramatically, and use of force by cops goes down significantly too. (BTW, what does that tell you?). It is irresponsible for the Ferguson police department not to have dash cams.

      • Either way you swing it Blitzer’s idiotic argument is worse than the way the ‘9ers played that preseason game against the broncos that just ended. That was sad. I mean, know its preseason, but 34-0 against Denver? HA!

      • Uhhh….How about having all of the facts come out…how about having a trial like civilized human beings.. how about not spouting your opinion as if it is fact?

        How about! How about!

        This is EXACTLY like Trayvone/GZ–except not in the way I assume you wish….Trayvone was hailed as a victim, a “child”, all of the media (including conservative) painted it as a racially inspired murder…

        Well then there was a trial and guess what happened next….

        I’m all for putting this police officer away if the evidence-the evidence-shows that he inappropriately shot and killed this man-not boy- (WHO by the way was actually a felon-not a lawyer but I think robbery with violence intended /implied constitutes a felony.. yes, no?- A.I. help me out? )

        Not sure ..but doesn’t matter. I haven’t heard a SINGLE major news media suggest that it’s not so important that the cop didn’t know he robbed a store violently, but that MIKE BROWN knew he had just robbed a store … and now the police are here yelling at “me” …how did that affect HIS reaction…

        NO ONE. NO ONE…..YET ..knows exactly what happened..

        so simmer down.

        • I tend to believe eye witnesses more than cops because cops brazenly lie so often. Even in court under oath.

        • At least one and possibly all of those eyewitnesses were also participants in the robbery. Watch the recording. That removes a lot of their credibility or me, as does the autopsy confirmation he was not shot in the back. So, one side of the story contains felons telling lies, I am believing the police until someone proves THEY are lying.

      • Funny how someone shot in the back running away has no wounds to the back but six to the front.

      • If you look at war, specifically pre wwii; you will find that the majority of deaths occurred as the opposing army fled. It took a great deal of discipline to not chase and not kill them from the back. Your point is well taken, I just want you to be aware that in life or death fight; that it is to fight our human nature to not pursue and kill. It is much harder than said.

      • How ’bout, since it has been confirmed that he was NOT shot in the back, you acknowledge that you have been lied to, and drop the “poor baby” diatribe?

      • how about the fact he wasnt shot in the back and you dont know what you are talking about?

      • That’s interesting… because he wasn’t shot in the back while running away, nor were his hands in the air.

        How about waiting for FACTS to come out before inciting violence by spreading around rumors lies and misinformation about what happened?

      • How about waiting for facts before judgement? Autopsy shows all shots were in front and arms not raised.

    • Shoot to “wound”? Dear, God, liberals are insane.
      You shoot to STOP THE THREAT.
      If it takes one bullet, great. If you have to empty your 17-round mag to make the threat stop, so be it. It’s not a “kill vs. wound” issue. It’s a “stop the threat” issue.

  3. Wow. Quite an ignorant statement…. I always love hearing the ignorance of “Just shoot them in the leg or something”… Excuse me, not love, I always puke when I hear it.

    • Have you seen the sketches of the bullet wounds? Couple of head shots; the remaining 4 were to the right extremities. Probably pretty typical of the marksmanship one could expect from a gun-fight. Suppose the cop aimed for a leg? What were his chances of hitting the leg? Assuming he was aiming for center-of-mass and actually hit the head and arm/hand, would his marksmanship have been on-target if he were aiming for the leg?
      – – – Let’s go at this proposition from a different angle. Did he land the head-shots first or last? Play-it-out both ways. Suppose the head-shots were first. The suspect landed 1 possibly 2 head shots, followed by a series of 4 shots to the arm/hand. If the head-shots didn’t stop him why would a shot to the leg have stopped him. Now, suppose the arm/hand shots were first, head-shots were last. Did 1 – 4 shots to the suspects extremities dissuade him from charging? Apparently not. Seems to be strong evidence for why we are taught to aim for center-of-mass.

      • The cop may well have been aiming for center of mass, a right-hander jerking the trigger will pull shots to the left (the target’s right). Also, targets move while shooters keep shooting, even assuming the police officer got off Jerry-Michulek-class splits of 0.15 seconds, firing six shots in a string still takes a minimum of one second, during which the target can move, twist, bend, etc. A right arm up in front of the chest (particularly an arm the size of Michael Brown’s arm) will intercept and deflect incoming rounds. What’s more, bending over and covering after being shot (a normal instinct) will bring the head down toward the center of mass.

        The injury pattern looks like Brown saw the gun coming up, or heard a verbal warning while facing the police officer, kept coming, raised his right hand in a defensive posture and took a series of hits to the arm and upper right chest. Then he bent over and took the last two to the face and head.

        Baden can count the number of wounds but they aren’t always labeled “Entry” and “Exit”, particularly when one bullet enters and exits multiple times. JHPs will expand and bullets deform, the second entry wound of an expanded bullet may well look like an exit wound due to size.

        The big thing is that there are no wounds on his back. He was not shot while running away.

  4. Because cops can only manage to hit 17% of their shots when aiming at center mass. How do you expect them to hit a guy in the kneecap?

    • Yeah, cops are not awesome shots like you Gov. Been in a lot of shootings have you? How many rounds did you put on target?

      • Zero shots. Zero hits. But if I ever have a valid reason to clear leather I won’t be shooting to wound. Anyway I get a lot more practice than most cops, so hopefully I can at least do better than 17%.

        • Yeah. I actually think many cops have zero gun experience outside of their department training and issued firearm. That’s the only explanation I can think of for the record of incompetence.

        • Scrubula: Knowing a lot of cops, that’s pretty much true. The vast majority of cops aren’t ‘gun people’, they don’t practice on their own time, they don’t know not to call it a ‘clip’ and they can barely pass their qualification once a year, which amounts to something like 70% hits on a torso target from 7, 15, and 25 yards, slow fire. The sort of course that any of us would be teased mercilessly forever by our peers if we missed a single shot.

        • k, agreed. That’s why I set the bar so low. If you can keep a cool head that should be 83% hits and 17% misses. Of course the ‘perp’ in question here was unarmed anyway, so what the hell are you talking about?

      • Don’t be an ass. A person running at you covers 21 feet in 2 seconds or just under. When you can draw, get sight picture and take out a moving tibia every time before they reach you, then you can talk.

        • Don’t forget, a little high and inside and you’ve got a not so non-lethal femoral artery shot.

    • Maybe in his head the real world is like Fallout and cops can freeze time with V.A.T.S. and then zero in on a specific part of the body, and VATS will then tell them the likelihood percentage of a hit….

    • Both the cops and the crooks have terrible hit to shots fired percentages. 12 lb NYC triggers do not help either.

      • I’d probably have a hard time hitting silhouettes at 10 yards 17% of the time with those NYPD triggers.

    • Tone aside, he’s right… police aim center mass because it’s easier to hit. A head shot would put out someone’s lights faster and a pelvic shot would drop someone quicker (though they’d still be able to return fire). There are times when snipers have aimed to disarm someone, but it’s under more controlled conditions and with a accurized rifle rather than a pistol.

      • And, getting hits is the important thing because you don’t want to spray bystanders with your misses (*cough*NYPD outside the Empire State Building*cough*). Aiming for a shoulder or thigh is much harder and much more likely to chew up the landscape.

  5. I believe that whether you are “shooting to wound” or “shooting to kill”, discharging a firearm towards another person is all the same legally speaking, regardless of intent.

  6. Well, the one positive aspect of his suggestion is that if they fire a warning shot into the air, it’s harmless…right?

    And did good Mr Blitzer take into account that according to a witness young Mr Brown had been shot while charging the officer…and still kept charging?

  7. He never carries a gun day-to-day to the restroom and everywhere else.
    He never served in uniform- military, police, boy scout….
    He’s never been shot at.
    Yep- ’bout what I expect from him… and his script writers

    • Unfortunately yes. I was once told by a girl in a bar, “I’m a CNN kinda girl”… Yeah, the level of ignorance was strong in that one….

        • Let’s say by that point I had a few- and I gave her the earful she deserved, about as much as you’d expect from a regular reader of this site. She wasn’t too pleased.

  14. The world has gone straight to hell since Universal Military Training and the draft were abolished. Wolf Blintzes is an ass.

  15. I don’t know whats dumber, the question or the answer. PD, and citizens for that matter, do not shoot to kill or wound, they shoot to stop the threat. Besides, most gun shot victms survive their wounds so, in a sense, the Po-Po are shooting to wound. Can anyone tell me how many shots this office fired?

  16. I heard that during prison riots, guards will take pelvic shots to incapacitate prisoners.
    Never mind, the excruciating pain of a pelvic girrdle taking a .308, or the possibility of bleeding out, or embolizing, gas, fat or feces from such a wound, the possibility of ever recovering a semblance of normal function after multiple reconstructive surgeries is negligible. But you still get to live…..

      • Maybe you just haven’t heard right. Pelvic shots are taught as a viable option as they will incapacitate someone quickly. Against an opponent with a knife they can be effective at dropping them in less feet than a chest shot.

        Also an easier target than the head if body armor may be in use.

        • I have heard the same from an LEO trainer, that its new, but being practiced by LEOs he knows, as a tactic for followup shots if first two to center mass have no effect, per possibility of body armor.

          I think he said also alternate two to throat, two to pelvis.
          Kind of “scary” when you consider street cops have to consider the active shooter threat as being equipped with armor, is high enough in probabilities, that the drill to include in the muscle memory tricks.

          I’m guessing these were more senioir, or swat trained, shooters, anyone trained enough in basics, to add this in, the bag of tricks, but IANLEO, so anyone who knows better, pls comment on this question:

          If street cops see the potential bad guy threat on street, in this way including a vest or armor, then how often? whats rationale? Should civilans be thinking to practice this way too?

  17. I may NOT have been a stupid question, per se, rather, it may have been posed to get the information out to the audience as to why shooting to wound is a bad idea. After all, CNN is a professional news network…Oops. Never mind, it WAS a stupid question

  18. I wonder if stupid questions like this, when asked in person and not on TV, could be used as a way to get people to the range.

    “Why didn’t X shoot to wound?”
    “Why don’t you come to the range with me and find out?”

    • That’s what I’ve heard. Supposedly CNN’s ratings have tanked, and even the website has few readers. I’ve noticed they’ve also completely done away with their own comments section because every top rated comment was anti Obama, anti CNN, or anti liberal in general. So in true leftist fashion, they did away with all comments.

  20. Wow.
    I guess they wouldn’t understand.
    Shooting to wound is one of the most idiotic statements that could be uttered about firearms. If someone claimed they shot to wound at a hearing over self defense, I wouldn’t even believe them. The action of putting your own life at risk and putting the lives of those around you at risk by shooting to wound is way worse than the prospect of possibly killing the aggressor…

    • Meh. Come on now, shoot-to-wound is the correct way to go, every time. You expect I am going to shoot-to-miss? I would hope to wound with every shot, and to keep shooting until the threat is neutralized, or I am.

  21. How do you suggest an officer “shoot to injure,” Mr. Blitzer?

    Aim for the leg? What if the officer hits the femoral artery? That might as well be a “shot to kill.” What if the officer hits the femur? The suspect will be in immense pain, and that’s also a potential life-threatening injury.

    Aim for the lower leg or the feet? The officer is very likely to miss and there’s an increased risk that the bullet will ricochet away and hit some unintended target.

    Aim for the arms or hands? The officer is very likely to miss and strike something unintended behind the target.

    AFAIK, there’s no reasonable way for an officer to attempt to only “shoot to injure” a suspect. It’s one thing to do precise shooting in a controlled, safe environment under relatively low stress. It’s another to do it when you’re juiced with adrenalin, have a variable environment being out in public, and don’t know if your target is going to shoot back.

    As for warning shots into the air, you do realize the bullet has to come down somewhere, right? How is anyone who fires a gun into the air supposed to know what it will hit? And firing it into the ground has the potential to ricochet and strike an unintended target.

    [I do think cops shoot way too many citizens. But I think it’s sad that Mr. Blitzer’s question displayed nothing but ignorance.]

    • It can be done. Saw it in a movie. Gene Hackman blew a man’s thumb off one hand. Put another right in the middle of the other hand. Both were moving targets. He was shooting from the hip from about 40 feet. It’s true. I saw it(sarc).

    • Look, NYPD wounded several innocent bystanders at the Empire State Building merely by shooting at a perp. The same thing happened in Times Square after that. So it can be done.

  22. You can’t fix stupid-but you can pay lots of $ on a NBC network. Isn’t Wolfie just following Shotgun Joes advice 🙂

  24. It comes down to a very basic fact. You do what you were trained to do. PD is very similar to the Military in their training. The aiming point is called “Center of Mass”. Meaning you aim for the middle of the target. This is for two reasons: 1) The largest portion of the body means the largest chance of a hit, and with all those organs in there, a very good chance of a lethal hit. 2) When a scenario that requires lethal force, or even MAY require it, comes up, your body is flooded with adrenaline. Anyone out there every tried threading a needle when they’re hyped up like that? Shooting at a flailing limb in the hopes that you cause an incapacitating wound is just plain dumb. But, let’s say that we are trying to do that, and somehow succeed. So we’ve shot our perpetrator in the leg. He’s on the ground. But he pulls a gun from inside his clothing. So, he’s down, but we haven’t stopped him, have we? So he’s injured, in serious pain, and armed. If we’re lucky, we’ll get the chance to shoot to kill this time, if we can get the shot off accurately before he does. Every scenario is full of unknowns. To preserve your life, and the lives of those around you (Battle buddies, civilians, family), you assume the worst. You assume he’s armed. You assume the injury won’t stop him in time. You assume that you have one chance, in the 2/3 of a second you have TO make a choice, that it’s HIM or YOU. If you have to shoot, you shoot to kill. Period.
    You can’t protect anyone if you’re dead. Y’know?

    • Every football coach anyone’s ever had instructs his players to tackle at the waist, because it’s the most stable target with the least movement. If cops were interested in shooting a stable, non-flailing target, then they’d aim for the base of the torso, not center mass where they’re apt to hit major organs and cause a kill shot.

      • I was taught to tackle by putting my helmet in the ball carrier’s chest and my arms around his legs, if I could Being small, I learned to tackle by throwing myself into the guy’s legs. Both ways, the idea was it was the best way to stop him. I expect that is the rationale behind “shoot center mass”.

      • I would also guess that if your goal is to knock someone off their feet, going through or just under their center of gravity would help a lot.

        On the other hand, if you have a long range hole punch, poking holes where they do the most to slow the threat is the way to go. In humans, that’s the mid/upper chest area.

        • The kinetic energy in a bullet (anywhere but Hollywood) is not enough to overcome the inertia in a human’s worth of mass, to “knock someone off their feet”, no matter where they’re hit. The goal is to render the attacker unable to continue their attack, which probably coincides with their being unable (due to injury) to continue standing upright on their feet.

          The idea of aiming for center of mass is not because that’s where all the important stuff is that you’re trying to poke holes in. The idea is to find the largest area of silhouette and try to place your shots in the middle of it. That middle is the part of the attacker that’s farthest (biggest angle) away from something that’s not bad guy, which means you missed and hit the backdrop.

      • I see. Boy is that important. In the future, I guess I’ll leave my gun at home and carry a football. Children’s games have no place in a discussion of armed self defense.

  25. You own every bullet that comes out of your gun. If you aim to wound and miss and hit an innocent bystander..oh oops its about cops. They can shoot 15 bystanders and its a good shoot.

  26. I think ol’ Wolfie has a point. Police need training in shooting to wound. I nominate Mr. Blitzer to be the target of choice. Who knows, he might enjoy it.

  27. “Uh, hello? Cops – like all civilians – shoot to stop a lethal threat. NOT KILL.”

    B.S.! Private citizen DGUs bear but the slightest of passing resemblances to shootings by cops. Your basic private citizen DGU is exactly that: defensive. A cop may “fear for his life”, but he’s usually not in immediate danger and usually only the cop is the one who actually attacks with a weapon. The subject may or may not have a gun and may or may not point it in the general direction of the cop, but the situation is usually far different from a private citizen DGU. The cop is usually not alone and usually knows with at least minutes of notice that they’re going into a dangerous situation.

    The cop usually has some distance between themselves and the subject, with cover in between. The cop frequently has a rifle or shotgun, in addition to other options, including less lethal tools. And, yes, the cop has more training than the private citizen, plus more experience. The cop has all of these advantages. Yet, the cops unload with collective fury and kill with numerous hits out of their many shots fired.

    Meanwhile, a private citizen’s DGU comes as a complete surprise, sometimes in the middle of the night, perhaps with family friends and bystanders in the midst. He has minimal training, little or no high stress experience, probably only a handgun, frantically drawn from concealment (likely for the first time ever), as opposed to an OC holster. And he’s all alone in the fight itself, taking place at bad breath distance.

    He’ll shoot to stop the threat, because that’s all he’s looking for and that’s the best outcome he’s even equipped to effect. Cops, on the other hand, have all the advantages and often the luxury to craft a measured response. That they do not, when the option is readily available, means they’re not interested in doing so.

    Now, to preempt the hero worshippers, I get that *some* cop shootings are one-on-one surprise affairs, but that’s atypical. It makes no sense to compare the two groups’ experiences based on a tiny subset of overlapping characteristics.

  28. I think a much more intelligent question would be why cops do not have a “do not fire until fired upon mandate”. I would rather our troops overseas not have to deal with that nonsense – but our own citizens – good or bad deserve better

  29. Maybe the NRA should take this opportunity to educate Wolf and CNN on the Do’s and Don’ts when it comes to civilian gun ownership and engaging other people in firefights. List out all the pros and cons between what the police do and what citizens are dealing with. And really pointing out the differences. If anything, to highlight the fact that what the police tend to “get away with” a lot more than the average citizen because they are protected by unions and their organization to back them up. Armed citizens don’t have such protections and we’re limited by our own wallets. We face mountains of litigation and often lose our jobs for engaging in lawful DGUs.

    This case will be an interesting one because it will hopefully highlight the legal and judicial double standard between armed police and armed citizens (the irony is we’re both supposed to be citizens). And we (citizens) share the singular duty of protecting ourselves from the criminals and bad people of the world when the police are under no obligation to do so on our behalf.

    Which is kind of ironic considering the police is whom society has insisted we call when we need individual protection from bad guys. Maybe that’s just a failure of society / the media to mislead us in thinking we’re being looked after and taking our self-reliant for granted?

    I understand and appreciate the brave officers that do go “above and beyond” their duty and actually do protect civilians and for that, all they receive is criticism heaped down on their collective heads for the terrible actions of a few bad apples.

  31. Could aim for that “not the whole ear but the hangy down thang” like Festus’s cousin did on Gun Smoke.

  32. This is one of the quickest ways to find out if someone doesn’t know anything about guns. If they ask this question their opinions on firearms should be completely disregarded.

  33. There is no “shoot to wound” versus “shoot to kill.” You could shoot someone in the leg and burst an artery, bleed them out and they die. And you could shoot someone in the skull and they live (Gabby Giffords for example). Also, cops only shoot if their or someone else’s life is in danger, and thus the last thing they need to be trying to do is to shoot at someone’s leg or arm or what not. You shoot at the largest surface area, i.e. the chest.

    As for warning shots, a cop isn’t supposed to fire unless they absolutely have to. Also a warning shot could mean someone else down range getting shot. Although I do agree that if regular citizens should be allowed a warning shot, so should police.

  34. Police and legal shooters use firearms to stop the use of deadly force by another person. Shooting at the legs instead of center.mass tells me that situation may not required the use of a firearm.

    • Very sensible. And think how that would be translated into testimony in a civil suit, especially if the shooter stated repeatedly that he did so. Say goodbye to the house!

  35. The premise is flawed from the start. The question is, “why does a lethal weapon have to be lethal”? This is a primer into a comparison to other police systems like that in the UK which are stereotyped to use completely non-lethal means, which is untrue as 1) the high crime areas have tooled up with firearms (and usually pricey H&Ks) and 2) their crime enforcement protocol often includes not enforcing the law or failing to report breeches in the law.

    The premise that the “victim” in this case should still be alive is flawed as well, but the trial will show that. The black community isn’t making itself look very good, though. Their response to nearly everything seems to be looting every business in town and antagonizing police.

    • It’s funny you should bring up the UK. I’ve worked over there the last few years and this whole article brings to mind and exchange I had with someone in a martial arts class I take off base. It was in the wake of the public beheading of a British soldier last year and naturally, everyone was in shock over the whole incident. But at some point the conversation turned to the sick bastards who had carried out the atrocity and why they had come out wounded instead of dead. At some point, an otherwise intelligent girl with a mean roundhouse insisted that it was because they wanted to take them in for questioning.

      I’ve had other cases of talks like that and have tried to give a good example of American culture in general and American gun culture in specific which has led to some interesting exchanges. For example, at one point, I confirmed that yes, you can indeed buy a firearm out of wall mart, and it nearly blew their minds, (although to be fair that was more of a case of not understanding what a wall mart is, they thought it was more of an average grocery store. )

      The thing is, most of their misconceptions come from the media. Mr. Blitzer IS the media, so what’s his excuse?

  36. The shooting in the air bit took the discussion to stupid, but the follow up with the “scare someone off” crack took it to a new level … because I want the cops to scare off the criminals.

  38. If someone 6-3 and 290 pounds was beating the beat the heck out of me and I was armed I WOULD SHOOT THE POS. Real life is not some fag Hollywood movie where you shoot a weapon from somebody’s hand at 100 yards while both of you are running on a sidewalk. Very few, if any, people could shoot to wound while fighting to save your life. If you must shoot to save your life then you shoot to kill. That is what they teach in combat training and what any person with more than a single digit IQ would do. Shooting a warning shot would only leave you with at least one less bullet to save your life or the life of a loved one. i assume CNN does not require an intelligence test to work for their company. Blitzer is as dumb as the Village Idiot Joe Biden. He recommends you just shoot two shotguns rounds into the air and see what happens. Liberals are such retards.

  39. Where I live, the police can turn their shirt cams off at will. I’ve been harassed by police (tall, lanky white woman here), and after going to the local news for help, police turned in short clips to “prove their innocence”. The clips of course cut off right before things were said to my daughter and I. I don’t trust police as far as I can throw them. I believe they did have dash cams, and trashed the footage after the incident. They lie to save their butts, and the media help – making the public dislike the very person being harassed by bully police.

  40. I remember in my gun newbie days I called the LGS and asked about “less lethal” ammo. (ear plugs apparently) The woman’s voice turned from cordial to scornful saying “If you don’t want lethal don’t use a gun.” She then hung up. I’ve never forgotten that quick lesson.

    • If the bad guy trying to harm me stops, I don’t give a damn about any other consequences. If he lives or dies its all the same to me, as long as he stops. Of course I’ll be aiming center mass and firing repeatedly, or the closest to it that I can muster, so death would be pretty likely.

      • Drives me nuts to hear our media superiors opine that shooting to wound is what should be done. Once the firearm is drawn the situation has gone lethal. Police have all manner of non-lethal options, pretending that a gun is part of that list is just crazy. But look at the source, crazy people who spend their lives pretending instead of having real jobs based in reality.

      • Agreed. In addition, I do not load target ammo in my SD weapons. Several BIG holes center mass have a predictable result.

  42. Hasn’t it been pretty well established that the only place on the human body one could be shot and have a reasonable expectation not to be wounded fatally is the buttocks? There are arteries and large veins in each extremity, vital organs all over the torso, as well as the aorta. Any shot “to wound” stands a decent chance of being fatal anyway.

  43. Deadly Force. Law enforcement officers are authorized to use deadly force to:

    � Protect themselves or others from what is reasonably believed to be an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury; or,

    � Prevent a crime where the suspect�s actions place person(s) in imminent jeopardy of death or serious bodily injury; or,

    � Prevent the escape of a violent fleeing felon when there is probable cause to believe the escape will pose a significant threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or others if apprehension is delayed. In this circumstance, officers shall, to the extent practical, avoid using deadly force that might subject innocent bystanders or hostages to possible death or injury.

    Warning Shots. Warning shots shall only be used in exceptional circumstances where it might reasonably be expected to avoid the need to use deadly force. Generally, warning shots shall be directed in a manner that minimizes the risk of injury to innocent persons, ricochet dangers and property damage.

    Excerpt from the Los Angeles Police Department Manual

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