Why shooting to wound doesn't make sense scientifically, legally or tactically

<i>The New York Post has just reported that Brooklyn Assembly Members Annette Robinson [D.-Bedford Stuyvesant] and Darryl Towns [D.-East New York] have introduced a &quot;minimum force&quot; bill that would require officers to &quot;shoot a suspect in the arm or the leg&quot; and to use firearms &quot;with the intent to stop, rather than kill.&quot;</i><p>This is what happens when people think TV and movies are an accurate representation of reality. Beyond the problem of police not getting enough firearms training in the first place, it just isn&#x27;t possible to shoot anything other than center mass with any hope in hell of hitting with a handgun for the average officer.<p>This is almost as stupid as thinking a taser is non-lethal. Getting hit by a taser can kill people. New research into low lethality weapons for police would be great, but I&#x27;m not holding out much hope given the funding.<p>Perhaps we can stop with the fantasy and start concentrating on things like over use of SWAT, actual police oversight, and liability of the chain of command. On the other side, stop demonizing police before the facts are in.

Shooting to wound is absurd. However, keep in mind that Bill Lewinski is a pseudoscientist who makes his living justifying killings by police.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.nytimes.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;08&#x2F;02&#x2F;us&#x2F;training-officers-to-shoot-first-and-he-will-answer-questions-later.html?referrer=" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.nytimes.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;08&#x2F;02&#x2F;us&#x2F;training-officers-to...</a>

The only instance in which an officer should ever be firing a weapon in the field is to stop a target that is posing an <i>immediate and lethal</i> threat. In that situation, shooting to kill would be perfectly justified.<p>Why can we not address and punish cops who think firing rounds into someone&#x27;s back as they flee is acceptable instead of trying to mandate that they shoot an extremity (which they will undoubtably &#x27;miss&#x27; in the &#x27;heat of the moment&#x27; in favor of center mass)?

This all makes a very compelling case for &quot;using firearms in an optimal way is outside the limits of human ability, so police should not use firearms.&quot; That&#x27;s assuming your terminal value is not &quot;police life matters more than any other consideration.&quot;

The real problem is that most officers have such minimal training and conditioning in hand-to-hand combat combat (specifically, grappling), and as a result they panic and shoot-to-kill much more often than they should, or use excessive force to control a suspect also resulting in unnecessary deaths.<p>Instead of passing stupid legislation (anyone who&#x27;s used firearms extensively knows aiming for limbs is not realistic, you have to aim for center-mass), they should work on improving ongoing officer training and conditioning so that officers would feel much more comfortable controlling a suspect without killing them.

Brit here. Is the &#x27;stop or I&#x27;ll shoot&#x27; thing a myth or does it actually happen in the US?<p>i.e. do police in the US shoot suspects when there is no threat other than the risk they will get away?

1. Dead men tell no tales. 2. Aiming at smaller and easier to miss areas is a great way to introduce bullets to whatever is behind the intended target. 3. Getting shot is not a guarantee of a cessation of hostilities.

Maybe what&#x27;s needed are better non-lethal weapons for police.

I think this article misses the point of recent controversies, which have dealt with lethal force on unarmed suspects. If a suspect is armed, you probably don&#x27;t want to shoot their legs and hope they drop their weapon. But if a seemingly unarmed suspect continues to run, or approach, it seems more than reasonable to not shoot to kill. Unless you are Judge Dredd.

Of course if it comes to shooting you have to shoot to kill. I think the problem is with too trigger happy cops that are too quick to pull their guns out and are not utilizing their tools to deescalate the situation. And yes sometimes deescalating means letting someone just get away temporarily if he only stole a pack of smokes.

As long as you allow the general public to carry firearms the police will have a hard time establish a power superiority in any stand of without the excessive use of firepower.<p>As this article talks about firing multiple rounds per encounter is the norm it nigh be worth pointing out that the whole German police fired less than 100 shots at person per year for the last decade. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;de.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_Deutschland" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;de.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_i...</a>

Maybe, I am from a different planet, but sometimes I heard, that police should protect people, but currently some policemen are more caring about protecting themselves -- and they are trained exactly that way.<p>This at least, as an European, goes threw my mind, when I read such descriptions and some news from unarmed people shot into the back.

Someone needs to invent a &quot;shoot to incapacitate&quot; weapon (that is not a Taser).<p>That said... we have the technology, <i>today,</i> to make a gun that automatically targets, in a split second and with high accuracy, the arms and legs (and any other part) of a person. So why don&#x27;t we just do that?

I wonder how the London police manage to keep order without carrying guns ?

Sounds like a strawman. Who advocates shooting people just to wound them? Why not shoot to disable a threat?

Perhaps the solution to police killings is to disarm the police. The current default--police have weapons and can use them as they see fit--seems not to be working.