Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
AboveAverageBear, that was a very interesting video to watch---thank you for posting. I am an ordinary citizen and had no idea of what a threat someone moving toward an officer could be. In that case, a knife was drawn. I guess it does help me to understand some shooting when an assailant was unpredictable.
AboveAverageBear, that was a very interesting video to watch---thank you for posting. I am an ordinary citizen and had no idea of what a threat someone moving toward an officer could be. In that case, a knife was drawn. I guess it does help me to understand some shooting when an assailant was unpredictable.
You are quite welcome. I am a retired LEO and videos like that were shown with regularity at firearms requalification. As retiredcop posted up thread we were trained to shoot for center mass. After the N Hollywood bank shootout in 1997 we started training for head shots. In that firefight the suspects were heavily armed and had body armor on. They were shot mulitple times and were just not going down because of their body armor.
No. A very good cop will fire center mass and keep firing until the threat has been stopped. There is good reason for that. Your odds of hitting the mark anywhere else are greatly reduced. If you miss, it is entirely unpredictable where that round will go or what it might hit. If you miss, the target now potentially has fully closed ground on you and potentially your life or someone elses is in danger. Even if you hit, the odds that they will continue to move forwards are greatly increased.
Police arent taught to shoot center mass because the people who train them are sadistic bastards, they are taught that way because it is the safest, most efficient and effective way of stopping a threat. It gives you the best chance of hitting the target and the lowest chance of hitting a bystander with a stray bullet. Also when youre out in the real world and someone is firing back or looking to hurt you, precision shooting becomes even more difficult so you aim for the biggest block of mass and fire and keep firing, assessing to see that the threat has been halted as youre firing.
In the military I qualified expert on basically every gun or rifle I tested out on. Ive been shooting since I was 14 and go to ranges often. I am pretty skilled when it comes to it but I still would never shoot anywhere but center mass. You just dont do it. You'd flunk out of any credible firearms safety, CCL program or police academy doing so.
I am already aware of all of this and have stated she ignored her training IF she deliberately chose to aim elsewhere. From my military history and further decades of hunting in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest and being occasionally confronted by verrrry large game, I would also never opt for wounding over killing, never. That precludes deliberately picking smaller bits to shoot at than the largest bit I can see.
The fact is there were no bystanders in the immediate vicinity and her line of sight included an empty minivan, the perp's burning car and a cement wall.
I bristled at the assumptions made before facts were available that she was incompetent or poorly trained or otherwise came up lacking in all of the "professional" assessments being made on here.
I thought I was making myself very clear by saying no one knows until we hear from her and investigators as to whether or not she was less than competent, poorly trained, foolish or incredibly lucky.
As the facts continue to roll in we will learn perhaps that she was all three but until then, judging her upon the norms of others behaviour seems unfair.
Second, big mistake aiming for his leg as it is too easy to miss. Poor training. Hit the chest.
I think it's been conclusively established that she wasn't purposely aiming for his leg (which indeed would be poor training). Forget what you read in the original post, it's just nonsense.
She was just aiming in his general direction and let off more than one shot and happened to hit him in the leg, perhaps didn't have time to bring the muzzle up.
I think it's been conclusively established that she wasn't purposely aiming for his leg (which indeed would be poor training). Forget what you read in the original post, it's just nonsense.
She was just aiming in his general direction and let off more than one shot and happened to hit him in the leg, perhaps didn't have time to bring the muzzle up.
That's what I thought. If you look at the first picture the perp is maybe 6 feet away and still charging and the muzzle of her firearm is pointing down.
I think it's been conclusively established that she wasn't purposely aiming for his leg (which indeed would be poor training). Forget what you read in the original post, it's just nonsense.
She was just aiming in his general direction and let off more than one shot and happened to hit him in the leg, perhaps didn't have time to bring the muzzle up.
Please bear with me here but, IF she fired multiple times, the muzzle should have gone up each time she fired and would require some downward effort on her part to put that muzzle once again lower than her sight line. I have not fired a .40 Glock and have no idea of it's recoil characteristics with that cartridge load and slide dynamics but having fired everything from a .455 Webley Large frame, Browning HyPower 9mm with a bunch of .38's 357 in revolvers (real bad for muzzle rise) to the Colt ,45 defender series...that has been my experience. Snap shooting multiple rounds would invariably see pattern going up.
Careful deliberate shooting always required re-acquiring sight line by bringing muzzle down. In every frame shot of that cop her muzzle is well below her sight line. If she has fired multiple times in mere seconds ..........sight line is deliberate on her part...or not? I used that (perhaps flawed) logic while thinking she had only fired once, but if she has fired multiple times; re-acquiring that readily noticeable lower sight line would seem deliberate on her part. Would it not???
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I used that (perhaps flawed) logic while thinking she had only fired once, but if she has fired multiple times; re-acquiring that readily noticeable lower sight line would seem deliberate on her part. Would it not??? 
