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Here's a very interesting video from youtube about military training and shooting to kill. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zViyZGmBhvs: This is the videos blurb:
We ask soldiers to shoot people in combat, but how many men find this easy to do? What proportion can pull the trigger?
Modern techniques of training have enormously increased soldiers' willingness to kill, but the consequences of this success are yet to be fully understood. A man who is not a natural born killer may have a tough time dealing with the fact that his training led him to do things that his natural reluctance would have prevented.

My partner and I where having a discussion on if this is how police are trained to shoot in america and if this trigger method of training is partly responsible for the high rate of innocent gun shot victims by police forces in america.
Obviously there are other factors, like potentially high gun ownership or racial tension, but really i was interested in discussing a consensus of how it could be avoided as a lot of the variables seem to happen in other nations without the same casualty rate.

I'm not very well versed in this sort of thing but I imagine anything other than 'shoot to kill' is best left in the reasons television dramas.

However, as an outsider to America I'm left wondering should people be even considering shooting at all in the majority of cases.

In the previous discussions of this, I came across the complete set of "Peelian Principles" that, at the very least, cover the aspirations of British police, even if it doesn't necessarily always come out in practice.

1) To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

2) To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

3) To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

4) To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

5) To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.

6) To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.

7) To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

8) To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.

9) To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

I have always felt that certain military training should carry over to police training. Shooting kill is one of them, but not for the reasons you may think.

First off to be effective, there needs to be an understanding that there will be consequences for shooting someone who did not show reason to be shot. If this is pounded into LEOs heads, the trigger will start to be harder to pull(metaphorically)

Shooting to disable leads to other issues.
1. Smaller target means higher likelyhood to miss. (aim small, miss small)
2. Misses lead to possible unintended casualties, which is why a center mass shot makes more sense. Center mass is not necessarily a kill shot thanks to modern medicine if treated in time, but it is more likely to kill. No one says shoot to kill honestly, that is a media/liberal term. The correct training is shoot center mass.
3.. Adrenaline and higher heart rate lead to inaccuracy. Its one of the fundamentals of marksmanship to train your body to not react in this way when firing your weapon in a stressful situation. Eventually a Soldiers learns to use this "rush" to their advantage, but this does not carry over to civilian law enforcement, or should not anyway.
4. And this one is important, a miss could lead to your death. Disabling a person is not as easy in practice as it is to talk about on the internet by people who have no experience in such matters.

Now, where this ties in with other military training.
1.Escalation of Force: You always start at the bottom and then work up to shooting someone. Depending on the era we were given different rules of engagement, which don't all apply in civilized world. The earliest that was engrained in me was such:
a. Shout- this is a verbal warning that you need to cease or things will get ugly.
b. Shove- This means getting physical if necessray but avoiding utilizing lethal means. Non lethal means also falls in this category. (example someone is coming at you with a baseball bat. You can either shoot them with a bullet, or a tazer. Tazer should be used first)
c. Show- Show you have the lethal means to end their life and let them make the decision how they want this to play out. At this point they should know that if the continue said activity, they will probably die.
d. shoot- this was in 2 parts, and part 1 was later recinded. part 1 has no usefulness and causes more problems than it solves. 1 was warning shot. Only useful with good backstops and in very rare occasions such as vehicle checkpoints. 2 shoot center mass, never to disable. Likely hood of allowing a perp in the perimiter/ protective bubble etc. is too high, and could lead to unwanted injuries/deaths by bystanders.

Now you can rewrite this to apply to LEOs easily in a way to protect both the LEO but more importantly the civilians which that LEO is sworn to "PROTECT".

So this is what a wartime escalation of force looks like. You are allowed to skip steps, in cases where you are being shot at. I mean I don't shout at someone shooting at me. But if no one is shooting at me, I can't just cap that ass cause I hate local nationals, and the same is true for law enforcement.

Lastly the above paragraph show part of the Soldiers attitude after being shot at constantly in country. We simply don't trust or like locals. You never know which one is gonna be hiding a trigger mech under his man robes and blow you and your buddies up.

That same attitude is rampant in LEOs. Here is the bottom line. LEOs that are not at the federal level are civilians, and they forget that sometimes. They are us. But they have a badge and create this class system among themselves. Treating that symptom is the first step in solving many of the problems. Then adapting a ROE or EOF that is hard wired in, with an understanding that consequences are real for failure to abide by those EOF procedures will actually solve some problems. Then put them on the streets, on foot in the communities. Remind them why they do this, what it means to serve the community and protect it.

sorry for long post, but this is something I have been giving a lot of thought to.

"shoot to thrill? I'm in!"
-Kronk

"Shoot to"BANG
"Hey he said shoot!"
-Frazzled

Dont have any police or military training, so am speaking as a regular Joe here who was raised in the south, where owning a gun is like owning a car. I got the gun "talk" when I was six, because that was just a fact of life that I would be around them. Keep in mind I never even heard the term "shoot to kill" until I heard it on the news one day. I had a heard something similar in the 4 rules of gun safety, which roughly goes "Dont shoot something you arent willing to destroy."

This rule applied to everything, be that with a red rider BB gun or a winchester rifle. The logic is that if you are shooting at something, you have accepted that it will be destroyed (or killed) because thats the most likely outcome. Even if its just a BB gun, you treated that thing like it was an anti tank rifle, to teach the kid or teenager proper safety for when they shot something bigger. Even 22lr can kill so its a good habit to be in. Heck, even a BB gun can hurt like hell.

Shooting "to wound", aka trying to disable, is discouraged because you might miss entirely by trying to shoot them in the arm or leg, not to mention that if you werent ready or felt the need to kill that person or animal you shouldnt have shot it in the first place. Worst of all, shooting to wound encourages a ridiculous version of movie logic that you can totally just pop a guy in the shoulder to disable him, and all he'll do is fall to the ground with minimal blood loss like you punched him. It ignores the very gruesome side effects a bullet wound can have if it doesnt go clean through. Or how even a couple of inches can mean the difference in hitting a person in the shoulder for just a really painful wound that will potentially cripple him for years afterwards, or a shot straight through the heart that will kill him instantly. Thinking you will have the accuracy to hit a specific non lethal area when the adrenaline is flowing and that target is moving is ridiculous for anyone who isnt an extremely skilled marksman.

Essentially, you shoot to kill because shooting someone and trying to NOT kill them meant you werent really ready to accept the consequences of shooting in the first place. Either you are shooting a person when a less lethal option would have sufficed, or you mentally hadnt prepared for the consequences of your actions. There are other "benefits", like encouraging better safety, better accuracy, taking responsibility for your actions, and trying to deescalate a situation before it comes to that, but the main reason is ultimately just to prevent shooting at something that didnt warrant being shot in the first place.

A couple good books on the topic:

On Killing by Grossman (covers the training aspect mentioned in OP)

On Combat by Grossman (covers the psychological prep before and the healing after killing)


A good book discussing evolution of US police from frontier law to current more militarized forces (and the changes in training and equipment that go with the evolution) is "Deadly Force: Firearms & American Law Enforcement, from the Wild West to the Streets of Today" by McNab

It seems obvious that you want your soldiers to be able to kill enemies, but you don't want your police to be trained to the same standards of engagement.

Essentially it isn't the government's job to go about your streets killing you. Police ought to be trained first to de-escalate tense situations.

It's notable that European police officers have a lower rate of shooting suspects than US police, and are also more capable of shooting to disable rather than kill. There must be a reason for this.

Whether it is the lower weaponisation of European society, or the different training of European police, or these two factors combined, or something else.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It seems obvious that you want your soldiers to be able to kill enemies, but you don't want your police to be trained to the same standards of engagement.

Essentially it isn't the government's job to go about your streets killing you. Police ought to be trained first to de-escalate tense situations.

It's notable that European police officers have a lower rate of shooting suspects than US police, and are also more capable of shooting to disable rather than kill. There must be a reason for this.

The only police I've ever heard of firing to disable are SWAT, and that's only expert marksmen from ideal positions, against stationary or slow moving targets. And that was US police.

Other than that, if a cop wants to de-escalate then he doesn't draw his weapon. If he does draw his weapon then it is because he needs a threat of lethal force to protect himself and anyone else. If he does fire it is because the use of lethal force is needed.

I'm not a cop, of course, but I don't think anything I just said was all that contraversial.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
and are also more capable of shooting to disable rather than kill.

This is a myth that needs to die. "Shooting to disable" has a very high risk of turning into "shooting to kill", because any injury capable of disabling a person could very well kill them instead. It is lethal force, and needs to be treated as such. If you shoot you should be shooting to kill, period, because the immediate use of lethal force is justified. If you are not shooting to immediately kill your target then it is a concession that lethal force is NOT justified, and you should not be shooting at all.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There must be a reason for this.

American police departments generally prefer veterans. They're already disciplined and their military training generally goes well with law enforcement training. In most cases this is a benefit to everyone involved. The problem is the approach that American police departments use generally favor containment and/or threat elimination instead of de-escalation and pacification. Hopefully with these police shootings giving departments all over the country a black eye, they'll look into alternatives to immediately escalating to deadly force.

Thank you for all your input.
Sorry about the shoot to kill tag, didnt mean the cheesy connotation was just trying to have a small title that summed up using deadly force with a gun. That and the source i was referencing talks about training military to shoot and kill rather than shoot to miss.

Regardless, I wounder if police need to be given more effective options. Im no fire arms expert but couldnt they be issued with less lethal ammo along side the lethal stuff. Ive seen a duel mag shotgun(i forget its name) that can carry different ammo for each barrel at the same time and at the flick of a switch they could be changing between shot and beanbags or something. Ive seen too many videos of 'deescalation' that involves just shooting before the officers are in any immediate danger especially from people armed with a knife, if should not be ok for multiple officers to fire repeatedly at someone simply brandishing a weapon like a knife.
Also im not convinced shooting the legs is both just as lethal as chest and as likely to cause friendly fire when its angled down not straight forward. I wonder how more friendly fire is not sustained when i see some videos of shoot outs at cars or at chest height.
Its going to continue to have broad reaching repercussions. otherwise. For the sake of life and liberty something needs doing.

Cops already have a ton of non-leathal options. Tazers, pepper spray, batons are all items carried by many forces. SWAT type units have CS gas and flash bangs. They don't always work. Tazers can miss, have one barb not sink in correctly or get caught in loose clothing, take a long time to load and prep a second shot, and have other issues. When cops had batons rather than pistols they busted a lot of heads (read the Deadly Force book I mentioned). Dual ammo seems dangerous. If you fire the wrong stuff believing you are using non-lethal you are risking a lot of liability issues. Much better to know if I point a gun I am intending lethal force rather than injecting the possibility of accidental lethal force. Use purpose made non-lethal devices.

You really don't understand how dangerous a knife is at close quarters. There are videos showing that within a certain distance (about 20 feet) even well trained folks have trouble drawing a pistol and getting off a shot before they would be stabbed. Maybe you think 'Well, it is just a knife wound, no need to cap the guy rather than endure it'. If that is the case we'll need to agree to disagree. I would rather kill than get gutted. Even if you are very likely to survive a stab or slash, that assumes the guy stops stabbing and slashing. Once you are grappling with a guy with a knife that is not an assumption I want to make, and trying to draw and fire while grappling with a guy with a knife is not as easy as you would think.

Shooting legs I guess is an option. The problem is if you do not hit bone you may not stop the guy, even if you do hit the smaller target a leg presents. Again, if it is time to draw and fire a gun, I would prefer to make you dead rather than attempt to wound and remain in danger myself.

The big thing is, as mentioned, not going to the gun right away. Assessing the situation and de-escalating if possible. Of course, if you look at total police interactions with perps in the US you would see that does actually happen the very vast majority of the time.

Shooting not to kill is irresponsible and more dangerous than shooting to kill. As some have already pointed out, trying to shoot someone in the leg or arm is much more likely to lead to misses, which then incease chances of innocents being hit or the perp causing harm to officer/hostage/bystander.

Shooting to kill isn't a problem. Shooting without reasonably exhausting other means first is a problem.

Aye, if you shoot, you shoot to kill. If the situation does not call for that level of force then one should be engaging other means of resolving the situation.

Another thing I might add in, is many departments have moved away from non-lethal means as the standard. This, IMO, is based on poor training. The problem with Tazers and other non lethal means was it created a "no harm, no foul' attitude and was over used. Batons, tazers, bean bags all hurt, and can if used improperly or based on health of person having it used on them be lethal.

The thought was if they have a pistol then they will only use it when absolutely needed which we are seeing is not always the case. However the majority are responsible and don't always just shoot first and ask questions later. However a proper escalation of force is needed, as well as a de-escalation mentality. However I am not for any action that takes away the LEOs ability to utilize lethal force when the need arises, just simply proper training on when that need truly is objectively, and not so subjectively.

Not sure if relevant but in the book I'm reading(fictious which is why not quite relevant) the "good guys" were about to launch punitive attack on murderers. Now mind you all involved are basically your average joe's and jane's who have been trapped in virtual game. However death in game means death in real world so the murder guild is bit of a problem.

Now the good guys(let's call them that) have been concentrating on basically PvE actions trying to escape the game. Murderers...Well they have been murdering people! For real.

In game skills and numbers the good guys had the bad guys outclassed so in all things being equal it should be murderers wiped floor.

HOWEVER bad guys had one advantage. They had killed before. They knew they were capable of it. Good guys meanwhile had not killed a real human before. Which resulted in them freezing up and while murderers were eventually defeated(leaving mental scars for the hero of the book series) quite a few of good guys bit the dust.

Reading this put me thinking just how hard it really would be to REALLY kill somebody? Okay you can have training, you can even know you are doing the right thing, you know your own life is in danger but can you really pull the trigger when the time comes?

Dunno. Not really relevant being fictious book and all but since this came up like other day and came across this thread came back to mind again.

tneva82 wrote:

Reading this put me thinking just how hard it really would be to REALLY kill somebody? Okay you can have training, you can even know you are doing the right thing, you know your own life is in danger but can you really pull the trigger when the time comes?

Read Grossman's "On Killing". It explains it all. Almost all our troops will pull the trigger.

 CptJake wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Reading this put me thinking just how hard it really would be to REALLY kill somebody? Okay you can have training, you can even know you are doing the right thing, you know your own life is in danger but can you really pull the trigger when the time comes?

Read Grossman's "On Killing". It explains it all. Almost all our troops will pull the trigger.

Yes we will, but it does take a bit of conditioning and even then for most, we know the difference between right and wrong as it has been taught to us. To quote my old JRTC senior OC "The reason we train in these techniques is to ensure we kill the ones who need to be killed and so we don't kill the ones who don't."

To echo the above.

Warning shots and shooting to wound are highly advised against for reasons mentioned above.

The only reasonable alternative for a charging attacker with a melee weapon would be to land a shot that shatters the pelvis. This is a "one step and down they go" ( because the pelvis is cracked in half) approach that came up in a course taught by Massad Ayoob that I had the privilege to attend earlier this year.

However, in a life or death situation, center mass in the upper torso is going to get the most result and stop that threat.

Which, by the way, if anyone ever tells you they "shot/shoot to kill", please politely get them in the habit of saying "shot to stop the threat". Their future defense cousel in a self defense incident will thank You.

Colonel Grossman'so books and his "bulletproof mind" series are also worth a look as is googling "Teuller drill" which can show you just how dangerous a knife weilding perp can be, even at or beyond 7 meters.

Last thought. If you live in America, look into the book "The Law of Self Defense" -- by Massachusetts attorney Andrew Branca.. It is possibily the greatest resource for average Joe gun owners out there.

 Zognob Gorgoff wrote:


Regardless, I wounder if police need to be given more effective options. Im no fire arms expert but couldnt they be issued with less lethal ammo along side the lethal stuff. Ive seen a duel mag shotgun(i forget its name) that can carry different ammo for each barrel at the same time and at the flick of a switch they could be changing between shot and beanbags or something. Ive seen too many videos of 'deescalation' that involves just shooting before the officers are in any immediate danger especially from people armed with a knife, if should not be ok for multiple officers to fire repeatedly at someone simply brandishing a weapon like a knife.

They are given lots of nonlethal tools, the problem is some (like tazers) can still be lethal if used improperly. Plus they can be overused when they werent necessary. They need training to use it just like anything else.

On the dual mag shotgun thing, do you really want a shotgun pointed at someone that is a 50/50 odds of "really painful beanbag" or "facefull of buckshot"? Because in a very intense situation, that seems like a switch that could be on the wrong setting very easily. Plus the other guy isnt going to see a shotgun pointed at him and think "oh I'll be ok, its just beanbags!"

Also im not convinced shooting the legs is both just as lethal as chest and as likely to cause friendly fire when its angled down not straight forward. I wonder how more friendly fire is not sustained when i see some videos of shoot outs at cars or at chest height.

Go look up bullet wounds to the leg. Turn Safe Search off. Do not be on a public computer or at work. If you dont handle blood/gore well, look up ballistics gel tests. Now look at the cavitation a bullet causes. Thats what the human body does when a bullet goes through it. That's what muscles, organs, arteries, and all the other gribbly bits we're made of do when theyre hit by a bullet.

Now, tell me if you think thats non lethal. Especially if it hits the main artery in your leg near the groin, it'll turn that thing into a fountain. Some of course, will go straight through with minimal damage. Others (especially hollowpoints) will make it look like a grenade went off inside. Now with modern medicine, theres a good chance the guy can live if he's lucky, but bleeding out is a very real thing. Technically, its not as lethal as being shot in the chest because your heart, lungs, etc. are there. Of course, I've technically got a better odds of surviving a hit by a VW bug than a Semi, but that doesnt mean I want to get hit by either if them.

Again, its called lethal force for a reason. Any person who thinks he can hit a specific spot on a moving target to disable that isnt going to horribly maim/kill is either a madman, has no idea how firearms work, or one of the best marksmen on the planet.

IIRC a wounded suspect also costs a gak ton more money than a dead one.

i would love/hate to see this confirmed.

but i have a feeling the training mentality comes from a liability and management standpoint over whats right or wrong.

 Desubot wrote:
IIRC a wounded suspect also costs a gak ton more money than a dead one.

i would love/hate to see this confirmed.

but i have a feeling the training mentality comes from a liability and management standpoint over whats right or wrong.

Now I am not saying they are trained with that reasoning, in fact I'm sure they are not, but I am saying that individuals may quite possibly think that way. Easier to write a report when your the one writing the facts undisputed. How's the saying go? History is written by the winners not the losers.

The thought that crossed my mind when reading Desubot's quote there was a very, very morbid, "dead men tell no tales..."

 Compel wrote:
The thought that crossed my mind when reading Desubot's quote there was a very, very morbid, "dead men tell no tales..."

Yeahs its very sad. its kinda brings to mind how china deals with people.

If you hurt some one in a car accident you have to pay them and the familiy for life or something like that for the medical and stuff.

so they will often back up and make sure they kill the person on any sort of accident, even minor non life threatening ones.

but thats OT

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

 Zognob Gorgoff wrote:


Regardless, I wounder if police need to be given more effective options. Im no fire arms expert but couldnt they be issued with less lethal ammo along side the lethal stuff. Ive seen a duel mag shotgun(i forget its name) that can carry different ammo for each barrel at the same time and at the flick of a switch they could be changing between shot and beanbags or something. Ive seen too many videos of 'deescalation' that involves just shooting before the officers are in any immediate danger especially from people armed with a knife, if should not be ok for multiple officers to fire repeatedly at someone simply brandishing a weapon like a knife.

They are given lots of nonlethal tools, the problem is some (like tazers) can still be lethal if used improperly. Plus they can be overused when they werent necessary. They need training to use it just like anything else.

On the dual mag shotgun thing, do you really want a shotgun pointed at someone that is a 50/50 odds of "really painful beanbag" or "facefull of buckshot"? Because in a very intense situation, that seems like a switch that could be on the wrong setting very easily. Plus the other guy isnt going to see a shotgun pointed at him and think "oh I'll be ok, its just beanbags!"

Also im not convinced shooting the legs is both just as lethal as chest and as likely to cause friendly fire when its angled down not straight forward. I wonder how more friendly fire is not sustained when i see some videos of shoot outs at cars or at chest height.

Go look up bullet wounds to the leg. Turn Safe Search off. Do not be on a public computer or at work. If you dont handle blood/gore well, look up ballistics gel tests. Now look at the cavitation a bullet causes. Thats what the human body does when a bullet goes through it. That's what muscles, organs, arteries, and all the other gribbly bits we're made of do when theyre hit by a bullet.

Now, tell me if you think thats non lethal. Especially if it hits the main artery in your leg near the groin, it'll turn that thing into a fountain. Some of course, will go straight through with minimal damage. Others (especially hollowpoints) will make it look like a grenade went off inside. Now with modern medicine, theres a good chance the guy can live if he's lucky, but bleeding out is a very real thing. Technically, its not as lethal as being shot in the chest because your heart, lungs, etc. are there. Of course, I've technically got a better odds of surviving a hit by a VW bug than a Semi, but that doesnt mean I want to get hit by either if them.

Again, its called lethal force for a reason. Any person who thinks he can hit a specific spot on a moving target to disable that isnt going to horribly maim/kill is either a madman, has no idea how firearms work, or one of the best marksmen on the planet.

Yes im aware of the danger and have seen bullet wounds, the internal cavities on gel ect but if youve looked things like this up then youve seen people being unfairly shot with bullets from both pistol and shot gun anyways, and thats the real issue here, trying to stop excessive force use and if thats not possible then altering that force should be next or prefereably concurrent. Im not attacking your points i very much apprechaite the discussion but i dont totally get this commentary that oh its still bad to shoot at the legs or use less lethal weapons... currently its just a case of 100% lethal surely some restraint to that is better. With the staring down a shot gun point, arnt US police issued with shot guns? Anyway I didnt make it clear that i was more referring to it as a stratigy and that the tech can be applied to a shot gun then could it be applied to a pistol? surly more options more lives saved is not a bad thing. As for moving target it very subjectie to discuss, but ive seen several instances of people stood still shot or lying down shot, you dont even need to do dodgy searches youtube has loads of vid like this.
Obviously your correct NO shooting would be best but with high gun ownership police in USA I understand they will need to have guns, they just needs some more ways to not go WOOPs i shot this guy six times in the upper body hes dead or dieing...what that wasnt a gun, oh my bad?
I think a lot of these points would be fare if it wasn't a situation of a huge amount of deaths at the hands of police in the US. Something needs to be done, hell maybe i'm wrong about it all but I feel this discussion needs more prevalence if these statics covered the UK id be terrified. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database

PS sorry if this may have sounded rant'y or aggressive, it wasnt meant to.

 CptJake wrote:
When cops had batons rather than pistols they busted a lot of heads (read the Deadly Force book I mentioned).

Isn't this a problem of training and policy rather than an inherent issue in batons, however?

Here in the UK it is official policy to never swing your baton for the head and to instead aim for the legs, such as the rear of the knee, to bring the suspect down.

If an officer in the line of duty is faced with an assailant displaying the intent, or actively employing, deadly force then that officer is legally and morally within their rights to respond with deadly force as a proportionate and reasonable measure to protect the life of the officer and the lives of bystanders.

Shooting to wound is an impractical and dangerous technique. To merely wound a suspect requires the officer to spend more time aiming in a high stress environment at the extremities of the assailant (arms/legs) which by their very nature are smaller and more likely to be moving. The risk of this is that it will require more shots to (1) hit the suspect, (b) shots to the extremities carry a reduced likelihood of stopping the attack, (c) greater risk of shots not hitting their intended target. Assuming that the officer is able to hit the extremity in a single shot there is very little guarantee that will stop the attack.

In practical terms an attack from an assailant is stopped by force in one of three ways (shown below in order of decreasing effectiveness);
1) Central nervous system disruption - essentially damage to the brain that shuts down control of the body
2) Physical incapacitation - blood loss that prevents the assailant continuing hostilities
3) Psychological incapacitation - the assailant simply loses the will to fight while still retaining the physiological ability to fight.

This article may help explain why shooting to wound is not common practice;
https://www.policeone.com/patrol-issues/articles/2071009-Why-shooting-to-wound-doesnt-make-sense-scientifically-legally-or-tactically/

Others more knowledgeable than I can comment if officers are specifically trained to shoot to kill, or trained to shoot to stop the threat (there is a difference). I would imagine that this is also situation dependent.

As to the alleged different philosophies between Europe and the US do we have any qualified law enforcement officers on the board who would like to comment? Otherwise I fear we invite lots of unhelpful speculation, tainted by cultural biases.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Desubot wrote:
IIRC a wounded suspect also costs a gak ton more money than a dead one.

i would love/hate to see this confirmed.

but i have a feeling the training mentality comes from a liability and management standpoint over whats right or wrong.

In the heat of the moment with an exchange of gun fire lasting seconds do you believe that the officers are weighing up the cost of litigation/burden to the public purse? I very much doubt that it is a part of training to kill suspects because it is cheaper. That requires documentation, and with 1.1 million LEOs on a State and local level (so excluding Federal agents), and not counting the admin personnel who would be compiling and preparing these documents, I find it hard to believe that a widespread and systemic shoot to save liability policy has not come to light.

In general I don't approve of wide scale use of firearms by the police as I think when they have the option to use them they use them far to often

either deliberately or because they use them to warn/threaten people and end up shooting when things escalate when if they'd taken things easier to start with the situation can be calmed down

BUT

if they do carry a gun they should only pull it out when they intend to use it and when they use it they should shoot at the centre of mass enough times to make the target to fall over and stop moving

warning shots and shooting to wound (or even worse Hollywood shooting the gun/knife etc out of somebodys hand) is just stupid, much more likely to result in missing the target and a significant risk to anybody else in the area

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
If an officer in the line of duty is faced with an assailant displaying the intent, or actively employing, deadly force then that officer is legally and morally within their rights to respond with deadly force as a proportionate and reasonable measure to protect the life of the officer and the lives of bystanders.

...

The USA has police shooting people multiple times and thereby killing them, who weren't a threat. This is the problem, not police shooting people who are obvious and immediate threats to public safety.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
If an officer in the line of duty is faced with an assailant displaying the intent, or actively employing, deadly force then that officer is legally and morally within their rights to respond with deadly force as a proportionate and reasonable measure to protect the life of the officer and the lives of bystanders.

...

The USA has police shooting people multiple times and thereby killing them, who weren't a threat. This is the problem, not police shooting people who are obvious and immediate threats to public safety.

Actual cases of someone getting shot who was not a threat, or more accurately was not reasonably perceived as a threat, are pretty rare all things considered. Which is why the 'Hands Up Don't Shoot' crowd are rightfully mocked when they pick guys like Michael Brown as the motive for their cause.

The various LEAs do need to get better at hammering officers involved in the few cases where there clearly was no threat.