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Again with the Legs?
At Thursday’s town hall, Joe Biden brought up legs again. No, he wasn’t talking about his own hairy legs this time, instead he was giving his ideas on policing. His advice for police was, “So instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do is shoot to kill, you shoot them in the leg.”
BIDEN TOWN HALL | Policing in America
Biden on policing in America: "Most cops don't like bad cops…they get intimidated into not reporting," and adds "we shouldn't be defunding cops," saying police should be more resourced to police differently in today's world.abcn.ws/bidentownhall#BidenTownHall
Posted by ABC News on Thursday, October 15, 2020
This is not the first time made that suggestion. A few months ago there was an excellent post up on Ricochet about that very same topic (and by “excellent post” I simply mean one written by me). Shooting to wound is bad for many reasons. First, it may not stop the threat. Second. it is really hard to hit a moving arm or leg compared to the larger torso. Another interesting point is, if you go with a shoot-to-wound policy, does that lower the threshold for when an officer can pull out his or her weapon? After the Michael Brown shooting in 2014, Criminal Justice professor Candace McCoy said:
As a policy, [shoot to wound] is a really bad idea because it would give the police permission to take that gun out of the holster under any circumstance.
Biden is trying to create policies for better policing. That is a noble cause but who is he consulting? Are men and women who have worn the badge and had to make life and death decisions really telling him that they need to shoot extremities?
Published in General
His own imagination? Hollywood screen writers? It surely isn’t anyone with firearms training and experience.
He’s changed from his “Buy a shotgun and shoot both barrels in the air from the balcony” policy.
No, that’s for civilians. Shoot for the legs is for police.
The musical version is even better . . .
I’ll defend Joe a little bit. It is a common to have the “shoot to wound” thought. But anybody that looks into the subject will understand that a firearm is poor choice for a non-lethal weapon. As a politician, he should make an effort to be informed. He is thus either stupid or a liar. Probably both.
Everyone would prefer nonlethal solutions whenever possible but aiming for a foot or hand? As Joe would say “C’mon man.” As to your question, I think “probably both” is the right answer but where are the advisors?
Now that is brilliant.
One deep caveat, you can’t find a shotgun for sale. Because, you know, the thing.
Not anyone in Hollywood, either.
It does for everyone, not just police.
Aiming to wound and accidentally killing is far worse than aiming to kill and accidentally wounding.
Just imagine giving that advice to the average cop after the Breonna Taylor incident (where shots landed EVERYWHERE and on officer was flagged for recklessly endangering the neighbors).
It’s like pulling out your gun to just scare them a little. You don’t do that, either. Accidents happen and accidents with guns are lethal, so the threshold for pointing a gun is with the intent to be lethal.
I think cops should be equipped with cosmic ray guns.They can get them in Area 51.
I thought police were trained to shoot the gun out of the hand of the bad guy. Shouldn’t we mandate that? Besides, why would cops even need guns if, as Mr. Biden recommends, they were accompanied by a psychiatric social worker on every 911 call?
Further, the very term “resisting arrest” has to go. It should be “citizen suggestion of alternative police-encounter outcome.”
To qualify at the range, officers must be able to consistently hit only the outer midpoint of the vastus lateralis muscle to minimize the risk of hitting the femoral artery or one of its main branches.
I just don’t get why these policies/procedures are not already in place. I blame systemic racism, Bush, Trump, and Exxon.
Now the main job of the officer will be to get the couch out of the trunk of the squad car so the perp can lie down while the psychiatrist asks the violent criminal if he got enough hugs as a child.
Boleadoras. Issue to and train on for all LEOs immediately.
Although it sounds cooler when you call it a “spiderman gun”
That is what the Lone Ranger did. Joe is probably remembering that.
Found this picture. Capture the real Joe, doesn’t it?
What, there aren’t enough thugs resisting arrest and killing police already, Joe? What kind of sick monster wants to get more police killed? Not enough widows and orphans in police families to suit your druthers???
Or maybe he recalls seeing this training video
As a kid, from the radio. Because TV wasn’t invented yet.
Little Joe would have been five when the original TV show first aired. Sixteen years later, it was still a Saturday morning staple.
I loved that show. I mean, Roy Rogers was good, but the Kemosabe was the man!
Wait a minute, now. Joe saw on FDR on TV when the stock market crashed, or so he told Katie Couric in 2008.
https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2008/09/23/biden-on-fdrs-management-of-the-1929-crash/
Also, shooting at the leg makes it more likely the round will go beyond the target and hit someone else.
He plagiarized “shoot em in the leg” from Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon.
Or hit the femoral artery and bleed out in about 2 minutes.
I assume Joe has not heard of the new development called “The Taser.” A number of these cases involve a “victim” who could not be taken down with the taser, suggesting the presence of pharmacology in their system resembling Methamphetamine.
When I read Cowboy Joe’s recommendation, it immediately brought to mind this very similar, but perhaps superior, rule.
In the Old West, bad guys abided by a universally accepted use-of-lethal-force policy. This bit of history is well-known to anyone who has studied the subject by watching old Westerns.
When shooting at heroes, the bad guy would aim to inflict only a flesh wound. Initially, it would appear that the hero was mortally wounded, creating a dramatic moment. But when the good guys had won the battle, the hero would immediately put the fears of his comrades and his beautiful female admirer to rest. He would always say, “It’s nothing…it’s only a flesh wound.”
I see no reason why the good guys should not adopt the proven non-lethal “only-a-flesh-wound” tactic today.
Non-experts might argue that in aiming for only a flesh wound, the good guy risked being slightly off and hitting a vital organ or artery.
We who have studied the movie literature know that, on the contrary, bad guys were notoriously bad shots, whereas good guys were consistently high-quality marksmen. Any hero, even an untested rookie hero, could do a spin move, unholster his pistol, fire a single-handed shot, without aiming, while his gun hand was moving in a whipping motion to give the bullet some additional energy, at each of two bad guys, one behind cover at fifty yards and the other on a galloping horse, and bring down both with a bullet through the chest.
If bad guys could fire thousands of shots throughout the whole cowboy era at heroes and score an only-a-flesh-wound hit 100% of the time, then good guys today could do it even easier.
Your reference to the moviemakers’ school of policing reminds me of another technique from that school, which must be better because it is used in so many genres other than Westerns, and which will no doubt be widely used in the new era of “send a social worker before sending a police officer.” With the correct words, facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice, you can get the bad guy to talk (and talk and talk) about his horrible upbringing, who has done him wrong recently, how bad his circumstances are, etc., all while the bad guy is still pointing his weapon at the good guy or at the innocent bystander, talking long enough for the hero to get into just the right place to execute the perfect wrestling-style move that harmlessly brings the bad guy to the floor and keeps the bad guy pinned with no further struggle.
Very good analysis. But you forgot the one shot that bad guys excel at: how many times have the bad guys threatened a good guy with a “gut shot”? One in which it takes a week to die in agony. Usually performed in the desert and with no water to give succor or sustenance. Of course, in supporting your argument, it is still only a flesh wound.
Buck wheats.