“Civilization was a blessing you never truly appreciated, until it threatened to collapse around you.”
Peter Hamilton
“Safe” for violent offenders?
I remember when I was going through the Police Academy back in the early 1970s, and shooting at a paper target called the “B21, Police Silhouette”
Scoring zones were marked with the appropriate value, depending on whether you were shooting to “kill,” or shooting to “disable.” The target was a human form printed on a white background
For example, when attempting to “disable,” one received a higher score for shooting the target’s right arm than for shooting the left arm.
The whole dubious notion of trying to “disable” someone via gunfire, but not produce a fatal injury, was soon unceremoniously, and contemptuously, discarded by American police.
It was a quaint idea, dreamed-up by desk-bound bureaucrats, but in actual practice “in the field,” it didn’t work, as any idiot could have predicted!
When attempting to “disable” someone in range simulations, the paper B21 was always perfectly stationary.
There was plenty of light. Plenty of time. And, the target was not actually trying to murder you!
Even then, scores were consistently poor.
Teaching students to aim at, and uniformly hit, “center mass” proved eminently more likely to succeed.
We all decided that attempting to produce “non-lethal injury” while employing “lethal force” was inherently a pretty stupid idea!
Now, we’re seeing that a medium-sized department, LaGrange, GA, has suddenly dredged-back-up this dubious idea!
I’m sure it will spread to other departments with leftist chiefs.
They’re calling it “Shoot to Incapacitate,” and in order to exercise their “non-lethal gunfire,” they’ve produced a new, improved version of the B21!
It teaches officers to shoot arms, legs, and “abdomen” when their very lives are in deadly, imminent peril!
Leftists who promote this long-ago discredited rubbish claim to want to “preserve life,” but the lives of violent criminals are obviously the only ones they care about. Lives of police officers and innocent citizens are apparently of no importance.
When an officer “shoots to incapacitate,” but the VCA dies anyway, predictably the officer will be lose his job for “acting out of policy,” and will then be prosecuted for self-defined “excessive force.”
The “new standard” will be that the “incapacitation method” must always be used, in every police shooting.
And, when mandatory “non-lethal results” from the use of “lethal-force” is the expected norm, and it predictably fails completely, the new demand from the Left will be that all police be disarmed, stripped of all guns.
You know that’s coming, to the invariable cheers of Democrats!
Simultaneously, leftists are taking away our OC, tear gas, bean-bags, Tasers, batons, every less-lethal option we have. In addition police snipers and SWAT Teams are being disbanded.
Guns are next. Count on it!
Meanwhile, you can bet good money that hypocritical Democrat governors who pseudo-sanctimoniously join this bandwagon will make damned sure none of it applies to their own bodyguards. After all, they’re “essential,” while police officers and citizens are obviously expendable!
Currently, lawlessness in every Democrat-controlled metro area, from NYC to SF, is completely out of hand.
It’s growing worse by the day, and that is exactly the way they want it!
This is not co-incidence!
“An important sign of the collapse of the rule of law is the rise of a paramilitary, and its merger with government power.”
Timothy Snyder
/John
