Intent to Kill vs. Shoot to Kill – Tom Rossi

There seem to have been a lot of police shootings in the last few years. I’ve been wordering about this. It seems that, if a cop feels he has to shoot at a suspect, the cop most often aims for the chest and pulls the trigger multiple times. Sometimes multiple cops pull their triggers multiple times.

This is fine in the cases in which it’s called for – and armed suspect has killed someone (or a few someones) and there has been a “hot pursuit,” where the suspect is cornered and desperate. In these cases, letting him escape could easily prove fatal for innocent bystanders, or for the very cops in pursuit.

But there have also been shootings where it was unknown whether the suspect was armed. The cops, lately, always say, “He was reaching for his waistband,” or something like that. In these cases, the cops have thought (assuming they told the truth about the reaching) that the suspect was going for a gun. It’s a split-second decision, with lives at stake. And I think we all probably have a “better safe than sorry” reflex built into our brains that activates in these situations.

What I don’t understand is why the police, in these types of cases, shoot to kill. It’s well publicized that cops are trained only to draw their weapons when they intend to kill the suspect. But I think the meaning of this has been lost.

The “only if you intend to kill” imperative was, I think, implemented because guns are dangerous – even in the hands of a well-trained police officer. It would be foolhardy to pull a gun in a situation where you were sure you didn’t want the suspect to die. Shooting a person and hoping they won’t die is a fool’s bet.

The message to young cops is: don’t pull your gun unless it’s okay that the suspect dies. But the intent of that “rule” is not that, once your gun is out, you should shoot to kill. It’s there to make the officer realize that, if you shoot someone, there is a good chance they will die, so don’t take shooting someone lightly, nor even un-holstering your gun.

But once that gun is out, there is nothing – no rule, no imperative, that says: “You must now kill this person, and make absolutely sure he or she is dead.”

An example where shooting to kill was unnecessary and uncalled-for came all too soon after Johannes Mehserle was given a light slap on the hand by the court for killing Oscar Grant – a time of turmoil for the city of Oakland, California. Derrick Jones, who was unarmed, was shot while running from the police and “reaching for his waistband several times.” (my emphasis) I guess the cops put up with him reaching for his waistband a few times, but then it was just one too many.

The police shot Jones at least five times in the chest and abdominal area, later making a kind of “better safe than sorry” argument. But why? Why couldn’t they have shot him in the leg, and taken one extra second to assess the danger that Jones might have a gun? This seems a reasonable course of action given the circumstances.

Police officers point out that they are under incredible stress in these situations. But the police are trained for this and they get practice in the real world, especially in a city know for gang violence. Cops are supposed to be the ones to keep cool heads when everyone else is screaming and panicking.

By and large, cops are brave individuals who perform a great service to our communities. But sometimes, a cop can let emotions rule his or her actions, just like the average citizen might. I think the policy that a cop shouldn’t pull his or her gun unless there is an intent to kill the suspect should be further explained and explored while cadets are in training. It seems like a policy with solid motivation but somewhat poor execution – with dire consequences at times.

-Tom Rossi

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Tom Rossi is a commentator on politics and social issues. He is a Ph.D. student in International Sustainable Development, concentrating in natural resource and economic policy. Tom greatly enjoys a hearty debate, especially over a hearty pint of Guinness.

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Legitimate Gun Owners Vs. the NRA

Just as it is essential that we figure out how to separate actual small businesses from giant corporations when it comes to policy, it is now, more than ever, necessary to separate actual gun owners from the NRA (National Rifle Association).

The other day on TV, (I wish I could remember on which channel) I finally heard someone say what’s needed to be said for years: “The NRA is the lobbying wing of the gun manufacturers of America.” That summed it up, beautifully. The NRA does NOT represent the interests of most gun owners – hunters, target-shooters, or people interested in home-defense. Not remotely.

It’s certainly true that a small fraction of gun owners have given themselves over to the ridiculous hype generated by the NRA – that President Obama is coming to take away everyone’s guns, or whatever nonsense, but their real benefits are not considered by the NRA in the slightest.

What the NRA cares about is money. They want their real bosses – Glock, Colt, Smith and Wesson, etc., to sell more guns and not to ever have to worry that those sales will slow down. And they want to keep on selling guns to people who buy them with the idea that they may want to kill someone for reasons other than self-defense. Their Strategy has worked well. Gun sales have soared.

Remember when someone created a way to identify what gun had fired a bullet found at a crime scene? The NRA had a sissy, hissy fit. They immediately created and released videos showing how to alter these guns in order to disable the identification mechanism. Why? If you’re going to use your gun for legitimate reasons, what have you got to fear?

The NRA works to convince its members that they need to buy as many guns as they can, before the coming war for freedom from our oppressive government. I’m not really sure what you do with 65 guns and only two hands, but that’s what your supposed to do – keep buying.

Most gun owners aren’t really all that complicated about the issue. They want to hunt and/or shoot targets or clay pigeons, they want to defend their homes or other property, they want to be able to defend their families against armed assailants… mostly pretty reasonable stuff (although I’m not a big fan of trophy-hunting). But a few have been driven to lunacy, mostly by the incessant fear-mongering of the NRA.

I really wish I had time to list all the ways this guy is delusional.

I’m not even sure HOW President Obama or anyone else would go about any attempt to ban guns, even if he wanted to do it. And I’m quite certain that the impossibility of such a task would stop the policy from ever being realized, anyway. In addition, Obama can hardly get anything done at all with all the Republican opposition. Remember the “fiscal cliff?” And now we have a huge fight coming up over his appointment of Chuck Hagel, a Republican, no less, as Secretary of Defense. Coming to take away your guns? I would much sooner bet on the Cubs to win the 2013 world series… AND the 2014 Stanley Cup.

One of the things that’s angered me about the news media, lately, is this: one of the worst crimes ever committed in the United states – the killing 20 children and 8 adults at Sandy Hook elementary school, has led to a huge bully pulpit for… the NRA. While most of us saw this horrible tragedy as at least an opportunity to finally impose some reasonable rules on the gun trade, people like NRA president Wayne Lapierre and NRA board member (and crappy rock star) Ted Nugent are all over TV, being legitimized in interviews on news programs.

As I always say, I’m all for a good debate. And some reasonable people are worried that gun-killing-control laws will go too far, infringing upon the rights of ordinary citizens. But the rantings of a man whose largest contribution to society was a song called, “Wango Tango,” don’t interest me at all. Ted Nugent strikes me as nothing but a meth-head, and Wayne Lapierre is nothing more than a corporate robot. Watch this to see how he’s flip-flopped, at the whim of his gun-manufacturing masters:

The relevant part starts at 2:03

and Ted Nugent at his finest:

I sure wish the voices of reason were the loudest in our country – even those voices that disagree with me. Instead, we have one lunatic fringe telling stories about the other side’s lunatic fringe (that really hardly exists) to scare the people in the middle that it HAS to be their way, or we will surely descend into tyranny. They say this in a tyrannical, ranting way, by the way.

We need to separate what it takes to make guns OK for the people who want to use them legitimately, while making it as difficult as possible for those who want to use a gun for illegitimate purposes. Legitimate gun owners do not fear this. In fact, they probably fear the lunatics as much as any of us do.

-Tom Rossi

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Tom Rossi is a commentator on politics and social issues. He is a Ph.D. student in International Sustainable Development, concentrating in natural resource and economic policy. Tom greatly enjoys a hearty debate, especially over a hearty pint of Guinness.

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