Shoot to Wound

After every police involved shooting that makes the media someone says that “Police should shoot to wound, not shoot to kill”. This is quite possibly the dumbest thing anyone can say and is always said by people who have zero first hand gun experience and watch too many Hollywood movies.

For starters, if you shoot to wound then that leaves time and ability to armed violent criminals to keep shooting and killing innocent people. If you shoot to wound and the criminal is on various drugs or alcohol they can be immune to pane. This means that they will keep killing innocent people as well. Additionally, if you shoot to wound you have to aim for arms or legs, which happen to be the most mobile and fastest moving portion of the human body. Arms and legs are also small targets compared to someone’s torso making them harder to stop. If the criminal is shot in the leg, then their arms are still working and they can keep shooting and killing more innocents. Are you starting to see a pattern here?

Police are trained to shoot to kill and keep shooting until they are certain the threat is eliminated in order to protect as many innocent lives as they can. If your spouse, child, or lover is in the area of a mass shooting or potential mass shooting, do you really want the police to be trying for trick shots like in Hollywood movies? If you are thinking that’s a realistic plan, please go to any gun range that rents guns, and try to pull off those shots yourself. You’ll quickly learn that such shooting is largely Hollywood magic. There are very few people who are actually capable of such feats. Police are also taught to shoot to kill for the reason I mentioned above. If a person is on various drugs or is drunk enough their body will not respond to the damage of a shot meant to merely wound. Talk to any police officer or DEA agent who has been in a shootout with a junkie or drunk, they’ll have stories that will keep you awake at night for a month!

Along the lines of “shoot to wound” is the movement to have police use less than lethal weapons such as Tasers and Shotguns loaded with beanbag rounds. These options too will not work on Junkies or drunks. If they can’t feel a bullet wound, they sure aren’t going to feel a beanbag or a jolt of electricity. Additionally, less than lethal weapons are not non-lethal! They do kill in a variety of circumstances. Those include if the criminal has a pacemaker or heart defect, brittle bones, has had previous surgery or injuries that resulted in weakening the breast-bone, and various other reasons for both Tasers and beanbag rounds. Also, beanbag rounds will kill children as if it were a real bullet due to their bones not being fully formed and hardened. Tasers will kill children because they are set to a power for full grown adult criminals. If the child has a gun and points it at a police officer, the officer has no safe way to take down the child. Especially if the officer wants to avoid getting shot by the child who’s pointing a gun at him anyway.

Now I’m sure some of you reading this will think, well what about pepper spray? It only works in very close proximity and tends to backfire just as much as it helps. What about a Taser or Beanbag round just for children? The police officer would have to know ahead of time the perpetrator was a child, which is seldom the case. Also the Police officer would have to carry these extra devices and be able to access them as quickly as their primary weapons or they would be risking those innocent lives again that are in danger from a violent child with a gun! If you think that still sounds reasonable, please go to your local police department and ask to speak with an average uniformed officer. Take a good look at the equipment they already carry. Ask the police officer how much all the equipment they already carry weighs. Ask them how many of their fellow officers suffer from chronic health problems due to carrying all that equipment around with them for their entire shift for their entire career. Then ask yourself if it’s actually reasonable to force that officer to have more equipment and more training for the extremely low occurrence of responding to a violent child with a gun in order to keep that violent criminal alive.

Seriously, please take some time to learn about the facts and reality before yelling out obtuse things like “Shoot to Wound”. Take time to know something about guns before you decide how they should be used, or what they’re capable of. Take some time to think! As the old saying goes, it’s better to keep your mouth shut and be thought an idiot, than to open your mouth and prove it. 

My View on & of Guns, Control, and Education

We all hear about guns, killing, and gun control all the time and everyone has a different view on it. Here is mine.

First my back ground, I was raised in a family with guns. I hunt, I clean, and I cook. I am not a great hunter and I have no Taxidermy in the house and never have (not for lack of want.) This said my view on guns, use, and control is: There will always be guns! They made drugs illegal and their still around what makes anyone think it would work for guns? Therefore based on the reality of this simple fact I suggest instead of banning guns or making them more popular by discouraging their use, that we force training about them in all schools. Yep, that’s right I want a class in school called gun education. In this class (held every year from K-12) students would be given information relevant to age about gun use and safety. Yes, even kindergartners would have a gun class where they learn what a gun is and that they should not handle one without supervision and the expressed permission of the adult owner. I believe this will aid in the reduction of accidental deaths greatly. As students age they will receive additional information about guns as they reach the age at which they can realistically fire that particular weapon based on demographics. A first grader can easily fire a BB gun but would likely be injured simply from the recoil of a 12 gauge shotgun. Students would be trained along the way not only in safety but in proper use, target practice, gun cleaning and maintenance, and in both local and federal laws related to carrying, hunting, threatening, and murder.

I believe that taking the mystique out of guns will greatly reduce accidental shootings. Let’s face it, items seen every day are less enticing to both kids and adults than ones only seen on TV or at a friend’s house. With this simple act gun safety will become routine to future generations and the number of accidental incidents will decrease.

Training in use of fire arms will also decrease the accidental death rate. If you know how to properly use a gun and learn proper habits regarding safety accidents such as unintentional discharging of the weapon resulting in injury or death will decrease. Proper target practice will also decrease accidents by ensuring that a fired weapon hits its target rather than missing and striking something or someone else. The other side effect of knowing how to shoot and hit a target is that if a person (gang member, road rager, or psychotic) does choose to take a life, only that one life will be taken. I know this isn’t a real bright side, but check out some statistics from your home town before you disagree. How many bystanders’ accidental deaths happen each year because the shooter was a bad shot? If these social deviants are going to kill no matter what (and we all know, for now, they will) why not try to limit the so called collateral damage?

The additional training in the use of guns for hunting should be incorporated into these lessons as well. Not to encourage hunting, but to ensure that the lesson of “guns do kill living things” gets across to the students. I for one will always remember the lessons related to that fact from my hunters education class and how thoroughly it improved my caution in regards to all firearms.

An education in the laws related to guns and gun related crimes should assist in getting across that there are penalties for improper, unethical, and illegal use of firearms. This will not only attach consequences but will remove the ability to claim ignorance of the law.

This is my suggestion for the post Columbine, 9/11, “postal”, “road rage” world. With mystique removed, proper training, legality, consequences, and most importantly safety taught. I honestly believe that accidental deaths due to improper handling, ignorance in handling, random firing, disregard to consequence, and lack of comprehension to consequence will decrease dramatically. I know after each lesson I learn about firearms and how each works. I feel a greater sense of appreciation for the power a gun holds and I walk away with a greater desire to ensure proper safety is taken the next time I am in possession or presence of a gun.

Lastly for those of you out there who insist that all guns can be taken away from society with “a little work” A lethal weapon of gun design can be made using PVC pipe, any aerosol spray, a potato, and a lighter. All found at your local hardware store. (Commonly called a Potato Cannon) So please don’t bother telling me otherwise.

Thank you

G-C