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I'm not sure where DT Guy wants the police to point their guns when they are involved in a critical incident with a likely armed suspect, because I don't think the Starsky & Hutch pose is acceptable. Maybe the police are supposed to leave their guns holstered until they are absolutely sure of a deadly force threat, and then practice their quick draw <rolls eyes>.
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Surely you've heard of 'low-ready'? You know, where the gun is nearly-but NOT-pointed at the person you have not yet decided you need to kill? Where you're slightly more than a muscle-twitch away from killing someone you have no legal or moral justification for killing?
Of course, if you can't move from low ready to COM quickly and competently, I guess you'll be a little worried-
ROLLSEYES.
Being 'ready' and having a gun pointed directly at someone are not equivalent concepts, despite the poor training and improper mind-set some police have been imbued with. And if you're 'protecting' the public by shooting them, you might want to stop arguing for your methodology and start making some changes.
Take a look at Houston PD's accidental shooting rate, as an example. (It's probably not a lot worse than any other big city's, it's just that some high profile accidental shootings by police mean a great deal of discovery has been done into that department.) When you've got 5 'accidental' shootings in one year (2003), a rational person would start looking for the flaws in the system.
And Comn Cents: one last time. You WEREN'T 'willing to destroy' the person you were aiming the gun at-otherwise you'd have
been shooting at him. You were prepared to respond, and willing to use deadly force if called for; an entirely different level of threat and response. Again, it's not about mindset, it's about your judgment of the circumstances. If you were truly willing to destroy the intruder, you'd have been just as happy to have shot him as to have waited.
If we can accept that there are problems with the current tactics-and stories like this, which are by no means isolated, serve to prove that is the case-why do so many people try to argue for the failed tactics?
Easy-change is HARD.
Larry