Should Police Only Shoot At Criminals` Knee-caps?
Would You Bet Your Life That you Could Hit any of these Guys in the Kneecaps?
Photo Credit: The Last Refuge
Last September I asked my readers to take a poll with the question, "Would You Kill to Protect Your Family?" A small percentage exhibited an obvious genetic defect and voted not to protect their family and would allow evil men to kill their family.
There are always those who want to avoid directly answering this question by suggesting that "perhaps one can defend one's family by taking out the person's kneecaps instead of killing him," as a reader did in the comment section of my article The Sixth Commandment is Not About Killing.
I responded:
Consider this: a man has broken into your home; he has a gun in his hand; you calmly shoot him in his kneecaps; he falls down screaming in pain. So far so good. You feel as if you've done the right thing in not taking a life.
He then looks at you in anger and pain - but since you did nothing to remove the gun from his warm hand, he fires wildly at your family behind you, killing your daughter.
You realize too late that in trying to be politically correct you have been directly responsible for your daughter's death.
It might be fine to debate some elusory high moral ground in a forum or comment section, but when it's life or death for you and your family, don't aim at the kneecaps - that is the very definition of a pious fool.
Let us not ignore the obvious fail in this suggestion: even a highly trained Navy Seal marksman would not take the chance that he might miss and get himself or his family killed.
But suppose a criminal intent on killing you has no weapon and that the person defending himself is a policeman? Isn't that a perfect example where a person trained in firearms should go for the knee-caps? Here is reader Satanbise Shik responding to my article Apologizing For Michael Brown:
The lie that Brown had his hands up and was shot is completely irrelevant to the basic narrative of the Brown case. The fact is that Brown was shot by an incompetent police man who acted out of fear, firing unnecessarily a total of 12 bullets. A professional law enforcer shouldn't base his decisions on fear. Kneecapping is effective at demobilizing the criminal, but obviously takes more skill. Skill that Wilson did not have. By the way, nice circlejerk you got here.
OK, let's consider Satanbise Shik points one by one:
- The lie that Brown had his hands up and was shot is completely irrelevant to the basic narrative of the Brown case.
My response: If Brown's accomplice Dorian Johnson had not initially lied, there would not have been any narrative and no Brown case. The lie was not only the basic narrative, it was the only narrative until the Justice Department confirmed that the hands up don't shoot narrative was in fact a lie.
- Brown was shot by an incompetent police man who acted out of fear.
My response: The Justice Department determined that Officer Wilson was indeed attacked by Michael Brown and that this 300 pound thug almost killed the officer in the struggle for his gun. An incompetent policeman acting out of fear, seeing his attacker running away, would have just thankfully let him escape. But this would have meant allowing a violent criminal to remain at large to harm others. At a great danger to his life he confronted the vicious hulk and demanded he freeze. Had Brown truly raised his hands in surrender and not tried to bum-rush the cop he would be alive today.
- ... firing unnecessarily a total of 12 bullets.
My response: 12 bullets would have been unnecessary if the first one stopped Mr. Brown. Autopsy results showed that it took at least 6 bullets to bring the man down.
- Kneecapping is effective at demobilizing the criminal, but obviously takes more skill.
My response: More skill? How about near miraculous skill? I have attended more than 100 hours of human anatomy classes and I cannot tell with any decent degree of certainty (that I would bet my life on) where to aim to hit even one kneecap in the photo above.
I would love to get from Satanbise Shik a quote from a Navy Seal marksman with a gun and no scope that he would have no problem hitting a 2 inch square area of bone, muscle and tendon hidden under loose pants of someone who is rapidly moving and with barely enough time to aim.
- Skill that Wilson did not have.
My response: I do not believe that there is a single sharpshooter on this planet that can accurately hit a running target in the unexposed kneecaps with 100% accuracy unless they fired at least a dozen shots. Sure, if the cop is stationary or preferably lying still on the ground with a rifle and scope, has time to relax and aim, the target isn't running, there is no imminent threat to life, and the criminal is conveniently wearing Bermuda shorts -- sure, in that case most cops would have the skill to hit close enough to the kneecaps to disable .
But moments after someone just tried to wrestle your gun away and kill you and is now a 300 pound angry weapon running breakneck at you, it would take more than skill to hit the kneecaps, it would take stupid luck.
- ... nice circlejerk you got here.
My response: A large percentage of my readers, probably larger than any other website, are not only very critical of my views but are egregiously vicious and nasty toward me. However, almost all readers who disagree with me have been so devastated by my coruscating responses that they are afraid to expose their views in further comments. That is why my blog is virtually troll-free despite the fact that I tolerate even troll-views - I do not ban anyone - I do not delete comments no matter how disagreeable unless they are blatantly pimping a commercial site. What I do is destroy countering comments so thoroughly that these readers go to easier pastures to graze. So, no exclusive circle-jerk here, just an absence of readers able to cogently overcome my arguments.
Cops should go for kneecaps so that their lives would be more in peril than drug-taking, convenience-store-robbing, cop-attacking thugs? Really, dear reader?
Let me know what you think:
