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To be fair, it probably looked like a gun from a distance. The police were in the neighborhood confronting somebody with a machine gun - not smart to take an a

To be fair, it probably looked like a gun from a distance. The police were in the neighborhood confronting somebody with a machine gun - not smart to take an action that looks like pointing a gun in a type of situation where one side has decided they need machine guns. It's not to excuse the behavior of the police..., but if you're pointing something at the police from across the street, it's hard to see the profile of said object...

ItendToDisagree 10y ago
Shoot first! Ask questions later! mirite?!
- 67726e 10y ago
  When someone was firing a "machine gun" in the vicinity, that might not be the worst idea. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
- praneshp 10y ago
  Absolutely yes, in this case. I'd prefer the officers went home to their families. If you want to go around pointing your phone at everything, you need to stop and think about the consequences.
  - bonzini 10y ago
    Assuming it's necessary to shoot at all, aiming to kill is even more rarely the right thing to do.
    - Kalium 10y ago
      In real life, there is only "do not shoot the firearm" and "shoot the firearm with the intent to kill". There is no practical aiming to disable or similar with a lethal firearm. There's no difference between the two, and no distinction to be drawn.
      - grzm 10y ago
        Thank you for mentioning this. One minor adjustment I'd make to the above statement is "shoot the firearm with the intent to stop". This is a small, but important distinction. It doesn't change anything with respect to how the firearm is used (e.g., point of aim). At least from the perspective of police use of deadly force, the goal isn't to kill, it's to stop the person from continuing to be a threat. The outcome may be that the person does die, but if the person is stopped and doesn't die, that's an acceptable outcome once the decision has been made to use deadly force.
        bonzini 10y ago
        It's not minor at all, and it's exactly what I was hinting at. If the person is stopped, doesn't die, and can be subject to trial in a court of law, that is a _better_ outcome.
        grzm 10y ago
        Would you clarify what you understand as alternatives to "aiming to kill" and how they would be effectively different from "aiming to kill"? Edit: clarified question.
        bonzini 10y ago
        They aren't different at all from "aiming to stop", but the difference from "aiming to kill" is enormous. For example, aiming at the leg can be just as effective as aiming at the heart.
        grzm 10y ago
        Sorry, I can see how my question was unclear. I mean how "aiming to kill" is effectively different from "aiming to stop". I've edited it for clarity. There are a couple of issues with the idea of, say, aiming at the leg. * A leg wound may not stop the person. * A leg wound can be lethal: you can bleed out very quickly if the femoral artery is hit. * The trajectory of a bullet (and its fragments) once it impacts the body can be very unpredictable: a bullet entering the leg may strike bone and enter the chest cavity. And all of these assume precise aim under stress. You mention aiming for the heart: police won't generally be aiming for something as small as the heart. Police (and all people using firearms) should receive the best training they can (and likely more and better firearms training than is often available today), but precise aim under stress is no easy task. They may be aiming for the torso (which of course includes the heart), because shots to the torso are generally more effective at stopping a person and it's a relatively large target: shots are more likely to hit and therefore less likely to miss (and hit something else: all bullets land somewhere). Firearms are deadly force. Police have less-lethal alternatives available as well, and should be trained to use them effectively when it's appropriate to do so. If a police officer resorts to deadly force, the goal should be to stop the person as effectively and quickly as possible.
    - praneshp 10y ago
      I'm by no means an expert gun-handler, but the only constant instruction every time I go to a range is "Don't point the gun at anything you are not ok with completely destroying". I understand police should be better trained, and ideally they must shoot to stop vs shoot to kill.
      - grzm 10y ago
        > ideally they must shoot to stop vs shoot to kill Would you clarify what you understand as the practical, effective difference between the two?
      - user5994461 10y ago
        Safety on, unless you're actively practising. Keep guns pointed toward the ground or the air when handling, don't point at things and never point at people. Only have your hands on the trigger if you are planning to shoot. (Corollary: if someone has hands on trigger, consider that he's gonna shoot.) P.S. That's what I've seen at European ranges, let's assume they are taking security more seriously than American ones :D
      - nylonstrung 10y ago
        They already have non-lethal options available if they intend to stop someone. I feel like this would increase the lethality of situations where non-lethal approaches are warranted rather than decreasing the lethality of other ones. Firearms should not be treated as implements of lethality and nothing but that. Imagine how many police shooting cases we'd see where cop claims he was shooting to wound but 'missed'
  - ajross 10y ago
    Genuinely confused about this morality. Why is it more correct that the officers "went home to their families" than that this innocent guy died in front of his? I mean, I can understand arguing that sometimes protective violence is necessary and accepting that tragedies happen. But you're literally taking a side here and saying that police lives are more important than ours. Why?
    - golergka 10y ago
      You're making this argument with full information. Police acting at the scene didn't have this luxury. It is very easy to tell what others should have done in a situation that they perceive as life and death.
      - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
        The point is they're scaredy cats who jump at shadows and create deadly situations out of things that aren't. If they want me to care that they perceive things as life-or-death, they need to adjust their perception. Being scared of your shadow holding a gun and pumping a house full of rounds isn't something I'm going to think is reasonable, even if you were really scared. Soldiers in literal warzones facing trained adversaries trying to murder them aren't as jumpy as cops in a suburban neighborhood dealing with normal people. Cops need better trigger discipline.
        praneshp 10y ago
        Well the person they were arresting was not quite normal. At least some part of your comparison is incorrect.
    - jtuente 10y ago
      It's not a rationalization that police lives are more important, but rather about the stupidity of holding up a phone in such a way towards the police engaged in a dangerous situation that it appears as though you are acting aggressively towards them. The officers only have a limited time to assess the threat of any given person before more lives are lost due to an unknown danger. It's a high stress situation and wrong decisions are easily made. The officers weren't right in their immediate assessment of the danger, but that doesn't mean their actions were unwarranted.
  - stupidhn 10y ago
    >If you want to go around pointing your phone at everything, you need to stop and think about the consequences. You should be embarassed of this comment. >I'd prefer the officers went home to their families. I'd prefer that unarmed, innocent civilians went home to their families.
  - i80and 10y ago
    I'm fairly sure you're being ironic, but I don't think it comes through in text very well.
    - praneshp 10y ago
      Nope! I'm still learning to say potentially offensive things in a non-offensive way, so maybe that didn't come across well. (Unless you are sarcastically saying that I must be trying irony.)
  - Broken_Hippo 10y ago
    I'd prefer everyone comes out of such encounters alive. At the point these folks thought someone might have a weapon, the prudent thing to do is hold back and carefully plan your next moves. One of the first things would be to verify your suspicions - that there was, in fact, a gun. They knew going in that folks hold things that can be mistaken for guns. Like phones and a myriad of other things - even during normal activities like running. Protocol should reflect that knowledge and err on the safety of everyone. Things change if there are actual shots fired from that direction, but caution before such time.
  - s73ver 10y ago
    Absolutely not. We hold cops to a higher standard. And I would have liked this guy to have gone home to his family.
bougiefever 10y ago
I think it's fair, if you're going to use deadly force, to first find out with a much, much greater degree of certainty, that there actually is a weapon, and if so that they actually are in danger. Too many cowardly and scared police shooting at shadows and noises. "It's not to excuse the behavior of the police.." And yes, your comment is excusing the behavior of the police. Just saying that you didn't just excuse their behavior doesn't mean that you didn't just do exactly that.
- golergka 10y ago
  Taking time to raise level of certainty will, with high probability, give the other guy time to shoot you. This is one untypical case that makes the news, so you're thinking about optimizing decision making for this case; all the cases where police actually get shot don't.
  - baloneyman 10y ago
    This isn't an issue in any other developed country. People don't want to shoot cops. Even if it was a gun, they shouldn't have shot him
  - ctrl-j 10y ago
    > Taking time to raise level of certainty will, with high probability, give the other guy time to shoot you. In war, soliders are required to have an extremely high degree of certainty before opening fire. I think it's pretty safe to hold a higher standard to a police force that is dealing with primarily innocent civilians. If they don't want to risk their lives, they can find another job. That may sound unfair, but it's more unfair to kill and murder someone who poses no threat.
  - scott_karana 10y ago
    Handling atypical cases well is the distinguishing feature between good and bad. That applies for business and software in addition to morals...
  - bobwaycott 10y ago
    If soldiers can do it in combat zones, LEO can do it in our city streets.
stupidhn 10y ago
>To be fair, it probably looked like a gun from a distance. Maybe we could train police to distinguish between rela guns and from the multitude of other things that people might hold. Maybe we could even give them binoculars or something.
- bobwaycott 10y ago
  Seems with the advent of body cameras, someone ought to help all the trigger-happy LEOs out by doing some auto-recognition and alerting that what the camera is aiming at does, in fact, identify as a statistically great probability of being a firearm. Maybe Google or Snapchat should offer LEOs some cool specs they can wear to do this with AR.
tomschlick 10y ago
> with a machine gun Ugh. I wish reporters would stop embellishing stories like that with words they don't understand. An AR-15 is not in any sense a "machine gun".
- maxerickson 10y ago
  It is in a US legal sense. (The National Firearms Act doesn't analyze the tactical utility of the weapon, just whether it fires multiple rounds per trigger pull or is easily converted to do so)
  - bmelton 10y ago
    > It is in a US legal sense You'll need to cite that. It is not in any jurisdiction I'm aware of considered to be a "machine gun". "Readily converted" is a legal term that is defined by the BATFE, and AR-15s are saleable to the public expressly because they are NOT considered readily convertible to firing multiple rounds. If they were, they would be barred from regular sale per the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act. As an AR-15 does not require a tax stamp, it is not legally considered a machine gun. Nor is it fully automatic, easily converted to fully automatic, nor capable of select fire.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/atf-national-firearms-act-handbook-appendix-b/download https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/atf-national-firearms-act-... That's the specific part I guess, not "the AR 15". Once it has been modified to full automatic fire the ease of conversion also isn't relevant.
      - bmelton 10y ago
        Right. In the same sense that a Subaru Legacy isn't considered a sports car, but with an engine / suspension change, it becomes one. Regardless, the AR15 is not in any way considered a machine gun until and unless it has been converted to be one.
syshum 10y ago
>>It's not to excuse the behavior of the police.. Sure reads like an excuse, Justification and Full throated defense of the police actions to me
s73ver 10y ago
No. That is not fair at all.

ItendToDisagree 10y ago

Shoot first! Ask questions later! mirite?!

67726e 10y ago
When someone was firing a "machine gun" in the vicinity, that might not be the worst idea. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
praneshp 10y ago
Absolutely yes, in this case. I'd prefer the officers went home to their families. If you want to go around pointing your phone at everything, you need to stop and think about the consequences.
- bonzini 10y ago
  Assuming it's necessary to shoot at all, aiming to kill is even more rarely the right thing to do.
  - Kalium 10y ago
    In real life, there is only "do not shoot the firearm" and "shoot the firearm with the intent to kill". There is no practical aiming to disable or similar with a lethal firearm. There's no difference between the two, and no distinction to be drawn.
    - grzm 10y ago
      Thank you for mentioning this. One minor adjustment I'd make to the above statement is "shoot the firearm with the intent to stop". This is a small, but important distinction. It doesn't change anything with respect to how the firearm is used (e.g., point of aim). At least from the perspective of police use of deadly force, the goal isn't to kill, it's to stop the person from continuing to be a threat. The outcome may be that the person does die, but if the person is stopped and doesn't die, that's an acceptable outcome once the decision has been made to use deadly force.
      - bonzini 10y ago
        It's not minor at all, and it's exactly what I was hinting at. If the person is stopped, doesn't die, and can be subject to trial in a court of law, that is a _better_ outcome.
        grzm 10y ago
        Would you clarify what you understand as alternatives to "aiming to kill" and how they would be effectively different from "aiming to kill"? Edit: clarified question.
        bonzini 10y ago
        They aren't different at all from "aiming to stop", but the difference from "aiming to kill" is enormous. For example, aiming at the leg can be just as effective as aiming at the heart.
        grzm 10y ago
        Sorry, I can see how my question was unclear. I mean how "aiming to kill" is effectively different from "aiming to stop". I've edited it for clarity. There are a couple of issues with the idea of, say, aiming at the leg. * A leg wound may not stop the person. * A leg wound can be lethal: you can bleed out very quickly if the femoral artery is hit. * The trajectory of a bullet (and its fragments) once it impacts the body can be very unpredictable: a bullet entering the leg may strike bone and enter the chest cavity. And all of these assume precise aim under stress. You mention aiming for the heart: police won't generally be aiming for something as small as the heart. Police (and all people using firearms) should receive the best training they can (and likely more and better firearms training than is often available today), but precise aim under stress is no easy task. They may be aiming for the torso (which of course includes the heart), because shots to the torso are generally more effective at stopping a person and it's a relatively large target: shots are more likely to hit and therefore less likely to miss (and hit something else: all bullets land somewhere). Firearms are deadly force. Police have less-lethal alternatives available as well, and should be trained to use them effectively when it's appropriate to do so. If a police officer resorts to deadly force, the goal should be to stop the person as effectively and quickly as possible.
  - praneshp 10y ago
    I'm by no means an expert gun-handler, but the only constant instruction every time I go to a range is "Don't point the gun at anything you are not ok with completely destroying". I understand police should be better trained, and ideally they must shoot to stop vs shoot to kill.
    - grzm 10y ago
      > ideally they must shoot to stop vs shoot to kill Would you clarify what you understand as the practical, effective difference between the two?
    - user5994461 10y ago
      Safety on, unless you're actively practising. Keep guns pointed toward the ground or the air when handling, don't point at things and never point at people. Only have your hands on the trigger if you are planning to shoot. (Corollary: if someone has hands on trigger, consider that he's gonna shoot.) P.S. That's what I've seen at European ranges, let's assume they are taking security more seriously than American ones :D
    - nylonstrung 10y ago
      They already have non-lethal options available if they intend to stop someone. I feel like this would increase the lethality of situations where non-lethal approaches are warranted rather than decreasing the lethality of other ones. Firearms should not be treated as implements of lethality and nothing but that. Imagine how many police shooting cases we'd see where cop claims he was shooting to wound but 'missed'
- ajross 10y ago
  Genuinely confused about this morality. Why is it more correct that the officers "went home to their families" than that this innocent guy died in front of his? I mean, I can understand arguing that sometimes protective violence is necessary and accepting that tragedies happen. But you're literally taking a side here and saying that police lives are more important than ours. Why?
  - golergka 10y ago
    You're making this argument with full information. Police acting at the scene didn't have this luxury. It is very easy to tell what others should have done in a situation that they perceive as life and death.
    - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
      The point is they're scaredy cats who jump at shadows and create deadly situations out of things that aren't. If they want me to care that they perceive things as life-or-death, they need to adjust their perception. Being scared of your shadow holding a gun and pumping a house full of rounds isn't something I'm going to think is reasonable, even if you were really scared. Soldiers in literal warzones facing trained adversaries trying to murder them aren't as jumpy as cops in a suburban neighborhood dealing with normal people. Cops need better trigger discipline.
      - praneshp 10y ago
        Well the person they were arresting was not quite normal. At least some part of your comparison is incorrect.
  - jtuente 10y ago
    It's not a rationalization that police lives are more important, but rather about the stupidity of holding up a phone in such a way towards the police engaged in a dangerous situation that it appears as though you are acting aggressively towards them. The officers only have a limited time to assess the threat of any given person before more lives are lost due to an unknown danger. It's a high stress situation and wrong decisions are easily made. The officers weren't right in their immediate assessment of the danger, but that doesn't mean their actions were unwarranted.
- stupidhn 10y ago
  >If you want to go around pointing your phone at everything, you need to stop and think about the consequences. You should be embarassed of this comment. >I'd prefer the officers went home to their families. I'd prefer that unarmed, innocent civilians went home to their families.
- i80and 10y ago
  I'm fairly sure you're being ironic, but I don't think it comes through in text very well.
  - praneshp 10y ago
    Nope! I'm still learning to say potentially offensive things in a non-offensive way, so maybe that didn't come across well. (Unless you are sarcastically saying that I must be trying irony.)
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  I'd prefer everyone comes out of such encounters alive. At the point these folks thought someone might have a weapon, the prudent thing to do is hold back and carefully plan your next moves. One of the first things would be to verify your suspicions - that there was, in fact, a gun. They knew going in that folks hold things that can be mistaken for guns. Like phones and a myriad of other things - even during normal activities like running. Protocol should reflect that knowledge and err on the safety of everyone. Things change if there are actual shots fired from that direction, but caution before such time.
- s73ver 10y ago
  Absolutely not. We hold cops to a higher standard. And I would have liked this guy to have gone home to his family.

bougiefever 10y ago

I think it's fair, if you're going to use deadly force, to first find out with a much, much greater degree of certainty, that there actually is a weapon, and if so that they actually are in danger. Too many cowardly and scared police shooting at shadows and noises. "It's not to excuse the behavior of the police.." And yes, your comment is excusing the behavior of the police. Just saying that you didn't just excuse their behavior doesn't mean that you didn't just do exactly that.

golergka 10y ago
Taking time to raise level of certainty will, with high probability, give the other guy time to shoot you. This is one untypical case that makes the news, so you're thinking about optimizing decision making for this case; all the cases where police actually get shot don't.
- baloneyman 10y ago
  This isn't an issue in any other developed country. People don't want to shoot cops. Even if it was a gun, they shouldn't have shot him
- ctrl-j 10y ago
  > Taking time to raise level of certainty will, with high probability, give the other guy time to shoot you. In war, soliders are required to have an extremely high degree of certainty before opening fire. I think it's pretty safe to hold a higher standard to a police force that is dealing with primarily innocent civilians. If they don't want to risk their lives, they can find another job. That may sound unfair, but it's more unfair to kill and murder someone who poses no threat.
- scott_karana 10y ago
  Handling atypical cases well is the distinguishing feature between good and bad. That applies for business and software in addition to morals...
- bobwaycott 10y ago
  If soldiers can do it in combat zones, LEO can do it in our city streets.

stupidhn 10y ago

>To be fair, it probably looked like a gun from a distance. Maybe we could train police to distinguish between rela guns and from the multitude of other things that people might hold. Maybe we could even give them binoculars or something.

bobwaycott 10y ago
Seems with the advent of body cameras, someone ought to help all the trigger-happy LEOs out by doing some auto-recognition and alerting that what the camera is aiming at does, in fact, identify as a statistically great probability of being a firearm. Maybe Google or Snapchat should offer LEOs some cool specs they can wear to do this with AR.

tomschlick 10y ago

> with a machine gun Ugh. I wish reporters would stop embellishing stories like that with words they don't understand. An AR-15 is not in any sense a "machine gun".

maxerickson 10y ago
It is in a US legal sense. (The National Firearms Act doesn't analyze the tactical utility of the weapon, just whether it fires multiple rounds per trigger pull or is easily converted to do so)
- bmelton 10y ago
  > It is in a US legal sense You'll need to cite that. It is not in any jurisdiction I'm aware of considered to be a "machine gun". "Readily converted" is a legal term that is defined by the BATFE, and AR-15s are saleable to the public expressly because they are NOT considered readily convertible to firing multiple rounds. If they were, they would be barred from regular sale per the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act. As an AR-15 does not require a tax stamp, it is not legally considered a machine gun. Nor is it fully automatic, easily converted to fully automatic, nor capable of select fire.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/atf-national-firearms-act-handbook-appendix-b/download https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/atf-national-firearms-act-... That's the specific part I guess, not "the AR 15". Once it has been modified to full automatic fire the ease of conversion also isn't relevant.
    - bmelton 10y ago
      Right. In the same sense that a Subaru Legacy isn't considered a sports car, but with an engine / suspension change, it becomes one. Regardless, the AR15 is not in any way considered a machine gun until and unless it has been converted to be one.

syshum 10y ago

>>It's not to excuse the behavior of the police.. Sure reads like an excuse, Justification and Full throated defense of the police actions to me

s73ver 10y ago

No. That is not fair at all.