Quote of the day
Looking at guns on campus, the local sheriff opines:
“In actual shootings, citizens do far better than law enforcement on hit potential,” said White. “They hit their targets and they don’t hit other people. I wish I could say the same for cops. We train more, they do better.”
And citizens seem to have a pretty good record stopping mass murderers.
Ht Linoge.
August 16th, 2009 at 11:04 am
“We train more.”
Ummm, no. Most of the “gunnies” I know are at the range a couple times a month or more. They take courses from the John Farnams and Mas Ayoobs of the world, etc. Not to mention training for CCLs.
The couple of (Non-SWAT-type, i.e., average) LEOs I know tell me they are on the range at most on a quarterly basis and qualify once or twice a year depending on department.
Who trains more?
August 16th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
From observation, law enforcement officers’ training,” especially when it involves automatic weapons, is pretty much Jerks Night Out. You probably could count on the fingers of one thumb the number of municipalities in which officers’ proficiency ratings are seriously related to handgun marksmanship.
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August 16th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
That might be the quote of the year.
August 16th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
They don’t train more than the average CCW holder.
August 16th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
An armed civilian would be at the incident from the getgo. The LEO is somewhere else at the beginning. We get a call over the radio.So we start heading for the trouble, with very insufficient information. Meanwhile our administrators (we lost our commanders about a generation ago, durned shame) are busy covering their backsides. So the police administrators fool around establishing a perimeter and figuring out a chain of command. By the time we are finally turned loose the bad guy has got tired of shooting and has eaten his gun.
August 17th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Google “tackled gunman” and see how many unarmed citizens have brought down mass murderers. It’s enlightening.
August 17th, 2009 at 12:52 am
Many years ago, there was a silent alarm from a bank in Park Ridge, NJ. The first policeman on the scene was from the neighboring town of Montvale. The bank robber made a mistake. He fired at the lone officer. Who fired one shot back. The day before the officer had won the Bergen County Police Officer target shooting contest. Some officers take their shooting seriously. Oh, the robber never committed another crime. It is difficult for dead people to commit them.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:57 am
The two small local departments hold qualification at the local gunstore/range. They had to start closing the window shades on the range bays they were using. Apparently, all of the civilian shooters who were standing outside the window laughing themselves silly watching the police “qualify” was disheartening to the officers.
You would see officers firing off an entire magazine while shouting to the guy in the next bay & not even looking down-range! I only went once but in that hour time, i saw 4 officers break 90degrees left or right during mag changes, just glad nobody got shot.
August 17th, 2009 at 7:33 am
man whoever this freedonian guy on the civilians stopping murderers sounds like a tool –
“oh he stopped a guy armed with what was now a blunt object”
well shit son, we just discovered that after the fact, maybe the dude’s concentration/SI was off or what? he probably could have ammo in the gun, you can’t tell either way!
August 17th, 2009 at 7:37 am
Wanda – tackling can help – so can firing a gun too.
I’d like to see you go hand-to-hand against an armed suspect up close – while there are many trained individuals who can do this, they also carry guns and train with them as well.
Just because there’s quite a few cases of unarmed citizens stopping mass murderers doesn’t mean we all have to follow suit and disarm ourselves.
Why don’t we just disarm the police and train them in ninjitsu?
August 17th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Insty makes a good point in his follow-up: average citizens only have to react in a few situations, compared to the police. Usually, a citizen knows their target clearly and is still ‘in cover’. A cop stands out with a blue sign on their head and will be the target of directed fire. It is a lot harder to shoot accurately when being fired upon.
Plus, the statistics hurt the police in presentation. Citizens rarely have to chase a mass shooter down a dark hall / alley and make a split second decision if the object in their hand is a gun.
So I would expect that – overall – citizens have ‘higher’ accuracy rates in shooting incidents. If we cull down to situations where both police and citizens are involved, I’d bet the differences are statistically insignificant.
August 17th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Wanda-
I know of a few cases where “tackled gunman” is the MSM way to hide the fact that an armed citizen stopped the bad guy. The Appalachian Law School is one case, and another was a knife attack in a grocery store.
August 17th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
“Google tackled gunman and see how many unarmed citizens have brought down mass murderers. Its enlightening.”
Yes. For one thing it is enlightening us to the fact that mass murders so often take place in “gun free” zones. Criminals do think about these things, and pick their targets accordingly. In such a case, tackling them during a reload is about the only way to stop them if they’re not yet too bored with shooting people. And Mad Saint is right– you rarely see a headline that says, “Armed Citizen Stops Killing”. Though it happens a lot, it doesn’t fit their template.