No, there are different ROEs depending on the situation. "Don't fire unless fired upon" applies to a checkpoint or other defensive situation.
If you're doing a cordon and search, which is very roughly equivalent to what SWAT does, you shoot if you see weapons.
The process to clear a room is a team (typically of four) stacks against the door, breaches the door, and then the goal is to get into the room and eliminate targets in your assigned sector.
You absolutely would fire preemptively because when you're going into a room there's just no time to wait, and you're relying on speed and ferocity to overcome the fact that you just dived into a room.
Now, all that said, that's also why you want to do that sort of thing as little as possible.
Source: US Army doctrine and training as combat arms. Thankfully never had to do one myself...
It’s easy to be an armchair expert on an Internet forum, whole different world when at the scene.
That works both ways.
Sometimes, it's better to make national law enforcement policies when not pumping with adrenaline at the scene of a tense scenario.
Looks to me like the military has less itchy trigger-fingers. The man was outdoors, and they didn't see any weapons.
Many policemen are happy to promote the view that cops put themselves in harm's way for society's benefit, but in reality, they go in shooting first, instead of taking on the risk of determining without doubt that a forceful response is necessary first (at their own risk). If all the news stories of unarmed victims are any indication, the net innocent lives saved would be much higher as a result of taking on that risk, even if the rarer instances of an armed, dangerous, and aggressive criminal did result in some of those lives lost being officers.
In any case, this risk of being wrong should only go down if police modernize, with the availability of drones and other technologies.
We can control how police act by settings standards and demanding better. We cannot prevent terrible people from making false 911 calls.
Cops in my country aren't great, but they don't do this, ever.
Ramping up punishments doesn't seem to deter criminals, and study after study seems to confirm this.
> 4. Increasing the severity of punishment does little to deter crime.
My point is that if SWAT teams stop shooting random people going for a walk, they'll stop being used as weapons.
My solution to the quick or reckless trigger finger is either holding the Police Union responsible for any settlements and not the Tax Payer and/or the officer is charged with manslaughter, loses all his benefits and can never own a gun again.
There was an officer in Toronto who had a Van Rampage Murderer actually either point a fake gun or motion that he was reaching for one multiple times and to the officers credit wasn't shot but taken into custody. At least now they can figure out why it happened and not have to speculate or attribute to some unknown reason.
Force yourself to make a decision and implement it as
quickly and completely as you can. Go all in or GTFO.
-- http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2012/04/robert-farago/hesitation-kills/
It's much worse with cops because not only do many cops have the same mentality, it can be compounded by an us-versus-them and better-him-than-me mentality. Basically, the mentality and the discipline leaves no room for actually assessing the situation. Whether or not using using the most lethal rounds, for instance, is legitimate, the emphasis is entirely misplaced. Such things are some of the least inconsequential aspects of what should be most concerning to someone training and preparing to use lethal force.
It's very easy for a person to be fatally injured but still able to kill you, and likely highly motivated to do so. For most women and men over 60, any aggressor with a knife and surprise can overpower them physically. At that point, you may as well assume their intent is lethal.
> So you're told to never, e.g., use a non-fatal round in a shot-gun.
Non-fatal rounds make sense in riot control, as do many police tactics where you have a large team and the ability to bring in backup.
For an individual, when you reason through it, you think you need to shoot someone with nonlethal, okay, what do you do if it doesn't work? After all, you don't have backup, so you don't really have a "plan B".
That article also hints at a legal problem, which is a result of the perverse logic of intent and probably not amenable to any legislative remedies.
1. Speaking generally, you can commit homicide in self-defense if there is a genuine threat to your life.
2. But, if you shoot to wound, you're demonstrating by your actions that you didn't think there was a genuine threat to your life.
3. Therefore you just weakened your claim to self-defense.
I think the statistics belie your claim that there's a cultural problem because, despite all this, the fact is that defensive gun use is overwhelmingly simply brandishing a weapon or arresting an individual by holding them at gunpoint. By orders of magnitude, violent situations are resolved peacefully vs. by shooting.
[snip]
> you think you need to shoot someone with nonlethal, okay, what do you do if it doesn't work?
What matters once you're in a gun fight should be less of a concern than how and whether you get into a gun fight. By emphasizing behavior in the former you're priming people to shoot when there's no need to. It's like bike-shedding some inner loop when what matters most is the larger structure of the program. Focusing on whether to make an inner loop O(1) vs O(2) is inefficient if the outer loop is O(N) instead of O(log N).
It's like with terrorism. What if a terrorist does X? What if a terrorist does Y? That sort of discourse primes society to overestimate the risk of terrorist incidents.
What if 1) a burglar 2) breaks into my home and 3) I shoot and hit and 4) he still comes after me? In that hypothetical #4 is the last thing I should be concerned with, let alone optimizing for. I should be most concerned with #1, that I properly identified the intruder as a burglar and not my daughter sneaking back into the house; then #2, that I'm not an easy target; and finally #3, the decision of whether or not to keep and be ready to use a gun.
#4 should be such a distant concern that most people, perhaps even most cops, shouldn't give it a second thought.
I would go further and say that #1 and #2 so dominate the equation that the standard advice should be to hesitate; for the sake of God, hesitate. There's a flip side to the fact that these situations unfold so quickly--when you're scared and amped up time also slows down. If people are told that they need to make split-second decisions then you're almost guaranteeing that they're going to make premature decisions simply because they'll feel like they're reacting too slowly. And that's precisely what happens again and again with these "accidental" shootings.
I'm not trying to dispute whether guns are useful for self-defense. But I think the dominate narratives within our gun culture are extremely dangerous and lead to unnecessary harm. I grew up around guns and I've noticed that the way many gun owners keep and use their guns is actually in opposition to how they talk about them. That they may say "never hesitate" but if you pay attention they actually do hesitate. They just don't realize it because what's happening internally is that they're quickly and skillfully processing their environment; experience has taught them how to filter and focus on their environment.
If I'm hunting duck I'll often shoot too early whereas my father is far more patient. That patience is learned. I've also been in a couple of physical altercations that could have gone really bad. Time does slow down and I'm glad I intentionally "hesitated" before I escalated.
The advice really should be to hesitate. When you finally have enough skill and experience to make so-called split-second decisions, you'll be relying on discipline and learned environmental cues, not on some heuristic advice. Lacking those specific faculties, the most important thing to remember is to assess the situation, and in a fight-or-flight situation where your autonomic system will try to override your executive functioning you absolutely want to give yourself more time. Again, time will seem to slow down anyhow so it's preposterous to me that we should be optimizing for some unfathomably rare scenario where the extra fractions of a second--if any--would matter.
Gun owners are rightfully taught to respect guns, which is another way of saying they should have a healthy fear of guns without allowing that fear to dictate their behavior. Perhaps what we need is a positive euphemism for "hesitate". But telling people not to hesitate is like telling people not to fear guns. Which would be stupid. Lacking the vocabulary to make finer distinctions, it's better to tell people to fear guns than not to fear them. Lacking a pithy word or phrase that denotes waiting to assess the situation, we should absolutely counsel people to hesitate rather than not to hesitate.
Not advocating for this, just repeating what has been expressed to me by many different people.
I often hear veterans weighing in on cases like this, shocked that domestic police are so incredibly undertrained in de-escalation compared to the military.
"Stop it right there, or I'll... I'll get really mad!"
The real problem is likely not having armed police, after all, Northern Ireland does not suffer a 246x increase in police-attributed deaths compared to the rest of the UK, but the expectation by police that theirs live are at risk - due to the common access of regular citizens to offensive weaponry
Well, not at the moment, but during the Troubles there were armed troops and armoured cars deployed on the streets. Quite a lot of people were killed by police and army shootings, some of which were extremely illegal (Miami Showband, Bloody Sunday) and one or two of which were actually prosected (Lee Clegg's shooting of Karen Reilly).
Reform of the police was critical to peace there, and will be critical in America. America needs a peace treaty with itself.
Edit: To the point: Yes. Anyone who can't respect "Don't fire until fired upon" should 100.0000% be disarmed.
Peace officers are supposed to be professionals.
And we have the right to make them not be police anymore.
Disclosure: I am a staunch Second Amendment supporter, well into the "extreme."
The Second Amendment does not override the employer-employee relationship - firearm possessors are not in a "protected class."
You're free to have that firearm and you may not be arrested for it - even while at your place of employ. We need not maintain your employment, however.
Which is why I argue that it's an intractable problem barring repealing the Second Amendment. Even if there are legal ways to accomplish merely disarming the police, it doesn't solve anything unless you disarm everyone.
I get that accidents happens, but something has clearly gone wrong with either the training or lack there of.
Not while acting as government agents they don't, just as those acting as government agents don't have the same freedom of expression and association in that context as they do as private citizens.
In fact, the underlying premise of the second amendment (alluded to, though not expressly stated, in it's preamble) is that there would be no substantial professional military forces or paramilitary police force in the US, and that there would instead be a dependence on (selective or mass, depending on situation) mobilization of the citizen militia to address threats requiring response of an armed force. The second amendment isn't rooted in the idea that having an armed population provides security against government armed forces, it was based on the premise that the government relying on the armed citizenry instead of government armed forces, military or police, was a foundation for securing liberty.
Employers are allowed to say "no guns at work" in other situations, correct? Does a cop have a corresponding First Amendment right to call everyone a n-word while out on patrol?
Unfortunately, yes.
As far as I know, racist speech is protected so long as it doesn't provoke violence against specific individuals ("fighting words.") Although IANAL and I'm willing to concede that I might be entirely wrong, and I don't want to go to the mat for racists anyway.
The police, along with everyone else, should be disarmed. NOBODY should be allowed to defend themselves with a gun. Guns should only be allowed for hunting.
Are you seriously suggesting they shouldn't?
Is everyone without guns dead?
How do they manage to survive, but gun owners can't without their guns?
I'm exceptionally happy that you are not the one making the decisions on these rules then. You appear to not have put much thought into this at all.
We already know what happens in a world completely bereft of firearms, it's called history. And history is dark and brutish for much of it, until very very recently. Firearms are but one of many technological advancements human society has achieved that has brought about an end to the dark and brutish existence we lived until now. Why, you might ask?
Quite simply, eliminating firearms returns society to a situation in which defense is only possible through literal force of arms (e.g. the force you can exert with the arms attached to your body) which greatly enhances the power of those who are physically fit when they behave in a brutish manner. In your world the old, infirm, meek, physically unfit, and women have no effective way to defend themselves. Self-defense becomes the hallmark of only the strong, and something which is a far bloodier and less sure affair.
Spare me your world, because I have been a student of history and I see what that world is like. I like the world I live in now, where I can be reasonably assured that I will not be attacked by someone simply because of my small stature and have the legal and practical means to defend myself if I am.
I do.
Pro-tip: ask yourself how the vast majority of people in the country live without firearms.
And ask yourself why they don't live in fear, while you do.
Perhaps government should offer mental-health counseling services for people that seem to be unable to live without firearms? You know, in order to allow these people to live normal lives like the rest of society, without fear of dying a violent gruesome death.
Again, if a 90-year old grandma can live without firearms, you can, too!
> I do.
Your trollish arrogance notwithstanding, we both have the required available information to deduce the outcome of your proposed policies. We have documented history for centuries that clearly shows what that outcome would be.
Harsh words?
The Federalist papers will enlighten you to the actual purpose of private arms if you need.
The fact that these things are regularly trotted out as if they have anything but the most peripheral relevance in discussions about things like handguns, bump stocks, and silencers is nuts.
None of the intent behind the Second Amendment has changed. It's quite frankly sad that to hear that people think so lowly of the Framers' intelligence to foresee technological advances.
The Girandoni Air Rifle existed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_air_rifle
The Framers couldn't extrapolate or imagine future technology? If you read the original justification, private ownership of arms has everything to do with individual liberty in spite of destructive capability.
Would they look at all the mass shooting deaths, suicides, law enforcement killings, accidental discharges by children, road rage incidents, overseas military adventurism, and the power and behaviour of entities like the NRA and say to all of it, "Yup, that's pretty much what we envisioned for the future of firearms in this country"? If not that, what kinds of common sense measures do you think they might suggest as appropriate to tackle some of the worst of the problem?
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
> mass shooting deaths
Statistically insignificant relative to any other cause of death in the country.
> suicides
Not pertinent to this discussion: why should a suicidal person have any bearing on _my_ rights?
> law enforcement killings
Do you know how few of these actually happen?
> accidental discharges by children
Sad, but statistically very rare.
> road rage incidents
??
> and the power and behaviour of entities like the NRA
I honestly believe the framers would be sad to see that such an organization (albeit almost entirely member-funded - yay, democracy!) needs to exist in the first place.
You can see that mentality in the fact that the Bill of Rights didn't exist at the time the Constitution was written. The Framers believed rights existed "naturally" - far beyond those that were explicitly enumerated. They believed that documenting individual liberties would cause the Bill of Rights to be seen as an all-inclusive list.
I wouldn't go so far as to say our current situation is what the Framers "envisioned," but I can say they would probably accept the costs of freedom, whatever those may be.
In any case, based on the "cost of freedom" remark, it's unlikely that we'll be able to take the discussion much further in a productive way. Fortunately for you the United States exists and is a good fit for your values, and fortunately for me, I can live most other places in the developed world without having to deal with it first hand.
As a citizen in the developed world, how do you defend yourself against violence?
How would your (wife|husband|child|grandmother) defend theirselves?
I am not tough enough to physically fend off multiple violent aggressors, unfortunately.
Even in the rare circumstance where there is a violent confrontation, most people are not able to effectively wield a firearm and make the situation better than it would have been without. That is, household guns for defensive purposes are like driving an SUV— it's mostly about the feeling of safety, but the reality is that it's basically worse in every way than the alternative.
It's non-zero and happens quite frequently where I live. Not all of us are privileged.
> How many of those are improved by the introduction of another firearm vs. allowing the situation to run its course and catching the perpetrators after the fact (which is how most of the developed world does, in fact, handle it
Meanwhile, the victim is raped or not alive to see this possible "justice."
What a fucking joke - I'll take my chances with a firearm instead. "Justice after the fact" isn't acceptable to me, I'd rather stop the crime being committed against me from happening.
> That is, household guns for defensive purposes are like driving an SUV— it's mostly about the feeling of safety, but the reality is that it's basically worse in every way than the alternative.
Just a moment ago you were a citizen of the "developed world," where firearms apparently don't exist and violence doesn't happen, and now you understand how "hard" it is to utilize and use firearms for one's protection? Really curious as to where your knowledge comes from!
You never answered my question, either. You presupposed that these "situations don't happen" as your argument. Should I just take this to mean the default of: "I cannot protect myself or my family from violent individuals?"
Suicides should be a human right (and I don't see how they are relevant to guns anyway).
> overseas military adventurism
Colonialism was a thing that started before the american revolution.
> law enforcement killings
Authoritarianism and all the deaths caused by it existed since the ancient times.
Sure, and I'm there with you on that. However, gun suicide attempts are worse than most other means in the sense that very little preparation or premeditation is required— you can pull the trigger in an instant and there's no recovering from it.
Quoting a Vox piece from 2015: "There's a popular myth that suicidal people will find a way to kill themselves no matter what, and that closing off one method (like guns) will just lead to an increase in suicides through other methods (like hanging or overdoses). But most suicides aren't committed by determined people who can't be talked out of it. They're impulsive actions that can usually be prevented by small barriers. Many survivors say they deliberated less than a day, and sometimes for only a matter of minutes, before making a suicide attempt."
https://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8721267/gun-suicide-gun-control
> very little preparation or premeditation is required
Assuming that you already own a gun.
I do agree with what you said, but I don't believe that trying to limit the freedom of someone to kill themselves using a gun is the best solution.
The point is that there is at least one gun in 1/3 US households. So someone living in one of those households can have a passing thought of suicide, and then act on it irreversibly in a matter of minutes. You're welcome, I guess, to frame that in terms of limiting someone's freedom, but it doesn't have to be about the government taking away the guns; maybe there's just an argument there that having a gun in your house is unwise given the potential impact it could have on future you or your family members. An alcoholic doesn't keep beer in their fridge either, because the potential for self harm is too great.
Which is not unreasonable, but more importantly, someone with this context sees comments about taking away hunting guns as ignorant urban superiority, scapegoating, and cultural disregard.
Why?