For reference, the LAPD standard issue pistol seems to be a FN 509 MRD-LE, with a magazine capacity of 17. Because police seem to be trained to empty their entire magazine any time they fire, that would be about in line with this number.
That is not just police - that is firearms training 101. Even civilian training courses hammer this into you.
You do not stop firing until it is absolutely clear there is no more threat.
I realize a significant portion of HNers are not familiar with firearms and have had zero firearms training. You'll have to take my word, and that of any other brave voices that this is how it's suppose to work.
The amount of rounds fired is quite literally the least concerning thing about the event. My original point was do not use round count as some sort of hammer to make a point - you only come off as uninformed and it diminishes your overall argument.
> You do not stop firing until it is absolutely clear there is no more threat.
One does not mean or imply the other. "until there is no more threat" doesn't say anything about a magazine.
The only relationship between the two is the presumption that while reloading you will have time to realize your target is already dead, while you might not have realized it a moment before in the haze of gunfire. But nobody is obliged to empty their entire magazine before evaluating the effect they had. Police are trained to stop shooting when the threat is gone and there are ample body camera videos showing police who stop shooting before their magazine is empty. This demonstrates that one is not necessarily synonymous with the other.
The gun only comes out for one reason - that is to kill something that you perceive to pose an immediate danger to you or someone around you. The gun does not come out for funsies - if it's out, someone is getting shot until they're not a threat anymore (which can mean different things depending on the situation).
It's not a "mag dump" as some have indicated, it's "fire until there's no more threat, reload and keep firing if there is still a threat".
The gun is a tool for killing. It is that simple. The gun comes out, someone is dying. It's that cold.
This isn't the movies. People don't get hit once and leave the fight... this is real life.
You are, however, trained to fire until there is no more threat (as repeated over and over). That's exactly what happened here. Turns out in hindsight they got the initial assessment very wrong... that should be the focus of the discussion, not rounds fired.
> you're speaking with authority on something
No, I just happen to be the only person here with firearms training that is brave enough to burn a bunch of points trying to help uninformed folks focus on what matters (hint, it's not round count).
Very brave of you. I have some (mild, think seriousmode CCW class) training in the area too, and FWIW it doesn't exactly match your description.
> trying to help uninformed folks focus on what matters
But you're the one who's constantly muddying the waters and turning this into a flame war instead of conversation. Reread the article, then reread this thread. If you come to the conclusion that you're doing something constructive or helpful, rather than that you have ulterior motives or need to seriously improve your communication skills, there's probably no reconciling your POV with anyone else's.
The only point I raised was 107 rounds fired from 7 or more individuals is not unusual. Folks like to run around with some number of rounds fired as-if it indicates malfeasance - but it really doesn't. That was the only point I was making... everything else is "what-if" noise...
Zero judgement was passed on the events themselves, but it seems people want to force you to state an opinion none-the-less.
If you'd said, "we should focus more on how the shooting started in the first place and the sheer incompetence and us-vs-them mentality that allows cops to cross the violence threshold so constantly & without consequences, rather than the specific number of bullets lodged in various things" you might have had a better and more constructive conversation. As it stands, you've doubled and tripled down on that not mattering, and I think it gives an impression to readers.
Very, very off topic, but I do think it's kind of weird to magdump in a public space. We're taught to be extremely cautious of what's behind our targets at all times, and the corollary to 'once the tool comes out, you use it' is 'try not to bring the tool out at all costs', which you conveniently leave out as well. Finally, I don't know how good you are in terms of time to reacquire but squeezing more than 3 or 4 in a row definitely throws my aim off (even with a relatively heavy CZ75 SP01 or my million pound 1911 - I imagine the cops use a more polymer-intensive and therefore lighter weapon) (also assuming still that these are handguns and not long guns of some sort), so just indiscriminately dumping 17+1 or whatever doesn't strike me as a viable approach to hitting your target.
Cops do a very poor job of all of this, and people rightly want their poor performance to be held to account.
Add to that... if they said "you just don't understand -- this isn't the movies, you don't just stab a person once and they die, you have to keep stabbing until they stop moving. I don't think any of you understand, you don't have the training I do to see that clearly this is a reasonable course of action for anyone who is intending to stab someone"
This whole thread is an absolute absurdity, to keep falling back on "you just don't get it, it's not the movies" and "we're focusing on the wrong thing, the number of bullets" when .. no one here is focusing on the numbers of bullets except the person arguing with, in most cases, himself.
> but it is not what they teach you in the army or special ops
What are you even talking about? I hazard to guess you have zero firearms training.
Of course people train to reload their firearms. Of course they train to reload their firearms during combat. It's not a musket for crying out loud.
This might all be fun and games for most of the people here, but for the folks that train and carry guns for a living - it's pretty darn serious. The things the uninformed masses expect, based on Hollywood movies and B-rated TV shows is dumbfounding and downright dangerous.