“On Thursday, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked guest [lawyer] Jeffrey Toobin why police weren’t instructed to “shoot to injure,” instead of kill,” talkingpointsmemo.com reports. “Blitzer’s questions arose during a discussion on the unfurling conflict in Ferguson, Missouri over the fatal police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.
“They often shoot to kill,” Blitzer said of police. “Why do they have to shoot to kill? Why can’t they shoot a warning shot in the air, scare someone off if they think they’re in danger. Why can’t they shoot to, injure, shall we say? Why do they have to shoot to kill?”
TTAG reader F reckons Blitzer’s ignorance . . .
…is on a par with legislators who think the very act of passing a law, no matter how stupid or inconsistent or poorly worded, solves a problem all by itself, like waving a wand, as if intentions alone matter. I am a computer programmer, and I constantly rant about why the damn computer can’t understand what I meant to do. But I also know it’s just a 2 second silent rant and that the bugs are my fault. I wish politicians, progressives, and statists in general could understand something so basic.
True dat. And I’m not happy with Toobin’s answer, either . . .
Toobin said police are trained to “never fire a warning shot” and to “never fire a shot to injure.” He explained that if police fire their guns, they must “accept the risk” that they are “gonna kill somebody.” Adding that: “If you are not prepared to kill someone, don’t fire the gun.”
The rationale behind this, according to Toobin, is that if law enforcement is taught to fire warning shots or to shoot to injure instead of kill, people will be shot “too often.”
Uh, hello? Cops — like all civilians — shoot to stop a lethal threat. NOT TO KILL. Click here for Mike McDaniel’s most excellent article on the importance of that concept.
Jeez.