I love when people who have never been in a situation like this carrying a gun suggest that the shooter should be arrested..... akin to suggesting shooting them in the arm to stop them..... when there is an active shooter the cop has 2 priorities, neutralizing the shooter to stop further harm to innocents by putting lead into them until they are no longer a threat and then going home to his family at the end of the night
Hmm - really not sure capturing and arresting is a realistic option in this situation - the plan when someone is shooting and killing innocent targets is to stop them ASAP and that means shooting to kill. There is a second point though - if a trained deputy was too scared to go in and fight someone who is shooting indescriminately its really hard to see your average teacher doing much better
I knew people would misread it in this way. I have nothing whatsoever against the cop killing the killer if the situation clearly demands it. I just find it strange that the instruction is immediately 'kill him' not 'stop him from shooting'. If stopping him involves killing him then fine, but that shouldn't be the number one aim before they've even entered the situation. It's not up to the sheriff to decide to commit capital punishment, it's the police's job to stop the killer from hurting anyone else. I know it's just words and it may amount to the same thing 99 times out of 100 but I think he should be telling his cops to stop them in whatever way possible, not just straight out 'kill them'. Being pedantic, does that mean that if he could safely stop him and arrest him without killing him then he would be doing his job wrong according to the sheriff? (Let's say in the unlikely situation that the gunman puts all guns down, hands on head and surrenders). As the sheriff said he should go in and kill him, not arrest him.
That is very true and provides a perfect counter argument to 'if the good guys all had guns then it would prevent bad guys from shooting anyone'.
I'm in now way making a counter argument - but would point out that in both florida and Sandy Hook - and I think Dunblane too - unarmed teachers ran towards the shooter. Teachers care more about the kids than cops.
We had a lockdown not long back at the school where I'm based because somebody had rung up and had threatened to shoot one of the teachers.
Totally correct. I killing him is the only way to stop him without further loss of innocent life then so be it but the aim shouldn't be that. The aim should be to stop and arrest him. They may never know the reasons behind why he did what he did but if they killed him they definitely wouldnt
Would you fancy being a black teacher when the trigger happy Yankee coppers turn up after you’ve shot a lunatic gunman?
What about if the person saying it has received a $30m bung from the NRA? Would you believe they'd come up with it then?
What about if the police encountered him while he was in the process of reloading? Should it be a case of walk in, see him and shoot him? Or walk in see him and shout a warning while he is temporarily unable to harm you and if he doesn't put his hands up THEN shoot him? I know that the chances are police would encounter him WHILE he is shooting (actually how often does that happen?) but there is also a chance of encountering while they are walking, reloading etc so surely the aim should be to stop not instantly to kill. That should be an unfortunate consequence not the aim.