IN general, police are not trained to shoot for legs. As someone who has been shooting their whole life, a leg shot is very iffy, even at the range they were at You have to be calm, exact, and hope at the last moment the target isnt moving said leg. Chests cant swivel the same way, and that is why they are trained to target that area. It is a high % shot, that is a stopper.

I am not a police officer, just been thru a lot of military training with MPs, and they are trained similar.

Also, you dont use a non-lethal response (taser) vs a lethal weapon (knife) That is not ever going to happen, so we can move onto the next argument in this.

He didn't have a knife, he had a pocket knife which didn't have the blade extended.

regardless, he was asked to drop it. The problem is that someone called in a Gun and a knife, and that is what they are going to assume he had. This is VERY simple Comply with what the police asked Drop whatever it was, and let this get sorted out Do not advance on them. Dont make excuses for this person, they did everything in the world wrong.

and a pocketknife is still a knife, regardless of whatever wordplay you want to go with. Leg shots however are NOT going to happen, too much chance involved in that one, and the adrenaline pumping on both sides, makes that a tough shot.

There were three security guards there and two of them didn't fire. Sure the victim was asking to be killed, but there was no reason that the third couldn't have backed off and waited with the others except poor training.

Just another peaceful, non violent protest from the liberals.

Thank god only one side is filled up with hate, that's what I always say.

While Stressedlines is right that 1) Shooting for the legs is not going to happen and 2) In most cases a cop will not use a non-lethal weapon when the suspect has a lethal one (remember, they only know what the dispatcher told them, and dispatcher said gun. It could've been hidden somewhere for all they know)

However, there are many, many cases of people who wish to commit suicide by cop not getting their wish. There are ways to de-escalate the situation that were clearly, and unfortunately, not used.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/us/georgia-tech-student-killed/index.html

Call to police was by the victim. His only weapon was a multipurpose tool which was closed and his hands were at his side in a non threatening position. Police assisted suicide. Then the police contradicted the video to claim a cause.

@Randomzier

1. it was not closed, we can't tell from the video. all we have is a picture after the fact showing it laying open but without a knife blade extended.

2. police reports said he seemed very close to a mental breakdown, and the fact that he had written several suicide notes supports this. if you're dealing with someone who is mentally unstable, the "non threatening position" is a VERY volatile state.

3. he approached the officer when she said NOT TO MOVE. many times in a row, he was told to drop the weapon and not to move. the fact that he did not do this was one of the worrying signs for the police, especially since the suspect was immediately identified as mentally unstable

4. Schultz was about 8 feet away from the cop when the shot was fired, i'm using the video for reference, maybe it's 9 feet, but it's not very far at all. in self defense classes with guns, there's something known as the 21 foot rule. if someone is within 21 feet of you with a knife, they're more likely to be able to approach and stab you before you can unholster and draw your firearm. there's also a rule that's less well known, but still is taught at 10 feet. if someone is moving towards you and is within 10 feet away, they can close the distance and attack you if you miss or do not hit on center mass with one shot.

5. straight out of the CNN article:

"Georgia Tech Police officers responded to a 911 call at 11:17 p.m. Saturday reporting a suspicious person on the Atlanta campus. The caller said the person -- described as a white male with long blond hair, white T-shirt and blue jeans, possibly intoxicated -- was holding a knife and possibly a gun."

Schultz set this up. it was very obviously suicide by cop, but Schultz added in not only a reference to gun and knife in his call: which increases the risk, but ALSO said that the person was possibly intoxicated. if the police get to the scene and see someone who is acting more mentally unstable than intoxicated, they might suspect narcotics are in play. the unresponsiveness of Schultz in the video can also corroborate this at first. with many drugs, even a shot to the chest won't bring someone down. the phone call made by Schultz to the police ensured they came armed, and were unwilling to get close to Schultz.

Schultz, according to police, kept asking the police to shoot him.

Police already had guns drawn and aimed, so response time was less. It was well lit and since it was a parking garage entrance there was clear room to back up.

That is a really shitty situation.

But lets discuss mental health if that is what this is. Any suicide is a tragedy. preventative healthcare should have been available to help reduce the frequency of suicides.

You may want to focus on policing, and there are clearly some situations where police responce is problematic. But ideally we avoid getting into a situation where people who need medical help get killed by police instead.

Society will be better off if police can spend their time dealing with malicious people rather than with mentally ill people. Increase spending on trained mental health professional. Have a serious discussion about suicide, and how we as a society treat people who have - for whatever reason - been unable to function in our society. Humans are not naturally city dwellers, we should not be surprised there are social illnesses created by our very fast cultural development. Look at history over the last 500 years, social structures have changed more in that time than any other time in human history. We don't evolve that fast, but we have evolved brains which can respond flexibly to different environments, which makes us one of the most adaptive species on earth.

Still we're not perfect. As a society we should take responcibility for the environment we created. And minimise the circumstance where tragedies like this one occur.

If you want to talk about police militarization and training, find an example where you don't have a medical failure at its' root.

On the other hand, the rioting is unsurprising. Police are a highly political, gun control isn't something people want to talk about, but in a society with free access to firearms it is inevitable that police will be trained to deal with armed suspects.

I am very lucky to live in a society where, for the most part, we don't see armed police because it is not necessary. The majority of police is done by unarmed police, and only special responce units are even trained in their use (for use against organised crime and para-military terrorist - who for the most part have been included in the political process in Northern Ireland, so have put down their arms - and destroyed them; and thank you to general John de Chastelain).

Ireland does have the same shitty issue with mental health care, but we don't have any recorded incidents of suicide by cop, probably because it would be rather hard to achieve when all the police you're likely to meet are unarmed.

Great posts.

Increased mental health care is far better solution than banning guns, but unfortunately not a solution that the liberal mass media and left wants to push and march in the streets over.

Curing the cause of the problems is a far better, far sighted/broad view solution than trying to fix the responses.

But what do I know. I have crazy, narrow minded views like racism exists everywhere and not just one isolated group.

at least this is a civil conversation going on.

Lets leave the gun-control part of of this, as nobody is changing anyone elses mind on it, so we can move onto the metal health issues.

Access to illegal guns are easy enough, even in Europe I know in Germany guns are quite easy to buy illegally as they come across from Eastern Europe.

This individual wanted to die, and thought to make a political statement doing it. If I want to die, I am going out alone, and on my terms, not a cop.

No, don't go out on your terms, you have so much to live for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines

@"Increased mental health care is far better solution than banning guns"

It is not one or the other. Those are solution to different problems. You want to solve the mental health crisis and reduce the number of suicides, do X. You want to solve the gun-crime/death by homicide/cop, do Y.

IF you see it as a problem that police are forced (in situations like this) to assume an armed and dangerous individual, then you need to address the under lying availability of guns in your society (maybe form well regulated militias, and ban gun ownership/use outside of militia training and practice).

This may be an intersection of two problems, but it isn't a question of which solution is 'better' it is a question of which problem you want to tackle.

@"Curing the cause of the problems is a far better, far sighted/broad view solution than trying to fix the responses." - Agreed. And part of the issue here, is that death by cop is an effective way to commit suicide in the US.

If you can re-train cops to de-escalate situations then that is fantastic. And maybe that is what Scout Shultz would have wanted. Maybe there are less lethal person-stoppers than bullets (which would wind a person if you hit them in the stomach/chest and put them down but not kill them). Maybe tasers would have been more appropriate in this cases. I don't know.

Reducing the need for militarized police, and even armed police, would help address several political issues, such as the complaints BLM have raised. And this situation would never have happened. But either way, you're talking about very serious changes to your culture (whether you look at mental health care, or gun violence - both by police and on police). I don't think the US has the capacity to have a conversation about either topic.

Though at least individual states can implement reforms of their mental health care responce, needing only a state wide conversation. Which is much more practical.

"It is not one or the other"

Never even remotely hinted that it was.

" And maybe that is what Scout Shultz would have wanted."

The reality that not one, but three suicide notes, would be evidence that Scout got exactly what he wanted.

Banning guns would have a very small impact on gun violence seeing as the large majority of gun violence is committed by criminals possessing guns illegally already.

The areas of this country that have the largest amount of gun violence already have some of the strictest gun regulations in this country.

Guess what though? Criminals don't care about the laws.

@""It is not one or the other"

Never even remotely hinted that it was.
"

You said A is far better than B. Which entirely suggests you see A as a solution not B.

They are both good solutions, for completely seperate problems.

@"Banning guns would have a very small impact on gun violence seeing as the large majority of gun violence is committed by criminals possessing guns illegally already. "

"The areas of this country that have the largest amount of gun violence already have some of the strictest gun regulations in this country."

This is so twisted. Because legal guns are easy to acquire there are lots of guns going around on second hand markets which are harder to regulate. IF guns were heavily restricted, you would find it much harder to acquire illegal guns.

And the areas with the highest gun violence decided to enact strict gun control laws because the violence was so high. Has it worked? I'm going to say, kinda - see: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/nyc-historically-number-shootings-2016-article-1.2933098

But it is very hard to measure as the strict gun controls are not the only factor at play here. So i don't think there is enough evidence.

But if you anted to get guns off the streets of your most violent cities, you would face the major problem of having to reduce gun availability 'just over state lines' or outside of city jurisdictions. Because you can't curtail the movement of people and start putting up checkpoints for people carrying guns into or out of cities... so long as the majority of the US has guns widely available, this will continue to be a problem.

@"Guess what though? Criminals don't care about the laws."

Now imagine guns can only be acquired in Mexico, and mexican gun runners are secretly trying to smuggle them across the border (because lots of criminals in the US would, as you put it, not care about the laws). Then you are entirely free to set up special armed task forces to intercept those smugglers.

That said, I suspect the US will never chose to give up the gun, because it is deeply tied to your national identity and independence.

"You said A is far better than B. Which entirely suggests you see A as a solution not B. "

No. it is exactly what I said it was. A far better solution.

Not the only solution. Had I meant it was the only solution I would have said A is a solution and B is not a solution.

Legal guns are used in only about 3% of crimes.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/oct/05/joe-scarborough/msnbcs-joe-scarborough-tiny-fraction-crimes-commit/

The major flaw in your theory is that your theory assumes that banning guns eliminates the supply of guns that are already on the streets.

It doesn't.

Just because a ban of guns happened, do you really think all the street gangs, drug dealers/cartels and other criminals will say "oh wow, I guess we should just hand these over now"? Lol

It is already illegal for them to possess the guns they have in their possessions, so what difference will putting them on double secret probation make?

BTW, the US Govt already tried to stop the flow of illegal guns into Mexico and the cartels there. Know what their plan was? They allowed the sale of 2000 firearms to happen and the guns to go to Mexico where they would confiscate them.

The results? Hundreds of Mexicans killed by these weapons and one Border Patrol agent with less than half the guns retrieved and zero high level cartel arrests.

Placing a ban on something is one thing. Enforcing the ban is a totally different thing.

A ban of guns will only punish the legal and innocent owners of guns.

"Now imagine guns can only be acquired in Mexico, and mexican gun runners are secretly trying to smuggle them across the border (because lots of criminals in the US would, as you put it, not care about the laws). Then you are entirely free to set up special armed task forces to intercept those smugglers. "

Good idea. Cause we are already so good at intercepting and stopping the flow of drugs into the country lol

Let's give those task forces even more things to look for.

As you said yourself, scale matters.

"It is already illegal for them to possess the guns they have in their possessions, so what difference will putting them on double secret probation make?"

Well if you were going to transition to a low gun society, yo'd probably want to bring in an amnesty for anyone wanting to hand in illegally held weapons. Where they aren't punished if they give up their weapons within a certain time period, and the punishment after that is much worse.

Probably people other than me with more experience would be better at talking about a transition plan (though Ireland did go about transition from having many paramilitaries to decommissioning most of those weapons and having those groups engaged in the political process...). My main argument is that in societies which already have very few guns, this kind of interaction with police doesn't happen. In fact you don't have police accidentally killing innocent people at all.

And yes, actually being able to target illegal guns effectively would be a major concern.

"Well if you were going to transition to a low gun society, yo'd probably want to bring in an amnesty for anyone wanting to hand in illegally held weapons. Where they aren't punished if they give up their weapons within a certain time period, and the punishment after that is much worse."

They already do that in many major cities where you can turn in guns no questions asked unless in exchange for sports tickets or gift cards or something like that once or twice a year.

There is also probably very few societies who have the armed criminal possessing illegal guns. In most major cities, the gangs are actually far better armed than the police are. Armed with weapons obtained illegally.

While no one wants to see the police kill innocent people (fewer actually than what the media brainwashes people with) the number of those incidents is an incredibly small percentage of police interactions. Probably somewhere in the .00001 percent range. Life is human and while the outcome is terrible mistakes happen and will never be eliminated. And before someone completely exaggerates my comments, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve.

But taking guns away from the police is not the answer when there are the number of illegal guns we have on the street in dangerous people's possession.

'But taking guns away from the police is not the answer when there are the number of illegal guns we have on the street in dangerous people's possession.'

worked in ireland after our civil war...

"worked in ireland after our civil war... "

And that was what, 1923???

Not quite the same nearly 100 years later and with hundreds of gangs more heavily armed than anything seen back then.

Also Ireland has a total population that might not crack the top five metro populations of cities in this country.

Remember, scale matters.