Another reason to fly GA...

"Skywise" wrote in message
...
Jose wrote in
:

Snipola
And in this case it was "kill first", not "Shoot first", since (from
what I understand) the victim was already under control, and was then
shot five times.
Snipola

I don't know how it is in other countries, or even in other parts of
the US, but law enforcement in the Los Angeles area seems to be trained
to shoot to kill.

The only place where "shoot to wound" exists is in Hollyweird.

"Jose" wrote in message



I'm curious. It seems folks are treating these bombers as criminals.

Now THAT'S funny!!

I don't see them as criminals as much as a new type of enemy fighter
("enemy combatant"?).

Geez!!

On Sat, 23 Jul 2005 21:32:20 GMT, George Patterson
wrote:

Stubby wrote:

OK if you yell the command in 31 different languages.

If they don't understand that much English, they should go back home.

Let's see: Your in England where the police do not carry guns.
Bad guys carry guns.
There's been a bombing.
You are a minority. The wrong minority.
You may not speak English well.
Two guys with guns holler at you.
Good guys don't carry guns in England.
First thought: Lynch mob, or vigilantes.
Second thought: Run like Hell as you are going to be dead if you
don't. What do you have to lose.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

George Patterson
Why do men's hearts beat faster, knees get weak, throats become dry,
and they think irrationally when a woman wears leather clothing?
Because she smells like a new truck.

"Gig 601XL Builder" wr.giacona@coxDOTnet wrote in
news:SddFe.32$_t.14@okepread01:


"Skywise" wrote in message
I don't know how it is in other countries, or even in other parts of
the US, but law enforcement in the Los Angeles area seems to be trained
to shoot to kill. it seems that if they pull the trigger they
completely unload their weapons then reload before reassessing the
situation.

If this is not actual policy or training, it is de facto policy in
that it is how they respond. There have been two police shootings in
recent months where multiple officers unloaded into the suspect. In
one case something like 120 rounds were fired, only a handful of which
hit the suspect, and at least one round hit another officer.


Police officers are taught to shoot at the center of mass. This is to A.
give them a better chance of actually hitting what they shoot at and B.
To stop the target from doing what ever it is he is doing.

The old cowboy crap of shooting the gun out of the bad guy's hand
doesn't work because as you point they do seem to miss alot.

Well, I tend to agree that in a fluid situation that's rapidly
degenerating there may not be much you can do.

However, I recall seeing on one of them TV cop shows once where there was
a standoff situation with a man holding a gun on a hostage and a police
sniper shot the gun out of the suspects hand. Damned impressive.

No 'hollyweird' special effects.

Brian
--
http://www.skywise711.com - Lasers, Seismology, Astronomy, Skepticism

Seismic FAQ: http://www.skywise711.com/SeismicFAQ/SeismicFAQ.html
Blog: http://www.skywise711.com/Blog

Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?

"Skywise" wrote in message
...
"Gig 601XL Builder" wr.giacona@coxDOTnet wrote in
news:SddFe.32$_t.14@okepread01:


"Skywise" wrote in message
I don't know how it is in other countries, or even in other parts of
the US, but law enforcement in the Los Angeles area seems to be trained
to shoot to kill. it seems that if they pull the trigger they
completely unload their weapons then reload before reassessing the
situation.

If this is not actual policy or training, it is de facto policy in
that it is how they respond. There have been two police shootings in
recent months where multiple officers unloaded into the suspect. In
one case something like 120 rounds were fired, only a handful of which
hit the suspect, and at least one round hit another officer.


Police officers are taught to shoot at the center of mass. This is to A.
give them a better chance of actually hitting what they shoot at and B.
To stop the target from doing what ever it is he is doing.

The old cowboy crap of shooting the gun out of the bad guy's hand
doesn't work because as you point they do seem to miss alot.

Well, I tend to agree that in a fluid situation that's rapidly
degenerating there may not be much you can do.

However, I recall seeing on one of them TV cop shows once where there was
a standoff situation with a man holding a gun on a hostage and a police
sniper shot the gun out of the suspects hand. Damned impressive.

No 'hollyweird' special effects.

Brian

I recall a similar incident (may have been the same one...but no hostage...)
where a guy was sitting in the middle of an intersection with a handgun and
kept waiving it at the Cops and threatening to cap himself.

Police Sniper did shoot the gun out of his hand when he dropped it to his
side for a second.

Jay Beckman
PP-ASEL
Chandler, AZ

"AES" wrote in message
...
To quote someone I overhead yesterday: "If there's a 2% chance, based
on all information known at the time, that the guy is a suicide bomber,
and 50 people in the subway car -- well, the choice is unfortunate, but
very clear."

I see several problems with this proposal.

* The proposal presumes that an expected-gain calculation (about lives saved
or lost) is morally decisive. But there are well-known problems with such a
strict utilitarian criterion. For example, strict utilitarianism implies
that if you are healthy, killing you to harvest your organs would be
justifiable--doing so would save several lives by taking only one life. The
philosophical issues are too complex to analyze here; suffice it to say that
at present, it is (to put it mildly) less than "very clear" that killing for
organs--or killing someone who is known at the time to be 98% likely to be
innocent--is morally justifiable, even if (in both cases) the expected-gain
calculation is somewhat favorable.

Other difficulties concern the implementation of the proposal, even if the
utilitarian calculation were indeed morally decisive. Some are technical
problems:

* People's intuitions about small probabilities are notoriously inaccurate.
If a subject stands out because evidence shows he is hundreds of times more
likely than the average person to be a suicide bomber, then he may seem to
be at least 2% likely to be one, even though a trivial Bayesian calculation
shows that the actual probability is orders of magnitude less than that. But
we cannot realistically expect police to perform Bayesian calculations while
making split-second life-and-death decisions.

* The calculation, as framed, presumes that in the 2%-likely case in which
the person killed is indeed a suicide bomber, the killing is both necessary
and sufficient to prevent the 50 deaths. That might be roughly true if, say,
you shoot a bomber who is running toward (but still distant from) a crowd.
But the presumption's accuracy is much less clear if (as in the present
instance) the person is already on the crowded train (the bomb, if any,
might explode anyway due to a passive-release trigger, or just from the
impact of falling, due to TATP's instability), and is already flat on the
ground, surrounded by police, without having detonated any bomb (so the
police, at that point, may well be able to subdue him less lethally).

Other problems stem from the readily foreseeable deliberate or inadvertent
abusability of the proposed policy:

* If the 2%-likely suspects belong disproportionately to an identifiable
minority group, then the majority will (accurately) perceive themselves to
be much less at risk from the proposed policy, and will thus have diminished
incentive to give due consideration to the moral and technical problems with
the policy.

* If those disproportionately targeted by the policy belong to a widely
*disliked* minority, then their endangerment may be devalued even further
(often unconsciously, and thus unscrutinized); their endangerment may even
be perceived by many as desirable, rather than as a drawback of the policy.

* Our species has demonstrably inherited a primate quasi-sexual appetite for
(often-lethal) gratuitous cruelty (see e.g. Nell 2005, forthcoming in
Behavioral and Brain Sciences). Contemporary civilization has devised
various ways to help keep this tendency in check, but the power to engage in
socially approved killing of innocents inevitably serves in part to give
expression to this unfortunate inclination (the inclination can be
manifested --without necessarily being recognized as such--both by the
advocates of the proposed policy, and by those whose task is to execute it).

For these reasons and others, I believe a reasonable policy only permits
killing someone who is overwhelmingly likely to be posing a lethal threat
that cannot otherwise be countered.

--Gary

"Skywise" wrote in message "Skywise"
wrote in message
I don't know how it is in other countries, or even in other parts of
the US, but law enforcement in the Los Angeles area seems to be trained
to shoot to kill. it seems that if they pull the trigger they
completely unload their weapons then reload before reassessing the
situation.

If this is not actual policy or training, it is de facto policy in
that it is how they respond. There have been two police shootings in
recent months where multiple officers unloaded into the suspect. In
one case something like 120 rounds were fired, only a handful of which
hit the suspect, and at least one round hit another officer.


Police officers are taught to shoot at the center of mass. This is to A.
give them a better chance of actually hitting what they shoot at and B.
To stop the target from doing what ever it is he is doing.

The old cowboy crap of shooting the gun out of the bad guy's hand
doesn't work because as you point they do seem to miss alot.

Well, I tend to agree that in a fluid situation that's rapidly
degenerating there may not be much you can do.

However, I recall seeing on one of them TV cop shows once where there was
a standoff situation with a man holding a gun on a hostage and a police
sniper shot the gun out of the suspects hand. Damned impressive.

No 'hollyweird' special effects.



Assuming that you mean TV cop REALITY show please keep in mind that sniper
is a VERY small subset of police shooting skill and he was probably shooting
for the guys head anyway and missed.

We had a police officer here shoot the gun of a crazy that had a revolver
cocked and aimed at his own head. But he spent several seconds aiming and he
got lucky. Later the gun was examinied and the crazy did pul the trigger
after it was hit. The only reason it didn't fire was the hammer was jamed
due to the damage done by the police officer's shot. THe really bad part of
this was that the crazy and his family sued the officer and the city. The
case was setteled out of court.

Just to keep this thread somewhat on topic years ago we had a problem of
many deers on the runway at the airport. The PD's Emergency Reaction Team
(AKA SWAT) decided to use it as a training excersise. 5 "snipers" along with
their spoters surrounded the suspect deers and when through the entire
process of setting up their shots just as they might in a multi badguy
hostage situation. When the commander gave the go code there was much sound
and smoke and I will let you guess how many dead deer.

If you can't guess scroll down.




























ZERO


I've heard they had some significant retraining since this happened and that
now about half the team now are reserve officers who really are pretty damn
good shots.

I wrote:
Sorry Icebound, I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or if you
really believe this. I thought it was common knowledge now that the
Bush administration actually did invent the WMD specifically to start
the war.


On Mon, 25 Jul 2005 17:55:23 -0400, Bob Noel
wrote:

at one time it was common knowledge that the earth was flat.

Exactly, until it was overwhelmingly proved otherwise. Thanks, great
parallel.

Unfortunately, some still believe the world is flat... Another great
parallel.

Corky Scott

Skywise wrote:

However, I recall seeing on one of them TV cop shows once where there was
a standoff situation with a man holding a gun on a hostage and a police
sniper shot the gun out of the suspects hand. Damned impressive.

Then you get into reality. At Ruby Ridge, an FBI sniper shooting at a suspect
standing in a doorway missed by a couple feet and hit his wife in the head.

No 'hollyweird' special effects.

I'd say a TV show is "hollyweird special effects."

George Patterson
Why do men's hearts beat faster, knees get weak, throats become dry,
and they think irrationally when a woman wears leather clothing?
Because she smells like a new truck.

In article ,
"Gary Drescher" wrote:

"AES" wrote in message
...
To quote someone I overhead yesterday: "If there's a 2% chance, based
on all information known at the time, that the guy is a suicide bomber,
and 50 people in the subway car -- well, the choice is unfortunate, but
very clear."

I see several problems with this proposal.
(REMAINDER OF THIS RESPONSE APPENDED FURTHER DOWN)



As the one who quoted -- not made -- the assertion above, I recognize
the merits of essentially all the points made in the reply appended
below.

We're faced, however, with a new and very difficult situation in the
suicide bomber phenomena. The fact that it's primarily based in, caused
by, and supported by religious fanaticism (not primarily anything we do)
makes it all the more difficult to cope with.

Simply quoting Ben Franklin's "better that 100 guilty escape punishment
than 1 innocent be convicted" -- an aphorism that validly applies to a
very different situation or set of circumstances -- and concluding from
this, as some apparently do, that the bottom line is clear: the police
should never shoot in any suicide bombing situation, is not a conclusion
I find acceptable.


REMAINDER OF RESPONSE:
* The proposal presumes that an expected-gain calculation (about lives saved
or lost) is morally decisive. But there are well-known problems with such a
strict utilitarian criterion. For example, strict utilitarianism implies
that if you are healthy, killing you to harvest your organs would be
justifiable--doing so would save several lives by taking only one life. The
philosophical issues are too complex to analyze here; suffice it to say that
at present, it is (to put it mildly) less than "very clear" that killing for
organs--or killing someone who is known at the time to be 98% likely to be
innocent--is morally justifiable, even if (in both cases) the expected-gain
calculation is somewhat favorable.

Other difficulties concern the implementation of the proposal, even if the
utilitarian calculation were indeed morally decisive. Some are technical
problems:

* People's intuitions about small probabilities are notoriously inaccurate.
If a subject stands out because evidence shows he is hundreds of times more
likely than the average person to be a suicide bomber, then he may seem to
be at least 2% likely to be one, even though a trivial Bayesian calculation
shows that the actual probability is orders of magnitude less than that. But
we cannot realistically expect police to perform Bayesian calculations while
making split-second life-and-death decisions.

* The calculation, as framed, presumes that in the 2%-likely case in which
the person killed is indeed a suicide bomber, the killing is both necessary
and sufficient to prevent the 50 deaths. That might be roughly true if, say,
you shoot a bomber who is running toward (but still distant from) a crowd.
But the presumption's accuracy is much less clear if (as in the present
instance) the person is already on the crowded train (the bomb, if any,
might explode anyway due to a passive-release trigger, or just from the
impact of falling, due to TATP's instability), and is already flat on the
ground, surrounded by police, without having detonated any bomb (so the
police, at that point, may well be able to subdue him less lethally).

Other problems stem from the readily foreseeable deliberate or inadvertent
abusability of the proposed policy:

* If the 2%-likely suspects belong disproportionately to an identifiable
minority group, then the majority will (accurately) perceive themselves to
be much less at risk from the proposed policy, and will thus have diminished
incentive to give due consideration to the moral and technical problems with
the policy.

* If those disproportionately targeted by the policy belong to a widely
*disliked* minority, then their endangerment may be devalued even further
(often unconsciously, and thus unscrutinized); their endangerment may even
be perceived by many as desirable, rather than as a drawback of the policy.

* Our species has demonstrably inherited a primate quasi-sexual appetite for
(often-lethal) gratuitous cruelty (see e.g. Nell 2005, forthcoming in
Behavioral and Brain Sciences). Contemporary civilization has devised
various ways to help keep this tendency in check, but the power to engage in
socially approved killing of innocents inevitably serves in part to give
expression to this unfortunate inclination (the inclination can be
manifested --without necessarily being recognized as such--both by the
advocates of the proposed policy, and by those whose task is to execute it).

For these reasons and others, I believe a reasonable policy only permits
killing someone who is overwhelmingly likely to be posing a lethal threat
that cannot otherwise be countered.

--Gary