19 hit by bullets in Chicago violence
Two dead, nine wounded. All of the wounded were from police bullets. What does one make of this?
Well, you can take away several lessons from it.
First, police are humans and can get very scared.
Second, scared people aren’t the best shots in the world.
Third, when bullets fly, they hit whatever gets in the way and not necessarily the target.
Ok, if I was going to criticize the police officers, I would say that they forgot one of the basic marksmanship rules I was taught when I first learned to shoot, and which was strongly reinforced when I went into the military: Always, always, always know where the bullet is going to go when you shoot it … or at least have a relatively good idea where it will impact. Unfortunately, when you are scared poopless – as most people would be looking down the muzzle of .45 caliber handgun at close range – remembering that axiom is pretty difficult.
In the military, I was taught in the Navy, never bother shooting warning shots and always shoot for the center of mass of the target. Why not a warning shot? Because where is it going to go? IF you shoot up, there probably are things above you that don’t take kindly to bullets and cost lots of money to fix. If you shoot down, the deck most likely is metal and the bullet most likely will ricochet off in God-knows what direction.
However, if you shoot for the center of mass of a person, a) you have a much greater chance of hitting what you are shooting at and b) when it hits the person, it is not very likely to ricochet off and hit something you don’t want it to hit.
In the New York City case, obviously, the police officers didn’t always hit the target that they were aiming at … and that was a major oopsie. Still, in a way, the fact that most police departments use hollow-point bullets actually worked in their favor this time. You see, when a hollow-point bullet hits something it usually breaks apart and loses a lot of its energy. When it hit a human body, it creates a god-awful wound. When it hits something else it breaks into smaller pieces and goes off in several different directions at a somewhat less speed which means that the people hit by the pieces are going to get hurt, but less likely to have a really serious wound like the person hit by the initially intact bullet.
The tragedy is that the police officers basically emptied their magazines in their pistols at the target. This is an understandable reaction when facing someone with a large-bore pistol (and all pistols look large-bore when you are staring down the muzzle of one). You want to make sure the guy you are shooting at is down and out of the game. However, with your adrenalin pumping and your instincts screaming - “WARNING EXTREME DANGER” - it is very hard to keep your brain engaged to remember that aimed shots work better than un-aimed shots. And since most police officers rarely find themselves in a shooting situation, they don’t have a lot of experience to draw upon in those cases. Soldiers will tell you it takes experience to know when to shoot and when not to shoot … especially when your life is on the line.
Now, a second point: It is interesting that the gunplay in New York City got national news play while a series of shootings in Chicago that left 19 wounded got zip. I suppose that may strike you strange, but then I understand it. It might be that I spent a lot of years in the news business and understand how these things work, especially for television.
Most of the gunplay in Chicago happened off in its various ethnic neighborhoods on the South Side – the basically who-cares-what-happens-there section of the city. The New York City shooting happened just outside a major tourist attraction – the Empire State Building.
That is No. 1. No. 2 is that it happened quite close to where the major television networks and cable news companies have their offices. In fact, a CNN news producer just happened to be walking by when it happened. The shootings in Chicago were all nowhere near the offices of the TV stations or newspaper offices. The NYC shooting could feature good video while the Chicago shootings featured none.
Strange world we live in isn’t it?
I bet it also is politically incorrect of me to point out that the mayor of Chicago also is the former chief of staff for President Obama and that the president points to his “hometown” as the model of America. Actually, it is irrelevant to the President or how he is doing his job. It is just an interesting coincidence.
Last point: The shooter in NYC was breaking the law. He didn’t register his handgun with city authorities. However, it is somewhat significant to point out that the pistol had been purchased 20 years earlier in Florida, quite legally. So, ratcheting up restrictions on gun purchases would have not done much in this case.
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