[CaptainCrunch]

Have you ever tried to take out an angry dog with a nightstick. If you miss or graze, your pretty much screwed.

If the dog was charging and threatening then the cop was justified in shooting it.

If the cop was trigger happy, the facts will come out. And that cop will be out of a job. We'll have to be patient

Well maybe my trickshot ideas of blowing hands off was hasty/foolish, but I think my overall point was clear. I don't see why every shot is trained to be fatal.

The thing with guns is that the moment that you decide to pull the trigger it has to pretty much be a fatal shot. That whole shooting to wound, or disarm is John Wayne stuff. And if you aim for a peripheral body part and miss and the bullet goes screaming down the streat at thousands of feet per second, who knows what its going to hit.

The reason for aiming for center mass is two fold. First of all, any hit in the x area is pretty much immediately fatal and will stop the shootee before he can do any more harm. The second reason is that the X zone is the thickest part of the body and will pretty much stop a bullet from traveling far beyond thus removing a lot of (but not all risk) of collateral damage.

I guess what a lot of you are all saying is that any civilian in Britain is pretty screwed if they have a dog problem potentially and coincidentally need a "bobby". I mean obviously they'd have to run away like little girls, clearly being unable to defend themselves and the original civillian would be abandoned to what ever fate they had called for. Either that or the police would be forced to call in the special arms unit, perhaps a helicopter or maybe get the military envolved, the SAS might be able to come to the rescue too.

The British now have armed constables that go into dangerous areas, and yes with the Bobbies discretion is the better part of valor, thier job is more to evaluate the situation and call in help as needed, they won't go into a dangerous area with a just a night stick. I think its very likely that the tradition of the unarmed Bobby is going to go away soon.

[/B]I'm by far not advocating cops should second guess a dangerous armed person, or drugged out person, or hostage sittuation or whatever I'm not advocating no shooting. Feel free to fill perps with lead, dead as dodo's, I just don't think every sittuation warrents it, but admittedly perhaps this did too. [B]

Until theres a solid non lethal method thats 100% effective and long range expect cops to continue to have discretionary use of firearms. As it stands the stun bag (bean bag in a shot gun) isn't 100% effective on putting people down, People high on angel dust and other hardened drugs have shrugged off pepper spray and tasers. There's a simple rule, do what the cops say in a arrest situation, don't make threatening moves or pull a weapon and they won't shoot you dead.