[Itse]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I don't recall seeing this when you posted it the first time, but I'm not sure I can accept two pieces of anecdotal evidence as a rebuttal to the consensus view of those who train people in the use of handguns. Maybe I would be convinced if I could read the links, but they're in finnish.

Google translate does exist and is really quick.

Järvenpää situation:

The armed man did not obey the police's order to raise his hands when the police had persuaded the man to give up his weapon, says journalist Tuija Nieminen, who was in Yle's presence. He adds that the man had shouted to the police "I want to die."

In connection with the arrest, police fired one shot that hit the man in the thigh. The detainee received first aid on site and has been taken to hospital for treatment.

The highway situatio is a bit longer, but here's a couple of other ones from

Suonenjoki-shooting

The man was armed and, despite the order, did not give up the gun, which is why the police shot the man in the leg.

The person is suspected at this stage of at least a firearms offense and violent resistance by an official.

and Kotka situation...

GOogle translate:

SHOOTING The police have had to use a firearm in Kotka for a man in Alakylä on July 27, 2018 after 11 pm. The police patrol that went to the home alarm had been threatened with a gun and in order to break the resistance, the police shot the person who threatened them in the leg.

Corsi:

I tend to doubt it though. Even the anecdote makes little sense to me - the perpetrator is stabbing a woman, so he takes aim, shoots, hits the guy in the leg. He's still attacking her, so he aims carefully again, hits him in the hand (unclear how the hell that happened, unless it was dumb luck). Both of those bullets could have hit the woman, but didn't. So he's still stabbing her. Then the officer finally shoots him in the chest, stopping the attack.

It only doesn't make sense to you because you've already accepted as truth something which isn't true about how difficult it is to aim and hit something like a leg, and the behavior of the motorcycle police in that example doesn't match with your preconception of "normal" policing.

I would also like to point out that no news article and only very few social media comments in Finland drew attention to the fact that an essentially randomly picked police officer who just happened to drive to the scene and had to react to a life-or-death situation within seconds fired three shots and made three (at least partial) hits on someone who was moving.

Let me just say that again: NOBODY IN FINLAND THOUGHT THAT A POLICE OFFICER SHOOTING LIKE THAT WAS SOMETHING SPECIAL. Because it isn't special.

If you accept that an average cop is expected to be able to take aimed shots at peoples legs in action and mostly hit what their aiming at, then there's nothing that surprising about a police officer who can on top of that take an aimed shot at someones flailing hand and hit. In the Finnish context, that's not "marksmanship", but rather it's just somewhat above the minimum proficiency for people in his profession.


If you accept that you have made a mistake in who you believe and choose to accept that I'm not trying to lie to you and I do know what I'm talking about when I say that seriously the Finnish police, and at least the Swedish police, Norwegian police, German police and Spanish police are all trained to shoot at people's legs and they all very consistently succeed in it, then you have to accept that this is a viable choice and that training the police to primarily shoot to kill is not necessary.

"Aim at center mass and keep firing" is something you teach to people who need to use a weapon they're not properly trained for, or when you want to teach people to effectively and reliably kill people. In many countries it would be unfathomable to have something like that as police procedure. It's not "only in America", there are many other countries that do what you do, but it's still unnecessary use of force and therefore bad and wrong.

The "consensus" you are talking about doesn't exist if you exit the American state of mind and American discussion, and if a "professional" tells you that it's unrealistic to aim for the legs in real life, they're just objectively wrong.