July 26, 2005
Do bullets set off bombs?
Need some help here… From an interview I caught on O’Reilly last night (Hat Tip to Powerpundit for the transcript), something didn’t sit right. Now, I’m no expert on guns, or explosives, but I think Judge Andrew Napolitano and Bill O’Reilly are even more deluded by Hollywood than I am.
Napolitano: “I didn’t say you couldn’t shoot him. In England and America, the law is shoot to stop, shoot to maim, shoot to protect yourself, but not low his brains out, as these police did.”
O’Reilly: “Where would you shoot?”
Napolitano: “Listen, I’m not an expert in guns. I would have shot them in his knees, or his arms, or some other part of his body to stop him.”
O’Reilly: “If you aim above the waist, alright, you might hit the bomb, and everybody dies.”
Napolitano: “The British police were aiming for his head. They put bullets into his head and his torso. He was as innocent is you and I. We don’t kill innocent people to protect other innocent people.”
So, for my readers who are experts in guns and explosives, can you answer a few questions for me?
1) If you were going to take someone down, your goal would be to aim at center mass, correct? Trying to hit a fleeing target in the arms or legs would be very difficult, right?
2) Just what types of explosives will or will not be set off if they are hit with a bullet? I suspect something like C4, being as stable as it is, will not detonate. But I’m not as sure about things like dynamite, etc. And since I think all these guys used explosives with electrical detonation, not a fuse, the police can be reasonably sure that their bullets will not detonate the bomb.
I don’t know enough about the situation to determine whether this was a clean shooting or not, and don’t want to debate that. But assuming that they’re in a situation where they need to shoot the suspect, is it feasible to expect them to aim for arms and legs? And is it dangerous for them to aim at his torso, due to the possibility of detonating a bomb?
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Police shoot to kill. There is no Hollywood stuff about “shooting the gun out of his hand.” Either the situation does not require the use of a firearm, or it requires the use of deadly force. Period. And if you are going to shoot to kill, you obviously aim for the center of mass, the torso.
As far as I know, any explosive stable enough to be jostled about while being worn by a running man would probably not be set off by a bullet penetrating it. Although this isn’t a certainty, because from what I’ve read, the London attacks may have used TAIP, which is rather unstable. I don’t really know enough about the subject to say with 100% certainty.
In any case, let’s think about this for a second. Setting aside the debate about justified shooting, the premise is that this man is carrying a bomb, correct? What other choice do we have other than to shoot him dead? This isn’t some bank robber, who, once incapacitated, can no longer fire his weapon and as such is not a threat. This is a suicide bomber, someone who has little fear of death. All the bomber needs to be able to do is lift his finger and push a button, something even the most severely wounded, conscious man can accomplish.
The bottom line is that if the London police had reason to believe this man was a suicide bomber, and felt that force was authorized, they had every right to shoot him dead. The fault here (if there is any) is in the intelligence and decision making, not the methods used.
You aim for center mass. Aiming for a hand or leg is stupid – too easy to miss. When you shoot, you are responsible for what you hit, including what is beside, above, below or behind the target. That’s why hollowpoints are so dearly loved – after they hit something, they stop moving, and don’t go through and beyond the target. Well, depends on the details of course but as a general rule . .
With a terrorist, however, you aim for the head to stop them cold. “Ambulation after death” means that, even if you hit a bad guy in a vital spot, chances are he’ll keep going for a bit, certainly long enough to hit a detonation button. So it’s necessary to thoroughly and quickly kill a terrorist – otherwise they’ll still have time to kill you and 50 other innocents. That means a head shot.
“Even a dead snake can twitch until sundown.”
Don’t know nothin’ about explosives.
I agree with the others. The idea of shooting someone in the arm, least of all a terror suspect, is stupid. Worse is the idea of sharing one’s stupidity within such a broad forum as a cable talk show. Whenever I hear something like that, it makes me wonder where the speaker gets the rest of his ideas…from comic books, perhaps?
Okay, ex military guy here.
1. You do not try to shoot a target anywhere but center mass. AFTER two center mass hits THEN, if needed, you shoot the guy in the head. Shooting to “wound” is a fancy way of getting your own ass blown away, period. No cop or soldier would ever do such a thing. If you draw a weapon and point it, you had better be prepared to kill, period.
2. C4, Semtex, etc. are so stable that you can light them on fire and they will not explode. Shooting them will not cause them to explode. Dynamite, which is not used by the military or terrorists, would, possibly, explode if shot.
When I was in the military I was stationed in Germany during the height of the 1980’s terrorism. We often went to “threatcon charlie”, which was the highest level of terrorist alert. I was there when the Berlin disco was bombed, among other things. Had I been on guard or quick reaction force when faced with a bomb wielding terrorist I would have shot him twice center mass and once in the head. Why?
1. My job is take the guy down and that is the fastest way to do so.
2. My job is to prevent possible injury, death or damage, hesitating because I might detonate the device or trying to wound is a surefire guaruntee that someone besides the bad guy is going to get hurt or killed.
3. It’s what my training and orders said to do when the use of force was authorized.
On a side note, I was stationed in a town that was known for Baader-Meinhof and Red Army Faction safehouses and several minor members of the RAF were from that town. One night on guard duty we had a taxi cab stay right outside the gate for over two hours. We called in the MP’s and Polizei who managed to capture the guy without killing him. He had several rolls of film he had taken of the gate and fence, notes on when the guard shifts changed, when the highest traffic through gate was and much more. Had the plan he was doing reconnaissance for been put into action we would have to shot to kill.