Is Tommy Lee Jones character a psychopath or something?
Dr Kimball was neither armed nor dangerous, yet he fired multiple shots at him with the intent to kill.
Is this normal in the USA?
It's not normal but it happens in the USA and all over the world... sometimes when proven that they did not proceed as they should have they are forced to "retire" (sometimes these guys can be in their 20s/30s) and they are given a very generous pension plan... look up Daniel Shaver.
shareThat Daniel Shaver video is sickening. I've been behind a rifle, in body armor, with support. There's no way - NO WAY - that coward "feared for his life" in that situation. Just no way.
He was looking for an excuse to kill someone. The mindset of these guys that just want to get a kill is so twisted.
Cheers, I will.
shareOf course not. This is fiction. They would normally only do that to a Black man.
shareThat's a relief!
shareI hope that was supposed to be a joke.
If not, you need to stop watching the news. It is nothing but lies.
The cops kill far more white men than black men, and with the exception of extremely rare mistakes, all of those men, both white and black, were a danger to the cops and/or innocent bystanders and needed to be killed. The mainstream news media lie to you all the time.
shareThe way I look at the scene is that Gerard knew the glass was bulletproof and therefore wasn't actually shooting to kill. He just wanted to scare Richard into staying put which did work for a moment; Richard froze in shock and his caught foot made him fall. Gerard could've shot Richard in the foot if he really wanted to hurt him.
shareMaybe. He looked a tad disappointed that Kimble's brains weren't splattered all over the sidewalk.
shareHe's the Big Dog! Arf Arf Arf!!
shareIn the army, people doing guard duty were taught to shoot to wound, not kill.
shareReally? Because I was in the U.S. army, and I was never taught that. I'm not aware of any military or law enforcement organization that teaches anything of the kind. People are taught to shoot center mass, because hitting a moving target actually isn't easy, and if you shoot anywhere else, you're too likely to miss. If the subject is wearing body armor, you might switch to the pelvis (which will break the hip and cause him to fall down) or the head.
Using a firearm constitutes lethal force. There's no reliable way to do it "safely." You shot him in the leg because you didn't want to kill him? Congratulations, you just shredded the femoral artery and he's going to bleed to death anyway. So if you're not justified in killing someone -- that's why they call it lethal force -- you're not justified in shooting him at all. Go to a lesser degree of force.
Sure, he might very well survive, most gunshot victims do (thanks entirely to modern medicine), but there is no way on earth to guarantee that, so you are justified in shooting someone only if he is enough of a threat that using lethal force and possibly killing him is the only reasonable option.
Remember, I am talking about GUARD DUTY. Being in a combat zone is a different thing.
shareThat would apply even more on guard duty. In combat, if it's the enemy, shoot it. Period. It's war, and he's the enemy. There is no legal liability, no police investigation or courts to worry about (unless you're committing a war crime), no need to get a lawyer or to justify your actions before the law. On guard duty, it's like any other peacetime scenario: if you shoot someone, you better be legally justified, or you'll go down for murder. Once again, there is no "shoot to wound" because a gun is lethal force, and no matter where you hit someone, you might still end up killing him. If you shoot someone, who succumbs to his wounds and dies, and you ever tell any investigator you were just trying to wound the target, you are pretty much admitting you didn't think you had the justification for killing him, and that will inevitably lead to you being asked "then what the hell were you doing shooting him at all?"
shareIf you've ever shot at anything that was moving, you'd know it's extremely difficult to hit, especially with a handgun. Trying to shoot someone in the knee would be taking a ridiculous risk. The torso is a far more likely target to hit, and a hit there is far more likely to stop the subject from continuing to be a danger.
shareKimball is a wanted murderer facing a death sentence. Of course he would be considered dangerous. U.S. Marshalls are tasked not only with bringing in the fugitive but also to prevent them from committing any further harm. It was a choice of letting him go, possibly to kill again, or take the shot and stop him. That's not psychotic or reckless but still a very hard decision to make.
shareYee ha gun down unarmed fugitives posing zero threat!
It's like the wild west.
"Yee ha gun down unarmed fugitives posing zero threat!"
You're not the fastest car on the lot, are you? A convicted murderer who has escaped from custody and is on the run is obviously considered dangerous by default, i.e., a threat. Shooting him when he's fleeing is justified as protecting public safety. It doesn't matter whether he's armed or not; you don't need to be armed to murder someone, plus "unarmed" isn't necessarily a permanent situation. In this case we, the viewing audience, know that Kimble is innocent, but the law enforcement characters don't know that. Legally speaking, it's been established that Kimble is a murderer. If Kimble had been convicted of something else instead, something non-violent like tax evasion, shooting at him merely for fleeing wouldn't have been justified.
Only in America 🇺🇸😂
The yanks are so trigger happy. 20,000 people killed a year by guns. Apparently this represents 'freedom'.
"The yanks are so trigger happy. 20,000 people killed a year by guns."
None of them are in my town; hardly any in my whole state, for that matter. There's only been one murder in my town during its ~200-year history; in the mid 1970s; the murder weapon was a knife. The vast majority of it happens in certain parts of certain cities and is gang/drug related, and good riddance to those scumbags.
"Apparently this represents 'freedom'."
Indeed it does. Freedom inherently carries risks, obviously. If you want complete safety then check yourself into the local funny farm where they can lock you into a padded cell. You won't have any freedom to speak of, but just think how safe you'll be, even from yourself.
Selling guns is big business and, as we all know, profit is more important than the right not to have your life endangered.
Associating guns with freedom is a clever marketing strategy.
"Selling guns is big business and, as we all know, profit is more important than the right not to have your life endangered."
As expected, you have no explanation for why many, if not most, people in my town own at least one gun, yet no one's ever been murdered with one here. Therefore guns aren't a significant endangerment to my life, no more so than e.g., lightning, knives, fire, or cars. Since you can't explain it due to it being completely at odds with your childlike sense of reasoning, guns don't cause murders, no more than forks cause obesity. If they did cause murders then there would be lots of murders in my town because there are lots of guns in my town. Scumbags cause murders, obviously, and some areas of the world have a drastically higher concentration of scumbags than others. I'll also let you in on a secret: murder predates the invention of the firearm by thousands of years.
Also, there is no "right not to have your life endangered", else any item or activity that could possibly endanger your life would be banned, which would result in everyone being locked up in a padded cell for the rest of their lives.
"Associating guns with freedom is a clever marketing strategy."
No, simple fellow, that association is an inherent one, not a manmade one. Being able to own a gun is a freedom, obviously. Furthermore, guns can be used to defend freedom (U.S. Revolutionary War for example, in which the U.S. had no chance of succeeding without guns), which is why civilian gun ownership is always banned or extremely restricted in places that have an authoritarian government.
That's YOUR town.
Across the USA you (ie. your nation) is killing way more people than most/all other countries.
Hardly freedom. The UK isn't perfect, but has had/has more freedom and democracy than the US has ever had.
"That's YOUR town."
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
"Across the USA you (ie. your nation) is killing way more people than most/all other countries."
First, there are ~75 countries with a higher murder rate than the US, with the top one having over 10 times the murder rate of the US, so you saying "most/all" means you are incredibly ignorant.
Second, even if your assertion weren't ignorant (it is), it would be irrelevant, because my town and countless other places across the US prove that guns aren't the cause of a high murder rate. If they were, there would be no such thing as a place with a high rate of gun ownership and a low-to-nonexistent murder rate, obviously.
"Hardly freedom. The UK isn't perfect, but has had/has more freedom and democracy than the US has ever had."
Yeah, right:
Q589: Are there any legal self-defence products that I can buy?
Answer
The only fully legal self-defence product at the moment is a rape alarm. These are not expensive and can be bought from most local police stations or supermarkets.
https://www.askthe.police.uk/faq/?id=fefeb701-3a75-ed11-81ac-6045bd0e726f
No it hasn't. When you can be jailed for expressing the wrong opinions -- which you now can in the U.K. -- you are less free by any definition.
And as MaximRecoil has pointed out, the U.K. seems to have largely eliminated the right to self defense. Even displaying a weapon to deter a possible attack will earn you a visit from police.
Myleene Klass warned after brandishing knife to deter intruders
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jan/10/myleene-klass-knife-intruders
I'm sorry, but if you cannot defend yourself from harm, you are not free either. You are being told by the state that you have no control over your life. If some criminal targets you, meekly submit and take the beating, or the state will come in and make you regret your defiance.
Most of those are shot by gangstas. A lot are suicides. 10,000 gun laws aren't going to stop either of those. Criminals do what they want, regardless of laws. That's why they're called criminals. If you take guns away from non-criminals, it just makes criminals' job easier.
shareThis is a popular argument because it appeals to naive intuition. It's also empirically false. On the whole, laws work. The economic laws of supply and demand also play a role. All other things being equal, mass shooters would prefer fully automatic weapons to semi-automatic weapons, but the former are so strictly regulated that they're basically banned. In other words, cost-prohibitive. So what do criminals do? They use semi-automatic weapons. Moreover, criminals tend to be dumb and impulsive. If you create more hoops for getting guns, criminals will resort to other weapons that are not as deadly or efficient. That's a win.
A real problem is that we do not strictly enforce existing gun laws. If someone illegally possesses a gun, but does not harm anyone, they typically get probation. It's similar for illegal discharges. That's a permissive, stupid gun culture. In England, if someone has a gun that they're not supposed to have, it doesn't matter if nobody was hurt, the person is going to prison. If the US incarcerated people like England, our incarceration rate -- already the highest in the world per capita -- would go way, way up.
Speaking of naivety, people ignore the facts staring them in the face because it is "racist" to acknowledge anything negative about black people.
[-If you remove all other nationalities/races than white, the US has a lower rate of gun violence than Canada.
-There are 42 times as many black on white violent crimes than white on black violent crimes.
-In 2022, the murder rate among blacks is 653% higher than the murder rate for whites. The murder rate for Hispanics is 65% higher than for whites. Nor are those numbers that much of an outlier. From 1990 through 2022, the black murder rate average 569% higher than whites, and the number for Hispanics was 57% higher.
- Roughly 93% of the time the perpetrator of gun violence against blacks is other blacks.
-Every year 500,000 to 2,000,000 crimes are prevented by lawful gun owners brandishing their weapon without shooting.]
-CDC, Bureau of Crime and Labor
Stop ignoring the reality of the situation. Inner city gangs and drug dealers, mostly black, are who is committing the vast majority of gun violence in the US. If we ignore the problem it is not going to go away.
This is a dumb copy/pastah ignorant of social science.
"-Every year 500,000 to 2,000,000 crimes are prevented by lawful gun owners brandishing their weapon without shooting.]"
Why do you think this is such a wide range? Because the extrapolation from the survey data is garbage. By the same methodology, you find a ridiculous number of Americans who report they've been abducted by aliens. That's because people lie and exaggerate to feel important. They answer the phone drunk. They're also primed by the gun questions. If the first question you ask people is "Are you happy?" you'll get a different answer than if you ask it after, "How's your romantic life?" These people ask how many guns someone has, why they have guns, and then the big question, "Have the thousands you spent on firearms ever actually paid off?"
Let's go by what can be well confirmed: Fatalities. They're significantly higher in the US.
"-There are 42 times as many black on white violent crimes than white on black violent crimes."
Clumsy misdirection. We can rather easily control data to compare white Americans to other white Americans. The results are utterly mundane: greater gun availability leads to more violence. You can compare Black populations (say the US Virgin Islands to the British Virgin Islands).
Canada has relatively high rates of gun violence compared to Europe. Look at where the crime guns in Canada come from (or Mexico for that matter).
But, yeah, this has been fun, thanks for playing. Continue to believe you've been dismissed as a dumb racist when you're just a dumb non-scientist. The laws of supply and demand are a thing.
"Why do you think this is such a wide range?"
Because most people do not report crimes that were prevented, thus the range is large year to year due to lack of solid data. The rates are real, though. I find it interesting that you claim the CDC is basically lying in an attempt to promote guns. Why would they do that? If the CDC has any bias it is leaning left, not right.
"Clumsy misdirection. We can rather easily control data to compare white Americans to other white Americans."
What? Go ahead. Show me the "controlled data" of whites being as violent.
"greater gun availability leads to more violence"
That is an outright lie. Chicago/Illinois has some of the worst gun violence rates in the country despite it being harder to get a gun there. Indiana, right next door has relatively lax gun laws(which is often cited as where the guns in Illinois come from). However, Indiana has far less gun violence. So, if the availability and access to guns is the answer, Illinois should have lower gun crime and Indiana should have higher gun crime. The reality is the opposite. The same can be said for Mexico. Mexico has very strict gun laws, yet their gun violence rates are very high.
Also, violent criminals commit violent crimes. Magically remove guns from the scenario and instead you have blades, blunt objects, explosives, arson, etc... Nothing really changes. E.g. a violent criminal in China got a knife, went into a preschool, and killed 30 something kids and adults.
"Canada has relatively high rates of gun violence compared to Europe."
For the sake of argument and time I will grant that as true, even though it likely isn't.
Keep moving those goal posts. I suppose you were never using the "look at Canada, they don't have the gun violence we have in America" argument that is so popular with the anti-gun-nuts... Right?
Anti-gun-nuts do nothing but avoid reality and demand the loss of paramount rights with no logic, reason, or sense to back up their absurd demands.
Re: CDC
You cite "Bureau of Crime and Labor" in your copy/pastah. I can find no Bureau of Crime and Labor. You also suggest the findings are from the CDC. This is unlikely. It appears some similar stat had been cited or linked by the CDC at one point, but it was removed, in all likelihood because it's bogus research for the reasons I mentioned above. Here's a link you'll find favorable: https://crpa.org/news/blogs/cdc-hiding-the-truth-on-defensive-gun-use/
You did say something correct when you mentioned "lack of solid data." It's almost certainly not due to year-to-year variability in data. The wide range because it's a bogus methodology that one cannot place any confidence in.
"What? Go ahead. Show me the 'controlled data' of whites being as violent."
That is not what I claimed. Please read for comprehension. I said gun availability matters, which is why you can compare whites with high rates of gun availability to whites with low gun availability, and discover the former is higher. I gave another example comparing Black populations. You dumb racists are so exhausting. Just look into your malevolent soul: Why do you think Southern states (and racist non-Southern states) prevented Blacks from getting guns? If you think guns don't make a difference, then you wouldn't care if Black people are armed. Speaking of being armed...
Re: Blades, blunt objects etc. vs. Guns
Yes, people can be killed umpteen different ways. And yet, firearms are one of the most effective. Why do gun rights actvists prefer guns on their nightstand to a brick? If you have a 10-year old, does he have access to a baseball bat? Golf club? A large rock in the backyard? Kitchenware? So there's no difference than if he could get his hands on Glock as he pleases?
One of the more retarded arguments I'll see is people who say that after a country like Australia imposes strict laws against firearms is someone who says there's a jump in knife crime. That shows gun laws are working...
The stats are on the internet and readily available.
Your lack of ability to find them only points to the profound insulation/censorship of the internet and the fact that your internet history has created a "bubble filter" for you that precludes reality from being presented to you.
In other words; Your below-room-temp-IQ internet activities, proclivities, and interests, have trained your assigned internet algorithmic a.i. controlled by overlords to manipulate you in ways that are so effective you have no idea you are being manipulated at all.
You are a tool of the people you propose and pretend to oppose.
Your non-replies are instructive. I'm not sure who you think you're fooling. It's nice you've abandoned the pretense of an argument for weak insults. This has been fun.
share...
If they weren't, then criminals would still be using guns... but they're not. They resort to substitutes. All other things being equal, knives are less deadly than guns, so it's a win. The overall level of violence is down. The big boy purpose of laws is not to eliminate crime, but to reduce it.
Re: Illinois vs. Indiana
A profoundly stupid straw man. You're conflating a vector with a monocausal explanation. Do you think the reason Texas has a lot of illegal immigrants is because they have a border wall and agents, and the reason Wyoming does not is because they lack those things? In terms of violence/organized crime, there ARE other factors. A big one is population density (and the things that come with it, like organized crime).
Nothing you said made any sense.
shareWas there an intent to kill? If it was he was a horrible shot. It was not that far and after multiple shots not one hit Kimble.
share