News Charlotte

[Casey_03]

They've declared a state of emergency in North Carolina after one protester was killed in what is quickly becoming a riot, not a protest. This is all over a police shooting. It makes me sad because it's like Groundhog Day; it's becoming too predictable. Anyone else following this?

 

[hodge]

Yep, I am. It's awful. Another guy killed for breathing while black. There's a dispute about whether he was holding a gun or a book. But even if it was a gun, why couldn't the officer just shoot him in the hand holding the gun? Don't they have to do target practice every so often? I'm not very experienced with guns and never went through police training, but even I think I could shoot someone in the hand if I was threatened by them. I would never shoot someone to kill, just to disable so they couldn't kill me.

 

[ShodokanJenn]

Police DO do a lot of target training, but they are trained and ordered to shoot center mass if threatened with a gun. When a person has a gun and won't put it down, that is legally using lethal force, and lethal force warrants lethal force in turn. For an officer under stress, it is EXTREMELY unlikely that they'd be able to hit the hand holding the gun. That happens in movies, and only in movies.

 

[hodge]

Yeah, that's just what hubby told me at dinner. It sucks. I'm a pretty good shot, but, yeah, in the moment if you're feeling threatened, I get it. Your best skills aren't necessarily going to come to bear. I don't think that's the solution, anyway. Last I saw there was no video released from the Charlotte incident yet. So, in my mind, it's still up in the air whether he had a gun or a book. The guy in Tulsa was not armed and in fact had his arms over his head in that video. What else is someone supposed to do to avoid being killed? This is modern-day lynching going on. There are too many black men being killed. White men make up the majority and they are not killed nearly as often as black men.