Are you guys fucking with me? Seriously? Am I being Punk'd?
Did you guys forget to put on your thinking caps today? Did reading comprehension fly out the window? Did we decide to think like liberals today and no one sent me the memo?
Show me where I ever said to purposefully shoot to wound. Read through what I posted. Read all of it. I'll wait....
One more time for the cheap seats:
As good guys -
WE DO NOT SHOOT TO KILL. WE SHOOT TO STOP.
Period. The end. Full stop. This has been what is taught since before I went to the Academy. It is what I was taught to teach others. It is what I teach all of my cops and all of my SWAT guys. It is the accepted reason, supported by case law as a seizure under the 4th amendment, to use deadly force.
I said we shoot to stop, not to kill in direct response to your post where you said this:
If you would have said "shoot to incapacitate, never to wound", or "shoot to stop, never to wound" or even "you to draw your weapon and not shoot to stop/incapacitate the threat" like you did in your latest post, I never would have opened my mouth.
We train to hit high center mass of our human adversary, not because that is more likely to kill them, but because it is the largest piece of meat to target and it contains the most critical areas on the body. Areas that have proven to be the most effective at rapidly incapacitating/stopping a threat. When the threat is stopped/incapacitated we have then removed the threats ability to continue whatever act they were committing that authorized the use of force in the first place.
This knowledge is gained from studying years of use of force applications and their effectiveness.
A side effect is that shots to his area of our body also have a higher likelihood of causing death - but death is not our goal.
What I did actually say was that:
A) Sometimes people miss completely or they hit something other than what they are aiming at.
B) Sometimes we don't have a high upper chest area to shoot at and choose to shoot at the center of another body part that is available.
Finally, here is the important part: If any force used by you in defense of yourself or another successfully stops the threat from continuing actions that were likely to cause death or serious bodily injury, your legal permission to use deadly force ceases. The force used that stops the threat's actions does not matter. The force could be your mere presence as an armed good guy. It could be giving verbal commands or brandishing a firearm. It may even rise to the level of actually firing a shot. That shot may miss or hits an area of the body that is non-critical. It doesn't matter. If your interventions makes the bad guys stop then you must stop any application of deadly as well. (Note, pointing a gun at someone/covering their position is NOT deadly force and can be used to secure a bad guy as you wait for assistance)
The trick here is we do not get to choose what causes the bad guy to stop. That is up to the bad guy. For some, it is the presence of armed resistance. For others, it can be merely being shot at and missed. And for others, they will fight to the death. The secret is that we need to constantly evaluate the effectiveness of our intervention, and react accordingly.
The above is all speaking in general terms that everyone that carries a firearm in self defense should understand.
As to this specific incident, all I know is that her intervention worked and she evaluated it correctly.
I don't know why the bad guy took a round to the leg. Wasn't my gun fight.
Having experience reviewing use of force incidents I can think of a few reasons why he bad guy took a round in the leg, but they are educated assumptions at best.
Is that all she had to shoot it? If so, good for her - that is a good mindset. Hit his leg, decrease his morale and mobility. This allows you to fix his position so you can move to a position of advantage and finish the fight.
Did she purposefully aim for the leg in an attempt to wound - I would not advocate this, but as I stated earlier, it was not my gunfight. She did what she thought she had to do.
Or, did she aim high chest and just hit him in the leg? As I stated in an earlier post it happens. Starting from behind the power curve she may have wanted to get on the trigger faster, she may have lost some of the finer aspects of trigger control under stress, and she may have likely been shooting over her sights so she can see her whole threat, again causing shots to go low. All three of these things are common in a defensive gunfight.
This is all nice to hot-wash with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and none of it matters.
What does matter is that her shot, regardless of where she hit or her intentions, stopped the bad guy without anyone else being injured.
What is important to note is that this armed defender recognized that her shot ceased the assailants actions, and she no longer had the right to continue to shoot him. She appropriately stopped shooting, and began her rehearsed post engagement sequence.
She is a rock star in my book.