Secret Service agents protecting President Joe Biden’s granddaughter have opened fire after three people tried to break into an unmarked Secret Service vehicle in Washington.
The fact that the car was unoccupied was their saving grace here. One of the agents fired a shot and “missed” which was almost certainly a warning shot. Had someone been in that car, the attempted thieves would almost certainly be dead.
Warning shots aren’t really a thing in modern law enforcement. Policy is generally if you need to shoot at someone you’re supposed to be trying to neutralize a threat with your bullet and not just attempting to scare someone with it.
True, but this is the Secret Service we’re talking about, not local cops. They are trained to protect high level US government assets. If they were shooting to kill there would have been far more rounds fired, more than one agent would have been firing, and there would be more bodies
Unless its “we need to exit the area now, firing a shot into the pavement may scare off the offenders and let us get into our vehicle immediately” or “we fire a bunch of rounds at three people surrounding our exit vehicle who may be armed, potentially damaging the vehicle and causing them to shoot back.” The secret service’s number 1 job is to protect their assigned assets. In this situation, thinking tactically, they may have determined that trying to deter would be car thieves with minimal confrontation so they could evacuate those involved to somewhere secure was most important. If they wanted to shoot to kill, the thieves never would have made it to their getaway vehicle, but the possibility of getting in a street-level shootout is far more dangerous when it comes to their job rather than scaring guys off and driving away.
I can’t even deal with the level of absolute ignorance you are displaying. Anyone who is firing guns “into the pavement” needs to be disarmed immediately as they are a CLEAR threat to literally everyone around them. This is not the expected behavior of a maximally trained Federal Law Enforcement Officer.
Here’s another Pro-Tip…you don’t fire warning shots horizonally or into the sky either as those bullets are going SOMEWHERE and you have no idea where. It’s completely possible that your “warning shot” ends up wounding or killing someone 2 blocks away. This is why no one with any serious firearms training does it and why no serious trainers recommend it.
I’ve done training and scenario shooting with everyone from NRA instructors to Law Enforcement to SPECOPS guys. NO ONE with real training does warning shots.
You are trying to create some wildly improbable hypothetical scenario in order to justify reckless and unsafe actions by Federal Law Enforcement. Stop it.
And yet every animal on the planet instinctively demos its weapons when threatened.
Regardless of what the law says about warnings, it is an effective technique as evidence by the behavior’s survival and ubiquity in the context of the ruthless optimization of evolution.
Demonstrating destructive capability is an effective means of protection, and I would expect Secret Service to be more focused on the rules of reality than the guidelines of law, given the weight of their assignment.
Like, indiscriminate ordinance is also illegal, but it gets used all the time in a state of war because that’s a context where law takes a back seat to survival.
“Thinking tactically”… You’re literally some anonymous person on the internet. I guarantee you know dick all about how the secret service operate in these circumstances.
As for the “shoot to kill” comment, the secret service hasn’t killed anyone in quite a while, yet they have shot a few. The evidence doesn’t corroborate your stance.
Because even when hitting centre mass, a bullet isn’t a guaranteed way to kill someone. Look at combat during the recent Iraq war, way more people got injured than killed due to bullets. Do you think they were aiming to just wound the people shooting at them?
So, in answer to your question that appears to be designed to embarass me, neither.
I’d sooner believe a miss in a situation like this then I would believe that secret service is flinging wild shots into the air in order to make sure they’re as kind as possible to someone trying to break into the car of someone they’re protecting.
I didn’t say it’s a good idea, just that a single shot fired from a team of three secret service agents was probably intentional. Most likely they fired at the pavement or something, so the sound of the shot would scare off the offenders. Their job is to protect their assets at all costs when on guard duty, not begin placing arrests or detaining suspects (unless that will help their goal in said situation). In this situation, preventing that vehicle from being stolen was important in case they needed to exit the area quickly. All the suspects fled in a red vehicle where the description was passed to capitol police.
The fact that the car was unoccupied was their saving grace here. One of the agents fired a shot and “missed” which was almost certainly a warning shot. Had someone been in that car, the attempted thieves would almost certainly be dead.
Warning shots aren’t really a thing in modern law enforcement. Policy is generally if you need to shoot at someone you’re supposed to be trying to neutralize a threat with your bullet and not just attempting to scare someone with it.
True, but this is the Secret Service we’re talking about, not local cops. They are trained to protect high level US government assets. If they were shooting to kill there would have been far more rounds fired, more than one agent would have been firing, and there would be more bodies
Yes ,which is how we knew that whoever fired fucked up. They don’t do warning shots.
Unless its “we need to exit the area now, firing a shot into the pavement may scare off the offenders and let us get into our vehicle immediately” or “we fire a bunch of rounds at three people surrounding our exit vehicle who may be armed, potentially damaging the vehicle and causing them to shoot back.” The secret service’s number 1 job is to protect their assigned assets. In this situation, thinking tactically, they may have determined that trying to deter would be car thieves with minimal confrontation so they could evacuate those involved to somewhere secure was most important. If they wanted to shoot to kill, the thieves never would have made it to their getaway vehicle, but the possibility of getting in a street-level shootout is far more dangerous when it comes to their job rather than scaring guys off and driving away.
I can’t even deal with the level of absolute ignorance you are displaying. Anyone who is firing guns “into the pavement” needs to be disarmed immediately as they are a CLEAR threat to literally everyone around them. This is not the expected behavior of a maximally trained Federal Law Enforcement Officer.
Here’s another Pro-Tip…you don’t fire warning shots horizonally or into the sky either as those bullets are going SOMEWHERE and you have no idea where. It’s completely possible that your “warning shot” ends up wounding or killing someone 2 blocks away. This is why no one with any serious firearms training does it and why no serious trainers recommend it.
I’ve done training and scenario shooting with everyone from NRA instructors to Law Enforcement to SPECOPS guys. NO ONE with real training does warning shots.
You are trying to create some wildly improbable hypothetical scenario in order to justify reckless and unsafe actions by Federal Law Enforcement. Stop it.
And yet every animal on the planet instinctively demos its weapons when threatened.
Regardless of what the law says about warnings, it is an effective technique as evidence by the behavior’s survival and ubiquity in the context of the ruthless optimization of evolution.
Demonstrating destructive capability is an effective means of protection, and I would expect Secret Service to be more focused on the rules of reality than the guidelines of law, given the weight of their assignment.
Like, indiscriminate ordinance is also illegal, but it gets used all the time in a state of war because that’s a context where law takes a back seat to survival.
“Thinking tactically”… You’re literally some anonymous person on the internet. I guarantee you know dick all about how the secret service operate in these circumstances.
As for the “shoot to kill” comment, the secret service hasn’t killed anyone in quite a while, yet they have shot a few. The evidence doesn’t corroborate your stance.
So how do you explain the Secret Service shooting people without killing them?
Is it:
(a) They lack the firing skill to hit center mass
or
(b) Their methods do not correspond perfectly with the legal guidelines given in a concealed carry course?
Because even when hitting centre mass, a bullet isn’t a guaranteed way to kill someone. Look at combat during the recent Iraq war, way more people got injured than killed due to bullets. Do you think they were aiming to just wound the people shooting at them?
So, in answer to your question that appears to be designed to embarass me, neither.
I’d sooner believe a miss in a situation like this then I would believe that secret service is flinging wild shots into the air in order to make sure they’re as kind as possible to someone trying to break into the car of someone they’re protecting.
Which is obvious because scaring someone that you’re going to murder them just means they will fight back
Secret Service, as the name implies, is not a normal law enforcement organization.
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I didn’t say it’s a good idea, just that a single shot fired from a team of three secret service agents was probably intentional. Most likely they fired at the pavement or something, so the sound of the shot would scare off the offenders. Their job is to protect their assets at all costs when on guard duty, not begin placing arrests or detaining suspects (unless that will help their goal in said situation). In this situation, preventing that vehicle from being stolen was important in case they needed to exit the area quickly. All the suspects fled in a red vehicle where the description was passed to capitol police.