TexasCHLforum.com

baldeagle wrote:I'll throw this into the mix. According to this research paper "Only 2% of shootings by civilians, but 11% of shootings by police, involved an innocent person mistakenly thought to be a criminal." According to this site which tracks police shootings, "In 2011, according to data I have collected, police officers in the United States shot 1,146 people, killing 607." That would mean that police accidentally shot 126 innocent people and killed 67 of them in 2011.

Apples and oranges.

Ordinary citizens getting into a deadly force situation have -- by and large -- pretty clear cut situations facing them. A home invader. A robber sticking a gun in their face and demanding money. Someone trying to abduct them or sexually assault them. Pretty hard to shoot someone that you mistakenly thought was a criminal that way.

Ordinary citizens are never tasked with ambiguous instructions: "there is a bad guy in there somewhere and we have reports of bad stuff happening. Go in there and find them and figure out what is going on".

Yet that is what law enforcement is asked to do everyday.

Of course there is a difference in the number of cases of mistaken identity.

When these cases come up and then the "blame the LEOs" crowd start bickering with "LEOs are never at fault" crowd, I quickly get bored and start flipping past their comments.

Which gets me to my real point. I wish y'all would just STOP needlessly and thoughtlessly hitting the quote button! Who gives a hoot if your signature is only 4 lines long on my phone if I have to flip past 100 lines of quoted text to see if there is anything word reading!!