I am reminded of a book I had back during my rottweiler-owning days that counseled against getting any kind of specialized guard-dog training for a rottie kept in the home as it had plenty of natural protective instincts and tools, and it was a bad idea to weaken its inhibitions if you still wanted it to be an indoor family pet.
If Law Enforcement Targets is a real thing and is really selling these targets, I would counsel them to hire an extra person in their accounts receivable department to handle subpoenas of their customer list from attorneys in future wrongful death suits. This looks like the kind of thing that makes liability lawyers need to wash their sheets in the morning. "Have you, or have you not, actually been conditioning, programming even, your officers to shoot small children?"
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71 comments:
LETargets is totally a real thing. They are located about 10 miles from me. I (until this week) bought all of my targets from them. 500 targets a year is nothing when you've got 7 figure .gov contracts, but it's money they won't get from me.
Two thoughts:
1) Notice all the wymen and chilens are white.
2) What would the reaction be to a company selling police/Swat/Soldier targets?
I love your writing process.
1. Drop Snark Bomb on a comment thread or forum.
2. "Hmmm, that's good enough for prime time."
3. Ctrl C, Ctrl V.
4. Profit!
I thought thats how most of us do it virginian. At least, in my case. Its always easy to know when your muse gets stimulated by someone else's stuff. If what you wrote is good, bring it home
I noticed that two of the targets are wrongful death/injury suits just waiting to happen.
The one with the girl on the playground in the green shirt has a child on the swings just behind the "target", which violates Rule 4.
The one with the little boy is, in all probability, a child with a toy pistol, since he also seems to be on a playground.
Congratulations, Deputy Dawg. You just shot an innocent bystander and/or a kid with a cap gun.
Odysseus,
"2) What would the reaction be to a company selling police/Swat/Soldier targets?"
Pshhht! Yeah, like anybody would EVER need to shoot a rogue cop. That's just crazy wookie-suiter talk.
Virginian,
Not always, but it's worked out that way often enough.
The other thing I do is to have the moment of inspiration and write five or six of my best paragraphs right here on the blog... at 0600 on a Sunday morning when, like, nobody's going to read it.
Am asking this because I do not know the answer.
Are you suppose to shoot the kid with the gun or just identify the kid is holding the gun?
I do recall at Gunsite they would use a priest/cleric with a pistol from time to time.
Gerry
I can see it now:
"Hey, those cap guns can be dangerous... they could hurt the hearing of the officers... and yea... that loud noise is an ASSAULT... lemme see... OFFICER SAFETY!... yea... the labs just came back and that kid had "K" (koolaid, most likely grape) in his system... Shoot ruled JUSTIFIED!!! YAY!!!!"
s
You had a rottweiler? No civilian needs a rottweiler for legitimate sporting purposes. Leave those dangerous dogs to LE. YOU can have a dachshund with up to seven teeth.
Not in Colorado, they just limited it to four teeth, if you can prove that he had them before you bought him.
Dachshund: The .22 of the dog world. Higher only than the chihuahua and/or pekingese, which occupy the .17 position. Bishon Frise is pure target. The gratuitous one that's handed to you when you fill out the form to get the lane at the range.
Mike_C, Shrimp, RabidAlien:
Thank you ever so much. These days I need every single dark chuckle I can find, and now I have a couple more to hoard...
Thanks,
JSG
The other thing I do is to have the moment of inspiration and write five or six of my best paragraphs right here on the blog... at 0600 on a Sunday morning when, like, nobody's going to read it.
Tam:
I read those Sunday morning missives. By Sunday morning I'm blogger-starved and I go hunting about for those few hardy souls still bruising their finger-tips on the weekend...
Which doesn't change anything you said, but there it is.
JSG
"Hey, those cap guns can be dangerous... they could hurt the hearing of the officers... and yea... that loud noise is an ASSAULT... "
Given that primary school kids have been _arrested_ for bringing obviously toy guns to school. ( Really) Been suspended for having a rifle as a screen saver...
etc... ad infinitum.
I'll not be surprised.
OhpleaseOhpleaseOhpuhleeeeeeze let them get an endorsement from Lon Horiuchi.
LOL. I award Jeremy one day's possession of odd-numbered internets.
Dachshund = "badger dog" in English. Mean little sonsabitches. Short legs means easy badger den access. Or something.
I always thought the current fad for zombie targets was stupid but harmless. So these guys decided to drop the "harmless" part.
Do they have targets of blue pickups with two Hispanic women in them?
As I said elsewhere on this:
Look, it's an important conversation to have. And, yes, there are times when shooting a kid with a gun is exactly the right call. But I've no stomach for training at doing just that.
In particular, this one tears me up. http://www.letargets.com/estylez_item.aspx?item=NMH-7 Sorry. That's not what I got into this to do.
Tam, I too read your Sunday morning stuff.
Your blog and comments section format well to my Windows Phone. Others do not (*cough*Ace of Spades*cough*) and I have found myself reading them less over the almost year I've had the phone.
Hmm? There's been police targets since like the 1970's.
(insert "pistol competition" clip from Magnum Force)
I should print up some pictures of beer cans, old appliances and actual steel targets, for use on ranges that are "paper-only".
I'd have to provide my own sound effects, however. (Not that it would *stop* me.)
1911Man said...
Dachshund = "badger dog" in English. Mean little sonsabitches. Short legs means easy badger den access. Or something.
You've never met my dachsunds. Fat, lazy, wouldn't know a badger if it walked up and slapped them.
Good at disposing of dog food and leftovers though.
Ever since seeing the online uproar about this, I've been thinking about one of Rory Miller's books, a place where he discusses capacity and glitches, the human safety valves that can get you killed in the wrong circumstances. Miller talks about how to overcome glitches and discusses the times you might not want to change them. The times when glitches are good or necessary or part of staying human.
And ... what?
The youngest school shooter was six years old. The youngest multi-victim school shooter was 11 years old. Kids.
To save a classroom full of five year olds, would I be willing to shoot a six year old? Would you?
If I were the sole adult with the ability to act, would I rather die alongside innocent kids, or would I rather stop the shooter no matter what it cost?
Given those choices, and only those two, which would you choose?
Tackling a shooter sounds good on paper -- but perhaps the shooter is nowhere near tackling distance. Then what?
Is a bullet launched by a young child any less deadly than one launched by a grownup?
Would I have the heartlessness to decide to stop the killer, and worry about my soul afterward?
How much are those innocent lives worth?
Anon @8:46 -- So to prevent the statistically small likelihood of another 6-year-old school shooter, you think we should condition police officers out of the "don't shoot kids" reflex, thereby increasing the percentage of fatal shootings in the much more common "kid with toy gun stupidly aims it at cop" scenario?
This is quite literally inventing a worse problem than the one this training is supposed to prevent.
Perhaps the target is in response to this tragic tale.
http://youtu.be/8ITqS2uTPD4
(Same anon as 8:46)
@Erin Palette,
No, I did not answer any of those questions.
They are questions only.
Good questions for anyone who carries a gun, really. Where are your glitches? Where's your ethics line?
If you can't answer q's like that slowly and in privacy, can you answer them when innocent life (yours, others) is on the line?
Dammit, been buying their targets for a long time.
Now they turn into dicks.
Searching for a new vendor here.
Anon 9:20,
"No, I did not answer any of those questions.
They are questions only.
Good questions for anyone who carries a gun, really. Where are your glitches? Where's your ethics line?"
They are indeed good questions, and represent the nightmare scenario of every good person who carries a gun.
As far as the value of the targets goes, however, I think that it's a banana peel on a roller skate at the top of a 10W40-covered slope. Statistically-speaking, the odds of that toddler pointing a gun at you, versus a cap gun or a finger or a chicken finger, are miniscule. I'd rather err on the side of caution when it comes to building in conditioned responses.
This ties into the officer-safety movement that has conditioned some cops in urban areas to scream "GUN!!!1!!!eleventy!" at the sight of a heater, even if, when the echoes die down, that heater turns out to have been holstered.
Following the "train as you fight, fight as you train" mantra, how many will use encountering these targets as compelling reasons to seek cover, as opposed to desensitization to encourage reactive deadly force without hesitation?
Given what may actually happen, shouldn't the DHS use targets depicting DHS agents to train in how to handle those who do not want to shoot the elderly, children and pregnant women and openly oppose with the force of arms those who do?
I also worry about "Yeah, you just kicked in the door and surprised the lady of the house/young mother and she grabbed a gun; do you REALLY want to practice shooting her without hesitation? Really?"
We already hear the "Well, even though we were at the wrong house and broke in in the dark of night, they should have known we were cops!" shit; I really don't like adding this into the mess.
What Firehand said times ten. Jose Guerena is dead because of this "shoot without hesitation" mentality.
Anon -- the big difference here is that I am just a citizen with a self-defense gun. I don't go into people's homes, armed and unannounced, where they would have to draw on me to defend themselves. Compare this to police who do this sort of thing on a daily basis.
For me, all I have to do is not be breaking any laws, and I can safely assume that anyone pointing a gun at me is nefarious. Police work, being proactive rather than reactive in this situation, is going to be filled with lots more false positives.
In other words, your BS jargon about glitch conditions is irrelevant to citizen concealed carriers, who only want to go home alive. It is, however, HIGHLY relevant for police, who are being trained out of contextual discernment and into "Shoot anything with a gun-like object."
@Matt G:
The problem is that these targets are designed to take that sort of context out of officers thought patterns. No need to think- see gun shoot! Who cares if its a toy gun. Or a pregnant lady who grabbed a gun because she was scared and heard a noise. KILL KILL KILL
That is the end result of a culture that promotes officer safety over civilian safety. The highest priority is not a cop getting home at night- its protecting citizens lives and rights.
If this is for shoot/don't shoot training, why not have the same image but with a phone, or a sandwich, or something as well? (I check out LET's website; they don't have that type of companion image though they do have shoot/don't shoot targets – which don't look much like the ones in question.
That argues more for the desensitization rather than the "look at the hands" rationale.
Patrick Henry: "That is the end result of a culture that promotes officer safety over civilian safety."
When police started seeing citizens as "civilians" is when a lot of these issues began rolling downhill.
If it was just the targets.....
but there is the ammo purchases.....
and the elimination of references to Islamic terrorists,......
and the increasing focus on the nearly non existent "liberty terrorists, or Constitution lovers " or what ever you want to call them...
it sure looks to me like the swivel gun of the DHS is being swung around to sweep the desks, so to speak.
A bunch of those targets were people
IN THEIR HOMES- which is a sorta natural place to be pointing a gun at an intruder.
Any one of these things would be a "meh" but all together?
In the last ten years Louiville Metro PD has shot 15 unarmed people IN THE BACK. EVERY shooting was ruled "justified". They chained one guy to a tree and tazered him for over an hour- "justified". LEOs in the US murder inocent and un-armed people every day of the week, and now they want to train them to kill babies/little kids and 12 year old girls? Maybe gas chambers and ovens would work better for them? Or maybe they can "arrest" some pre-schoolers and use them for targets.
"In the last ten years Louiville Metro PD has shot 15 unarmed people IN THE BACK. EVERY shooting was ruled "justified". They chained one guy to a tree and tazered him for over an hour- "justified"."
Whoah, that's some serious shit. Do you have links?
I was gonna say, cops still actually get held accountable for unjustified shootings? I thought that concept was deader than corduroy. All I ever hear these days about it is "boys will be boys."
jf
Quite a while back I got to sit in on a shoot/don't shoot training session, back when it was a slide projector and cap guns(I was about 16) run by a OHP trooper; some of the pictures were the same person as in a previous, but in one they were holding a gun, in others a phone or something else. In some holding a gun it was pointed at you, in others simply in their hand, pointing at the floor. The WHOLE FREAKIN' IDEA was 'LOOK at what's in front of you, is it an actual threat or not? Is it a threat that demands you shoot NOW, or be ready to?'
As Tam said, this seems to be aimed at eliminating that trained-in thought process and going straight to 'Kill them'. And that is a big damn problem.
I was working with relatives of these 12 & 14 year old criminals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Johnson_and_Andrew_Golden when that shooting took place.
I could cite other examples, including when I stopped a 14 year old from attacking a teacher (he used the word kill but maybe he just planned to beat the teacher senseless) he was mad at, because that teacher had stopped his physical assault on a female student.
The year before that, when he was 13, that kid and his twin brother beat up his mom's boyfriend, so she kicked them out.
One of the basic points of training & practice related to carrying a gun, is to prepare yourself mentally for what can happen, and what you will do.
When lethal force is involved that means you have a choice between bad and worse.
Maybe real problem lot of people are expressing here is they haven't thought of just how rotten of a choice they might have to make?
And this kind of rubs their nose in it?
Otherwise your actually using same argument the anti gun people like to make, that the "gun" causes the crime.
Only here your blaming a target which depicts an armed lethal threat.
Or you think it is better to let a kid kill people than to use lethal force to stop them?
~Glamdring
Glamdring,
"Or you think it is better to let a kid kill people than to use lethal force to stop them?"
Did you read the comment thread or just hit "Reply"?
I'd suggest reading my comments upthread.
(...and nothing in your comment changes the fact that these targets are giving liability lawyers boners even as we speak.)
Heh heh...
Tam just said boner....
And now that my highly intellectual contribution to this discussion is complete, I will fly off into the ether to once again return when my Muse strikes.
Just did some looking around their site. They seem to be trying to memory hole these--could only find them using the site search box, didn't see them on any of the menus I drilled down through.
Something interesting that I did find, though, was another pregnant woman under the scenario targets section--I think filed under workplace violence. It, along with two targets of cops with guns--one in profile and one pointed toward you, was described as useful in shoot, no shoot scenarios. This was in the product description.
The product descriptions for these targets, along with their name--No Hesitation--show that these are not intended for shoot, no shoot training, they're for desensitization.
Wow, that didn’t take long, did it?
Okay, my honest .02 on this matter:
Right now, the prevailing attitude in Law Enforcement is that all officers should return home safely to their families at the end of the day, at all costs.
This is a stupid concept to begin with. The job description means that you’re going to risk your life for the safety of citizens in your jurisdiction. It’s right there in the motto: “to serve and protect.”
In short, if you are a cop and you’re not ready to put yourself in imminent danger in order to protect the innocents under your care, you’re in the wrong profession. If you’re so scared of the people in your jurisdiction that you’ve got a “shoot first, figure it out later” attitude about the folks in your district, then you are in the wrong line of work. Period. End. Of. Discussion.
So, that being said, you don’t train to shoot at the first sign of a gun, regardless of the target. The chances of a child or a pregnant woman yanking a gun on you with ill intent towards you are so remote that if you truly fear this situation, you need to reconsider your line of work. Any example of a little kid going ape-shit with a gun is irrelevant to the discussion – we’re talking likelihood here. You train for the most likely scenario. Odds are that if you see a six year old with a gun pointed your way, it isn’t actually a real gun, and he means you no ill intent whatsoever. This attitude of “better safe than sorry” would have you putting Dennis the Menance in a body bag for playing cops and robbers with his cap gun and his over-active imagination. If you’re a cop that doesn’t feel it is necessary to take a little extra time to make sure before automatically shooting this kid, then you’re in the wrong line of work.
And if you’re wrong, and it really is a six year old with a gun that means you ill intent? Take the risk, or turn in your badge. I would rather die than kill a kid with a cap gun, or a pregnant woman who had a gun in her hand because she was scared and pulled her heater to protect herself, or a home-owner who came a-lookin’ with his heater in hand because he heard me rummaging around in his backyard in the middle of the night whilst going about my duties. If you wouldn’t, then you have no business wearing a badge. If you think that nothing is more important than returning home after your shift, I would advise you to turn in your kit at the end of the day and start looking for other employment.
I have it on unimpeachable authority that whereas the company is legitimate, the images for targets are not and the recent misrepresentation that they're selling these to DHS guys to desensitize them to shooting civilians is shameful.
I despise rabble-rousers. Bastinado's too good for 'em.
gvi
gvi,
"...the recent misrepresentation that they're selling these to DHS guys to desensitize them to shooting civilians is shameful."
That part was pretty obvious tinfoil hattery, (and often spouted by people who, in the same paragraph, demonstrated that they didn't know what a "five-year contract with an option to buy up to..." means, either.)
Good comment Goober. I agree.
Been some good discussion.
The "civilian" or "citizen" question is sadly common. Cops aren't military, they are civilains also. They're also citizens. There should be a common term, one that cops should get in the habit if using, that breaks down the supposed separation between "us" and "them".
The notion that anyone that has a gun is bad or subject to being shot or subdued is just plain wrong. Sorry, it's not a safe world. Sorry if police don't like being around people with guns, but they have a right to, so get over it. If anyone has a real right to be armed, its the common folks.
Malamute
GVI,
My question would be why a search of their website brings these up?
Were they hacked and these added to their inventory, or are they making excuses.
Yes, the DHS tale is silly, but the fact that I can go to their site, type "No more Hesitation" into their search box, and these are pulled up, makes it look like these are/were actual products of their own design.
@Tam,
Yep read comments before posting.
I am frustrated by the tone of many of them.
If one has the misfortune to be in a lethal force encounter, you will learn first hand there is no happy ending.
No matter what age of criminal put you into that position.
If your training isn't covering that aspect, then your training is missing one of the most critical elements.
Self Defense or LEO Lethal Force training isn't about fun IMHO.
At best it is about limiting damage or bad outcomes.
I also don't see the logic of claiming that "training" would lead to liability issues.
AFAIK documenting training and policies is main defense against liability issues.
Consider this from http://patc.com/weeklyarticles/liabilitytraining.shtml:
"Police agencies have an obligation to train its police officers for the recurring tasks that officers will face during their career. Where it is foreseeable that a police officer will face a particular task that may result in harm to another person, the officer’s agency must provide training in how to conduct that task in a manner which is consistent with generally accepted practices in law enforcement. What is “generally accepted” is defined by the law enforcement profession and by court decisions analyzing police conduct.
Training serves as a means toward high-level performance by police officers. Training is an input toward proper performance. Unfortunately, many agencies conduct training to avoid, or in response to civil liability rather than to promote high-level performance. Over the past two decades, attacks on training have become one of the weapons for persons who file lawsuits against the police...
It should be noted that failure to train cases can be established in two ways. The first involves a lack of training in an area where there is a patently obvious need for training, for example an officer who is untrained in deadly force unreasonably shoots someone."
Dealing with elderly, young, & pregnant people is certainly a recurring issue for LEO.
They don't get to pick the people they deal with.
Saying training for lethal use of force is bad, is like saying you shouldn't go to Thunder Ranch, Gunsite, LFI, etc because if your in a shooting they will claim that you went to school for murder.
They *might* try that, but is easy to shoot that kind of claim down when you have documentation covering the training.
Specially when the training actually covers all the downsides and negative impacts of using lethal force even if you survive without physical injury.
Everything from nightmares & impotence to "Mark of Cain" syndrome to the possibly financially crippling legal battles.
Or in the case at hand, I am sure they cover the additional problems and complexities involved with these specific situations.
I can't think of any other reason why a normal person would want targets like this.
Regards,
~Glamdring
those are not very PC targets- no diversity at all.
Glamdring,
Do you think I am unaware of any of what you've just typed? Let me address one specific point:
"I also don't see the logic of claiming that "training" would lead to liability issues."
Ask yourself why none of those targets depicted an ethnic minority.
~Glamdring
You are an ass. If you are an LEO I want to be sure to stay out of your AO.
Fred
"'GUN!!!1!!!eleventy!' at the sight of a heater, even if, when the echoes die down, that heater turns out to have been holstered."
What was the name of that man killed by LEO's about 4 years ago at a Costco? Holstered.
"Ask yourself why none of those targets depicted an ethnic minority."
THIS lack of ethnic diversity reveals the depravity of the product. The keys to understanding this product are the phrase "no hesitation and the fact that these are all non-ethnic targets, which fits the lie previously propounded by the media "journalists" that US Constitutional Strict Constructionists are only white men and the occasional female impersonator (to reference a slander that was directed against Texas Senator Kay Baily Huchinson by Gloria Steinem).
I thought the Chihuahuas were the .25ACP of the dog world. "Don't get one. He might bite someone someday, and if that person finds out, he will be severely pissed off" (With apologies to the Colonel).
As for guard dog training. I was recently advised that if I had a dog with aggressive tendencies it was better to get such training so the dog would be conditioned to jump and bite only on command.
Windy Wilson,
"THIS lack of ethnic diversity reveals the depravity of the product."
No, it shows that somebody there has a glimmer of awareness of liability concerns, but maybe didn't think it all the way through...
That glimmer of awareness was of the strong potential for bad press if people of color were also depicted, not liability. Whoever thought this product line up was more afraid of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the lickspittle lackeys in the media than they were of some plaintiff's lawyer putting together a slam dunk case that they planned for the dead people as proved by these targets they purchased and used.
I still think there is major depravity in this product.
I am with goober. Look, cop, is it really so hard to ask you to be a professional and take the tiniest bit of time to use your gorram brain before shooting a child? If you can't talk down or outwit a 9 year old, I don't want you wandering my streets with any kind of authority.
As with Humpty Dumpty's speech in Through the Looking Glass, "Diversity" means just what the speaker intends it to mean, no more, no less. It is situational, just like the ethics of many of those who toss about the term with such enthusiasm. Personally, I think it's kind of insulting to claim that a person will "bring diversity of experience and opinion" (say, to an entering college class) based on the color of their skin or their surname. Isn't that, well, STEREOTYPING? But what do I know? I washed out of Progressivism 101 long ago. You want diversity of thought and opinion, preferentially admit Flat-Earthers and Holocaust Deniers. The former are idiots and the latter are hateful, but that's REAL diversity.
As to the kiddie targets, that's both warped and deeply disturbing. And I agree that the "No More Hesitation" name pretty much gives away the intent behind the product. But hey, those lily-white targets probably are generally representative of the bitter clinger demographic, so they're okay. Situationally, that is.
And I say this not as a bitter, religious, gun nut white dude, but as a non-gun owning, agnostic (as in it all sounds crazy, but I can't disprove it, so ...) occasional minority*. I do admit to being a dude, however. Not generally bitter, but I think I'm getting a callus on my forehead from all the facepalms lately. This LE Targets stuff is not helping.
*Occasional minority = not an "under-represented" minority, so I'm functionally white when it comes to preferential (oops, sorry, diversity-enhancing) hiring, admissions, etc, but I'm colored folks when they count things like "look how many minorities have graduate degrees" or the like. Neat, isn't it? Trying to wrap my head around my variable ethnic-ness has vastly expanded my view of the world.
@1911Man "Dachshund ... Mean little sonsabitches." Absolutely. And isn't it neat to be able construct a sentence where SOB is not necessarily a pejorative, but just a straightforward descriptor. Wasn't putting down dachshunds, but was thinking of the following: Google "redefining the weiner dog" and follow the top hits. Heh.
Jayson,
" If you can't talk down or outwit a 9 year old, I don't want you wandering my streets with any kind of authority."
If you CCW, how many times would you let a 9-year-old shoot you before shooting back? I'm trying to get an idea of a fair number, here. ;)
Tam,
Honestly? If i was wearing a bullet proof vest? Probably once. If i wasnt wearing a bullet proof vest, I'd probably die if the kid shot straight. But he would get off the first shot. Bare minimum.
If that gets me killed, I guess i can live with that.*
There are things worse than death, and shooting a kid by mistake would rate right up there in the top ten on that list.
*ba-dum tisss!
Anon@12:15,
I just went to their site, typed in "No more Hesitation" like you claim to have and the search came up completely empty.
It may be they took their product down after enough pushback.
On the other hand, the story I got from my unimpeachable source (who is none of your business but who spoke directly with the owner of the company) said that the images were the result of a product "idea brochure" sent them by a photographer, with images added to by someone else, and the entire lot attributed to their company.
Unless they took the products down I'm calling it rabble-rousing and making an otherwise legitemate company the unwitting victim of misrepresentation.
gvi
gvi,
Here's why you couldn't find them.
Goober,
Okay, fair enough.
How many of his fellow classmates would you let him shoot before firing yourself?
That's an entirely different context, Tam. The target showed a little boy on a playground, where toy guns are often found. It would be another thing entirely if the target showed him in a classroom, where guns, even toy guns, are not allowed. It would be an even bigger difference if instead of him smiling, he had an angry expression.
Is it too much to ask for targets to LOOK like they're actually school shooters?
What Erin said. I'm speaking of the condition presented on the target. In a hypothetical classroom where a hypothetical kid stands and delivers against his classmates, he won't be smiling under a tree on the playground. He'll be disturbed and angry and quite obviously have evil intent.
Even then I fear he would still get off the first shot before I could return fire.
Erin nailed it.
The context of the kid holding the gun, while looking joyful or giddy--not angry or distressed or otherwise disturbed--and on a playground should shout to your brain "no shoot!" His expression and his location do not say that he's presenting a danger that needs to be shot.
Yes, he has a gun, and yes it is aimed in the direction of the viewer. But he doesn't appear menacing and is no more likely to shoot you (based upon his body language) than a Cletus booger-hooking a handgun at the funshow. Would one be justified in shooting a couple Cletii at the local gun shop for the same?
If they truly wanted to make a No Hesitation target, it would have to be more complete and better context. A child holding (what appears to be) a gun isn't enough to make me take that shot-not without more information. A child holding that gun with an angry expression, and the gun aimed at another person might be. While on a playground? It makes the conditions such that it might still be play/all in fun/not a real gun. How did I happen on it? Was I there and heard angry yelling? Was I called to the scene (*in the case of a police officer)? What other things preceded this?
Honestly, I think a video or live action scenario needs to precede the target. Without some sort of context to place it in, these targets would only lead to bad consequences.
I stand corrected and withdraw my objections.
gvi
It's the "No More Hesitation" connotations that are so disturbing.
Erin,
"That's an entirely different context, Tam. The target showed a little boy on a playground..."
I was referring to Goober's comments on his response to armed juveniles in general, not these targets, which I thought I'd made abundantly clear I believe to be a giant pile of fail.
Do you happen to remember the name of the book? It's hard to find *good* information on Rottweilers.
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