Jean Charles de Menezes verdict

Actually I would think that that is exactly what SAS would train to do.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

The SAS are trained to not establish risk, to not adequately identify targets, to wait until the last possible moment and then shoot to kill a suspect without adequate warnings or attempts to establish contact?Wow - that's a low opinion. I assume you feel the same way about the American special forces squads?

UK Police marksmen are a different thing entirely to how firearms are provided to US police officers. The training is extensive and rigorous.The other thing to remember here is that they were not working to their Standard Operation Procedures. Generally Police marksmen are trained to put 3 rounds into the chest as the means of taking down a gunman. However in this situation, that was changed because they were (mistakenly) expecting to be facing a suicide bomber. My understanding (from talking to MPS officers) is that, taking on board the experience of the IDF, they were told to go for a headshot to ensure that they would not trigger any suicide belts and to ensure that the "bomber" had no chance of setting off his explosives.

Well, since that is not what I said, I'm not at all sure what the hell you are talking about.I assume these folk "Did establish risk, they did limit damage to just the target, they did wait until they thought it was the last possible moment and they did shoot to kill. And YES, in SAS or Special Ops you do NOT give warning.It's just that in this case they were wrong.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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The SAS are trained to not establish risk, to not adequately identify targets, to wait until the last possible moment and then shoot to kill a suspect without adequate warnings or attempts to establish contact?

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The SAS are trained to go for headshots - this is because three shots in the right place will kill someone instantly - something that chestshots might not do. As for warnings, while in debriefs and legal situations, they must suggest they give a warning, in practice this never happens - this is pretty well-known in the "community".

Yes, COM (Center of Mass) vs CNS (Central Nervous System). In most cases it is two to COM and one to CNS but in cases where you are expecting either body armor or as in this case, the possibility of a chest worn bomb, straight to CNS.The goal in ALL cases is to reduce and if possible, stop the threat.The key in this particular case is if the suspect was on the ground and in custody, under control, were the shots to CNS justified?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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The key in this particular case is if the suspect was on the ground and in custody, under control, were the shots to CNS justified?

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I have no idea - I don't know the circumstances of the encounter.

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I also find it deeply hypocritical that the same justice system that sentences people to years in jail for killing an intruder in their own home, justifies people who hold a stranger down and turn his face into a bloody pulp.

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Martin was a psycho, he's not someone I'd hold up as a good example of citizens holding licenses for firearms. He shoot a young boy in the back while he was running away. He had his firearms license removed because he shoot at people picking apples on his land. His own brother had to leave the country due to harassment from Martin, who went around and shoot out his windows - the guy is a nutcase.And he wasn't locked up by the justice system - he was locked up by a jury of his peers who found that he was guilty of murder rather than manslaughter. He only got that reduced to manslaughter on appeal because he pulled the looneytunes defence.

Me too.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I thought these were the kinds of things you referred to when you implied they were poorly trained. Are you saying that the problem wasn't lack of training, or poor training - but instead that it was just that they were wrong? Actually I agree, and that any problem in training would be in decision making procedure. This is going away from my original point which was nothing about decision making training but 'the ability to fire a weapon and hit a target'. I was trying to suggest that the skill levels of your average Joe to take out one police officer are much lower than the corresponding skill an armed officer has of taking out your average Joe and the average Joe was outnumbered.

Agreed. So you'd agree that the average man in the subway with a firearm would be very likely to get killed if he attempted to defend himself against a group of armed and trained police marksmen using said firearm?Cos that's all my point was. How often has this 'not giving a warning' thing been tested in a crowded public place? Do the SAS do a lot of actions in this kind of scenario?

Based on the information I have, yes, UNLESS, as has been stated in this thread, the person was shot after being subdued. If the threat was stopped and they continued shooting, then it is a training issue. If there were other options then there was a training issue. However, my personal experience is that the average sport shooter I associate with is likely better trained than the average cop when it comes to those tasks. I know that I would prefer to have the average US cop shooting at me than any of my shooting friends.This is not meant as an indictment of the police, but it is hard for someone who shoots a few rounds annually at qualifying to be as competent as someone who practices regularly often firing thousands of rounds a month.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

No question. But then firing thousands of rounds a month would make you exceptional, not the norm. The norm in Britain would be less practice (nill will be the modal amount of practice) than a British Armed police officer, yes?

I'm not sure in which country you live, EighteenDelta, but here in the U.S. it's pretty easy to get a gun, either legally or illegally. Yet instances described in the OP are pretty routine here. So easy availability of guns doesn't necessarily result in either a free society or police who are aware of their duties to the citizenry.In fact, the biggest political supporters of low levels of gun control also tend (in general) to be "law and order" types who support more authoritarian government and who have a reflex to support the police and military in all cases whatsoever. There are exceptions (like myself), but that is the general trend here. When I notice who in the U.K. also supports gun ownership, I tend to see the same trends there, too.So I never understood the reasoning of those who advocate gun ownership as a means of maintaining a free society. Well, actually, I do understand the reasoning -- it's good reasoning that, like Medievel Scholaticism, isn't checked against real-life facts.

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Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory. -- Rick Perlstein

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How often has this 'not giving a warning' thing been tested in a crowded public place?

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I'm going off memory here so could be wrong - but I think Gibraltar is an example of this, the official account says that they identified themselves but witnesses say that they just gunned down the IRA suspects without warning.

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Do the SAS do a lot of actions in this kind of scenario?

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In crowded public places? To the best of our knowledge, not in the UK but the problem with discussing this is that plainclothes operations aboard are rarely discussed, so we don't have much information to go off. What we do know from the accounts of former servicemen is identifying themselves to people is not high on their list of priorities.