Shooting at Empire State Building
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The NY Police Commissioner has identified Empire State shooting suspect as, Jeffrey Johnson, 53-years-old; disgruntled employee.
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Hard choice, to shoot or not to shoot.
There is a clear line of fire between the police and the target, but there are people in the background.
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By Mark Ames
The early news reports made Jeffrey Johnson out to be a deranged monster: After pumping five bullets into the supervisor who’d fired him from his job at the Empire State Building, Johnson supposedly went on a wild shooting rampage out on 5th Avenue, firing randomly at innocent bystanders, wounding nine before cops took him down using their anti-terrorism training.
In this early, cinematic version of events, the NYPD’s aggressive anti-terrorism training paid off—who knows how many more people Jeffrey Johnson would have shot and killed?
But as the day wore on, the early heroic version of events started to give way to something more complicated and disturbing—as so often happens with these workplace shootings. The gunman, it turned out, didn’t go on a wild shooting spree; all of his bullets were fired into one target, his former boss who downsized him; it was the NYPD who hit the bystanders while trying to get the gunman, who happened to be standing right next to their faces, in what appears to have been a conscious decision to commit suicide-by-cop.
Despite all the Jack Bauer anti-terror training the two cops supposedly received, they couldn’t hit the side of a skyscraper if their lives depended on it—let alone the front of a human being practically pressing his face into the barrels of their guns. In fact the “graphic” CCTV video looks like some desperate middle-aged schlub trying to get himself killed by Mr. Magoo and Magoo’s twin, who empty their handgun clips on every living creature except for the suicidal schlub with the .45 in his hand, doing a tapioca dance right in front of their faces…
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Incidents like this and the recent shooting at Dark Knight Rises's premiere make me wonder about the criminilization of firearms in the US.
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I wonder if Mark ever fired a gun.
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Originally posted by mancha:
I wonder if Mark ever fired a gun.
Elaborate? Are you referring to the author of that article Dalforce posted?
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Originally posted by soleachip:
Elaborate? Are you referring to the author of that article Dalforce posted?
Yes.
Firing an automatic weapon is not as easy as in seen in the movies. The first shot is usually at the target, the following shots will fly all over the place from the recoil.
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Originally posted by mancha:
Yes.
Firing an automatic weapon is not as easy as in seen in the movies. The first shot is usually at the target, the following shots will fly all over the place from the recoil.
Nice catch. Hurrah to online journalism. :P
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Originally posted by mancha:
Yes.
Firing an automatic weapon is not as easy as in seen in the movies. The first shot is usually at the target, the following shots will fly all over the place from the recoil.
All parties involved in the incident were using semi-automatic handguns; the cops were firing Glocks (either the 17 or the 19) while the gunman had a 1911. There was no full-auto recoil to contend with.It's entirely possible to take reasonable aim between shots even when rapid-firing a semi-automatic handgun; the cops' wildly inaccurate fire during the incident points to a lack of firearms training within the NYPD.
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Originally posted by Meia Gisborn:
All parties involved in the incident were using semi-automatic handguns; the cops were firing Glocks (either the 17 or the 19) while the gunman had a 1911. There was no full-auto recoil to contend with.It's entirely possible to take reasonable aim between shots even when rapid-firing a semi-automatic handgun; the cops' wildly inaccurate fire during the incident points to a lack of firearms training within the NYPD.
Quite true, there will always be a recoil with any firearm, this plus the squeezing of the trigger, standing and firing unsurported, shooting while moving, a slight tilt of the gun barrel would mean shooting around the target even at a close distance.