Dan,
As we know, use of deadly force incidents have to be assessed individually lest undeserved generalizations are made. I have no personal knowledge of a "spray and pray" use of deadly force incident, but I am aware of shootings were multiple shots were fired, and in many cases no one was hit. However, it would be fallacy to conclude the "misses" were "bad" shots.
I do not know the facts of Cirillo's shootings, but from what I understand many were the result of surveillance.
We also have to be careful about inferring to the general population that which is most accurately the exception. And legally, the fact that a suspect in a shooting was unarmed does not make it a bad shooting. The reasonable man standard is controlling. I personally know of a suspect who was shot in the back while running away and killed. The suspect was unarmed. However, under the circumstances created by the suspect, the DA, using the reasonable man standard, ruled it justifiable.
Again, the controlling question in contemporary law enforcement is not whether the bad guy was hit but whether the good guys survived. And I can't begin to write how many times I was admonished to not die with bullets in my weapon. The goal is not to kill the bad guy but to ensure the bad guy does not cause me to wind up supine on a fiberglass examination table with a nickel block of wood keeping my lifeless head from wobbling while a youthful mortician assistant uses a rotary saw to open my skull. Therefore, before we can denounce a "missed" shot as "spray" we have to first determine if the "missed" shot had demonstrable efficacy in keeping the bad guy from killing the good guy.
Dan, if accuracy was controlling in gunfights, cops would be issued K-38 Masterpieces with wadcutter ammunition. Instead, survival is controlling, which is why cops are issued tactical handguns.
Take care,
Mando
