Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Cop firing through his windshield???

Actually, the goal is to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. You can't help anybody if you need help and resources are devided with each additional problem. It would behoove everyone to remember that, no matter what you do for a living.

You may understand that and I understand that but there a lot of civilians that don’t...Many believe the first cruiser on seen should act... Why are they waiting??? What are they waiting for??? Like those words have never been said before...Especially by liberals 😎

I couldn't find a date on this article, but it's clearly an older report based on the type written font and ammunition used (lead 38special and 357mag.). It does however, support what my thoughts were regarding the ballistics of shooting through a windshield. (I can't judge the officer, as I don't know all the details, or the nature of the suspects, etc.) I do know this though, any disturbance to the bullet's flight early in the flight will lead to significantly larger dispersion of the bullet's flight down range. As any good rifle shooter knows, a cross wind near the muzzle is far worse than cross wind at the target. This is the same principle here, mess up the bullets flight as it leaves the barrel and it's probably not going to hit where intended. Compound this variation with shooting from a moving vehicle at a moving vehicle and any hit would be impressive. The other question that comes up is, after going through the windshield, what condition was the projectile in to penetrate another windshield or sheet metal? Looked like he was using 40sw., but couldn't discern the bullet make. Whatever happened, it worked out for the officer and two more bad guys were taken off the street.

Worst part is now all the ammunition testing standards are going to have to be redone. Forget shooting through denim and 18" of gel, going to need to pass through two windshields and an engine block now. Might have to bring back the 10mm.

Of course. Complaints stemming from lack of insight come with most professions. I get the same thing with being a fishing guide. "You people kill too many fish. You make way too much money for what you do. Why should you get a tip? People don't tip me for going to work." , Etc.

I would rather be a fishing guide on a river any day over being a cop. Especially today. If I don’t like my fishing customer, the dock is my destination to rid myself of the idiot.
Cops deal with foolery everyday 24/7. I’m amazed that all of my friends have continued in LE with everything they see and deal with. Oh, and don’t forget the inside politics of a big department. Sheesh! 😎

Didn’t the FBI run the carousel of caliber testing from carrying a S&W 10mm, then moved to a 357 Sig, and now the 40 cal? I don’t know for sure...Seems they ran ballistic tests on almost every known material under the sky
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I have to believe that the trailing cop was tired of taking direct fire from the SUV and was hoping beyond hope that if he got some hits on the SUV it would possibly encourage the bad guy to just drive instead of shoot. Just a guess.

And, yes. I would have done a mag dump through my windshield if I had closed with 25 yards of the SUV. And, another part of a mag would have been unleashed by me once he came to a stop as I’m walking up to the driver side window while firing. 😎

Winning fighters and coaches evaluate everything done critically and are hyper focused on removing weaknesses. Losers high five each other “because they played”.



True statement.

I don't care if Mother Theresa's niece was in the car with the shooters. Once you fire on a LEO, you just signed your death warrant, and everyone else's in the vehicle/house etc...

That's not true, but the potential is definitely something to consider before doing it.

It's seldom the players complaining. It comes from the cheap seats.

FBI switched to 9mm about two years ago. They never used the 357sig, though Secret Service, and Air Marshals did (and to my knowledge still do). The latest round of FBI testing included various barriers, but also heavily favored lack-of-recoil and shootability in their selection - their thought, an a logical one it is, is that if you can't hit the target it doesn't matter what caliber you are shooting. - pick a caliber that allows for more hits. FBI testing with glass places the angled glass 18" from the ballistic gel (i.e. the intended target), not 18" form the muzzle and 25 yards from the target. Two very distinct ballistic challenges. The officer did what he felt he had to and it worked, and kudos to that.

You choose to repeatedly advocate for the killing of LE, that is the only time you catch my attention.

You know nothing of consequence and frequently expose that. If my posts offend you or lack value use the ignore button.


mike r

Once again, you are just throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks, and letting others waste time proving you’re wrong. It doesn’t work that way. The police just have to show that they acted reasonably under the time constraints in which they are operating. They are not expected to have an engineering degree and have trained through every theoretical scenario, because we all know (well, maybe not you), and courts recognize, that this would be impossible. Unlike you, the courts recognize that it is not a perfect world, and that dealing with criminals frequently requires contemporaneous improvisation without the benefit of lead time to come up with a perfect plan backed up by scientific research and analysis. Furthermore, your hypotheticals are imponderables if all we have is a video, because the appropriate analysis is based on what the officer in question should have known and what he actually knew, not what you or anyone else on this thread knows or should know. So, get some insight on that and share it before wasting time with hypotheticals.

Without getting in the weeds of discussing shooting through glass, off the top of my head, this situation appears (in my personal opinion only) to check all the boxes supporting the force used in a Graham v. Connor analysis, fits within the rationale of Tennessee v. Garner in support of the use of force on a fleeing felon, and also Plumhoff v. Rickard. Not on point, but demonstrating which way the wind is blowing, are Mullenix v. Luna (which, admittedly, only focused on the “clearly established” principle, not whether it was reasonable), S.F. v. Sheehan (elements of both prongs, coupled with poor briefing), White v Pauly (another “clearly established law” case), County of L.A. v. Mendez (this one should have wide ranging effect on “woulda, coulda, shoulda" analyses where no independent constitutional violation has occurred on the front end), and the latest Ninth Circuit smackdown, Kisela v Hughes (another “clearly established” case with the caveat that the court was not saying that the use of force was not justified). (Of course, there are a million picky points that are not worth discussing on the basis of a few minute video.) (Further, in the absence of a person harmed by the rounds (which could pop up), we really don't even have a controversy with respect to rounds that did not hit the bad guys.) Do you have some binding or trending precedent going the other way that fits this situation? Believe me, I want to see that stuff, and I will read it when time permits.

As I said in my earlier post, I can’t begin to project what a Nevada state court would say about this under applicable state law, or if there is some Ninth Circuit case on point. (I am in the Tenth.) I am just dealing with the Constitutional procedure as discussed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Your numerous posts about recklessness and scientific “perfect world” analyses appear to go in that direction and sound like deflection and scattergun plaintiff lawyer hyperbole. (I am not seeing anyone but spencer516 insinuating as an abstract principle that shooting back at someone who is shooting at you and trying to run you over cannot be justified on general self-defense principles.) Maybe in 5 years we will have some precedent on this one way or the other, and then we all will know. Stay tuned.

Science and reality do merge sometimes after failure is found in the human form. Gotta put hits on targets. Good info that I didn’t know. Thanks...😎

He's old and set in his ways. You know how that goes....

He probably hasn't been doing it long enough to realize that you absolutely cannot fix stupid. Idealism is sometimes hard to overcome.

What you put forward hasn't been the case for years. Bonded core premium bullets deflect a little, but not near as much as you claim. 308 rounds and 223 rounds deflect almost "0" after passing through windshield glass. Handgun rounds deflect a small amount, but not enough to cause a miss on the target if the officer shoots center mass and the bullet actually would've hit where he was aiming, absent the glass.

Couple of things:

No question that these were bad guys. Shooting at the cop pretty much establishes that.

The cop COULD have taken the safe route for himself but chose to fight back.

Quit bitching and give the cop a medal.

Is that when the windscreen glass is at the target end, or the muzzle end? The reason I ask is because I've seen reports of testing that would have it that if the glass is near the target, the bullet will pass through and strike the target, provided the glass isn't too sharply angled. However if the glass is near the muzzle and the target at some distance downrange then the bullet may be so damaged or deflected that it won't strike the target.

For example, in the aftermath of a hostage siege in 2014 our police here did some testing with .308, and firing at 6 mm glass set at an angle with both 165 Trophy Bonded and with 196 gn RUAG Swiss P (AP) at a distance of 49.5 m they found that a target close behind the glass would have been killed. However when a second glass panel (I think this one was 12 mm thick, but I don't have the actual report to hand) was placed a short distance in front of the muzzle the RUAG AP bullet broke up on penetrating the first panel and no fragment hit the second panel 49.5 m downrange.

None of the above should be taken as comment on the actions of the officer in the video.