During his ABC town hall on Thursday night, Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden responded to a question about police reform by suggesting that cops should simply become Hollywood action heroes. “Instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do is shoot to kill, you shoot them in the leg,” Biden said, with all the seriousness and credibility of a man wondering whether plane crash fatalities could be avoided by covering aircraft in bubblewrap. Biden of course is far from the first person to put forward this “just shoot them in the leg” thing. Anti-police activists often engage in similar silliness and attempts have been in New York state to legally require cops to aim for a suspect’s limbs.
The problem is that reality is not a movie. In reality, legs are a narrow, fast-moving part of the body. Unless we are requiring every police officer to be an expert level marksman — which would be an even taller order when we replace them with social workers, as has been suggested — it is absurd to expect that kind of pinpoint accuracy during a high pressure, quickly evolving situation. And even if you successfully hit the suspect’s leg, you may sever his femoral artery, the main source of blood to his lower extremities, causing him to bleed out. If you don’t hit the artery, you’ll have wounded him but not stopped him. Depending on where you hit him, and how much adrenaline or foreign chemicals are coursing through his veins, the suspect may still be able to run, walk, and certainly shoot.
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