German politician stirs debate after criticizing police for shooting ax-wielding attacker

The response from the German Green Party politician in this item is remarkably stupid, but entirely typical of the things one hears from people who have absolutely no understanding of either firearms or the types of situation in question. Most of these critics evidently get their conception of how armed law enforcement responds by watching old Lone Ranger episodes where he shoots the gun out of a bad guy's hand.

It doesn't work like that.

When police are threatened with potentially deadly force, they're trained to shoot to kill. For good reason. Despite what TV shows may have suggested, the ability to make precise shots with a pistol, even if you have the time to aim and calmly take the shot is unreliable. When someone is coming at you with a weapon and you have a split second to respond, not only is there a high probability that if you aimed for a leg or shoulder you'd miss, but even if you hit the assailant, he might still be able to reach you and kill you before you could stop him.

After a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker allegedly injured train passengers Monday night, a special police unit closed in on the assailant — and fatally shot him when he tried to attack the officers, authorities said Tuesday.

But amid a long-held skepticism of firearms use by officers in Germany, questions soon arose over whether officers were right to shoot the man.

Renate Künast, a prominent politician and former leader of the country's Green Party, suggested that police officers should not have killed the 17-year-old. On Twitter, the politician said it would have been sufficient to injure the attacker to an extent that he would have been put out of action...

See also:  Islamic State claims Afghan teen implicated in German train attack as its own