Miss during testing, makes you look better in court? Advice for civilians and law?

[Wheeler]

As a private citizen I have trained to NOT point my gun at people that haven't earned that action. I've yet to attend a class that taught me to miss however, every class I've been to in the past few years has gone to great pains to point out that I am legally and morally responsible for every projectile that leaves the muzzle of my firearm. Given that I don't have a union or agency to pay for even part of my legal fees, I'll role with that advice.

It's also prudent to note that Georgia considers lethal force as anything capable of killing another person. So regardless of whether I use a pistol, rifle, Hand and a Half sword, or a paper clip I will be judged on whether my actions warranted lethal force, not whether I should have missed a shot so as to not look like a trained killer.

Perhaps the advice offered would be to be competent enough with your chose weapon to use it properly, instead of trying to find some potentially litigious method of fooling the system?

[Ed L]

At one point the CCW shooting test in TX was recorded on a point basis. Now the instructor looks at your target, makes sure you have the requisite number of points, and marks you as passed.

Interestingly enough, when they first introduced CCW permits in TX in 1994 or 1995, I had a gunsmith at the range tell me a similar thing to what someone told Glenn. In this case I was not told to not shoot a perfect score.

The person who told me was someone at a gun range. I am amazed to hear that some police or even police instructors actually think this way.

I believe that Glenn lives about 300 miles away from me--so it isn't some localized stupidity in TX.

[Coyotesfan97]

I’ve heard individual Officers say that. Don’t shoot a perfect score you’ll make me look bad hmmmm? I’ve never heard one of our internal FIs say this and I’ve never heard any external trainers espouse this.

[the Schwartz]

As a private citizen I have trained to NOT point my gun at people that haven't earned that action. I've yet to attend a class that taught me to miss however, every class I've been to in the past few years has gone to great pains to point out that I am legally and morally responsible for every projectile that leaves the muzzle of my firearm. Given that I don't have a union or agency to pay for even part of my legal fees, I'll role with that advice.

It's also prudent to note that Georgia considers lethal force as anything capable of killing another person. So regardless of whether I use a pistol, rifle, Hand and a Half sword, or a paper clip I will be judged on whether my actions warranted lethal force, not whether I should have missed a shot so as to not look like a trained killer.

Perhaps the advice offered would be to be competent enough with your chose weapon to use it properly, instead of trying to find some potentially litigious method of fooling the system?

This goes to the point that I was striving to make.

True to each and every LE agency that I ever worked for, we were always advised to stick with the truth since they could most easily defend that; lies and deceptive practices (like fudging qualifications)―or those that could be portrayed as improprietous―not so much.

[LSP552]

I’m unaware of any institution that teaches this, or anything other than center mass for shooting people. Head shots of course under certain circumstances.

[Radar Love]

stick with the truth

Totally. It's easy to explain to a jury why shooting to wound is not reasonable. On the other hand, I can just imagine a competent prosecutor/plaintiff's attorney finding out about this during discovery, destroying the defendant on cross examination, and at closing telling the jury how this all means this was premeditated homicide because the defendant clearly began planning this murder from the moment he intentionally missed that one shot during a routine qualification, turning what may have been justified homicide into first degree homicide.

So yeah. Lying is bad.

[Kyle Reese]

I heard this suggestion once from a Detective who was an advisor for my Explorers group.

Yea, this type of advice is just as bad as "choot 'em outside and draggum into the house" or "rack yer shotgun action to scare the bad guy" type bovine excrement that I used to hear in my younger days at various shooting ranges whenever the topic of home defense came up.

Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk

[1911Nut]

Don't get a perfect score on your driver's license test, because if you are in an automobile accident someone will sue you because you didn't drive up to your known skill level.

Don't get your best possible score on your bar exam, because if your represent a client in court that loses, you will be liable for not using your demonstrated superior litigation skills.

Don't get a perfect score on your realtor exam, because if a home purchase deal falls through and you are involved, the disappointed potential buyer will sue your ass because you didn't get them the deal they hoped for.

All those make about as much sense as does encouragement to not shoot a perfect score on a shooting test.

Where does this BS originate?

[jtcarm]

At one point the CCW shooting test in TX was recorded on a point basis. Now the instructor looks at your target, makes sure you have the requisite number of points, and marks you as passed.

Interestingly enough, when they first introduced CCW permits in TX in 1994 or 1995, I had a gunsmith at the range tell me a similar thing to what someone told Glenn. In this case I was not told to not shoot a perfect score.

The person who told me was someone at a gun range. I am amazed to hear that some police or even police instructors actually think this way.

I believe that Glenn lives about 300 miles away from me--so it isn't some localized stupidity in TX.

I’ve read on another forum by someone in another state being told the same thing, but the logic was state police administered the test and if they couldn’t count every single hole, it was a miss, so don’t put them all in one hole.

[Shoresy]

I’ve read on another forum by someone in another state being told the same thing, but the logic was state police administered the test and if they couldn’t count every single hole, it was a miss, so don’t put them all in one hole.

Not LE related and a bit off the original subject, but that was a thing during the live-fire portion of the Missouri CCW class I took about 10 years ago. (i.e.(paraphrasing) "I need to count X number of holes in the target, one big one doesn't count. So if you are competent/skilled with a pistol, spread them out.")