If you shoot you shoot to kill. The threat will not be stopped until the other person is either dead or unconcious. I have had several professional use of force training and some do make that comment about civil suits, but bottom line you need to justify your initial use of deadly force. I see nothing wrong with the comment.
You always shoot to stop. While killing a person may be the only way to stop him sometimes, you still only ever shoot with the intention to stop the threat. This is what currently is taught in professional tactical courses about use of force. I would certainly be interested to speak to the so called professional civilian firearms instructors who taught that you shoot to kill as opposed to shooting to stop. You see once the threat is stopped, if you then shoot to kill, you have committed at least manslaughter and maybe even murder. To say a threat will not be stopped unless the assailant is unconscious or dead is absolutely ludicrous. Hows about this testimony, from a truthful bystander, who is now testifying at your manslaughter trial: "The youth threw up his hands, dropped his knife, started to cry saying he was sorry and said in a very loud voice 'I surrender', then your honor, the guy with the gun shot him dead". I'll visit you in Sing Sing.
Shoot to wound is ridiculous IMHO.
When you shoot someone dead you mortally wound them but, I will not play on that just for the sake of semantics; instead I will get to the meaning I think you meant. I believe you mean that shoot to stop is the same as shoot to not mortally wound. It is not always the case. If, however, you equate shoot to wound with shoot to stop then let me point out the current prevailing legal opinion in the USA because that opinion does not match your own; the legal system does not believe that shooting to stop is ridiculous. It is not the opinion of lawmakers, not the opinion of professionals who teach firearms training and use of force training, and it would likely not be the opinion of the jury that convicts you of manslaughter. You always shoot to stop, just as you train to shoot to stop even if it winds up you had to kill your assailant in order to sop him/her. This does not mean that you aim at an arm or leg with the hope of making a bad guy go ouch and then run home crying to mommy. This means you shoot at the center of mass of the target that presents itself and maybe throw in a head shot if you suspect the bad guy is wearing body armor or if the first two to the chest don't work and the threat remains. You keep shooting until the threat has stopped. If the guy is down, is breathing but not moving, has dropped his gun, and is no longer a viable threat to your life or limb - are you telling me you would then kill him? That would be ridiculous from a moral, legal, and civil standpoint. Let's do a scenario in which you and I are both threatened by the same psycho with a knife:
A psycho Charles Manson Wanna Be type runs at you with a large knife (like a Bowie Knife with a 14 inch blade). He is 35 feet away as he begins his charge and, he is screaming he is going to kill you. As he charges he slashes one or two people along the way. You have drawn, you scream out what if anything? Do you yell stop or I'll kill you? He keeps charging and you shoot him. After the first 6 shots, he falls into a bloodied heap and, he drops the knife. He still is obviously alive but no longer a threat as at least the witnesses see him. Yet, you continue to fire until you empty your magazine of 16 rounds. You reload and would fire ore but someone says he is dead as you grope for a reload. It is indeterminate if he died because of bullet number 1 through bullet number 16. All of your shots were to vital organs and could have killed him but we know he was still breathing when you started firing number 7 through 16. At your trial for manslaughter you will have to answer some questions like these, they will be a lot tougher coming from a slick big time district attorney: He fell after the first 6 shots in a bloodied heap, the knife slipping out of his hands, was he still a threat to you at that point? Why did you keep shooting, was it because he was breathing because he was alive and because you were always of the belief that if you ever were involved in an armed encounter you would shoot to kill regardless of whether or not the threat had stopped?
I am involved in an identical situation. I start shooting just as you did. Just before I shoot, or as I start to shoot I yell out stop or I'll shoot. He is coming though and slashing people and screaming he is going to kill me, so I am shooting. After 6 shots he falls into the same bloodied heap. He drops the knife. He is breathing. He is otherwise pretty much just a bloodied heap as he was in your situation. What do I do, I do a tactical reload. Yet I sure don't shoot him again, unless he again becomes or is about to become an imminent threat of loss of life or of serious bodily injury to myself or others. I walk over to the knife, I secure it. I tell bystanders to call the police and for an ambulance while I keep him covered. I ask if anyone knows first aid. I ask bystanders to secure him by tying him up with belts if necessary. Someone says he has died. I again ask they call the police, ambulance and secure him nonetheless. He has died just as he did when you shot him. Would it be the same for me in court as it was for you? I go to court. It does not get past the grand jury stage. I am exonerated. You maybe are in jail, maybe not. maybe you paid your big city slicker attorney enough to get you off after a 2 year trial. You used to own a house. It was sold to pay the attorney. You used to have a college fund for your child, it was taken away by the family of the guy you killed. You lose your job and your wife divorces you because you have changed because you now suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome. Sure you won the fight but lost everything else.
If you were found guilty, or just if you went through the lengthy and very expensive trial process, why did it hapen to you and not to me. If for no other reason that you had shown previous intent to kill if ever you were involved in any shooting situation. INTENT is a big thing in the criminal law.
I think tha what some find wrong with the comment is the fact that the individual made it in front of witnesses.
Good people often do a funny thing when testifying under oath, even about things that close friends have confided in them, they tell the truth. Yes this could come back and bite him in the ass really hard if he is ever involved in a justfied shootout but; it is not just this reason that makes such a statement bad as I tried to point out above.
After all I wrote above, allow me to stress something: Shooting to stop may wind up becoming shooting to kill. You might even someday testify that in order to stop the threat you realized you would have to kill the guy (for a numbe rof reasons, such as he kept coming after several chest shots, so I fired at his head knowing it would probably kill him) but, I was till only trying to stop him from posing a threat to me and ohers. This is vastly different from saying that: If I ever get involved in a shootout situation, I am going to shoot to kill. If killing someone was the only way to stop the threat, then so be it; if killing was your intent before you even started to defend yourself, well that is a whole different story.
