LK>> I remember reading an article in Guns & Ammo a few years back that
 LK>> said that the Law School of St. Louis University did a study that
 LK>> showed that cops were about 10% less effective than civilians in
 LK>> stopping a crime or bad guy (whether they shoot or not) and were about
 LK>> 10% MORE LIKELY than civilians to shoot a bystander.  (The actual
 LK>> numbers were 9% and 11% but I can never remember which number goes with
 LK>> which stat.  :-)  )
 PN>  That sounds about right.
 PN>  I'm going to suggest that we be a tad careful of drawing a
 PN>  conclusion just from that raw data: while it would be
 PN>  ideal for every LEO to be a dead-eye shooter, it just
 PN>  isn't ever going to happen.  And the average civilian
 PN>  intervention I'm suspecting is involving a person somewhat
 PN>  more motivated than the average to maintain proficiency.
I don't think this data was too awful raw; I mean, if you have X number of
"events" and Y number of stops it's a pretty simple matter to figure out what
(X/Y)*100 equals in each case.  :-)  Another consideration is that civilians
can be more effective in a lot of cases because don't have to worry about
whether they had a "clean shoot" nearly as much as a LEO.  Civilians
typically have much more leeway in justification than do LEOs.
        Lyle    --INTERNET:  lyle.knox@iotp.com OR lyle.knox@technoid.com
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