They get basic firearms training. They just don't particularly get any reason to follow it.
I had a coworker who was accidentally shot at an Army range by one of his closest friends. Everyone agreed that the Colt had malfunctioned; the last round did not fire, did not eject, and failed to fire again when the gun was dry-fired into the sand barrel. (SOP was to fire the magazine, eject the magazine, rack the slide, and dry-fire into the sand barrel just in case. The accidental discharge happened while they were returning the pistols to the range sergeant. Dude still did two years because he failed to treat the gun as loaded and allowed it to point at a fellow soldier. A ricochet might have been explicable; a direct hit was not.
Exactly. If you do the very simple things that I've been taught like direct visual of the chamber after you eject the magazine that accident is impossible. Even AFTER that you still treat the gun as loaded and you don't point it at anyone. Every person that touches the gun after should pull the slide back and check the chamber regardless if you just watched someone else do it.
One big mitigating factor here though - the cop pointing it at this dangerous lunatic WAS SOP for the situation and his job, so any accidental discharge will strike this, ahem, fine individual. I think though that the cop still has some culpability for not verifying that the asshole was hit, not rendering aid, and not reporting the fact to the EMTs in a timely fashion. Treatment might differ if one has been shot.
I saw zero reason why the cop should have put his finger on the trigger. The guy couldn't have been less of a threat when as he had his full body weight on both of his arms. The
only time your finger should touch the trigger is when you intend to immediately put a hole in something. Where I come from finger on the trigger = you meant to pull it. Granted it's high stress and all that which is why I call it negligence and not anything else. I, as a civilian, am expected to follow those rules and if I don't and accidentally get someone shot I will be, and fully expect to be, charged with a crime. I expect no more or less from the people we give vastly more training and then issue a firearm to.
I'd almost let this go too if it wasn't for the cop pretending he didn't shoot the guy even after the guy said he was shot and not telling the EMT, or anyone, until he absolutely had to. Knowing what's wrong with a patient is vital to saving someones life, the fact that he was getting out of the vehicle shows that he probably wasn't seriously injured from the crash.
Edit: Don't forget that the officer said that he wasn't even pointing the gun at him so it's hard to claim fear for his life is what caused him to put his finger on the trigger. The only explanation is that the officer fucked up. There are supposed to be consequences when you fuck up and seriously injure someone else in the process of fucking up.
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