C-dub wrote:Thinking about this a little I began to wonder about the following. If a similar type of attack happened here and I was in the pathway or near the path of such a vehicle how justified would I be in shooting at and potentially killing the driver? Probably pretty justified if it was just like this case. However, what if it turned out to be someone suffering some kind of medical emergency such as a heart attack?
I'd think physics would render the point moot a least 90% of the time. Unless you had an overwatch position and looking for an incident like this with a long-gun at the ready, it would be a very difficult thing to accomplish. The poor motorcyclist who pulled up even with the driver's door would have had a chance had he been armed, but if you were on the ground with a handgun, it would be a
very difficult shot...one that's only common in the movies.
First is relative motion. The truck plowed into the crowd at about 30 mph; that's 14.67 yards per second. OODA loop: from
60 yards away, if you could see and recognize the threat, decide to act, and then act, you would have
three seconds from start to finish before you were mowed over. Plus you'd have to get those handgun rounds accurately
through the windshield, which would probably take more than one shot, and your hind-brain's self-preservation instinct would be moving your feet to try to get you out of the way, further complicating accurate shots.
If you didn't perceive the threat until it 30 yards away, that's a total of two seconds before you're run over. I have no accurate data on this, but I suspect highly competitive IDPA shooters can draw from concealment and get a shot on target in the .07- to 1.0-second range. Mind you, they're already past the Observe and Orient steps of OODA: they're just standing at the ready waiting for the buzzer. In a completely unanticipated, unscripted, highly-stressful situation, I'd be very surprised if even world-class shooters could pull it off within two seconds...and of course, a good hit on target through the windshield of the moving truck, even if it hits the driver's CNS and shuts him down, doesn't shut the truck itself down; it'll still be coming even though pressure has been removed from the accelerator.
You'd have a little more time if you were standing off the path of the truck and were shooting at angle. Not a lot more time, but some. But increasing the angle to the windshield or windows also increases the likelihood that the bullet(s) will be deflected from its trajectory, making an accurate hit more luck than anything.
What about standing off the path of the truck and waiting to take a perpendicular shot through the driver's or passenger's side window? Assuming the window width combined with reasonable effective angles of bullet entry totaled about 3 feet wide, you'd have to break the shot with no margin of error within exactly 0.068 seconds if the truck passed you at point-blank range. For every yard you are distant from it, you gain a little more time, but only a fraction...and the farther away, the smaller the target, the harder the shot. So it sorta balances out. And since this was a truck, you'd probably be slightly below the target line-of-sight and see less of the target than would be optimal.
Add to the physics that there are hundreds and hundreds of people suddenly panicked and rushing around you, probably jostling you and bumping into you...even knocking you over if you're trying to not move with the flow in order to present your gun. And, most importantly, there are all those densely-packed innocent people rushing around between you and the target, and behind and around the target.
The physics of the situation alone render an accurate shot, if not almost impossible, highly improbable. Add to that the melee of screaming people erupting all around, and I'd say that pushes the shot into the actually impossible category.
I don't know what actually transpired on the ground with the police in this event, but the truck traveled for almost a mile before the driver was shot and killed and the truck halted. I suspect officers early in the attack path radioed other officers further down the Prom des Anglais to alert them; with the sea on one side and no other major ingress/egress on that stretch of the road, they knew where he was headed. The truck's progress no doubt began to slow, and it undoubtedly hit other vehicles along the way. By the end of its one-mile run, it was probably damaged and had slowed enough that the driver had decided to go to guns, or at least it had slowed enough for the three officers in its path to put a couple dozen rounds through the windshield; and we don't know what they were firing, but I'll guess one or more was using a rifle, not a pistol.
If this had played out exactly the same way--say at Galveston during a packed Mardis Gras evening--it would be IMHO a no-win scenario for an LTC holder to think about using his gun. Run with your family or friends perpendicular to the path of the truck and try to save yourselves. If the truck had been brought to a halt and the attacker started shooting people from the cab of the truck, the situation changes and you might be presented with a much more makeable and sane shot.
Really long-winded; sorry. But whenever there is a question about a potential altercation when an LTC holder is behind the wheel of his or her vehicle, this is one reason the sage advice is almost always
stay in your car. Not only does the average passenger vehicle on the road weigh 4,000 pounds and can be a formidable defensive weapon, but it provides some level of cover and it can accelerate quickly to impressive speeds. Whenever possible, don't travel in the middle lane of a multi-lane boulevard and, when you come to a stop, make sure you can see the bottom of the tires of the vehicle in front of you...so you can hit the gas to get around it if you have to.
More information will be revealed over the next day or so, but there has been a lot of criticism about French security preparations in Nice. Short of closing Prom des Anglais to all but foot traffic (if you look at a map, you'll see that would temporarily paralyze the south end of the city) and cordoning off the area and searching all attendees, I don't know that police or authorities did anything wrong. The driver was a legal resident of Nice; he was a chauffer and delivery driver by trade; he no doubt had the equivalent of a French commercial driver's license; he was wearing a deliveryman uniform; and he had all his proper papers with him. Even if police stopped the truck upon entering the area, unless they searched it and found the guns and no cargo, they would have had no reason to be suspicious of this guy.
This guy was on no one's terrorist radar. Yet Hillary Clinton's first "constructive" recommendation was that intelligence sharing and communication among allies needed to be improved. Yeah; right; that's what's been wrong the past few years. Instead of a coalition effort to really shut down ISIS, we just need to more carefully analyze the articles in its glossy magazine,
Dabiq, and email our allies about it.
Continued prayers for all those killed and injured in this nightmare of an attack.
