As reported by CBS Sacramento, a pair of Elk Grove police officers are now recovering after they accidentally shot each other while in pursuit of a suspect.
The news site noted that officers received a call around 11 p.m. Saturday for a travel trailer burglary whereby the caller said he witnessed a man shift a gun from his pants pocket to a sweatshirt pocket. Initially, an officer showed up and made contact with a man and a woman near the trailer.
The officer followed a male to a nearby Walgreens parking lot where he was joined by another police officer, according to the Elk Grove Police Department.
A resident who was watching the situation unfold, Dean Trafton, told the news station, “I said get out of the window because there's going to be bullets spraying here in a little bit.”
Turns out he was prophetic, per CBS Sacramento:
One officer was on either side of the suspect, facing each other. The suspect then reportedly moved toward one of the officers with his hands near his waistband, and that’s when the officers started firing — hitting the suspect and each other.
All three men were taken to the hospital. Each officer suffered a non-life threatening wound to their lower leg.
“We’ve seen the cops when we looked out the window and they all had their guns drawn towards the trailer and you know anytime guns are drawn there’s a possibility of there being a shooting,” Trafton added.
In short order, both cops were released from a local hospital after being treated, but the point to make here is this: Just because police officers carry weapons doesn’t mean they’re always experts when it comes to using those weapons.
In fact, as Bearing Arms reported in June 2016, it is a misconception to think that police officers are highly trained when it comes to using their firearms.
They’re not:
A careful, but hardly exhaustive, study of reality reveals that common knowledge is wrong: Where firearms are involved, the police are not highly trained professionals.
Getting away from our founding principles will lead us BACK to tyranny
The site notes that it’s understandable for people to believe that cops are experts with firearms because we’re “fed a steady diet” of police-related shows on TV and in the movies “where the heroes…end up shooting the bad guys” with single, well-aimed shots. (Related: NYC officials caught up in pay-to-play gun licensing scandal… the Second Amendment only applies to those with the right political connections.)
“The truth is — and should be — frightening: The overwhelming majority of police officers are not competent shooters,” Bearing Arms’ Mike McDaniel writes.
One reason is that police officers don’t spend a lot of time becoming — and then remaining — proficient with their firearms. McDaniel notes, however, that scores of private citizens engage in far more training:
Many police officers own few, if any, handguns, and many more own only a shotgun or a .22LR rifle of some kind. They rarely, if ever, practice on their own, and only a tiny portion of all police officers use their own time and money to attend advanced shooting or tactical schools, things a great many citizens routinely do.
And yet, private citizens, not police officers, are restricted by Left-wing laws from carrying firearms whenever and wherever they choose, as was intended by the founders and as per the spirit of the Second Amendment.
The officers in Elk Grove will survive, thank goodness, but their mishap highlights a major problem within our society as it ‘matures’ and that’s this: We’re getting further and further away from our founding principles, and the farther we get, the less likely we are to recover them.
That will eventually lead us, once again, to tyranny.
Read more about gun rights and the Second Amendment under assault at Guns.news and SecondAmendment.news.
Sources include:
Please contact us for more information.
