Democrat presidential hopeful Joe Biden suggested Monday that police training would change for the better if it included teaching officers to shoot unarmed people in the leg rather than firing a fatal shot.
Biden’s comments were made at a meeting at Bethel AME Church in Wilmington, Delaware, discussing the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police and the violent unrest that has swept the nation in response.
“There are a lot of things that can change” regarding police training, Biden told community leaders, moments before suggesting officers should aim for non-lethal wounds in a suspect’s extremities.
One of those things is how police react when being charged by an “unarmed” person, although Biden described the hypothetical “unarmed” person as having “a knife or something.”
He continued, “To shoot them in the leg instead of the heart is a very different thing.”
Biden’s advice on shooting to wound instead of to kill comes as he stresses his plan to set up a police overview board during the first 100 days of his administration should he win in November.
Shooting an individual in the leg can strike the femoral artery, a major passageway for blood transport, which would be just as fatal as a center-mass wound. The blood loss can lead to loss of consciousness in seconds and death in mere minutes.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.