By: Teresa Mull

Joe Biden is back to telling law enforcement officers how to do their jobs – with asinine “advice.”

Speaking about the outrage and riots that stemmed from the shooting of George Floyd earlier this year, Biden said at a townhall meeting last week:

“There’s a lot of things we’ve learned and it takes time, but we can do this. You can ban chokeholds … you have to teach people how to de-escalate circumstances. … Instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do is shoot to kill, you shoot them in the leg.”

This isn’t the first time Biden has urged police to shoot suspects in the leg. In June 2020, GPM reported that Biden said:

“[There is] the idea that instead of standing there and teaching a cop when there’s an unarmed person, coming at him with a knife or something, to shoot him in the leg instead of in the heart. There’s a lot of different things [policies] that can change.”

Several law enforcement organizations are decrying the presidential hopeful’s repeated ignorance, pointing out how difficult it is to hit a moving target, and how much harder it becomes when you’re required to aim at a small surface area – a leg, instead of center mass.

Fox News reports, “Joe Gamaldi, vice president of the national Fraternal Order of Police, dismissed Biden’s suggestion as ‘completely ridiculous, ‘unrealistic’ and a ‘pandering talking point.’

‘“By aiming at legs we are much more likely to miss and we already only hit roughly 50% of the time,’ Gamaldi said.”


Teresa Mull ([email protected]) is editor of Gunpowder Magazine.