Mike Williamson observes that the collateral damage produced by the sharpshooters in the NYPD make Graven Tower look downright solicitous by comparison:
As long as you ignore the fact that the shooting victims were innocent bystanders, hitting two people with three shots represents unusual excellence in marksmanship for the NYPD, matching another recent incident in which skilled NYPD officers were able to hit their target and nine bystanders with only 16 bullets. Overall the NYPD usually requires about 331 rounds to hit 54 targets, of which 14 will be innocent bystanders, 24 will be dogs, and 16 will be people the NYPD was actually aiming at. Statistically, if you aren’t a dog, it is slightly more dangerous to be the person the NYPD was shooting at than a bystander (16 people out of 331 shots for intended targets for a 4.8% hit rate vs. 14 people out of 331 shots for bystanders, a 4.2% hit rate.) NYPD has a better success rate for other weapons, and certain factors, like shooting unarmed people in the back, tend to increase hit rates.
When NYPD officers fire 331 shots, and hit 16 targeted people, 24 dogs, but also 14 bystanders, there is a problem.
If the gun control advocates were truly serious about wanting to reduce the amount of unnecessary harm caused by firearms, they’d be campaigning to disarm the police, not the American people.
I suppose we can be grateful that the NYPD doesn’t have rocket-armed aerovars or missile-armed drones at their disposal… uh, oh, wait a minute.