At almost every police shooting in the USA like one in Fergusson, there are people that criticize _shot placement_ of law enforcement officers. They usually claim, that police _shoots to kill_, and present as evidence suspect's punctured chest. Often in those cases, you can hear that they should shoot at suspect's hands or legs.

Shot at hand with a weapon or sharp-edged tool sounds like a good idea, as well as shooting assaulting person at the knee. Why then should we shoot at torso in self-defense situation?

Reason one - size matters

Elbow and knee are targeted with two-three inches in diameter. In assumption, that we are in a situation, that fits to apply 21tf rule, shooting at a target with that diameter at the stressfull situation is incredibly hard to do. This is even tougher to do if we will consider, that our target moves his hand or he runs towards us. In this situation hitting the target so small and fast moving is almost impossible.

For similar reason in Mozambique Drill, first, we shoot 2 times in the chest and the third shot is placed at the head. If the chest is behind cover (for example - hostage) we make an exception and don't shoot chest, and shot should be placed at head directly.
Mozambique has been designed this way because the head is a smaller target, and that puts on the table risk of a missed shot.

Reason two - mind your surroundings

Most of the law enforcement use full metal jacket ball ammo, and it goes through wrist like through a paper. In an urban environment, that bullet may hit someone or something. Even if it will go slower, the bullet still may cause serious damage.

Additionally - mind that smaller target means, that we will have higher chance to miss and do collateral damage.

Most important aspect of self-defense is to stop the attack without putting surrounding on jeopardy.

Reason third - efficiency (or lack of it)

After analysis of many shootings in the USA, we can notice, that adrenaline and endorphin hit not only police officers, but also attackers. We know situations from reports, when an attacker with thighbone shot through was able to run for over 15 yards, what is impossible to do in a normal situation, because of the staggering amount of pain. Polish Police record assault on an officer, when suspect switched ax from injured hand to healthy one.

Shooting at legs or hands gives us proportionally small profit, and brings huge risk to our surrounding and ourselves**. Police officer, whose job is not to kill, but to stop the danger doesn't have a warranty, that less effective in self-defense context will not cause massive bleeding and suspect's death in 30 seconds.

Summary

Maybe shooting to suspects that run full speed looks good in movies, but in real life, it doesn't look like that at all.

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