"Just shoot the tires..."

[AJMD429]

.
Another gun expert telling us that if we feel an immediate threat from someone heading towards us with their automobile intending to run us over, we should just 'shoot the tires out'...

"...If they [ICE agents or police] really think that a car is going to hurt somebody, I mean, even a kid would tell you, you shoot the tires, you don’t shoot the driver."

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/0 ... ocrat-rep/

She says "even a kid would tell you that" - Well I hope my kid would not say that because I hope my kid is not that stupid when it comes to not only firearms and Ballistics, but tire construction , momentum, and a lot of other extremely basic and irrefutable elements of physics.

Stupid people not only vote, they get ELECTED.

And it's not just being stupid in the sense we normally think of it; When discussing the ICE shooting about a year ago, a friend who has both a medical degree and an engineering degree said the agent should have shot the tire out when Renee Good was coming at him.

1. the vehicle was so close to him that the tire was down towards his feet with many layers of metal between his muzzle and the tire
2. guessing where the tire is under the fender and other vehicle parts makes hitting the tire unlikely, even if the bullet gets through the intervening metal
3. a 9mm, 10mm, or even 45 cal bullet through the tread of a tire will let the air out - slowly - not affecting the vehicle travel for many many yards
4. a vehicle with a going-flat tire is still a deadly and steerable weapon, and even with a fully flat tire, it is still capable of running over a person
5. so trying to shoot the tire is very unlikely to accomplish anything other than possibly cause a ricochet into innocent bystanders
6. the individual trying to kill the officer is the problem, not the vehicle, and the individual is still a potential threat even if the vehicle is neutralized
7. even killing the driver, which is difficult, but easier and more likely to help than shooting the tire, may not save the officer's life
8. but an individual violent and irrational enough to kill an officer is a danger even after he/she runs over the officer, so needs neutralized

and

9. some people are just destined to F.A.F.O.

But explaining this to my MD/PhD friend didn't convince her of anything... "Well, I still think he should have shot out the tire..."

Liberals may be cute and cuddly, but they don't do facts, they don't do science, they don't do math, they don't do economics, they don't do history, and they think it's ok to lie, censor, defraud, and if those fail, use violence, to attain their political goals. The are masters of 'projection' - such as when they accuse the conservatives of being 'greedy capitalists' who worship money. Yet the majority of the philanthropists I know are 'conservatives', and it is the liberals who seem to think that life-success and happiness is only affected by money, which is why they think taking it away from the Musks and Trumps, and giving it to the 'poor and downtrodden' is such a noble goal (as long as they themselves get a cut and some side-benefits of course) that it justifies any means necessary, including socialism, communism, or totalitarianism, to accomplish. It is THEY who worship money and exhibit greed. Meanwhile liberals claim the moral high-ground with pretense of being 'spiritual' and 'intellectual', when it is the conservatives who truly value the moral/spiritual/intellectual growth as a measure of life-success.

Anyway, the "just shoot the tire" argument is so ridiculous I can't imagine she could say it with a straight face.
4.

[Walt]

Anyone who has lowered themselves to watching police chases on YouTube knows that even with 2 or more tires flat, the bad guys still drive on the rims, sometimes exceeding 100 mph and having enough control of their vehicles to lead the cops for miles.

[jeepnik]

Too many people get their tactics from Hollywood. Shooting tires or shooting guns out of hands is pure Hollywood, a good way to get dead.

On the other hand in almost all westerns where the bad guys are chasing the stage coach or the indians are chasing the cover wagon they get it wrong. If you have team of horses, be it a 4 up or six up, they show the bad guys shooting at the people. In reality just shoot one horse, a much bigger target. The resulting wreck will likely kill or at least seriously injure the rest of the team, damage the wagon, and very possibly kill the folks in the wagon. One of the leaders would be best, but any one will do.

[piller]

Shooting the tires is becoming the same old stuff as saying a girl cannot get pregnant on her period.

[AJMD429]

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I'm not surprised when some stupid journalist or politician says 'shoot the tires', but I've heard so many college educated people say it, even people educated in the science fields...!

Of course those of us who grew up sensibly had experience with firearms by the time we were in junior high school, and certainly most of us I had experience helping change tires or using discarded tires to build things, and knew how tough they were. Those of us who grew up in a rural area probably handled and likely even shot quite a few tires that weren't on vehicles, and probably a few of us shot tires that were on vehicles - for all sorts of reasons. Maybe it was an old farm trailer that had a tire that kept going flat and was needing replaced, so we inflated it and shot it out of curiosity just to see how quickly it would go flat. That happened to me, and my Uncle helped me with the 'experiment', because he wanted to be sure I only shot the TIRE, and not the rim.

However, even if NONE of those real-world educational things had happened that involved real guns, real tires, and real bullet-holes in those real-tires - if we graduated High School, we had to take some semblance of science, and that would have had at least basic physics, and we would have discussed things like 'inertia' and 'horsepower' and so on. We also sooner or later would have begun to drive an automobile, and aside from just sitting in the driver's seat and gazing out the window and at the dashboard, we would have looked under the hood, under the wheelwells, and had a feel for the design, where the metal was, where the wheels/tires/ were, how steering worked, and so-on.

So even for those who didn't take auto-mechanics or go deer hunting, there certainly was exposure in High School that was sufficient to make it clear that 'shoot the tire' is a nonsensical cartoonish concept.

But still you get these college-educated people, often even in the 'sciences', with their MD's and PhD's and high-falutin' smarts in whatever their field of study was, and they STILL say "the agent should just have shot her tire". The ONLY way I can explain that is Trump Derangement Syndrome - they are so psychopathic about hating Orange Man that anything associated with his administration is deemed 'bad' by definition, and whatever comic-book Roadrunner or Tom&Jerry 'alternative' they can come up with is what they think SHOULD have happened instead of reality.

They do the same with 'climate change'. Take real things (climate, and weather), conflate them so there is always an imminent 'crisis', and tell us all our only salvation is to enrich them with money and power. The only difference between the 'climate scientists' and the shamans of antiquity is that the shamans at least had pretty costumes, and back then they asked for gold, power, and virgins. I guess virgins are passe now.

[piller]

I have asked a couple of people who said to shoot the tires if they can do it. Not a single one can hit well enough on an FIB human torso target to even hit a tire.

[AJMD429]

I have asked a couple of people who said to shoot the tires if they can do it. Not a single one can hit well enough on an FIB human torso target to even hit a tire.

They're the same ones who insist that a 115 pound 70 year old woman should have just shot her 275 pound 35 year old rapist who is stoked on meth "in the arm" instead of the sternum.

[jeepnik]

Well, I suppose it you happened to be carrying a saw, with AP too boot) you could reliably shoot tires out. The problem is you have several thousand pounds of plastic and steel moving in a direction. You need considerable force to change the direction. So unless you have distance and time enough that the force the flat tire exerts on the vehicle you won't have a lot of effect. But hey, Hollywood can cause a catastrophic decompression of an airliner with a single .357 diameter hole in the fuselage.