Veteran Cop Says Biden's Bad News For Public Safety

Sgt. Betsy Brantner Smith has 29 years of law enforcement experience, and currently serves as a firearms trainer, so as you can imagine she has some pretty strong opinions about Joe Biden’s plan to train cops to “aim for the leg” when using their firearms. Sgt. Smith, who’s also a spokesperson for the National Police Association, says Biden’s bad idea is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to policies that threaten public safety and the right to keep and bear arms, and she joins me on today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co. to discuss why she believes cities are going to become more dangerous places if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are in charge.

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As Brantner Smith points out, Biden’s intent to force police to shoot for the leg when they use their firearms to stop a threat is an awful idea that could lead to disastrous unintended consequences for both officers and innocent civilians. As I mentioned in my last post on the subject, there are good reasons why both law enforcement and civilians are taught to aim for center mass when using their gun in self-defense or in defense of another.

Joe Biden seems to think that if police officers aim for the leg, the lethal force of a firearm is suddenly somehow less lethal. This is fundamentally wrong on multiple levels; the femoral artery runs through the leg and severing the artery can cause someone to bleed to death in a matter of minutes, aiming for a smaller, moving target like a leg is more likely to result in a missed shot and the potential for a friendly fire injury to another officer or a civilian, the officer firing to stop the threat and aiming for the leg instead of the chest is an ineffective and dangerous way to do so, just to name a few.

Brantner Smith’s concern over Biden’s public safety policies goes deeper than his cluelessness about firearms, however. She fears that a Biden/Harris administration would paint a rhetorical target on the backs of law enforcement, which would make them less likely to engage in the kind of proactive policing that’s needed to reduce violent crime. We may already be seeing this is take place in some Democrat-controlled cities and suburbs.

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HotAir’s Jazz Shaw, for example, highlighted a couple of cases in Aurora, Colorado that have left residents wondering if police are backing off from making arrests of violent suspects because of “social justice policing.”

We’ve already seen two instances where the police in Aurora, Colorado have “stood down” when facing violent felons. The first incident involved a guy with a lengthy rap sheet who was exposing himself to young girls, destroying property, and threatening harm to the residents of an apartment complex. The cops stood down twice in two days rather than taking him into custody. The more recent incident involved a child abuse suspect with multiple warrants and who was on parole, who barricaded himself inside his home with one of his children and some firearms. The cops walked away that time also and the perpetrator is still on the loose.

As Jazz notes, in Aurora violent crimes are soaring, while arrests are down nearly 50%. That’s a recipe for disaster, but Brantner Smith similar statistics could be seen across the country if Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have the chance to “reimagine” policing in the coming months.

Be sure to check out the entire interview with Sgt. Betsy Brantner Smith in the video window above, and stick around for more news afterwards, including a closer look at an armed citizen in San Francisco and a Denver man who recently received a slap on the wrist for his role in a gang shooting in the Mile High City.

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