Thread: DHS Supplier Provides Shooting Targets of American Gun Owners

Company produces cardboard cut-outs of “non-traditional threats”: Pregnant women, elderly & children
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
February 19, 2013

A provider of “realistic” shooting targets to the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies has created a line of “non-traditional threat” targets that include pregnant women, mothers in playgrounds and elderly American gun owners.

Law Enforcement Targets, Inc. is a 21-year designer and full service provider of training targets for the DHS, the Justice Department and thousands of law enforcement agencies throughout the country.

The company’s website offers a line of “No More Hesitation” targets ”designed to give officers the experience of dealing with deadly force shooting scenarios with subjects that are not the norm during training.” The targets are, “meant to help the transition for officers who are faced with these highly unusual targets for the first time.”

The targets include “pregnant woman threat,” “older man with shotgun,” “older man in home with shotgun,” “older woman with gun,” “young school aged girl,” “young mother on playground,” and “little boy with real gun.”

Why are top training target suppliers for the government supplying the likes of the DHS with “non-traditional threat” targets of children, pregnant women, mothers in playgrounds, and elderly American gun owners unless there is a demand for such items?

This is particularly alarming given the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has purchased roughly 2 billion rounds of ammunition over the course of the last year, enough to wage a near 30 year war.

In comparison, during the height of active battle operations in Iraq, US soldiers used 5.5 million rounds of ammunition a month.

The DHS also purchased no less than 7,000 fully automatic assault rifles last September, labeling them “Personal Defense Weapons.”

The fact that targets of armed pregnant women, children, mothers in playgrounds, and American gun owners in general are being represented as “non traditional threats” “for the first time” is deeply concerning given the admitted preparations for civil unrest undertaken by Homeland Security as well as other federal agencies.

A leaked US Army Military Police training manual for “Civil Disturbance Operations” also outlines how military assets are to be used domestically to quell riots, confiscate firearms and even kill Americans on U.S. soil during mass civil unrest.

This also dovetails with the continuing characterization of Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists by DHS-funded studies.

The US military trained last year to take on another “unusual target” – zombies – which some fear is just a ruse to get troops used to engaging crowds of people with deadly force. As Alex Jones documented in his film Police State 2000, numerous “urban warfare” training drills stretching back well over a decade have revolved around incarcerating and battling the American people on domestic soil.

See the other “non-traditional threats” that are being provided in the form of shooting targets to the DHS and thousands of law enforcement agencies below.

Note: The website containing these targets has crashed since this article was published, but this graphic shows a screenshot of the page with the URL visible.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

» DHS Supplier Provides Shooting Targets of American Gun Owners Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

This is truly one of the worst things Ive seen yet in my life. How anyone could be comfortable putting bullets through any of these is beyond me.

W

Of course, the whole point is to desensitize law enforcement to shooting women and children, threat or not. Totally disgusting.

Notice each is listed as "hostile."

The people in these targets represent the people in America that are demographically the least likely to engage in crimes against others and least likely to engage in violence against police officers.

They also represent the people most likely to be victimized by criminals.

Everyone needs to think of what it would take for them to pull the trigger on one of these targets and furthermore in real life.

Picture in your mind pulling the trigger on a gun and blowing the head off of a young mother protecting her children in front of a swing set.

These targets are not to train. These targets are a psychological test to determine who can be counted on to kill innocent gun owning Americans defending themselves in their own homes for God's sake!

W

Stereotyping and depicting white americans as gun toting targets is both Disgusting and Offensive. Ive already written this company which needs to be run out of business NOW...

Story update. This company is asking for feedback on Facebook about these targets. Here is my message to them....

Our law enforcement officers should be taught to hesitate for any of the targets depicted where women and children are encountered in their own homes or yards! Our police officers assume risks with their job and if they ever encounter anything like what I see in these "targets" which are clearly designed to desensitize officers to killing women and children, they had better speak to the suspect, seek cover, retreat, or all of the above! If an officer ever shoots a child with a toy gun again, and he trained on these targets I hope the family sues you all into oblivion. The women and children in these targets represent the least likely criminal demographics in the country and the least likely scenario of anyone that would harm an officer. If you came in my back yard and found my wife with a gun on you in front of our children, you had better hesitate for several reasons. One, it won't matter what the courts do to you if you put a bullet in someone I love represented in these "targets" and two, Americans are going to put their collective feet so far up your rear ends if you ever start shooting people like those in these pictures. Training officers not to hesitate when encountering citizens, women, and children, in or near their homes is beyond the pale! If it is ever determined that DHS, or DOJ, or any law enforcement in America is using these targets to litmus which officer can or cannot be counted on to fire on women and children in or near their homes then some heads are going to roll. I am a loyal and patriotic American citizen that loves my country very much, and I have put in a lot of thought about these targets and even spoken with friends that are police officers. These targets are wrong on every level and no officer should ever practice or be encouraged to quickly put a round through a child or woman even if hesitating increases the risk to their safety. In this case, the safety of our citizens is more important than the safety of our officers and the damage your targets, and whoever the sick and evil bastards that ordered them are, are doing to America tonight is off the charts. Your company and the agencies that have been ordering these targets have a hell of a lot of explaining and apologizing to do and I suggest you do it whole heatedly and quickly and you announce that you are discontinuing these products. You have a good section of America tonight giving serious consideration to the possibility that our own government is becoming a threat to the people instead of protectors of the people. If you put me on a range and told me I had to practice on those targets to have or keep my job, I would refuse to put rounds on those targets and would march into the nearest TV station to report my resignation and the reasons. With DHS purchasing 1.6 billion rounds of ammo and Obama and Napolitano trying to work towards full gun confiscation, your targets encouraging police to quickly gun down women and children are causing extreme damage to public trust in law enforcement. I hereby call on Law Enforcement Targets Inc. to share with the public who ordered these offensive targets, where officers are putting rounds into these targets, and announce the discontinuation of these targets immediately!

https://www.facebook.com/LawEnforcem...14852535197835

Law Enforcement Agencies "Requested" Targets of Pregnant Women for Shooting Practice

February 20, 2013 01:10 PM EST
5 people recommend this | comments: 7
Law enforcement agencies "requested" shooting targets of pregnant women from an organization that also provides "no hesitation," or "NMH" targets to the Department of Homeland Security depicting "children, elderly gun owners and mothers in playground."

In a shocking call to the company as reported by Paul Joseph Watson of InfoWars, Blaine Cooper asked a representative whether she was concerned about selling images of pregnant women as targets. She noted that "unfortunately our world is made up of people, pregnant or otherwise, that are gun owners not for the right reasons," adding that the targets were used to "train police officers". The representative seemed a bit taken by surprise over the scrutiny of the "no hesitation" target and explained that the pregnant woman target was "requested...for training."


Listen to the conversation here:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=z0rUNVsgxgU#!" data-cke-saved-href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=z0rUNVsgxgU#!" >

Mike Riggs of Reason reports that the "marketing team" at the company, Law Enforcement Targets, Inc. sent a statement that said in part, "The goal of NMH is to break that stereotype on the range, regardless of how slim the chances are of encountering a real life scenario that involves a child, pregnant woman, etc. If that initial hesitation time can be cut down due to range experience, the officer and community are better served." Riggs points out that the company "has landed $5.5 million worth of contracts with the federal government." In light of the scrutiny, the organization posted on Facebook "inviting commentary and criticism."


One certainly cannot fault the company for providing the targets; however, it is a bit concerning that the police would "request" photos of pregnant women for their shooting practice.

Photo Source: TheBlaze
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Their choices are not very diverse and appear to me to be very specific.

Shooting Children, Pregnant Women And Elderly People Should Require Hesitation

February 21, 2013 by Sam Rolley

Police officers in the field face an array of threats to their safety on a daily basis; sometimes these threats warrant the use of deadly force against a suspect. Unfortunately, with the advent of the Internet the civilian public has learned in recent years that many officers throughout the Nation are quick to abuse power or jump the gun, so to speak, in using deadly force with alarming frequency.
Reports flooded the Internet yesterday about a series of paper targets produced by Law Enforcement Targets Inc. that depict non-traditional threats that law enforcement officers may encounter in the field. Below are images of the company’s targets included in the series “No More Hesitation”:


The company has secured more than $5 million in Federal money, mostly from the Department of Defense ($3,124,371) and the Department of Homeland Security ($1,913,489). The company also does business with the Department of Energy ($150,877), the Department of State ($133,812) and the Department of Veterans Affairs ($51,822).
The Moral Lib*eral’s senior edi*tor, T.F. Stern, a retired police offi*cer, penned a column pointing out that the “No More Hesitation” targets must exist for a reason and that the reason likely amounts to demand, as more law enforcement agencies adopt the mantra that anyone who isn’t a cop is a threat.
Stern laments:

There’s something wrong, seriously wrong here. If we start to desensitize law enforcement officers, have them disregard humanity, to feel nothing’s wrong in shooting a pregnant lady or an old man with a shotgun inside his own home…then what kind of society have we become? How will police officers react after they no longer believe they are part of the society which they have been charged with policing, when they have become used to shooting pregnant ladies and old men?…
… Odd as it may sound coming from an old retired cop, if police recognition skills, the red flags that alert to danger were delayed for a moment, so be it; I’d rather get shot than develop the attitude that all or even most of my neighbors were a constant threat.

Stern’s mention of reaction time was probably in reference to a statement issued by Law Enforcement Targets Inc. to Reason, the publication that first broke the story: “This hesitation time may be only seconds but that is not acceptable when officers are losing their lives in these same situations. The goal of NMH is to break that stereotype on the range, regardless of how slim the chances are of encountering a real life scenario that involves a child, pregnant woman, etc. If that initial hesitation time can be cut down due to range experience, the officer and community are better served.”
The company also confirmed that law enforcement agencies have requested “No More Hesitation” targets specifically in the past.
While it is reasonable to believe that, over the course of a career, a police officer could encounter a pregnant shooter in a nursery or a boy younger than 10 with a weapon, it isn’t highly likely.
A report entitled “A Critical Analysis of Police Shootings Under Ambiguous Circumstances”published by The Police Policy Studies Council in 2008 gives some insight to the “critical microbehavioral issues that seem to have a significant cumulative effect on an officer’s decision to employ deadly force.” One interesting, and predictable, caveat in the report is that police often decide whether to shoot based upon visual characteristics of a suspect:

Officers/deputies are more likely to shoot when the subject is young (rather than old), in punk dress (rather than business dress)…

So, training officers to identify children, the elderly and pregnant women in the same threat category as young men in punk garb could have an impact on their willingness to open fire on members of the former group whether armed or not.
In a study conducted as part of the report, which involved using a video screen portraying actors — either armed or unarmed — turning in an officer’s direction, it is revealed why shaving reaction time almost to the point of “shoot first, ask questions later” can be a bad idea:

…[S]ince the officer’s decision to fire at the suspect predates the subject being shot .25 seconds or more, the officer can (and easily does) shoot the suspect as he/she is raising his/her hands into a “surrender” position. This was a frequent and somewhat unanticipated outcome in many of the shootings that involved “unarmed” suspects; suspects getting shot while “surrendering.” The officer typically has 1/3 of a second or less (from a critical juncture in each scenario) to decide whether or not to employ deadly force, and then to apply that force, before he/she risks being “shot.”

The results of the study point out what is already common knowledge: Regardless of an officer’s oath to “serve and protect,” the basic human instinct of self-preservation takes precedence in the face of a perceived threat.
The dangers faced by officers in the field should not be discounted, nor, though, should common sense in the name of faster draw time. Take, for instance, the overwhelming number of recent reports of educators throughout the Nation becoming shrieking alarmists at the sight of elementary-school students having pretend shootouts or bringing toy guns (even Hello Kitty bubble guns) to school in the wake of the tragic Sandy Hook shooting.
What happens if school officials call police the next time they suspect a child of having a toy gun? What happens if the child is wearing a “punk” T-shirt and acting defiant? And what happens if an officer trained to shoot a child without hesitation arrives on scene?
It may sound like a series of ridiculous considerations. But many people would likely think it ridiculous for officers to need to train with targets portraying pregnant women, children and elderly people in the first place.

Shooting Children, Pregnant Women And Elderly People Should Require Hesitation : Personal Liberty Digest™

Is Your Local Police Department Using Pictures of Pregnant Women and Children for Target Practice?

By Mike Riggs

What if I told you police in your town could desensitize themselves to the idea of shooting an (armed) child, pregnant woman, or young mother, for just a couple of bucks? The "No More Hesitation" series from Law Enforcement Targets Inc. offers exactly that. For less than 99 cents per target, police can shoot at real-life images "designed to give officers the experience of dealing with deadly force shooting scenarios with subjects that are not the norm during training."

Update: The marketing team at Law Enforcement Targets, Inc. sends along this helpful explanation for the "No More Hesitation" series:

"The subjects in NMH targets were chosen in order to give officers the experience of dealing with deadly force shooting scenarios with subjects that are not the norm during training. I found while speaking with officers and trainers in the law enforcement community that there is a hesitation on the part of cops when deadly force is required on subjects with atypical age, frailty or condition (one officer explaining that he enlarged photos of his own kids to use as targets so that he would not be caught off guard with such a drastically new experience while on duty). This hesitation time may be only seconds but that is not acceptable when officers are losing their lives in these same situations. The goal of NMH is to break that stereotype on the range, regardless of how slim the chances are of encountering a real life scenario that involves a child, pregnant woman, etc. If that initial hesitation time can be cut down due to range experience, the officer and community are better served."

Read More Here: Is Your Local Police Department Using Pictures of Pregnant Women and Children for Target Practice? - 12160