Not just to shoot, but to “shoot dead.” According to YourDailyGerman, "It shifts [verbs] from”doing the activity” to “reaching a goal by doing the activity.“
Right.
Maybe nothing to be proud of, but we Germans have the full spectra:
“auf etwas/jemanden schießen” = shoot at (non indication of htting or not)
“etwas/jemanden anschießen” =shoot, hit but not kill
“etwas/jemanden erschießen” = shoot and kill
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I love the way Germans use prefixes to make verbs do things English usually has to spell out. So, “anschiessen” reads a little like “trying” to kill, “an” being used to indicate starting an action (Hammer), so by implication, intentions. Prepositionality seems to be a trait of the German mind.
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Even in English, saying “they shot at us” does not convey the same meaning as saying “they shot us”. The first means that they didn’t hit us, the second means that they did.
I’m trying to think if we have a way of saying “to shoot and kill” in a single verb, and the closest I can get is “execute”, but that’s more generic and doesn’t apply just to shooting someone. So I don’t know if English has a direct verb equivalent to “erschießen”.