> 300m guns in circulation... what wonder that people get shot. [Edit: what wonder I get downvoted, kind of expected this]
...have you seen how well armed the State is? You'd be a fool not to own a cannon or two.
The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system
81–90 of 145 posts
Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system
#82One problem among many is that US police are both allowed and trained to use deadly force very quickly, when under any kind of threat. German police will often (successfully!) shoot to disable, not to kill, even when confronted by someone armed with a knife. It's a common American meme that when police fire a gun, the only rational decision is to shoot to kill, but it's just not true.
> shoot to disable
Proponents of this usually have no experience firing a weapon, let alone while in distress. It's nearly impossible to disable-but-not-kill a person by shooting them.
> even when confronted by someone armed with a knife
Again, usually someone who is not aware of how deadly a knife really is.
Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're low in the sense that any given person is unlikely to be personally murdered. They're not low in the sense that the impact of the crime on the community can't be felt. I used to live in Wilmington, DE, where 0.038% of people in the city get murdered each year. Vanishingly small odds, to be sure, but high enough where in the year I lived there several scary incidents "hit close to home." There was someone gunn…
I agree. When looking at stats like these, they hide the fact that homicides are not distributed equally across a country. The US has a high murder rate, but it is very localized not only in certain cities, but certain parts of cities. Outside of those areas the homicide rate is vanishingly low.
I wouldn't say "vanishingly low." In the wealthy suburban county where I grew up, the homicide rate was roughly comparable to London. Four U.S. states have a murder rate lower than the U.K.: http://libertarianhome.co.uk/2012/12/uk-murder-rate-higher-t.... Aside from Hawaii, those states have almost no major urban centers to speak of, in comparison to the U.K. which is dense and urban.
Alabama, Mississippi, North Dakota, and South Carolina are heavily rural with few major urban centers to speak of, yet have 3-5x the murder rate of the U.K.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1....
Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system
#84These people are trained to take on murders, yet we expect them to nab every bit of weed they can find in a culture where it's weird if you don't own a gun. What do you expect them to do?
If you want a better society pass better laws. That means funding rational candidates for office.
Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system
#85I've been reading the Economist for 20+ years now and it never ceases to amaze me that while there is some excellent journalism, they really don't get the United States. Statements like "If America did not have 300m guns in circulation, much of this would change." show their bias, rather than having anything to do with the way the US turns everything - drugs, immigration, poverty - into a policing issue infused with…
True. Gun control generally is something a lot of Brits just default to thinking is a necessary thing, while not actually having considered it in much depth. (This is largely a reflex to the Dunblane incident, and they can't understand why anyone would disagree with the resulting course of action). The thing is both sides are kind of wrong. London has far more gun crime than much of the US does (personally I ran into…
"London has far more gun crime than much of the US does"
Can we get a figure to back that up please? The MET places gun crime figures in greater London at 1570 (http://www.met.police.uk/crimefigures/) with a population of approx 8 million. Which American populations would you compare this to and what are their figures?
I've spent a significant amount of time in London and have never once run into any firearms incidents. It would be interesting to me to see the data behind this.
Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dont know for sure but i think they typically come from contraband cigarettes (where taxes have not been paid and, as others point out, without required license). It'd be like selling whiskey shots on a street corner.
Strangely not illegal: making and marketing a toxic product that has killed literally tens of millions of people.
Alcohol?
Truth is, pretty much everything is toxic at some point of consumption or another. Deciding where to draw the line is not black & white to me
Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system
#87How about also ending grand juries altogether (or at least in cases of potential homicide)? It's obvious that the people on the grand juries are not qualified to asses anything and it's an archaic system not employed by any other country ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_jury ). In addition, the prosecutors' powers need to be curtailed. Such crimes should always be charged, regardless of what the prosecutor wants.…
How exactly does eliminating grand juries help with out-of-control law enforcement? Grand juries are a safeguard for the accused . Do they work in practice? No. But eliminating them concedes the problem to the prosecution entirely. You're not the first person I've seen suggest this, and I'm baffled by the logic.
They're most likely thinking about it from the flipside: grand juries rarely (if ever) vote to indict police officers involved in fatal incidents.
Not that it changes the point of your argument, just guessing where the motivation for that statement comes from.
Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system
#88One problem among many is that US police are both allowed and trained to use deadly force very quickly, when under any kind of threat. German police will often (successfully!) shoot to disable, not to kill, even when confronted by someone armed with a knife. It's a common American meme that when police fire a gun, the only rational decision is to shoot to kill, but it's just not true.
> shoot to disable Proponents of this usually have no experience firing a weapon, let alone while in distress. It's nearly impossible to disable-but-not-kill a person by shooting them. > even when confronted by someone armed with a knife Again, usually someone who is not aware of how deadly a knife really is.
> It's nearly impossible to disable-but-not-kill a person by shooting them.
Its not really nearly impossible to disable-but-not-kill a person by shooting them (it happens all the time, actually), it is just hard to do that reliably compared to disable-without-regard-to-killing, which is why the general rule is don't shoot unless willing to kill, and then aim center of mass -- not because hitting center of mass is the most likely place to disable or kill (though its pretty close -- the head is better for either, though), but because missing center of mass makes you more likely to at least disable than missing pretty much any place else you might aim to disable.
Given the fairly high cost of failing to disable in any situation where shooting is justified at all, adding a "but not kill" constraint is generally an unacceptable risk.
Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
When people fixate on the untaxed ciagarettes thing, what's often going on is an implicit assumption that once someone has an interaction with the police, it's just inevitable that the police will summarily execute them. That's stupid. We can debate the laws too, but you should be demanding police that enforce the laws with due process and respond to threats proportionally. If you're thinking, "well, once the police…
When police fixate on the criminal thing, what's often going on is an implicit assumption that once someone has an interaction with a suspect, it's just inevitable that the suspect will attack. See how that works? As for the rest, go look up Warren vs. District of Columbia . The police are not there to serve and protect.
Then programmers are not there to write good software, firefighters are not there to fight fires, doctors are not there to cure diseases, etc.
There is a huge difference between being "there" to do something, and going to prison or paying out a massive judgement because you weren't successful.
Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then you run into the problem of innocent, or at least justified, people having their financial lives destroyed defending against murder charges. I don't think it's as simple as "if someone dies there needs to be a trial".
> I don't think it's as simple as "if someone dies there needs to be a trial". But there almost always is in reality, if there's a reasonable suspect. The only exception seems to be with law enforcement officers.
Not really. Iff it makes it to the Grand Jury, then what you said is true.
Often it never makes it that far. In many self-defense cases involving non-police civilians the district attorney will decide that no crime was committed and that will be the end of it.
One quick example from the top of a google search: http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/janitor-wont-be-charged-i...