The Human Toll of Flashbangs • Hacker News Board

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#231

Post by exprL » Wed, Jan 14, 2015, 11:04 PM UTC

bmelton wrote: post #197

exprL wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This interests me (in a slightly off-topic way): do the soldiers really switch their service weapons to a semi-automatic model in order to patrol, or are all the rifles within the military police (etc.) semi-automatic only?

I suspect that you're mistaken on what semi-automatic means. Basically all of the rifles likely to be carried by law enforcement are semi-automatic, except for sharp-shooters, who my carry a single-shot with a floated barrel. Semi-automatic is not automatic, and has no burst or rapid-fire mechanisms. All semi-automatic rifles shoot one bullet for each pull of the trigger, and in 2015, that's the norm for just about e…

The comment I responded to said that in addition to law enforcement, it's common for soldiers to patrol the streets, too, at times.

If I had to guess, I'd say they would prefer using the weapons they are accustomed to, which are probably not the same that LEO's use. Now I don't know much about the French military, but where I come from, I doubt the military even has appreciable amounts of semi-automatic rifles, as even the military police always use the same assault rifle everybody else does.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#232

Post by bmelton » Wed, Jan 14, 2015, 11:38 PM UTC

exprL wrote: post #231

bmelton wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that you're mistaken on what semi-automatic means. Basically all of the rifles likely to be carried by law enforcement are semi-automatic, except for sharp-shooters, who my carry a single-shot with a floated barrel. Semi-automatic is not automatic, and has no burst or rapid-fire mechanisms. All semi-automatic rifles shoot one bullet for each pull of the trigger, and in 2015, that's the norm for just about e…

The comment I responded to said that in addition to law enforcement, it's common for soldiers to patrol the streets, too, at times. If I had to guess, I'd say they would prefer using the weapons they are accustomed to, which are probably not the same that LEO's use. Now I don't know much about the French military, but where I come from, I doubt the military even has appreciable amounts of semi-automatic rifles, as ev…

Ah, my apologies. I read the comment backwards from what it was, so thanks for the clarification.

That said, I have no idea what the French Miliary use. I would guess a lot of H&K stuff. In the U.S. at least, swapping out from an M16 to an AR-15 is pretty natural, but I have no way of knowing what the transition is from or to in France.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#233

Post by base2 » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 12:42 AM UTC

algorithmsRcool wrote: post #192

tinco wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being irrational now. Of course cops need to be and feel safe. They are just humans, humans equipped with guns. Anything you can do to make sure they don't fire those guns prematurely should be done, after all, they're for protecting us. Calling it an armored tank is exaggerating. It's basically a mobile barrier that can carry a bunch of officers. There's all kinds of nice stuff you can do with them, and frank…

I want to contend this point strongly. My home city (approx 200k people) does not have gang activity, we don't have drugs or prostitution or muggings or car-jackings as major problems (or problems at all). There are very very few parts of my city that i would feel threatened walking alone down the street at 3am. All of them on the outskirts of the city and in swamp areas. And yet the city has acquired a ex-military a…

I think the usage of the word military to describe equipment is getting convoluted. I still have an old MILITARY 2 piece canvas tent(with the little poles and stakes) It's certainly ex-military but in terms of offensive capabilities I think you might be able to cripple and enemy due to laughing at you when you try to whack them with a tent pole piece. Give that to a police department and it's still considered Ex-Military. Canteens? Military too...

In most situations a rifle is going to be able to penetrate through almost every part of a police/civilian vehicle. If someone is shooting at you the only proactive thing you can do to keep your self safe is to return fire to either take the enemy out of the fight or suppress them.

If you have a vehicle that can stop small arms fire the immediate need to start shooting back is slowed down to a degree.

They also make nice rolling barriers in case you need to move to someone that is injured with out the need for suppressing fire.

Also psychologically it slows people down due to the fact that they will have less of a chance to be able to harm/pose a threat to police.

On the other hand if they start using turret mounted automatic weapons such a MK19 then that's going to be a problem.

When folks throw around escalation when bringing in an armored vehicle I in my mind I'm thinking the bad guy is going to get MAD due to having a harder time killing a police officer.

I guess we can all take a vote with the knowledge that police get killed in the line of duty. Let's pretend we are all police here. Who want's to be the last cop killed before we achieve societal and world peace?

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#234

Post by base2 » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 12:52 AM UTC

cmdkeen wrote: post #139

pjc50 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK police routinely deal with this by talking the person down, use of TASER, or baton strike. http://www.quora.com/How-do-British-police-officers-manage-t... (There used to be an excellent police blogger who talked about doing this from firsthand experience, but he was de-anonymised and his blog taken down).

As a former UK police officer I can assure you that if armed police officers came across someone with a drawn knife at least one firearm would be aimed at them. One of my officer safety trainers was a qualified close protection officer (i.e. bodygaurd) who ran through one of their scenarios whereby someone with a knife faces off across the diagonal length of a basketball court sized room with someone with a holstered…

I can remember the proper name for them but it's along the line of Armed Emergency Response Teams. Watching tapes and a short training exercise the amount of trigger discipline and weapons handling is amazing.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#235

Post by girvo » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 12:58 AM UTC

snsr wrote: post #169

sukilot wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As horrible as police brutality it, it still directly hurts less than ~20% of society (more in some really bad areas, less in others). So only those, plus the few percent of others who have a sense of compassion, are opposed to the brutality. The rest are either ignorant or complicit or in cognitir dissonance.

> As horrible as police brutality it, it still directly hurts less than ~20% of society. So only those, plus the few percent of others who have a sense of compassion, are opposed to the brutality. Your unsupported position is disgusting. It hurts all of us when some are beyond reproach for brutalizing and murdering the most vulnerable in our society.

It's a shame the parent is being downvoted, as I read it they're not condoning that reaction, merely commenting on it. And they're right: that's exactly how the masses react to things like this. I wish more people reacted like you did, and I want to help build a world where that's the case.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#236

Post by base2 » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 12:59 AM UTC

ecdavis wrote: post #222

Rainymood wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is the problem with guns, imagine if the police didn't have any guns and they would have to approach him by first. Obviously they outnumber him but know (unless he has a lethal weapon on him) there shouldn't be any lethal force. Guns escalate the situation way too quickly to a life threatening one ...

Police in Australia carry guns and yet suspects being shot dead is rare enough that when it happens it tends to be headline news (often nationally). Perhaps part of this is that civilians in Australia are far less likely to be carrying weapons themselves, so police do not have to be as cautious as in the US. Ultimately, I don't believe the problem lies with the firearms but with the culture. As an Australian visiting…

You would be amazed at the difference in reaction time if someone steps out of a car with a weapon drawn and the time it takes to bring up your own weapon.

If the US police were so gun happy I would expect way more people to be shot per year/day.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#237

Post by base2 » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 1:07 AM UTC

exprL wrote: post #183

antimagic wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, French police carry sidearms... And if that's not enough, during periods of elevated risk of a terrorist attack, you even get soldiers walking around with semi-automatic rifles in squads of three.

This interests me (in a slightly off-topic way): do the soldiers really switch their service weapons to a semi-automatic model in order to patrol, or are all the rifles within the military police (etc.) semi-automatic only?

Most military rifles are semi-automatic. Even with a fairly tame AR style rifle using automatic fire makes it a little harder to quickly engage targets and the recoil can be a little un-predictable even when just using burst fire.

In short most military rifles are single shot due to the fact that you may engage targets out to a few hundred yard to a couple of meters.

tldr; Automatic rifles for military applications, not all that great.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#238

Post by base2 » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 1:15 AM UTC

antimagic wrote: post #201

exprL wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This interests me (in a slightly off-topic way): do the soldiers really switch their service weapons to a semi-automatic model in order to patrol, or are all the rifles within the military police (etc.) semi-automatic only?

It's not military police, it's just plain ol' soldiers. Which kinda freaks me out, because I spend my time wondering exactly what their rules of engagement are, and how well they have been trained in them. At least they always have the safety engaged when I check...

Solders for the most part get much more time and training using firearms than police who tend to have a much wider range of duties to perform.

Most NATO militaries have increased the amount of training in urban environments. I'm pretty sure(or overly optimistic) they have decent training/drilling experience as the political backlash from having soldiers get way to aggressive in terms of resorting to military tactics vs police tactics.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#239

Post by base2 » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 1:30 AM UTC

fapjacks wrote: post #128

mattstreet wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proper military use of flashbangs is to roll them towards the corner of a room or doorway. Not to chuck them into the room where they could land anywhere.

That's not true. The proper military use of flashbangs is to throw them into a room (to land wherever, usually the center of the room) and then run in and murder everyone inside. You are overstating the precision involved.

Why does everyone seem to derive the usage of flashbangs from something like Counter Strike. Knowing the room layout/size as well as what kind stuff is in the room is never a sure thing. I'm going to assure you that the most common place you are going to find an open area is closer to the entry point due to the need for people to enter and exit through a door.

I guess its a moot point to try and explain the concepts that are common to almost every CQCish type training out there.

The point is you don't throw a flash-bang and grenade at full power. Knowing where the center of the room is and even if that's the best place for it to land is not the easiest thing in the world.

Nearside corners people, most people that are under a threat will be closer to the corners than the middle of the room and the corners that will give you the most problems to due the amount of time it takes to clear and how quickly they can ruining your day is throwing stun grenades to get effects on the nearside corners.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#240

Post by ecdavis » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 1:32 AM UTC

base2 wrote: post #236

ecdavis wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police in Australia carry guns and yet suspects being shot dead is rare enough that when it happens it tends to be headline news (often nationally). Perhaps part of this is that civilians in Australia are far less likely to be carrying weapons themselves, so police do not have to be as cautious as in the US. Ultimately, I don't believe the problem lies with the firearms but with the culture. As an Australian visiting…

You would be amazed at the difference in reaction time if someone steps out of a car with a weapon drawn and the time it takes to bring up your own weapon. If the US police were so gun happy I would expect way more people to be shot per year/day.

I understand the reasoning behind the action, but it's still not justifiable. Following that same reasoning we can argue that police should approach car windows with their weapons drawn and aimed. After all, if an officer approaches a car window and sees the occupant has a gun aimed at them they won't have time to defend themselves if their sidearm is holstered. Officers have certainly been killed by vehicle occupants, so this is not some invented scenario, either.

> If the US police were so gun happy I would expect way more people to be shot per year/day.

There are, though.

A couple of articles on the subject:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-many-americans-the-p...

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/another-much-higher-count...

But if we use the FBI's number of ~400/year[0]it's still ridiculous. In the two decades between 1989-90 and 2010-11, Australian police fatally shot a total of 105 people.[1]

Looking at those figures, Australia has ~0.25 fatal police shootings per million people per year. The US has ~1.25 fatal police shootings per million people per year. Five times more. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't believe that's solely due to gun control policy in the two countries.

[0] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/c...

[1] http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/rip/21-4...