NYPD shoot hammer weilding man

[Rick Lee]

Determined people have access to guns anywhere in the world. It's only easier in the US because of HIPAA and no one has even suggested changing that law, I suspect, because they don't want to really solve that problem.

[creaturecat]

ccw in Europe? Wtf for?
good luck on that front.


an aside: i love seeing the cops at work in France; they will group up in areas, they are nicely dressed. they wave to the people going by. they are smiling. they are helpful.
in essence, they seem to promote an overall calming effect.

[dentist90]

My intuition tells me that if someone uses a gun on a cop over a "simple traffic stop" there is much more going on than that. The fact that the person is packing a weapon (more than likely unregistered/illegal) is telltale. These are probably not NRA members offing cops that pull them over. What they are most likely afraid of is having the cop realize that the car is stolen, that they have priors and/or warrants or they are so stoned that they don't want to be arrested. My bet is that almost every incident of cop shooting is not the offenders first offense. But it is absolutely true that human life has been devalued to the point that killing a fellow human being is preferable to being held to task for your own behaviour. Gangsta culture? Just the modern equivalent of wild west bank robbers. Shoot anyone that gets in your way.

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by Mike80911

Here is an interesting fact (sorry I do not have a chart). Since 1792 there were 4000 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in the UK. During that same period there were 20,000 officers killed in the line of duty in the US. NYC leads the list with officers killed with firearms and Texas leads the list with total officers killed. Maybe this sheds some light into the reason US police are more likely to use their weapon then some other countries it seems they are under attack more.
Rick as you stated there are people who shoot at cops even on a simple traffic stop and there are some who simply ambush the police as we have seen several times in NYC. Police officers Piagentini and Jones 1971, Police Officer Edward Burns 1988 and the most recent Police Officers Liu, Ramos and Moore just to mention a few as well as others all over the country. I wonder how many times this happens in European countries?

Couple of supporting articles:

British:
Police deaths: The officers killed in the line of duty - BBC News

American:
FOP Foundation

Why 1792? Seems arbitrary, until you read that is when Britain first employed professional constables. Seems kind of late in the game - I wonder how they policed themselves before that.

The numbers are indeed clear - five times the number of cops have been killed in the U.S. vs. all of Great Britain over the last 223 years.

Now, granted, this may not mean much at all, but the U.S. now stands at roughly five times the population of Great Britain (319 vs. 64 million). That's not to say the U.S. has always had five times their population, but it does make for an interesting comparison - we have five times the population, and five times as many of our cops have given their lives in the line of duty. Nothing really alarming about the difference - it tracks with the population difference. Of course every one of these deaths is a tragedy, I don't mean to sound like I'm minimizing any of that.

Then we get back to numbers of citizens killed by cops in the two countries. As can be seen from the numbers posted earlier, this most decidedly does not track with the population differences. U.S. police (still being as generous as possible, and fudging the numbers to put this in the best possible light), still kill citizens at a rate 40 times that of British police. Not being quite so easy on them, but still not even using worst case data, that number could very well be 80 to 100 times that of British police. That's pretty darn significant.

Is there any way we could discuss that without devolving into some kind of "Higgins hates cops" b.s.? I don't make these numbers up; I merely bring them up. Please don't shoot the messenger (o.k., bad pun...).

[stuartj]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

Determined people have access to guns anywhere in the world. It's only easier in the US because of HIPAA and no one has even suggested changing that law, I suspect, because they don't want to really solve that problem.

HIPAA ?

What you say is true. But- most nutbags are not determined people, they are nutbags. and the difference is in the USA nutbags have (relatively) easy access to guns.

In say, GB, AUS, NZ, lots of EU - there are certainly "determined people" with guns. But both legal and illegal guns are generally hard to get, expensive and are not the ubiquitous factor that they are in the USA. And if caught with an illegal gun, you will do jail in many countries.

USA police seem to (probably justifiably) approach situations as if a firearm may be be present. As you mentioned earlier, your EU police friend has no expectation of being shot on the job.

As an observer, this and the happy coincidence of the military defence establishment surplusing off battlefield equipment to the Bumfck, Idaho Sherriffs Dept, has resulted in your cops turning out, as recently in Ferguson, like the 8th Airborne.

Seem to have forgotten they serve the community, not occupy it.

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by stuartj

HIPAA ?
What you say is true. But- most nutbags are not determined people, they are nutbags. and the difference is in the USA nutbags have (relatively) easy access to guns.

Disagree. They are determined. And they have the same access to guns I have because their mental health histories are not accessible by NICS. Although most, if not all, the mass shooting nutbags in the US were well-known to be nutbags before they shot anyone. Almost all got their guns legally because HIPAA prevents NICS from accessing their records. No one even talks about fixing that because they'd rather the mass shootings continue because those incidents galvanize public support for more gun laws that only people like me bother to obey.

[stuartj]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

Disagree. They are determined. And they have the same access to guns I have because their mental health histories are not accessible by NICS. Although most, if not all, the mass shooting nutbags in the US were well-known to be nutbags before they shot anyone. Almost all got their guns legally because HIPAA prevents NICS from accessing their records. No one even talks about fixing that because they'd rather the mass shootings continue because those incidents galvanize public support for more gun laws that only people like me bother to obey.

Those "out lie-rs", the mass shooters, the truly mad, bad bastards, are I agree, "determined people". But in the overall numbers of gun homicides in the US- something like 14,000 per annum and about the same again by firearm suicide - these people are responsible for a tiny fraction of the problem.

Besides which, with so many illegal guns in circulation in the USA, why would that group even bother with a legal gun? Was it Sandy Hook where the kid shooter (illegally) took his mothers (legal) guns? Wasn't Columbine the same? Parents guns? The problem is the presence of/access to the weapons in the first place.

[Jeff Higgins]

I guess it's easy to look at the widespread availability of guns in the U.S. and arrive at whatever conclusions one likes, factual or not. One of the salient points that can be discerned from the numbers posted above is that despite our population being awash in firearms, that rate at which our police are killed tracks precisely with our British friends, who presumably have no firearms at all. A reasonable man might conclude that civilian owned firearms are not, after all, a significant factor in the number of officers killed on the job.

The other elephant in the room is a population that is rather unique to the U.S. - the inner city black gang banging welfare rat. If we remove black on black gang and drug related killings from the mix, the U.S. actually has a much lower violent crime rate than most other "first world" countries. No one wants to talk about that, however, and anyone who dares bring it up will quickly be labeled a "racist".

Anti-gunners very much need this population in the mix; they serve to drive the numbers up to rather alarming rates. No matter that your average small town in "flyover" country has far more guns per capita than Chicago, or Washington D.C., or New York, yet gun crime is virtually unheard of.

That doesn't matter. They want us to focus on the Chicagos, while attempting to portray a homogenous population with universal, evenly distributed gun crime throughout, ignoring the single best, most accurate, most consistent predictor of gun crime - inner city young black males with gang and drug affiliations. If we had the political stomach to single them out and truly address them as the problem, we might get somewhere. But nobody wants that...

[Mike80911]

You want to have a valid discussion and then insinuate that I am ignorant because I question your chart as not having all of the facts. I assure you that when it comes to Police work I am far from ignorant. Especially when it comes to Police involved shootings and deaths.
I will not trade insults with you. But thank you for the offer.

[Taz's Master]

Originally Posted by stuartj

Those "out lie-rs", the mass shooters, the truly mad, bad bastards, are I agree, "determined people". But in the overall numbers of gun homicides in the US- something like 14,000 per annum and about the same again by firearm suicide - these people are responsible for a tiny fraction of the problem.

Besides which, with so many illegal guns in circulation in the USA, why would that group even bother with a legal gun? Was it Sandy Hook where the kid shooter (illegally) took his mothers (legal) guns? Wasn't Columbine the same? Parents guns? The problem is the presence of/access to the weapons in the first place.

You are overstating "gun homicides" and using the total homicides figures. Gun homicides make up about 60% of total homicides in the US. Our non-firearm homicide rates eclipse many total homicide rates of first world nations, so if you magically eliminated all US firearms today the US would still be a dangerous place. Violent crime and homicide rates are of serious concern in the US, and firearms do indeed play a role, but suggesting that access to them is "the" problem is more than a little simplistic. Alcohol has a higher correlation to violent crime in general and specifically to homicides than firearms for instance. Freedoms have consequences, and if personal safety is your prime concern, I suspect you would want the government to have far more authority over my liberties than I am comfortable with.

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by Mike80911

You want to have a valid discussion and then insinuate that I am ignorant because I question your chart as not having all of the facts. I assure you that when it comes to Police work I am far from ignorant. Especially when it comes to Police involved shootings and deaths.
I will not trade insults with you. But thank you for the offer.

I have insinuated nothing, Mike. I have no idea where you are getting this. I have not insulted you in any way. I don't get where you came up with that, either. I mean, really - just how "gently" do I have to treat you to avoid these perceptions on your part? Again, I have insinuated nothing, I have not insulted you, and have no intention of doing either. I just want an honest, open discussion. That's all. I can't help it if you are reading more into it than that. Ask anyone around here - if I set out to insult you, I'll make it pretty damn clear. I'm pretty straightforward in expressing my thoughts and opinions here. I'm honestly very sorry you have taken our exchange this way. I assure you, it was never my intention to do any of what you accuse me of.