10 ms·

Australia had 94 fatal police shootings in the 19 years from 1992 to 2011. That's about 5 per year. Australia didn't institute significant gun control until th

Australia had 94 fatal police shootings in the 19 years from 1992 to 2011. That's about 5 per year. Australia didn't institute significant gun control until the gun buy back in 1996, so for at least 4 of those years Australia was a heavily armed country - a good analog for the US. Germany has a small handful of police shootings per year (6 - 8 on average). Many years that number is zero. England & Wales managed to go 24 years with only 54 police shootings total. So roughly 2 per year. Germany, the UK, and Australia are all plenty diverse.[1] Furthermore statements like that -- "the base rate is never going to be zero" -- show an unwillingness to even try to do better. It's excusing terrible performance rather than demanding accountability. The US currently has 1000 - 2000 police involved shootings per year. Every year. We may not be able to get to zero, but we can definitely do better than that. A lot of those shootings can be traced back to police hiring and training practices which can unquestionably be improved. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-...

jerf 10y ago
"Furthermore statements like that -- "the base rate is never going to be zero" -- show an unwillingness to even try to do better." No, it doesn't, and that's a hostile attitude to take. "We may not be able to get to zero, but we can definitely do better than that." Exactly how much better? Or are you demonstrating an unwillingness to address the issue concretely? Or do you perhaps not like that excessively hostile attitude on my part? The situation is complicated, and people like to fling around statistics with the apparent intent to simply inflame passions with no regard for the result it produces. So the US has been talking all about this for the last year or so... has it improved the situation any, or has the inflammatory rhetoric actually made things worse? I look to results, not words, and I can make a far better case for the latter than the former. So I'm pretty unimpressed by the attempt to socially shame me into accepting a line of rhetoric that from my point of view has killed more than it has helped. (My current estimate is in the mid-hundreds at a minimum, just to put some numbers on it.) Whatever the solution is, this doesn't appear to be it. I also consider the fact that it is visibly not working to trump any other vague arguments, such as, say, "but it's raising awareness". So what? It's not working. Awareness is not the end goal some people seem to think it is, it's as best a method to attain some goal, and that goal is not being attained. This rhetoric line is killing more people and corroding social fabric. Concrete results don't get changed by hypothesizing about how they could have possibly been good maybe sorta in an alternate universe. Do we care about reducing the violence, or do we just want to feel brief moments of emotional catharsis by blaming everything on cops? Because if it's the former, a change in approach is needed.

jerf 10y ago

"Furthermore statements like that -- "the base rate is never going to be zero" -- show an unwillingness to even try to do better." No, it doesn't, and that's a hostile attitude to take. "We may not be able to get to zero, but we can definitely do better than that." Exactly how much better? Or are you demonstrating an unwillingness to address the issue concretely? Or do you perhaps not like that excessively hostile attitude on my part? The situation is complicated, and people like to fling around statistics with the apparent intent to simply inflame passions with no regard for the result it produces. So the US has been talking all about this for the last year or so... has it improved the situation any, or has the inflammatory rhetoric actually made things worse? I look to results, not words, and I can make a far better case for the latter than the former. So I'm pretty unimpressed by the attempt to socially shame me into accepting a line of rhetoric that from my point of view has killed more than it has helped. (My current estimate is in the mid-hundreds at a minimum, just to put some numbers on it.) Whatever the solution is, this doesn't appear to be it. I also consider the fact that it is visibly not working to trump any other vague arguments, such as, say, "but it's raising awareness". So what? It's not working. Awareness is not the end goal some people seem to think it is, it's as best a method to attain some goal, and that goal is not being attained. This rhetoric line is killing more people and corroding social fabric. Concrete results don't get changed by hypothesizing about how they could have possibly been good maybe sorta in an alternate universe. Do we care about reducing the violence, or do we just want to feel brief moments of emotional catharsis by blaming everything on cops? Because if it's the former, a change in approach is needed.