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It's crazy that as a citizenry we allow our police to operate in this manner. Kansas is a constitutional carry state, in which all adult citizens are legally al

by jdanp 9y ago

It's crazy that as a citizenry we allow our police to operate in this manner. Kansas is a constitutional carry state, in which all adult citizens are legally allowed to carry a pistol on their person without a permit. Why should the presence of a firearm, or the reach for a pocket or "long black stick", be a death sentence for a citizen? Why do we allow state actors to behave in this way at all?

davidw 9y ago
I know this sounds weird, but it's almost as if there were some kind of correlation between a populace having a shitload of guns, and more gun deaths.
- foxhound6 9y ago
  The top 3 safest states are all constitutional carry states. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/slideshows/the-10-safest-states-in-america?slide=9 https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/slideshows/the-10-sa...
  - overtpb949 9y ago
    From what I can tell, looking at Wikipedia: Five states with lowest rates of gun death: Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_death_rates_in_the_United_States_by_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_death_rates_in_the_Uni...) States with constitutional carry: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho (residents only), Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota (residents only; concealed carry only), Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_carry#U.S._jurisdictions_that_have_constitutional_carry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_carry#U.S._juri...)
    - foxhound6 9y ago
      And more cars = more car accidents and more multi-story homes = more people falling down the stairs. As a society, we're concerned with overall safety and reducing overall violence and crime metrics.
      - notheguyouthink 9y ago
        While an interesting metric, a sample size of 3 (states) seems insanely low to draw cause between guns carry == safety. There has to be more meaningful ways to glean that data, no? May as well tie it into most popular music if we're using sample sizes that small.
        foxhound6 9y ago
        I wasn't making the argument that more people carrying == safety. I was countering the argument that more people carrying inherently means less safety.
        notheguyouthink 9y ago
        Fair enough, apologies for my confusion :)
        c22 9y ago
        But the argument you responded to was that more guns were related to more gun deaths. You might as well have countered any tangential "argument".
        wavegeek 9y ago
        https://i.imgur.com/aO6oWe7.png https://i.imgur.com/aO6oWe7.png
    - rbcgerard 9y ago
      Except if you use the metric of murder or violent crime instead of gun deaths you find that there its much more complicated Vermont = lots of guns and safe Louisiana = lots of guns and unsafe Hawaii = not so many guns and safe Illinois = not so many guns and unsafe...
- michaelscott 9y ago
  This just isn't true. Canada and Switzerland, as examples, also have a high number of firearms and not nearly as many firearm-related deaths (at least from 2014 data I could find; I doubt it's changed).
  - davidw 9y ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shoot... Looks like your numbers are badly off (those countries have less than half the guns the US does per capita, so not all that high), and in Switzerland there are a ton of restrictions on the guns (and on the ammunition!) compared to the US, to boot.
    - michaelscott 9y ago
      I'm talking about gun deaths in total, not mass shootings as in your link. Yes, the number of guns is far below the US (every country on Earth is) but looking at the number in isolation is disingenuous. As to legal restrictions in Switzerland, that is absolutely true but orthogonal to the point I've made. The issue lies in the number of guns per person (and I'd personally argue the culture surrounding guns which spurs it), not the legal framework. South Africa has tighter gun laws than the US but still suffers from greater gun deaths (again, in total not mass shootings).
    - rbcgerard 9y ago
      I believe that the post above is a reference to household ownership rather than per capita, there are a number of countries where the household ownership percentage is similar, but the number per household is much lower, that is true of many things, cars, TVs, guns, etc.
  - api_or_ipa 9y ago
    A long-gun stored in a locked cabinet in the attic with a trigger guard and ammo in a separate locked compartment is very different than carrying a loaded pistol on your hip in public. In Canada it is essentially impossible for normal citizens to carry a gun in public, let alone a loaded handgun. IIRC you need a separate license to transport your weapon (in a locked case, unloaded, and carried securely in your trunk). The idea of adult citizens carrying loaded pistols around in public is completely foreign in Canada.
- totalZero 9y ago
  Police everywhere have a shitload of guns. Are you arguing that the police are more likely to kill people at random in areas with higher amounts of gun ownership? I'm not sure I follow you.
  - davidw 9y ago
    > Are you arguing that the police are more likely to kill people at random in areas with higher amounts of gun ownership? Cops have to make split second decisions with their own lives on the line. In a country where it's very likely that the person they're interacting with in a tense situation could be armed with a gun, it's going to make them more likely to shoot. Perhaps not quite so relevant to this particular case, as the caller said the person was armed, but I think this would have played out differently in a lot of other countries.
    - totalZero 9y ago
      > this would have played out differently in a lot of other countries. This is precisely why the USA needs to reform its approach to police use of deadly force.
      - davidw 9y ago
        Sure, I think there's progress to be made, but the police - not wrongly - are more worried about getting shot at than in most other countries.
        totalZero 9y ago
        There are other countries with similarly high rates of gun ownership and divergently lower rates of police firearm deaths. The problem is in the police culture towards discharging a firearm, not the greater ownership of guns. American society bears much of the blame for lionizing cops instead of scrutinizing them. Many cases of police officers killing innocent civilians involved civilians who were either fleeing, submitting, or already subdued and pinned down. Cops in the US tend to be exonerated for using deadly force, even when the victim could not arguably have endangered others.
- talmand 9y ago
  Actually it does sound weird to me, because in the vast majority of cases this is simply not true for the US.
- mikeokner 9y ago
  "Gun deaths" always seems like a silly metric to me. Who cares if you're killed with a gun instead of a knife or baseball bat or whatever else? Why not just compare murder rates?
  - davidw 9y ago
    I think people care because when was the last time someone stabbed 546 people, killing 58 of them? Guns are an efficient tool for killing people, much more so than knives or baseball bats. This is, incidentally, the same reason other things that are efficient for killing people and not constitutionally proteced, like dynamite, are not something you can walk in and buy in Walmart.
    - mikeokner 9y ago
      While attacks like that are absolutely a massive and terrible problem, I think that problem is orthogonal to my original question. Those victims are also tallied under general violent crime and murder statistics. When trying to determine whether legal gun ownership is a net positive or negative to society by comparing stats across states, it makes more sense to compare general rates. Presumably gun deaths will be lower in states where it's very hard to legally get access to a gun. But does that matter if far more people are being murdered overall in those states even with mass shootings occurring in gun-friendly places like FL & NV? Chicago sees more people shot and more people murdered each month than any single mass shooting.
      - davidw 9y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... It's a bit 'noisy' because there are a lot of 3rd world places that are simply quite violent. The US has a lot more than, say, a lot of Europe. Also, don't discount suicide: guns make that easier too. Some will find a way without, but some would be prevented if it's 'too much effort'.
- wavegeek 9y ago
  The liberal obsession with guns exists to avoid having to think about other factors involved in the US's high rates of crime and murder. Do a graph of legal gun ownership versus murder rate (comparing US states, or countries). No relationship, in fact slightly negative. Do a graph of other demographic factors against murder rates. Bingo!
toomuchtodo 9y ago
Authority fetish engrained in society. Something bad happen during an interaction with law enforcement? It’s assumed to be the victim’s fault.
beambot 9y ago
What was the "right" interaction from your point of view? Please keep in mind... I used to live in an Atlanta neighborhood where a Sheriff and his deputy responded to a domestic violence dispute. Sheriff responded to a call and knocked on their door. The man inside the home opened the door, shot the deputy in the chest at point-blank, slammed the door shut, and then barricaded himself inside for a 6-hour standoff (ah, the memories of that neighborhood!). Thankfully the standoff ended peacefully thereafter. Keep in mind the shit that SWAT deals with on a regular basis: they're putting their lives at risk for public safety. That doesn't give them carte blanch to go shooting people, but they deal with life & death situations regularly. It sucks.
- raguuu 9y ago
  I don't want to be the defense lawyer for the police but all the Silicon Valley and other office workers on good life always criticizing every move police makes should show an example and become a cop. And show how it's done. Make a sacrifice and show what's the right way.

by jdanp 9y ago

davidw 9y ago

I know this sounds weird, but it's almost as if there were some kind of correlation between a populace having a shitload of guns, and more gun deaths.

foxhound6 9y ago
The top 3 safest states are all constitutional carry states. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/slideshows/the-10-safest-states-in-america?slide=9 https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/slideshows/the-10-sa...
- overtpb949 9y ago
  From what I can tell, looking at Wikipedia: Five states with lowest rates of gun death: Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_death_rates_in_the_United_States_by_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_death_rates_in_the_Uni...) States with constitutional carry: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho (residents only), Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota (residents only; concealed carry only), Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_carry#U.S._jurisdictions_that_have_constitutional_carry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_carry#U.S._juri...)
  - foxhound6 9y ago
    And more cars = more car accidents and more multi-story homes = more people falling down the stairs. As a society, we're concerned with overall safety and reducing overall violence and crime metrics.
    - notheguyouthink 9y ago
      While an interesting metric, a sample size of 3 (states) seems insanely low to draw cause between guns carry == safety. There has to be more meaningful ways to glean that data, no? May as well tie it into most popular music if we're using sample sizes that small.
      - foxhound6 9y ago
        I wasn't making the argument that more people carrying == safety. I was countering the argument that more people carrying inherently means less safety.
        notheguyouthink 9y ago
        Fair enough, apologies for my confusion :)
        c22 9y ago
        But the argument you responded to was that more guns were related to more gun deaths. You might as well have countered any tangential "argument".
      - wavegeek 9y ago
        https://i.imgur.com/aO6oWe7.png https://i.imgur.com/aO6oWe7.png
  - rbcgerard 9y ago
    Except if you use the metric of murder or violent crime instead of gun deaths you find that there its much more complicated Vermont = lots of guns and safe Louisiana = lots of guns and unsafe Hawaii = not so many guns and safe Illinois = not so many guns and unsafe...
michaelscott 9y ago
This just isn't true. Canada and Switzerland, as examples, also have a high number of firearms and not nearly as many firearm-related deaths (at least from 2014 data I could find; I doubt it's changed).
- davidw 9y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shoot... Looks like your numbers are badly off (those countries have less than half the guns the US does per capita, so not all that high), and in Switzerland there are a ton of restrictions on the guns (and on the ammunition!) compared to the US, to boot.
  - michaelscott 9y ago
    I'm talking about gun deaths in total, not mass shootings as in your link. Yes, the number of guns is far below the US (every country on Earth is) but looking at the number in isolation is disingenuous. As to legal restrictions in Switzerland, that is absolutely true but orthogonal to the point I've made. The issue lies in the number of guns per person (and I'd personally argue the culture surrounding guns which spurs it), not the legal framework. South Africa has tighter gun laws than the US but still suffers from greater gun deaths (again, in total not mass shootings).
  - rbcgerard 9y ago
    I believe that the post above is a reference to household ownership rather than per capita, there are a number of countries where the household ownership percentage is similar, but the number per household is much lower, that is true of many things, cars, TVs, guns, etc.
- api_or_ipa 9y ago
  A long-gun stored in a locked cabinet in the attic with a trigger guard and ammo in a separate locked compartment is very different than carrying a loaded pistol on your hip in public. In Canada it is essentially impossible for normal citizens to carry a gun in public, let alone a loaded handgun. IIRC you need a separate license to transport your weapon (in a locked case, unloaded, and carried securely in your trunk). The idea of adult citizens carrying loaded pistols around in public is completely foreign in Canada.
totalZero 9y ago
Police everywhere have a shitload of guns. Are you arguing that the police are more likely to kill people at random in areas with higher amounts of gun ownership? I'm not sure I follow you.
- davidw 9y ago
  > Are you arguing that the police are more likely to kill people at random in areas with higher amounts of gun ownership? Cops have to make split second decisions with their own lives on the line. In a country where it's very likely that the person they're interacting with in a tense situation could be armed with a gun, it's going to make them more likely to shoot. Perhaps not quite so relevant to this particular case, as the caller said the person was armed, but I think this would have played out differently in a lot of other countries.
  - totalZero 9y ago
    > this would have played out differently in a lot of other countries. This is precisely why the USA needs to reform its approach to police use of deadly force.
    - davidw 9y ago
      Sure, I think there's progress to be made, but the police - not wrongly - are more worried about getting shot at than in most other countries.
      - totalZero 9y ago
        There are other countries with similarly high rates of gun ownership and divergently lower rates of police firearm deaths. The problem is in the police culture towards discharging a firearm, not the greater ownership of guns. American society bears much of the blame for lionizing cops instead of scrutinizing them. Many cases of police officers killing innocent civilians involved civilians who were either fleeing, submitting, or already subdued and pinned down. Cops in the US tend to be exonerated for using deadly force, even when the victim could not arguably have endangered others.
talmand 9y ago
Actually it does sound weird to me, because in the vast majority of cases this is simply not true for the US.
mikeokner 9y ago
"Gun deaths" always seems like a silly metric to me. Who cares if you're killed with a gun instead of a knife or baseball bat or whatever else? Why not just compare murder rates?
- davidw 9y ago
  I think people care because when was the last time someone stabbed 546 people, killing 58 of them? Guns are an efficient tool for killing people, much more so than knives or baseball bats. This is, incidentally, the same reason other things that are efficient for killing people and not constitutionally proteced, like dynamite, are not something you can walk in and buy in Walmart.
  - mikeokner 9y ago
    While attacks like that are absolutely a massive and terrible problem, I think that problem is orthogonal to my original question. Those victims are also tallied under general violent crime and murder statistics. When trying to determine whether legal gun ownership is a net positive or negative to society by comparing stats across states, it makes more sense to compare general rates. Presumably gun deaths will be lower in states where it's very hard to legally get access to a gun. But does that matter if far more people are being murdered overall in those states even with mass shootings occurring in gun-friendly places like FL & NV? Chicago sees more people shot and more people murdered each month than any single mass shooting.
    - davidw 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... It's a bit 'noisy' because there are a lot of 3rd world places that are simply quite violent. The US has a lot more than, say, a lot of Europe. Also, don't discount suicide: guns make that easier too. Some will find a way without, but some would be prevented if it's 'too much effort'.
wavegeek 9y ago
The liberal obsession with guns exists to avoid having to think about other factors involved in the US's high rates of crime and murder. Do a graph of legal gun ownership versus murder rate (comparing US states, or countries). No relationship, in fact slightly negative. Do a graph of other demographic factors against murder rates. Bingo!

toomuchtodo 9y ago

Authority fetish engrained in society. Something bad happen during an interaction with law enforcement? It’s assumed to be the victim’s fault.

beambot 9y ago

What was the "right" interaction from your point of view? Please keep in mind... I used to live in an Atlanta neighborhood where a Sheriff and his deputy responded to a domestic violence dispute. Sheriff responded to a call and knocked on their door. The man inside the home opened the door, shot the deputy in the chest at point-blank, slammed the door shut, and then barricaded himself inside for a 6-hour standoff (ah, the memories of that neighborhood!). Thankfully the standoff ended peacefully thereafter. Keep in mind the shit that SWAT deals with on a regular basis: they're putting their lives at risk for public safety. That doesn't give them carte blanch to go shooting people, but they deal with life & death situations regularly. It sucks.

raguuu 9y ago
I don't want to be the defense lawyer for the police but all the Silicon Valley and other office workers on good life always criticizing every move police makes should show an example and become a cop. And show how it's done. Make a sacrifice and show what's the right way.