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I work as an EMT for a 911 service. The general attitude that I have and other EMS providers I’ve talked with seem to share is that this won’t end well. The f

I work as an EMT for a 911 service. The general attitude that I have and other EMS providers I’ve talked with seem to share is that this won’t end well. The first thing we’re taught is that the scene must be safe. If it’s not safe, we stage nearby until law enforcement or fire tell us to come in. The 911 dispatch is notorious for misevaluating the nature and severity of a situation, and generally we are toned out to an address and keep getting updates with call details as we are driving there. In this country where anyone can have a gun on them, there is no way in hell that I and my partner are approaching an emotionally disturbed person with no way to defend ourselves. If something goes wrong, the most effective weapon we have is an oxygen tank. And now the public’s perception of drugs like ketamine for chemical restraint is souring, so the message seems to be “Go deal with the worst our society has to offer, with no backup in case they try to hurt you, no not even safe chemical restraints. And no sorry we can’t pay you more than a cashier at WalMart... but you’re heroes!” Just last year a firefighter paramedic in my state was shot dead after administering naloxone to a man and saving his life. Part of it is the compensation. Law enforcement officers are paid substantially more than the EMS folks here with the understanding that they take on more risk. We make $12 hourly... not enough to accept drastically increasing our chances of being hurt or killed.

giantg2 6y ago
My thoughts exactly. Also, the success rate of calming down a mentally unstable person threatening violence to self or others is only about 33% for someone who is trained and knows the patient's history. That leaves a lot of risk for that other 67% of the time.
- pjc50 6y ago
  [citation needed]
  - giantg2 6y ago
    The Tactical Edge p.349
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - mcguire 6y ago
      Charles Remsberg. From 1986. One of the leading minds who got us into this situation. https://www.police1.com/columnists/charles-remsberg/page-12/ https://www.police1.com/columnists/charles-remsberg/page-12/
      - giantg2 6y ago
        What situation is that? Most of the abuse I've seen is by officers who either were never given the training Remsburg presents in his books or ignored it.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      Why is this downvoted?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
trevyn 6y ago
It sounds like this pilot is using a specific subset of workers who are being given some degree of specialized training to deal with these situations, and it sounds like you have not been given this training, is this accurate to the best of your knowledge?
- goodells 6y ago
  We have some level of training at my level (EMT), and the paramedics I work with have more. But the stuff we're expected to cover is really broad - anything from a sexual assault victim and preserving evidence to your garden variety suicidal ideation. So given our role it's mainly geared towards identifying potential medical causes for their behavior. The best thing we can do for a patient is keep an open mind to why they're acting strangely. It could be an infection, stroke, overdose, withdrawal syndrome, postictal state after a seizure, tons of stuff. My point is that even the best training probably won't make the tradeoff of not having law enforcement on scene worth it. Patients with the kinds of issues I listed above - they tend not to respond to being talked down. No amount of babying is going to make the person who's been high on meth and awake for 4 days straight stop seeing the shadow people.
rasengan 6y ago
Thank you for the risks and efforts you take and make every day.
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
Presumably they won't conscript mental health professionals into this work. It should be done on a voluntary basis. My understanding is that approaches like this work with acceptable levels of risk in other countries, so hopefully it will be likewise successful here. That being said, my gut reaction is that I would not want to be the person called upon to do this job, and I could understand any other person who felt likewise. I would want to be armed when dealing with people who are operating outside the ordinary human envelope of behavior. Maybe that's my Americanness talking.
Klinky 6y ago
Use of Ketamine is souring due to the death of Elijah McClain, so you should refrain from claiming it's safe. There is always risk when injecting someone with a chemical in an emergency or crisis situation. No doubt your job is tough and underpaid, but it sounds like your mindset is perfect to be complicit in acts of police brutality.
- giantg2 6y ago
  Ketamine is only used to prevent the use of more force or injury in scenarios where there is potential for higher levels of force or injury to be occur. It is a mitigating agent for higher levels of force.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Well, apart from in the Elijah McCain case; or do you mean that ketamine mitigates the willingness of the responders to use lethal force?
    - goodells 6y ago
      If someone doesn't get ketamine, the alternatives are: - they get tased, pepper sprayed, and thrown around by law enforcement officers - they get a less safe drug like midazolam, lorazepam, or haloperidol - they get restrained and fight against the restraints which puts them at risk of sudden death and rhabdomyolysis
      - mattkrause 6y ago
        ....if there’s a real, imminent threat. In some of these cases, it seems like the officers could have tried to de-escalate the situation while keeping these options in reserve in case that failed. The choices don’t have to be either immediate compliance or overwhelming force. Even with animals—-where the use of drugs is a lot less ethically fraught—-ketamine isn’t necessarily the first option.
        6y ago
psyc 6y ago
Sounds to me like you’re falling right into the stigmatizing myth that the mentally ill are especially likely to be violent. Even calling them “the worst society has to offer”, and so far nobody is calling you on it. Presumably there would be some up front report and assessment of whether the person is exhibiting violent behavior. The actual “worst of society” should obviously be dealt with by police.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  It sounds to me like goodells is relating their experiences. > Presumably there would be some up front report and assessment of whether the person is exhibiting violent behavior. That's a very presumptuous thing to presume, when the person who actually has personal experience with the matter says that dispatch is notorious for misevaluating situations (surely through no fault of their own much of the time, since dispatch is not on the scene and can only relay what they've been told.)
  - bluntfang 6y ago
    It's just as presumptuous that every mentally ill person is carrying a firearm and is violent.
    - dageshi 6y ago
      It only takes one to kill you? I think that's op's point.
      - spoondan 6y ago
        But it isn’t a good point absent the bad assumption that the mentally ill are more dangerous. It only takes one bicyclist that’s fallen off his bike to kill you. So what?
        dageshi 6y ago
        It isn't just the aspect of someone being mentally ill, it's someone being mentally ill and that their behaviour caused the police to be contacted.
goatherders 6y ago
You're an EMT. Which means you aren't trained to deal with mental health issues. Just like the police.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > You're an EMT. Which means you aren't trained to deal with mental health issues. I don't get that - a mental health emergency is a health emergency (the clue is in the name)... which is what EMTs are for aren't they?
IIAOPSW 6y ago
In your view, what would be a good set of reforms?
brundolf 6y ago
Are you a mental health professional? I would imagine that's a separate skillset, and one that would allow a person to better evaluate whether or not someone acting broadly "unwell" is likely to be dangerous.
sdwvit 6y ago
Then change a job
samirillian 6y ago
> We make $12 hourly... not enough to accept drastically increasing our chances of being hurt or killed. Would you have higher hopes for this pilot succeeding if these mental health professional made as much as cops? I think that is supposed to be the logic of defund the police. But yeah 12/hr is a crime.
- goodells 6y ago
  Maybe, and with FDNY where this pilot is being tested I don't know how the pay compares, but it'd still be a big shift in how EMS is presented from the very beginning to trainees. I personally like EMS because even though it's not exactly _safe_, if someone is acting out the cops deal with them, and if something is on fire or spewing ethyl-bethyl-bad-stuff into the air, fire/HAZMAT deals with it. We're the smart people in the wee-woo box that primarily focus on patient care with our friends in law enforcement and fire close by. My issue with it is that EMS and a "mental health professional" could easily get stuck in a situation with a violent, armed person and be at the mercy of police coming from a separate location to help in an emergency. Sure, the vast majority of patients are not like that, but it doesn't make sense to me to take the risk. In my experience, having police on scene but keeping their distance is fine and patients usually understand when we say they're not in trouble and anything they say to us is confidential. Some other services probably don't do it as well, especially since police get there faster most of the time.
slg 6y ago
It is strange to see this opinion voiced by an EMT. There are millions of people in this country that grew up in a world without EMTs. If you were hurt or sick you had to get yourself to the hospital or rely on the police getting you there. Police obviously weren't able to properly handle these situations from either a training or equipment perspective. This resulted in countless people dying unnecessarily. That was seen as an obvious failure and eventually a job was created to bring medical attention to the scene of an emergency and remove police from the handling of these medical issues. We have already made this transition once. Police are no more able to handle someone experiencing an emergency mental issue as they are able to handle someone having a heart attack. Why not change the system to get the proper people on site as fast as possible? 99 Percent Invisible recently did a great podcast on the early history of EMT services and ambulances. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/freedom-house-ambulance-service/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/freedom-house-ambulan...
georgyo 6y ago
If you make $12 an hour, you are not in NY state were the minimum wage is $15. This is not to underrate your personal experiences, just that situations can be different in different places. Guns in NYC are fairly rare, but your comment holds true with any weapon. NYC has an extreamly low violent crime rate, and a murder rate that is nearly non-existent. And that crime rate is dropping lower and lower: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-city.pdf https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statist... It is possible that our crime rate is reaching a low enough valley that this might be successful here.
- AndrewUnmuted 6y ago
  > Guns in NYC are fairly rare What, are you kidding? This is a crazy statement to make. Guns are everywhere here in NYC and everyone who lives in an actual NYC neighborhood knows this. I've lived in NYC my whole life. I always knew kids that had handguns, I knew people that sold them, I knew people that would buy them every chance one came on their radar. I was at my local deli today and heard a 45 year old gentleman telling another older person about the new Smith & Wesson they had for sale. > that crime rate is dropping lower and lower That's not really the "crime rate" that is dropping lower, but rather the number of crimes booked by police officers. Police spent months not responding to, nor intervening in, basically any crimes committed in NYC in 2020. The incidence of crimes committed against innocent citizens in NYC - as well as the gun crimes - all are rising dramatically, as anyone who lives here would be quick to tell you. I am impressed with the amount of disinformation in this post, given how few words you actually wrote.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    While I believe cops could suppress reporting of a wide variety of crimes, I find it a bit difficult to believe they could do much to suppress reporting of violent gun crimes. When people show up at hospitals with bullet holes, certainly that triggers the creation of a paper trail no matter how badly the cops want to ignore it.
  - georgyo 6y ago
    I have also lived in Brooklyn my whole life. I have never seen a gun outside of a person's home or a gun store. When I was a when I was maybe 15 I was on the roof of a building when someone reported a visible gun. With 15 minutes my friends and I were surrounded by police and questioned as they looked for the gun. They did find the person about 10 minutes later. I also had a kid in my school shoot himself in the leg by accident because he thought he'd be cool and tuck it in his pants. The closest I ever come to an active shooting. I stick by my statement that guns are extremely rare in NYC. They are not non-existent, but they aren't at all common place. The nypd downplaying crimes is a significant real issue, that is true. But that only fuels the the thesis that what is proposed may work here.
jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
You're an EMT. You aren't trained for this. I don't know about NYC's new program, but Portland has been doing something like this for a couple years. They send out teams of a medic from the fire department and a counselor/social worker with specific training in deescalating acute mental health crisis. There have been no incidents of these teams being attacked or injured. This "under siege" mentality that the police have adopted as central dogma, which clearly has spread to you as well, is the problem. I'd suggest reading the various interviews and comments from Patrick Skinner. He's been on a solo crusade for a more compassionate approach to beat policing for a few years now. He gets a lot more clout with police with it though, as he's ex CIA, so no one questions his machoness. The very core of his approach is "how would you solve this without a badge and gun?" It's simple. It works. It's moral. It doesn't mean we abandon society to anarchy, it just means we stop seeing citizens and police as enemies of each other, where the default assumption is that a restraint and a gun are necessary to even have a conversation.
- Natsu 6y ago
  What sort of training helps deal with violent and irrational people?
  - xxpor 6y ago
    Simply not feeling you must deal with the situation right now. In the UK for example, the normal beat police do not have guns. If they approach a situation where they feel in danger, they're trained to back off and call for either more backup or an armed response. Turns out most of the time whatever the issue is will still be there when backup arrives. On the other hand, if it's a simple issue, they can just deal with it and there's a much smaller chance someone gets shot.
    - Natsu 6y ago
      > Simply not feeling you must deal with the situation right now. I can see that helping in some situations, but how does that help when the situation really is urgent? Say you have someone who is violent and irrational due to drug intoxication and they need medical aid or they'll die, yet it's not safe to provide that. What is the answer in that case?
nonbirithm 6y ago
> In this country where anyone can have a gun on them, there is no way in hell that I and my partner are approaching an emotionally disturbed person with no way to defend ourselves. It sounds like this is one of the major issues, if not the most important issue. Nobody is going to attempt to repeal the Second Amendment, and trying to do so would cause way too much upset in a country where gun culture has been ingrained in the populace since its founding. I personally believe that so long as guns are so widely available, and mentally ill people who are predisposed not to seek or have no treatment available exist (which given human nature pretty much always will), gun violence will continue to occur, and so the police and other responders will assume that they could be killed from guns in risky encounters. All it takes is one mistake in determining that someone does not have a gun to have someone killed and make headlines and potentially be remembered for years. I wonder how I would feel about the gun laws in the U.S. if I were born and raised in a country that prohibits firearms. I would prefer to live in such a country but very few people directly affected by the violence have the option of leaving. I also wonder how many people would be accepting of guns today if we didn't have the Second Amendment from the beginning, and people didn't end up receiving the impression that the founders of the country affirmed gun ownership. Trying to cut back on the violence with the gun culture continuing sounds very complicated to me.
hkt 6y ago
Just wanted to say that I am absolutely astonished that "chemical restraint" with ketamine is a thing. I am confident it is not a thing where I am from (UK). How have you people not realised that a country full of guns will generate constant escalating violence?

giantg2 6y ago

My thoughts exactly. Also, the success rate of calming down a mentally unstable person threatening violence to self or others is only about 33% for someone who is trained and knows the patient's history. That leaves a lot of risk for that other 67% of the time.

pjc50 6y ago
[citation needed]
- giantg2 6y ago
  The Tactical Edge p.349
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - mcguire 6y ago
    Charles Remsberg. From 1986. One of the leading minds who got us into this situation. https://www.police1.com/columnists/charles-remsberg/page-12/ https://www.police1.com/columnists/charles-remsberg/page-12/
    - giantg2 6y ago
      What situation is that? Most of the abuse I've seen is by officers who either were never given the training Remsburg presents in his books or ignored it.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    Why is this downvoted?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

trevyn 6y ago

It sounds like this pilot is using a specific subset of workers who are being given some degree of specialized training to deal with these situations, and it sounds like you have not been given this training, is this accurate to the best of your knowledge?

goodells 6y ago
We have some level of training at my level (EMT), and the paramedics I work with have more. But the stuff we're expected to cover is really broad - anything from a sexual assault victim and preserving evidence to your garden variety suicidal ideation. So given our role it's mainly geared towards identifying potential medical causes for their behavior. The best thing we can do for a patient is keep an open mind to why they're acting strangely. It could be an infection, stroke, overdose, withdrawal syndrome, postictal state after a seizure, tons of stuff. My point is that even the best training probably won't make the tradeoff of not having law enforcement on scene worth it. Patients with the kinds of issues I listed above - they tend not to respond to being talked down. No amount of babying is going to make the person who's been high on meth and awake for 4 days straight stop seeing the shadow people.

rasengan 6y ago

Thank you for the risks and efforts you take and make every day.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

Presumably they won't conscript mental health professionals into this work. It should be done on a voluntary basis. My understanding is that approaches like this work with acceptable levels of risk in other countries, so hopefully it will be likewise successful here. That being said, my gut reaction is that I would not want to be the person called upon to do this job, and I could understand any other person who felt likewise. I would want to be armed when dealing with people who are operating outside the ordinary human envelope of behavior. Maybe that's my Americanness talking.

Klinky 6y ago

Use of Ketamine is souring due to the death of Elijah McClain, so you should refrain from claiming it's safe. There is always risk when injecting someone with a chemical in an emergency or crisis situation. No doubt your job is tough and underpaid, but it sounds like your mindset is perfect to be complicit in acts of police brutality.

giantg2 6y ago
Ketamine is only used to prevent the use of more force or injury in scenarios where there is potential for higher levels of force or injury to be occur. It is a mitigating agent for higher levels of force.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Well, apart from in the Elijah McCain case; or do you mean that ketamine mitigates the willingness of the responders to use lethal force?
  - goodells 6y ago
    If someone doesn't get ketamine, the alternatives are: - they get tased, pepper sprayed, and thrown around by law enforcement officers - they get a less safe drug like midazolam, lorazepam, or haloperidol - they get restrained and fight against the restraints which puts them at risk of sudden death and rhabdomyolysis
    - mattkrause 6y ago
      ....if there’s a real, imminent threat. In some of these cases, it seems like the officers could have tried to de-escalate the situation while keeping these options in reserve in case that failed. The choices don’t have to be either immediate compliance or overwhelming force. Even with animals—-where the use of drugs is a lot less ethically fraught—-ketamine isn’t necessarily the first option.
      - 6y ago

psyc 6y ago

Sounds to me like you’re falling right into the stigmatizing myth that the mentally ill are especially likely to be violent. Even calling them “the worst society has to offer”, and so far nobody is calling you on it. Presumably there would be some up front report and assessment of whether the person is exhibiting violent behavior. The actual “worst of society” should obviously be dealt with by police.

bigbubba 6y ago
It sounds to me like goodells is relating their experiences. > Presumably there would be some up front report and assessment of whether the person is exhibiting violent behavior. That's a very presumptuous thing to presume, when the person who actually has personal experience with the matter says that dispatch is notorious for misevaluating situations (surely through no fault of their own much of the time, since dispatch is not on the scene and can only relay what they've been told.)
- bluntfang 6y ago
  It's just as presumptuous that every mentally ill person is carrying a firearm and is violent.
  - dageshi 6y ago
    It only takes one to kill you? I think that's op's point.
    - spoondan 6y ago
      But it isn’t a good point absent the bad assumption that the mentally ill are more dangerous. It only takes one bicyclist that’s fallen off his bike to kill you. So what?
      - dageshi 6y ago
        It isn't just the aspect of someone being mentally ill, it's someone being mentally ill and that their behaviour caused the police to be contacted.

goatherders 6y ago

You're an EMT. Which means you aren't trained to deal with mental health issues. Just like the police.

chrisseaton 6y ago
> You're an EMT. Which means you aren't trained to deal with mental health issues. I don't get that - a mental health emergency is a health emergency (the clue is in the name)... which is what EMTs are for aren't they?

IIAOPSW 6y ago

In your view, what would be a good set of reforms?

brundolf 6y ago

Are you a mental health professional? I would imagine that's a separate skillset, and one that would allow a person to better evaluate whether or not someone acting broadly "unwell" is likely to be dangerous.

sdwvit 6y ago

Then change a job

samirillian 6y ago

> We make $12 hourly... not enough to accept drastically increasing our chances of being hurt or killed. Would you have higher hopes for this pilot succeeding if these mental health professional made as much as cops? I think that is supposed to be the logic of defund the police. But yeah 12/hr is a crime.

goodells 6y ago
Maybe, and with FDNY where this pilot is being tested I don't know how the pay compares, but it'd still be a big shift in how EMS is presented from the very beginning to trainees. I personally like EMS because even though it's not exactly _safe_, if someone is acting out the cops deal with them, and if something is on fire or spewing ethyl-bethyl-bad-stuff into the air, fire/HAZMAT deals with it. We're the smart people in the wee-woo box that primarily focus on patient care with our friends in law enforcement and fire close by. My issue with it is that EMS and a "mental health professional" could easily get stuck in a situation with a violent, armed person and be at the mercy of police coming from a separate location to help in an emergency. Sure, the vast majority of patients are not like that, but it doesn't make sense to me to take the risk. In my experience, having police on scene but keeping their distance is fine and patients usually understand when we say they're not in trouble and anything they say to us is confidential. Some other services probably don't do it as well, especially since police get there faster most of the time.

slg 6y ago

It is strange to see this opinion voiced by an EMT. There are millions of people in this country that grew up in a world without EMTs. If you were hurt or sick you had to get yourself to the hospital or rely on the police getting you there. Police obviously weren't able to properly handle these situations from either a training or equipment perspective. This resulted in countless people dying unnecessarily. That was seen as an obvious failure and eventually a job was created to bring medical attention to the scene of an emergency and remove police from the handling of these medical issues. We have already made this transition once. Police are no more able to handle someone experiencing an emergency mental issue as they are able to handle someone having a heart attack. Why not change the system to get the proper people on site as fast as possible? 99 Percent Invisible recently did a great podcast on the early history of EMT services and ambulances. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/freedom-house-ambulance-service/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/freedom-house-ambulan...

georgyo 6y ago

If you make $12 an hour, you are not in NY state were the minimum wage is $15. This is not to underrate your personal experiences, just that situations can be different in different places. Guns in NYC are fairly rare, but your comment holds true with any weapon. NYC has an extreamly low violent crime rate, and a murder rate that is nearly non-existent. And that crime rate is dropping lower and lower: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-city.pdf https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statist... It is possible that our crime rate is reaching a low enough valley that this might be successful here.

AndrewUnmuted 6y ago
> Guns in NYC are fairly rare What, are you kidding? This is a crazy statement to make. Guns are everywhere here in NYC and everyone who lives in an actual NYC neighborhood knows this. I've lived in NYC my whole life. I always knew kids that had handguns, I knew people that sold them, I knew people that would buy them every chance one came on their radar. I was at my local deli today and heard a 45 year old gentleman telling another older person about the new Smith & Wesson they had for sale. > that crime rate is dropping lower and lower That's not really the "crime rate" that is dropping lower, but rather the number of crimes booked by police officers. Police spent months not responding to, nor intervening in, basically any crimes committed in NYC in 2020. The incidence of crimes committed against innocent citizens in NYC - as well as the gun crimes - all are rising dramatically, as anyone who lives here would be quick to tell you. I am impressed with the amount of disinformation in this post, given how few words you actually wrote.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  While I believe cops could suppress reporting of a wide variety of crimes, I find it a bit difficult to believe they could do much to suppress reporting of violent gun crimes. When people show up at hospitals with bullet holes, certainly that triggers the creation of a paper trail no matter how badly the cops want to ignore it.
- georgyo 6y ago
  I have also lived in Brooklyn my whole life. I have never seen a gun outside of a person's home or a gun store. When I was a when I was maybe 15 I was on the roof of a building when someone reported a visible gun. With 15 minutes my friends and I were surrounded by police and questioned as they looked for the gun. They did find the person about 10 minutes later. I also had a kid in my school shoot himself in the leg by accident because he thought he'd be cool and tuck it in his pants. The closest I ever come to an active shooting. I stick by my statement that guns are extremely rare in NYC. They are not non-existent, but they aren't at all common place. The nypd downplaying crimes is a significant real issue, that is true. But that only fuels the the thesis that what is proposed may work here.

jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago

You're an EMT. You aren't trained for this. I don't know about NYC's new program, but Portland has been doing something like this for a couple years. They send out teams of a medic from the fire department and a counselor/social worker with specific training in deescalating acute mental health crisis. There have been no incidents of these teams being attacked or injured. This "under siege" mentality that the police have adopted as central dogma, which clearly has spread to you as well, is the problem. I'd suggest reading the various interviews and comments from Patrick Skinner. He's been on a solo crusade for a more compassionate approach to beat policing for a few years now. He gets a lot more clout with police with it though, as he's ex CIA, so no one questions his machoness. The very core of his approach is "how would you solve this without a badge and gun?" It's simple. It works. It's moral. It doesn't mean we abandon society to anarchy, it just means we stop seeing citizens and police as enemies of each other, where the default assumption is that a restraint and a gun are necessary to even have a conversation.

Natsu 6y ago
What sort of training helps deal with violent and irrational people?
- xxpor 6y ago
  Simply not feeling you must deal with the situation right now. In the UK for example, the normal beat police do not have guns. If they approach a situation where they feel in danger, they're trained to back off and call for either more backup or an armed response. Turns out most of the time whatever the issue is will still be there when backup arrives. On the other hand, if it's a simple issue, they can just deal with it and there's a much smaller chance someone gets shot.
  - Natsu 6y ago
    > Simply not feeling you must deal with the situation right now. I can see that helping in some situations, but how does that help when the situation really is urgent? Say you have someone who is violent and irrational due to drug intoxication and they need medical aid or they'll die, yet it's not safe to provide that. What is the answer in that case?

nonbirithm 6y ago

> In this country where anyone can have a gun on them, there is no way in hell that I and my partner are approaching an emotionally disturbed person with no way to defend ourselves. It sounds like this is one of the major issues, if not the most important issue. Nobody is going to attempt to repeal the Second Amendment, and trying to do so would cause way too much upset in a country where gun culture has been ingrained in the populace since its founding. I personally believe that so long as guns are so widely available, and mentally ill people who are predisposed not to seek or have no treatment available exist (which given human nature pretty much always will), gun violence will continue to occur, and so the police and other responders will assume that they could be killed from guns in risky encounters. All it takes is one mistake in determining that someone does not have a gun to have someone killed and make headlines and potentially be remembered for years. I wonder how I would feel about the gun laws in the U.S. if I were born and raised in a country that prohibits firearms. I would prefer to live in such a country but very few people directly affected by the violence have the option of leaving. I also wonder how many people would be accepting of guns today if we didn't have the Second Amendment from the beginning, and people didn't end up receiving the impression that the founders of the country affirmed gun ownership. Trying to cut back on the violence with the gun culture continuing sounds very complicated to me.

hkt 6y ago

Just wanted to say that I am absolutely astonished that "chemical restraint" with ketamine is a thing. I am confident it is not a thing where I am from (UK). How have you people not realised that a country full of guns will generate constant escalating violence?