In that case, you're comparing the US, a country with extremely lax gun control laws and the resulting greatly increased threat to police safety, to countries w

In that case, you're comparing the US, a country with extremely lax gun control laws and the resulting greatly increased threat to police safety, to countries with far more stringent gun control. I'm a homicide researcher in Chicago. There were over 4000 shootings and nearly 800 homicides in my city last year, and I've seen footage from a lot of them, including a lot of completely justified police shootings. Calling officers "trigger-happy thugs" ignores the reality of policing in a country where the frequency of encountering someone carrying a firearm is so high. That being said, somehow the Newark Police Department(in Newark, New Jersey's biggest city, and about 50 homicides per year) went all of 2020 without any of any officers firing a single shot (outside of training and firearm qualification contexts, I assume) [0]. [0] https://bronx.news12.com/newark-police-no-officer-fired-a-single-shot-in-2020-thanks-to-de-escalation-program https://bronx.news12.com/newark-police-no-officer-fired-a-si...