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"The police officer who visited Kuppalli after a second death-threat call suggested she should get herself a gun." It is hard to overstate how bad this advice

• twofornone 5y ago
  >Gun owners are substantially more likely to die of gun violence than non-gun owners. Gun owners have a 3x higher risk of suicide. It is disingenuous to conflate "gun violence" with suicide. >In the event that someone does break in, gun owners are more likely to die than non-gun owners. I've never heard of this statistic and I suspect that the relevant literature is an interpretation based on questionable assumptions. Do you have a source? >We are so, so far away from a sane, functioning public safety system in this country it can be depressing. Allowing responsible gun ownership is neither insane nor an indication of dysfunction. In fact if you remove a single demographic from gun violence statistics, the US becomes one of the top 5 or so safest nations, in spite of the highest rate of gun ownership in the world.
  • iammisc 5y ago
    Your downvotes show why this problem will never be solved. Getting rid of guns is not going to solve violent people.
    • thomastjeffery 5y ago
      That isn't the argument here. The argument is that giving people guns is not going to solve violent people.
    • saiya-jin 5y ago
      In the same vein, adding more guns to the equation isn't going to solve violence/crime either
    • nuerow 5y ago
      > Getting rid of guns is not going to solve violent people. I do not understand this "the proposed solution is either a panacea of don't bother" attitude to major problems in society. The whole point of guns is to make it extremely easy and simple to apply lethal force instantly from a distance onto multiple targets and without any chance of defense. Don't you think that taking that away from practically all attackers improves everyone's chances of surviving an attack?
      • iammisc 5y ago
        The 'proposed solution's tramples on a fundamentally more important right.
        • nuerow 5y ago
          Why do you feel that the right to own a gun is "fundamentally more important" than the right to live your life without the risk of being gunned down?
          • iammisc 5y ago
            Because all life has risk, and the purpose of government is not to eliminate all risk to life. Such a government would be immensely awful. Gun ownership, self defense, and most importantly, the maintenance of real armed power in the population at large discourages a worse outcome, than the loss of any particular life.
    • anders_p 5y ago
      I think that the downvotes are because it's pretty disingenuous to remove criminals and poor people from US statistics, before comparing with other nations. Like, I imagine that my country would the greenest & cleanest in the world, if we would get to disregard all factory and car emissions, from our stats. And I'd be rightly downvoted for making that claim.
  • simonh 5y ago
    >>Gun owners are substantially more likely to die of gun violence than non-gun owners. Gun owners have a 3x higher risk of suicide. > >It is disingenuous to conflate "gun violence" with suicide. They were called out separately, and distinctly in their own sentences and one of them had a specific statistic. That is not conflation.
  • op00to 5y ago
    Do tell, what is that one “single demographic” which is allowed to be removed from counting in the US, friend?
    • jimmaswell 5y ago
      It's a correlation with poverty and gangs. If you take out gang on gang and suicide, assumung neither is relevant to you, it's true that the numbers become much better.
      • op00to 5y ago
        Do these people deserve to die?
        • jimmaswell 5y ago
          If you join a gang you know what you're signing up for, and I find it hard to argue that an individual doesn't have the right to end their own life.
          • op00to 5y ago
            OK. So just to get your point straight, you believe that we should remove all "illegal use of firearms" from violence and murder statistics so we reflect the harm and damage to people that you deem to be worthy of life? Is there ever collateral damage from a breadwinner, say, getting gunned down? Does that mean that gangster's children don't deserve life at all? Is there something special about their bloodline that makes you more likely to discount their life altogether? Let's get down to brass tacks.
    • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      "people who's primary source of earned income is the sale of transportation of illegal substances" Usually this group shows up in stats as "gang related crime" or something like that. Basically it's all the violence that lawful businesses don't need to use to settle business disputes because they can use the courts and threat of state violence to settle their disputes instead whereas the drug industry needs to bring it in-house.
  • dangerlibrary 5y ago
    I'm not talking about allowing responsible gun ownership. I'm talking about the fact that a person whose ostensible role in society is enforcing laws and ensuring public safety told a psychologically stressed out person facing death threats to take an action that increases their risk of death by suicide by 3x. This is not a criticism of responsible gun ownership. This is a criticism of the idea that "owning more guns will solve public safety problems," which is demonstrably false.
    • pseudo0 5y ago
      Are you sure it isn't that suicidal people attempt to purchase firearms? Seems like a pretty obvious correlation/causation problem, like blaming home alarm systems for burglaries.
  • goto11 5y ago
    > In fact if you remove a single demographic from gun violence statistics, the US becomes one of the top 5 or so safest nations, in spite of the highest rate of gun ownership in the world. Did you also remove "a single demographic" from these other nations gun violence statistics? If you remove the poorest segment of the US population form all statistics, I'm sure the US is going to look a lot better in many ways compared to the full population of other nations.
    • twofornone 5y ago
      >Did you also remove "a single demographic" from these other nations gun violence statistics? This demographic is unique to the US and a product of its unique history. >If you remove the poorest segment of the US population form all statistics, I'm sure the US is going to look a lot better in many ways compared to the full population of other nations. I don't blame you for believing this but the gun violence rate in this demographic is about an order of magnitude higher than that for other impoverished demographics. In any case I'm not making a statement about them, only pointing out that they distort the overall statistics for the greater US, which has implications for the assertion that gun violence is a widespread problem in the US. Yes, poverty is correlated with [gun] violence, but not nearly to the same degree among all groups of people in the US (and the world).
• poo-yie 5y ago
  Put yourself in the shoes of that police officer. What would you have advised?
  • dangerlibrary 5y ago
    Bear spray. Also, increased monitoring on a vulnerable person with known death threats against them. Also, if it were available, counseling.
    • poo-yie 5y ago
      Any police officer that recommends bear spray for self defense would be putting themselves in legal hot water as such products typically have warnings printed on them that say "Any other use of this product is in violation of federal law". I've never bought or seen a can of bear spray in person, but every can of wasp spray has such printing on it. I agree with you on the points about increased monitoring and counseling.
      • dangerlibrary 5y ago
        Bear spray is indeed illegal to use on people, but so are high-velocity bullets. The courts tend to be fairly understanding in self-defense cases. It is legal to carry in California, at least.
        • poo-yie 5y ago
          I agree with you. I would not hesitate to use bear spray, wasp spray, etc. for self defense when I thought that my life is in imminent danger. However, it would be foolish (IMO) for a law enforcement officer to recommend it. Also, if I were on a jury and the defendant used bear spray or wasp spray to save their own life I would certainly not vote to punish that person for what I would view as reasonable force for the situation.
          • dangerlibrary 5y ago
• spywaregorilla 5y ago
  > In the event that someone does break in, gun owners are more likely to die than non-gun owners. That sounds like some backwards causality to me. It seems way more likely that people own guns when the likelihood of murderous break ins is high, rather than the idea that the same break in situations are happening and they're just getting into firefights and losing.
  • throw0101a 5y ago
    > It seems way more likely that people own guns when the likelihood of murderous break ins is high, rather than the idea that the same break in situations are happening and they're just getting into firefights and losing. A person with a gun may feel like they can "handle" the intruder more than someone who is unarmed. If you're unarmed you may take the less risky action of barricading yourself in a room and calling the police.
• nvelty 5y ago
  >Gun owners are substantially more likely to die of gun violence than non-gun owners. I'd imagine that people living in areas more prone to gun violence are also more likely to arm themselves. >the cop's advice to someone facing substantial psychological stress was to "get a gun." I don't think it's the worst advice, probably could have been delivered with more tact. Having the means of defense gives one agency and can be reassuring. Instead of lying awake hoping no one breaks in, you now focus on how you'd most effectively detect and stop someone breaking in - you're now a player instead of a victim. That said, responsible gun ownership requires knowledge and training, so probably not the best time to suggest gun ownership for the author.
  • dangerlibrary 5y ago
    > I'd imagine that people living in areas more prone to gun violence are also more likely to arm themselves. I'm all for skepticism, but at some point people's willingness to assume that peer reviewed research is flawed in _the most obvious possible way_ and that the researchers made no attempt whatsoever to correct for _the most obvious possible failure mode of their study_ borders on insane. Do you really think that nobody thought of that before just now?
    • native_samples 5y ago
      The original claim doesn't cite any peer reviewed research. Nonetheless, there are enough really bad peer reviewed studies out there (which get attention) that it's not insane to willingly assume the worst.
      • dangerlibrary 5y ago
        I'd just like some acknowledgement that maybe - just maybe! - confirmation bias is kicking in when people make these assumptions. Maybe the reason for this particular brand of reflexive skepticism is not genuine concern about the quality of the research, but an attempt to rationalize their own actions and beliefs without actually doing any introspection or self-examination.
• oceanghost 5y ago
  Your reasoning is flawed. The average gun owner has not received a death threat.
  • worstestes 5y ago
    Do you have data to support this?
    • oceanghost 5y ago
      You are absurd.
      • worstestes 5y ago
        Right.. so no evidence or data. Show yourself out