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Is the murder rate easy to measure? As best we can tell, “stand your ground” laws in states like Florida result in hundreds of deaths each year. How many of th

Is the murder rate easy to measure? As best we can tell, “stand your ground” laws in states like Florida result in hundreds of deaths each year. How many of those would be considered murder in other states? Police killed over 1,300 people last year. How many of those people truly posed an immediate danger to others, and how many were murdered by a trigger-happy cop who was not held accountable by his colleagues? Crime, even serious crime like murder, is socially constructed. It’s not objective; society decides what’s illegal and who gets to do it anyway.

WalterBright 3y ago
> Is the murder rate easy to measure? Yes. The medical examiner decides if a death is homicide or not. > result in hundreds of deaths each year Lacks context - the number of homicides in the same year. > How many of those would be considered murder in other states? They're still considered homicide. > Police killed over 1,300 people last year That figure is for all deaths where police were involved. A subset of that would be the police killing. Furthermore, if someone points a gun at a policeman, and the policeman kills him in response, that is self-defense, not murder. There are officers killed while on duty, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_officers_killed_in_the_line_of_duty_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_office... Less than 10% of homicides result from police action. > how many were murdered by a trigger-happy cop who was not held accountable by his colleagues? In Washington state, each death from a police encounter are investigated by law, and charges get filed if the officer broke the law. That would include being trigger-happy. > It’s not objective It's objective enough. My larger point is there aren't a lot of (or even any) homicides that go undetected in wealthy communities. Furthermore, your figures lack context as you didn't compare with the total amount of homicides. Your figures are not enough to claim that the higher homicide rates in poor communities are the result of police murders.
- jakelazaroff 3y ago
  None of this addresses my point. You can measure dead bodies. Whether or not those get counted in the murder rate depends on social factors — are police honestly investigating themselves? are there laws that exculpate killing humans? etc Arizona has a bill in the works that would make it legal to kill people trespassing anywhere on one’s land, intended to allow farmers with large plots of land to shoot migrants. The bill will probably get vetoed, but in a world where it passes it’s very likely that the number of killings will increase but the number of murders will drop. Dead bodies are objective. “Murder” is not.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    You'd have a point if you compared the number of edge cases with the total number of homicides, and those edge cases are enough to swing the results. But I doubt there are enough.

WalterBright 3y ago

> Is the murder rate easy to measure? Yes. The medical examiner decides if a death is homicide or not. > result in hundreds of deaths each year Lacks context - the number of homicides in the same year. > How many of those would be considered murder in other states? They're still considered homicide. > Police killed over 1,300 people last year That figure is for all deaths where police were involved. A subset of that would be the police killing. Furthermore, if someone points a gun at a policeman, and the policeman kills him in response, that is self-defense, not murder. There are officers killed while on duty, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_officers_killed_in_the_line_of_duty_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_office... Less than 10% of homicides result from police action. > how many were murdered by a trigger-happy cop who was not held accountable by his colleagues? In Washington state, each death from a police encounter are investigated by law, and charges get filed if the officer broke the law. That would include being trigger-happy. > It’s not objective It's objective enough. My larger point is there aren't a lot of (or even any) homicides that go undetected in wealthy communities. Furthermore, your figures lack context as you didn't compare with the total amount of homicides. Your figures are not enough to claim that the higher homicide rates in poor communities are the result of police murders.

jakelazaroff 3y ago
None of this addresses my point. You can measure dead bodies. Whether or not those get counted in the murder rate depends on social factors — are police honestly investigating themselves? are there laws that exculpate killing humans? etc Arizona has a bill in the works that would make it legal to kill people trespassing anywhere on one’s land, intended to allow farmers with large plots of land to shoot migrants. The bill will probably get vetoed, but in a world where it passes it’s very likely that the number of killings will increase but the number of murders will drop. Dead bodies are objective. “Murder” is not.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  You'd have a point if you compared the number of edge cases with the total number of homicides, and those edge cases are enough to swing the results. But I doubt there are enough.