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 Ouze wrote:

The US is awash in guns, and so the police have to assume that guns are likely present and police accordingly. I'm really not sure why this is a controversial idea.

I think the basic idea really isn't controversial. The problem, IMO, is that a lot of police training is focused on "every encounter could involve bad guys who are going to kill you, so be ready to kill them first" and that side of the training gets more emphasis than the "because every situation could be dangerous, here is how to de-escalate situations rather than escalate them".

There are also many cases where police officers place themselves in harms way when it's really not needed rather than putting themselves into tactical positions where situations may be more likely to be resolved without the exchange of gunfire.

 d-usa wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

The US is awash in guns, and so the police have to assume that guns are likely present and police accordingly. I'm really not sure why this is a controversial idea.

I think the basic idea really isn't controversial. The problem, IMO, is that a lot of police training is focused on "every encounter could involve bad guys who are going to kill you, so be ready to kill them first" and that side of the training gets more emphasis than the "because every situation could be dangerous, here is how to de-escalate situations rather than escalate them".

There are also many cases where police officers place themselves in harms way when it's really not needed rather than putting themselves into tactical positions where situations may be more likely to be resolved without the exchange of gunfire.

If we would give police proper training, get tips and information from other counties, require continued education about new problems as well as old ones, and stop giving police military hardware, we would be better off. Proper de-escalation training would be great. This is not the wild west, cops shouldn't be leaving the precinct expecting a showdown every day. But as we have seen with recent events, specifically the St. Louis riots right now, that is all they are looking for. I cannot support police who jump to violence before putting forth any attempt at diplomacy.

 Dreadwinter wrote:
and stop giving police military hardware

They would have to first cut military spending. fat chance of that ever happening

Just by looking at police training standards between the US and other countries should tell us a lot.

 d-usa wrote:
Just by looking at police training standards between the US and other countries should tell us a lot.

It's worth noting that police training isn't lower in the US overall, but like a lot of things it is wildly inconsistent from location to location. Police in a large, prosperous cities tend to have much better resourced training than police in poorer cities and rural areas. This can compound the issues these poorer cities have with shortages of police and equipment.

It isn't all of the story, of course - it's worth noting a lot of the shootings there still seems to be a lot of police shootings in areas that are well funded, but it is likely playing a part in what is happening.


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AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Obviously I know universities are big places with lots of kids, but my point was "campus police" are almost exclusively an american phenomenon. The rest of the world tends to get by with unarmed security.

And even unarmed security is minimal. At the university I used to work at, and it was one of the biggest in the country, thousands of staff and many thousands of students, there was a grand total of 3 security on the payroll (although there was a contract for security to patrol the grounds at night). And it was a very cruisy job, these guys had almost nothing to do. Most of the work they did came when they got grabbed by the infrastructure guys to help them move furniture and stuff like that.

Part of it might be to do with the US having more of a dorm culture, where many students live on or near campus. That wasn't really a thing here for a long time. Campuses are located in major cities, so you either stay with your parents or get your own place, which isn't necessarily that close to the uni.

It is changing as international student numbers are growing, they prefer to cluster in groups around the university. A couple of years after I left work at that uni there was a couple of attacks on or just outside of campus grounds late at night, with Asian international students being attacked as they walked home. Something similar happened to some Indian students in Melbourne some years before. I wonder if those 3 campus security were engaged in by the police at all? I wonder if there's now more police as a response to the increase in students living on or near campus?


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AllSeeingSkink wrote:
You're using a purposely inflated number here. Gun ownership in Australia is is roughly 1 gun per 4 people, in the US it's a touch over 1 gun per person (but obviously not everyone owns a gun and others own multiple). Yeah the US has more guns but it's no where near 100 times more like your number suggests, more like 4 times more.

But that's misleading too, as the overwhelming share of guns in Australia are held by a small number of farmers, for work on their farms. Just 6% of households own a gun, and those guns are almost all rifles and shotguns. In contrast the US is closer to 40%, with a much larger share of pistols.

In a place where pistols are common an officer can never be sure when approaching a person if they are carrying, and that will affect how he deals with the situation.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
That's the same with the US. Most firearm crimes involve illegally acquired weapons. Legally owned weapons are rarely involved in crimes.

There's a lot of varying research on this, and it depends on how you define 'legal'. Certainly only a small percentage of guns used in crimes are bought legally through gun stores, but a much larger share get their guns from friends and family and through private sales, which may or may not be illegal.

It is good evidence that just cracking down on gun stores won't necessarily restrict gun use in crime, but it also shows that a society with a lot of guns in it will naturally see more guns getting to people who will to use them for crime.


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 redleger wrote:
This all day long. I still don't know why people ignore societal reasons for the high crime rates and the fact that most major shootings happen in areas with the strictist gun laws. Its almost as if guns are really not the problem people make them out to be. If you got a wish from a Genie and wished all guns in the USA away, being run over and stabbed in the eye by pencils would be all over the news. Its gonna happen. Research on homemade explosives would go up, and these things would still happen.

I think Luciferian's point was valid and correct, but in replying and agreeing you have way overstated the case. Poverty and other social issues are major drivers of crime and homicide, much stronger than guns. That's true. But you take that to the next step, claiming that guns are not also a driver and that's just plain wrong. This can observed quite easily by noting that the US is far from unique in having social issues like poverty, but it has a much greater murder rate. The reason is that when take those social issues and tip in a pile of handguns it doesn't help.

This doesn't mean that increasing controls on guns would help, or even if it did help that you should do it, but it is an important thing to acknowledge that gun proliferation increases illegal gun use.


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 Luciferian wrote:
Why would you want to include suicides in violent crime statistics?

You wouldn't be including suicides in stats of violent deaths, but in fatality stats. Just like you would track workplace deaths in measuring the impact of safety regs, it only makes sense to track gun suicides when measuring the impact of gun proliferation.

This isn't a thing that most gun owners need to consider, but if a person is having mental health issues and suicidal thoughts, then for God's sake do not keep a gun in the house. Unfortunately in places where guns are more common then there's just more houses where a person with suicidal thoughts is more likely to have a gun in the house.

It's a loose example, but here in Australia most of the guns are in the country, and that's where most of the suicides are as well. The guns aren't the only reason, anyone who's been to an Australian country town would understand there's a lot of reasons people there might be killing themselves, but it is a factor.

Also, a straw purchase made on behalf of someone with no right to own a gun is not an example of legal gun ownership.

Sure, but it is an activity made much easier when there is a large amount of legal gun ownership.

Anyway, this is kind of loosely connected to the topic. There are a lot of reasons our police are so militarized compared to those of other nations. One of those reasons is the availability of guns, but I think a bigger reason is the style of "law and order" policing we've adopted. Especially since the beginning of the war on drugs around the time of the LBJ administration. Much like in war, no other country can match our expenditures in these areas, and it's created a vicious cycle of poverty, violence and escalation that is very much a problem to this day.

The militarisation is generally seen as starting for real in the 70s, as a response to a genuinely horrible spike in policemen being killed on the job. A whole range of responses, from more defensive police, to greater sentences, to greater police resources and so on, managed to reduce both the crime rates and the number of police deaths, particularly in major cities. But while the threat declined, the more militant policing remained.

 sebster wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Obviously I know universities are big places with lots of kids, but my point was "campus police" are almost exclusively an american phenomenon. The rest of the world tends to get by with unarmed security.

And even unarmed security is minimal. At the university I used to work at, and it was one of the biggest in the country, thousands of staff and many thousands of students, there was a grand total of 3 security on the payroll (although there was a contract for security to patrol the grounds at night). And it was a very cruisy job, these guys had almost nothing to do. Most of the work they did came when they got grabbed by the infrastructure guys to help them move furniture and stuff like that.

You've got me wondering what University and how long ago you worked there, at the University I work at there's at least 4 security people wandering around my faculty alone at any given time, and that's only 1 of half a dozen or so faculties on the campus. I often work late and have met most of them when they come round wondering what I'm still doing there when the university is empty, lol. Occasionally we have secured work in my department in which case another 2 or 3 get put on to keep watch over the entrances to the secured area.

But yeah, it's still a pretty cruisy job.

Part of it might be to do with the US having more of a dorm culture, where many students live on or near campus. That wasn't really a thing here for a long time. Campuses are located in major cities, so you either stay with your parents or get your own place, which isn't necessarily that close to the uni.

Yeah, that's gradually (or quite quickly) changing. The Australian universities I've worked at have really swelled with on campus students, even if you ignore the internationals there's seems to be a lot more students who come from the country, different cities or the other side of the city and end up living on campus.

It is changing as international student numbers are growing, they prefer to cluster in groups around the university. A couple of years after I left work at that uni there was a couple of attacks on or just outside of campus grounds late at night, with Asian international students being attacked as they walked home. Something similar happened to some Indian students in Melbourne some years before. I wonder if those 3 campus security were engaged in by the police at all? I wonder if there's now more police as a response to the increase in students living on or near campus?

The same thing happens in the US. The university I worked at in the US had it's own police, but they only patrolled the university and maybe 1 street outside the university. Most students lived 2 to 3 streets away from the university and you'd constantly hear about students being mugged just outside the area the cops patrolled. The university would send out a notice every time something happened so you got a pretty good idea the rate at which students were being mugged or assaulted.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
You're using a purposely inflated number here. Gun ownership in Australia is is roughly 1 gun per 4 people, in the US it's a touch over 1 gun per person (but obviously not everyone owns a gun and others own multiple). Yeah the US has more guns but it's no where near 100 times more like your number suggests, more like 4 times more.

But that's misleading too

Yeah I know, but at least it was honest, the 1 vs 300 number is nowhere near true, people do occasionally get shot over here too

In a place where pistols are common an officer can never be sure when approaching a person if they are carrying, and that will affect how he deals with the situation.

Yeah I've often said the same thing in defence of US police officers when people talk about them being worse than other countries. I guess my query is what the net benefit for armed security/police actually is in the end. How many lives do they save vs how many students/staff get killed in unfortunate situations, and maybe coppers who do work on campuses need different training to deal with the different burdens.

I recall 1 shooting at an Australian university some years back where a couple of people died. I'm trying to remember if there was any call for more armament in campuses after that event.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 sebster wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Obviously I know universities are big places with lots of kids, but my point was "campus police" are almost exclusively an american phenomenon. The rest of the world tends to get by with unarmed security.

And even unarmed security is minimal. At the university I used to work at, and it was one of the biggest in the country, thousands of staff and many thousands of students, there was a grand total of 3 security on the payroll (although there was a contract for security to patrol the grounds at night). And it was a very cruisy job, these guys had almost nothing to do. Most of the work they did came when they got grabbed by the infrastructure guys to help them move furniture and stuff like that.

You've got me wondering what University and how long ago you worked there, at the University I work at there's at least 4 security people wandering around my faculty alone at any given time, and that's only 1 of half a dozen or so faculties on the campus.

I've never seen a security guard at my university. Not one. I don't actually recall any security at any university I've visited for conferences or anything either (except Hebrew U and Tel Aviv, but they're obvious outliers).