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 CptJake wrote:

 MrDwhitey wrote:
Clearly by shooting the guy and checking his body after. Only way to be safe.

Does that translate into "I'm a smart ass who really does not have a solution"?.

I would have thought that the obvious solution would be for police to stop shooting people just because they think there might be a gun...

 CptJake wrote:
A person who has not been searched is going to be secured/cuffed for the safety of the cops and EMT. .

So clearly we should just all be wearing handcuffs until such point as a police officer determines us to not be a threat.

Or shoots us in the head, on the off-chance that we might have a gun.

 CptJake wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
A person who has not been searched is going to be secured/cuffed for the safety of the cops and EMT. .

So clearly we should just all be wearing handcuffs until such point as a police officer determines us to not be a threat.

Or shoots us in the head, on the off-chance that we might have a gun.

Spoiler:

 Jihadin wrote:

For all the LEO's knew he might have had a pistol/revolver/flint lock pistol/sawed of Nagant/Pipe Shotgun/TyrionorDaryl crossbo/Callahan full-bore auto lock with customized trigger double cartridge thorough gauge with a potato silencer on the end of the weapon wrapped in a towl aimed at them

Although presumably the fact that he didn't have such a thing would have become quickly apparent when they went to handcuff him...

I mean, I've never been handcuffed, so might be mistaken, but I had been working under the belief that it somehow involves cuffing the hands. Thus making it readily noticable whether or not there is in fact a weapon in said hands.

 Talizvar wrote:
Wouldn't having some guy with a towel wrapped around his hand and pointed it at you not creep you out a tiny bit?

Ah, well, if it creeped them out, then that's totally justification for shooting him in the head. Nobody needs creeped out police officers.

Hindsight is 20-20, you expect a cop not to "deal" with this weird situation with anything less than worst case scenario?

Yes. A million times yes.

Lethal force should always be an absolute last resort.


'Well, he might have a gun. Better shoot him in the head, just in case' is not an absolute last resort.

Relapse wrote:
... that the cops should have been mind readers with X-ray vision.

Nobody has suggested this.

Just that police officers shouldn't be shooting people unless they're presented with a valid reason for doing so. 'He might have a gun' is not, in my opinion, a valid reason.


Yes, that may mean that in some situations police officers wind up getting shot at before they get to shoot back. Yes, that sucks. But that's their job.


Police are supposed to protect the public. If a 'shoot first and make sure he was actually a threat later' policy results in even one single innocent person being shot by police, then that's a bad policy.

 Jihadin wrote:
Easy to arm chair after the fact
I bet if you had their job you be thinking the same thing.
Threat
Remove Threat

I certainly might. I'm not a police officer, precisely because I have no interest in putting myself into those sorts of situations, or any of the myriad other horrible things that police have to deal with. So lacking the training to deal with that sort of situation, there's a very good chance that I would handle that situation badly.

I also wouldn't deal with, say, a patient with a complex fracture of their femur as well as a paramedic would. Or a child stuck on the 4th floor of a burning building as well as a fireman would. Because I don't have their training either.


Not having their training, though, doesn't mean I can't expect them to not kill people for no good reason.

If we start giving LEO a Rules of Engagement policy you all be screaming militarization of the force

I have absolutely no qualms with police forces being given more military-style training if it results in a police force that is more capable of dealing with the situations they are thrown into without needless loss of life.

 Jihadin wrote:
Everyone looking at the LEO and the Vic shooting which is inside the "Box" with your perception. No one has looked around outside the "Box" to what prompted the LEO to take out the vic

Then I guess we'll all just have to wait for the startling revelation of just what was 'outside the box' that justified shooting a man brandishing a towel-wrapped forearm.


I'm certainly interested in seeing what that might have been, because I simply can't imagine anything that fits.

 Jihadin wrote:
Did it dawn on you that the cops might have thought they were going to be next on national news of getting killed in the line of duty?

I would expect that's something that runs through the minds of police officers more than once over the course of their duty.

Again, that's the job. It's a crap one, but it is what it is.

Let's assume the LEO is carrying a 9mm Beretta

Alternatively, let's not.

Because he wasn't.

He was carrying a towel.

 Jihadin wrote:
The Vic had the towel not the LEO or did we have another cop get shot I missed?!

Yeah, I misread your post.

Although going by these events, perhaps law enforcement should reconsider their armament options. Towels would certainly reduce ammunition expenses.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jihadin wrote:
if it was me in the situation I get behind cover. You bet your fething ass i would move out the line of fire

For sure, if you suspect that he might be armed then not standing in the potential line of fire might be wise.

It's still a reasonable distance from there to 'He might have a gun, shoot him!'

 Grey Templar wrote:
Making guns harder to get would only infringe on the constitutional rights of law abiding citizens, it doesn't reduce criminals ease of access to guns..

Of course it does. Reduce the number of people who have guns,and you reduce the number of guns that the criminals can steal.

 Desubot wrote:
I shudder to thing what criminals would start doing if guns where at hard to obtain.

Probably not use guns, for the most part.

At least if most of the rest of the western world is any indication.



Down here, we still have the odd issue with some guy with a gun doing bad things... But for the most part, our criminals (at least, the ones not in biker gangs) tend to content themselves with knives, baseball bats and screwdrivers instead.

 Hordini wrote:
Exactly. And what is the point of penalizing law-abiding citizens, when it's the criminals who are they problem?

It's less about 'penalising' anyone, and more about the fact that if guns aren't so prevalent amongst the criminals, there's less need for the law-abiding citizens to have them either.


I find it a little mind-boggling that, in this day and age, anyone in a non-third-world country should feel they need a firearm to protect themselves. That's a pretty severe failing on the part of the society that person lives in.

 Desubot wrote:
and it sounds like running into crime down under is horrible.

No more so than anywhere else, I would imagine.

But with less chance of being shot by the police when you go to them for help...

 Hordini wrote:
I find it mind-boggling that someone would realistically expect the government to be solely responsible for their personal security, ...

Solely responsible? No, not really.

Responsible enough to provide a system whereby I don't feel like I need a firearm to protect myself from the nasty world outside my house? That's not an unreasonable expectation. It's pretty much the reason for having government in the first place.

 Hordini wrote:
There are also reasons to own firearms other than for protection from criminals.

Sure. But whenever the subject of gun control comes up, that's the main one that gets bandied about.

Well, that, and the need to protect yourself when your government inevitably turns on you.

And that's great. But at what point do you stop and say 'Holy crap... look at all of the problems that are caused by allowing that particular freedom...'

For us, that point was the Port Arthur massacre. One loony with a gun went on a shooting spree, and Australia said 'Nope, let's not do that again.'

Not without some disagreement, admittedly. But for the most part, it was accepted that for the majority of Australians, guns simply weren't something that was necessary enough to allow for this sort of craziness to happen again.


But that's probably far enough with that little tangent. My last few posts were probably verging a little far over towards 'murica-bashing, and that was never my intention. I just find the casual acceptance of this sort of thing (well, yeah, some guy got shot... but hey, we have a right to own guns, so what are you going to do?) to be more than a little baffling.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

If people abide by the law, then why do you care at all whether or not they own firearms? Does it make you feel uncomfortable?

Well, yes. Insofar as it creates a culture whereby firearms are accepted as commonplace, and where people willfully ignore all of the reasons that having these things out amongst the general public is a bad idea because their 'right' to own them trumps all other considerations, absolutely that makes me uncomfortable.

To be more specific, the idea that my neighbour might have a firearm in his house doesn't make me uncomfortable. The idea of living somewhere where most of my neighbours have firearms in their houses and accept that as a trivial thing, leading to a massive number of accidental shootings, firearm related violence, and people being shot by police due to them having to work under the assumption that every car they pull over, every 12-year-old-boy on the street, and every domestic incident they attend might involve a firearm?

Damn straight, that makes me uncomfortable.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
How about the woman and her kids who escaped an abusive ex who has threatened to kill them? Watch the video and ask what might have happened if she was unable to defend herself
How about an elderly couple that live in a crime ridden neighbourhood and cannot afford to move?
How about the farmer that lives in an area where the average police response is over 45 minutes?

insaniak wrote:That's a pretty severe failing on the part of the society that person lives in.

Your examples just highlight my point. If people feel that they need a firearm to protect themselves, then something is wrong with the system.

 insaniak wrote:
And that's great. But at what point do you stop and say 'Holy crap... look at all of the problems that are caused by allowing that particular freedom...'

What problems are those?

Well, for starters, I recently heard about a situation where a guy with a towel wrapped around his arm was shot in the head by police who thought he had a gun...

 Hordini wrote:
Why shouldn't someone want the most effective weapon to protect themselves?

Someone wanting something isn't automatically a good reason for them to have it.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

I don't know if you're aware, but the streets running red with blood is a common warning every time gun laws are relaxed. Strangely though this never happens;
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/04/20/colorado-campus-carry-12-years-no-mass-shootings-no-crimes-by-permit-holders/

Deaths by accident involving firearms has been on the decline here for a long time...ETC

The problem with statistics like that is that they only show a part of the picture. You seem to be taking 'more people have guns, gun-related deaths are down' as a sign that gun-related deaths are down as a result of more people having guns.

Of course, if ou extrapolate that further, you come to the conclusion that if nobody had guns, then gun-related deaths would skyrocket. Which sort of leads to the inescapable conclusion that there is something else actually going on there that is influencing those numbers, and that it's not as simple as counting how many people have guns.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
So countries without guns do not experience violent or abusive exes? Old people can freely move without the financial means to do so? Farmers can live far away from law enforcement without issue?

I don't recall claiming that any of those issues were solely confined to the US. Although I did live in a rural area here for some time and, contrary to certain movie depictions of rural Australia, very rarely had to defend myself from roving packs of marauders.

People winding up in a life-threatening situation like that represent a failure of any social system in which they occur, IMO. Adding guns into the mix doesn't improve the situation.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Somebody feeling uncomfortable about something isn't automatically a good reason for someone else not to have something.

Again, some people are uncomfortable about mixed-race marriages. By your standard, those should be illegal too.

I never said that my being uncomfortable with the culture created by free access to firearms was a reason for firearms to not be allowed.

 Hordini wrote:

Well, it varies depending on where in the US you live, but besides the potential of a criminal encounter with long police response time, in rural areas you might also have to deal with coyotes, wolves, black bears, brown bears, or mountain lions. Not to mention large numbers of smaller pests who are less dangerous (to humans) but can be very dangerous to pets and poultry livestock, namely raccoons, possums, and foxes. Not to mention all the damage to crops (and cars, and people) that animals like deer can cause (and the significant supplement to your diet that hunting animals like deer can bring).

To be clear, the original claim was that farmers needed guns to protect themselves from criminals, due to being so far from law enforcement. I fully understand that bears and suchlike are a potential problem, but from my understanding it's not usually of the 'violent ex' or 'give me your wallet' kind.

And I would imagine that bear and coyotes are less of a threat in, say, Los Angeles.


Down here, farmers have specific exemptions to the normal firearms laws, allowing them to have firearms with appropriate licencing to do what they need to do.

 Hordini wrote:
But even so, not everyone lives in LA, and that's part of my point. And not everyone who lives in a rural area is a farmer. People living in rural areas needing (or wanting guns) due to slow police response times is only one part of it. Yes, it was what we were originally talking about, but I figured that bit about wildlife was pertinent since Iron_Captain seemed to be confused about why someone living in rural America might feel the need to own a gun. The answer is, there are a lot of valid reasons.

Sure. And a lot of them are good reasons for allowing people in rural areas to have guns.

Quite a few of them suddenly become much less applicable when you start looking at urban areas, though. Which is why we have different rules for rural folk and city folk.

Oh good, we're back to 'but my rights!'...

At which point I think I'm stepping off this merry-go-round.