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Comment by hebdo | Hacker News Reader

If you think that a knife threat should never call for a firearm response then I recommend this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xpcrDzy344

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I don't think that and don't appreciate the framing you're trying to impose on me. Could you perhaps word comments like this more carefully?

What I think is that people armed with firearms give the police much less reaction time, while people armed with knives can, if they're not on a vector that puts them in contact with other officers or civilians, be pacified more gradually.

>I don't think that and don't appreciate the framing you're trying to impose on me. Could you perhaps word comments like this more carefully?

This is a fantastic, measured answer - I'm always pleased to see reasonable responses to unreasonable comments.

Sorry for the choice of words, but my point was that a person armed with just a knife can still be very dangerous. The use of a gun in such a situation cannot be simply called a deadly overreaction, without going into details. Therefore I do not see my comment as unreasonable.

Nobody called it a "deadly overreaction", so I'm a little confused about this comment.

If we're trading youtube clips here's a police force who disarm a man armed with a machete. Armed police are available, (the UK has armed police, especially in London) but those police are not needed because our police force is not fucking incompetent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX5CPx4RKWw

Here's another video of a man wielding a knife and approaching police. In the US he's much more likely to be killed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9TFvh6Xps4

In the first clip I wouldn't call that "competence" so much as "overwhelming force", something US police use frequently. It's worth noting that at the beginning of the video, an officer is trying to ram the perp with a trashcan found at the scene...

It's also worth noting that in the US an officer is much more likely to be killed. Hence why regular people are more likely to be killed by police. It's a fearful, kneejerk reaction thing.

Source please for "in the US an officer is much more likely to be killed"?

I took a quick look and found this. [1][2] Looks like number of cop deaths are at a 50 year low but can't find a country by country comparison.

[1] http://www.groupnewsblog.net/2014/09/i-saw-posting-on-facebo...

[2] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131230/15411225716/numbe...

It's surely anecdotal, however I have a hard time believing most of Europe, in particular the UK, has more mentally ill and/or drug addicts who are more prone to this kind of behavior than the general populace. You also have a variety of high profile examples of cop-killing in the US that play into this kneejerk reactionary arms race on the part of police.

> more mentally ill

Nice stigma. People with mental illness are not violent; mental illness does not predict violent behaviour. That's about as offensive and ignorant as saying "has more black people and/or drug addicts".

Once again. Provide examples of high profile cop killings contributing to so-called arms race. It's not an arms race when police always has a gun while the suspect may or may not have one in any given encounter.

You have moved from one statement to another without much to show for it.

Reusing your own comment in a different thread, "what terrible reasoning"

This is what happens in the US.

http://heavy.com/news/2015/12/san-francisco-sfpd-police-shoo...

With no clips to trade, I'm merely spectating at a tennis match, but I remain unconvinced that the UK response is in any way better.

In all 3 clips (your two, plus the parent's) what I see is that a person holding a knife is an immediate and real danger to anyone within 15 feet of them.

Also, if I'm seeing correctly, both assailants had already been pepper-sprayed, is that right?

I don't know the numbers but it seems to me the relevant question is, in X number of incidents in the UK vs. the US, how many perpetrators die? How many cops die?

If the UK police are able to subdue these people without killing the perpetrator or getting killed themselves, on a per capita basis, I'd say the UK response is better.

Leaving aside the apples/oranges comparison of the greater latitude given to the individual's rights in the US vs. the UK (2nd and 4th amendments in particular), I'd more or less agree with this criteria being a good way to distinguish the overall value of the two approaches to dealing with armed civilian confrontations.

That being said, if the numbers you're looking for exist in an unbiased, non-doctored study, I'd be surprised. If they did, and they supported the thesis, you'd see them quoted in every article advocating gun control.

Yes, in the UK version the person poses a risk of very real harm to officers. People could die. Despite this, police manage to subdue him, and arrest him. They can do this because an officer didn't shoot him within six seconds of arriving at the scene.

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